[benihana]

I know what a watt is, and I understand what giga means. I know what a calorie means because I eat food and I have to make decisions about how many calories to consume daily. I know what horsepower means because when I shop for cars, I compare them to one another. I don't know what gigawatt means because I don't shop for power, I don't compare power output of one reactor to another, and I don't worry about power consumption because it's all covered by my wall outlets.

I don't know why you're getting uppity about this specific unit, but your post reeks of elitism and arrogance. You happen to understand what a watt is, so it's disheartening and sad that nobody else does (it's so lonely being so smart and being surrounded by dumb people)? Keep your shitty judgmental attitude to yourself.

[venomsnake]

> I don't know what gigawatt means because I don't shop for power, I don't compare power output of one reactor to another, and I don't worry about power consumption because it's all covered by my wall outlets.

Okay. 1000 watts are roughly one 1.3 HP, everybody knows what a horse power is. So a megawatt is 1300 hp and gigawatt is 1 300 000 hp. We use cars all day - we have idea how much a horse power is.

[TeMPOraL]

I have (had, until your post) no idea how much one HP is because I don't own a car and generally never liked cars (always was more into jetplanes), so I keep forgetting. But when I read something that gives HP values, I look up how much it is in watts; that's just one C-t "1 horse power in watts" <Return> away.

I know I'm shouting at the wind here, but I get the impression that most people today think education ends on high school, and after they graduate it they're not to be expected to ever go and look something up.