Talk:Dry Falls

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I calculated the kinetic energy of the falls using the figures provided in the text and the formula

Mass is nine cubic miles per hour; Velocity is 45 miles per hour (although a 65 mile per hour figure is also given, making this a conservative calculation.

Nine cubic miles is 37.5 cubic km. Assuming one cubic m of water weighs 1000 kilograms, that's 3.75x10¹³ kg

Divide by 3600 to get kg per second: 1.04x10¹⁰

45 miles per hour is approximately 20 metres per second.

0.5 x 1.04x10¹⁰ x (20x20)

= 2.08x10¹² Joules

As this figure is calculated per second, it is identical to 2.08x10¹² Watts, ie, 2.08 Terawatts.

World electricity consumption in 2001: 1.7 TW World electricity consumption in 2005: 2.0 TW

[edit] Kinetic energy

Other editors have questioned the following content here and at Talk:Missoula Floods. I have removed it until a better source can be located. The cited source is a blog. Blogs do not satisfy my reading of WP:ATT and WP:RS.Walter Siegmund (talk) 21:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The kinetic energy of the floodwaters as they flowed through Dry Falls was approximately 2 terawatts (TW) - enough power to provide electricity to the entire globe.1

We reach here a sort of circular loop: the blog post in question in act used the calculation described above for the kinetic energy figure. Perhaps a better source should be found, as discussed at Talk:Missoula Floods. Ppe42 14:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other falls?

I was wondering if Frenchman Coulee or Potholes Coulee would also be considered dried waterfalls. How do they compare in size?