1.21 Gigawatts! 1.21 Gigawatts!

Tonight, I learned that the 'Back to the Future' movies revealed some oddly accurate findings in the real world.

1. FACT. The true pronunciation of the Greek prefix giga for n x 10⁹ (billions) is with a soft 'g' like in the movie script when Doc Brown pronounces it correctly - 'jiggawatt.' The SI acceptance of this prefix was not until 1960 (some 5 years after Doc Brown's famous outburst, but perhaps he deduced what his future-self meant when he heard the term in the video from the future.) My college professor in physics, the late Dr. Asim Barut, always pronounced it "jigga" - and he knew better than anyone else.

2. FACT. A bolt of lightning produces anywhere from 1 gigawatt to 100's of gigawatts of power in it's short life span.

3. FACT. If I took the literal translation of my name (Todd = Middle English for FOX, and Mitchell = Hebrew name MICHAEL) and flipped to MICHAEL FOX, who starred in the 'Back to the Future' movies, this is just plain eerie.

Aside from my name on different internet forums being variations of FastbackToTheFuture, I have no intention of turning my EV conversion into a time machine. If indeed 1.21 gigawatts of power is needed for time travel, then I would need more than 3000 times the battery voltage to resuscitate a Monty Python parrot. And that's more than I'm willing to fit under the back seat.