Sunshine Power

Do you ever wonder about the energy that the Earth gets from the Sun? Here are some fun facts from the University of Oklahoma's department of Geology and Geophysics:

• incoming radioactive energy = 38 trillion watts = 38,000,000,000,000 joules per second
• heat flux  = 0.075 watts per square meter  (average over Earth surface)

That's about 350 watts if you could grab everything hitting your very king-size one-acre yard. So you could run a couple of light bulbs and a (not too big) TV. But in places like Florida, we have much more power to work with. Next time, we'll take a look at that.


http://geophysics.ou.edu/geomechanics/notes/heatflow/global_heat_flow.htm