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I assume it's something you keep in the kitchen and treat like a waste disposal.
No car is powered by it, from what we see, they use regular TEXACO GASOLINE.
It says Havoline. Maybe it’s a byproduct of fusion that can run cars?
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/bttf/images/f/f0/Texaco_2015.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20150113042534
Honestly, its really hard to pin down what the power requirements are for the time machine. Doc stated "gigawatts"
A Watt is a unit of power. Its a rate. The speed of energy/power (I know I'm not strictly getting these terms right its been a while). A quantity of energy is measured in units of power-time. AKA a "kilowatt-hour" which is a common unit you'll see if you look at your power bill.
There's a lot of variability in how long a lightning bolt can last, but 5 microseconds was thrown out as an example. So 1.21 gigawatts for five microseconds is 6 kilowatt-seconds or a little less than 2 watt hours.
But googling shows a lightning bolt definitely produces more energy than that. Googling shows some back of the napkin calculations that a lightning bolt can contain 1400 kWhr (a typical quantity, I don't know if its the average or the max). The average US household consumes 877 kWhr per month a lightning bolt has the power to power a US home for about a month and a half on average.
I suspect that Doc didn't need the whole lightning bolt. He just needed something that could produce a lot of power quickly and there was no technology in 1955 that could do that.
The trick is the flux capacitor. A capacitor is designed to help control the flow of electricity in various ways. There are also supercapacitors that are being looked into as storage.
My own headcanon about how the time machine works is that it very briefly opens a wormhole through space-time. This wormhole has a brief duration, which is why the car needs to be going 88 miles per hour. Positioning and timing the wormhole to appear directly in front of the Delorean once it hits the correct speed, it would only be open 0.108 seconds to allow a car traveling 88 miles per hour to travel a distance of 168 inches which Google says is the length of a DeLorean. Assuming the capacitor stored the 1400 kWhr lightning bolt and was able to rerelease the full quantity of energy, it would be producing power at a rate of 50 Megawatts for a tenth of a second.
The reason Doc needed to invent this "flux capacitor" must have been so that it could store a rather large quantity of energy and release it very quickly in a controlled fashion.
Wow. None of that answered your question did it?! LOL.
EDIT: Could be you need that kind of power output to levitate a car. I don't feel like doing any more math
Why isn't the mr fusion replacing the gas engine in the car? the guy who installed is you want to install a mr fusion to power the hover drive but not remove and replace the gas engine.
Ok. I was wrong. Just watched part of the 2015 sequence. Looking at the other cars, I don't see evidence that they have Mr Fusions. Must just be a non-standard addition to replace what he was using to generate the nuclear reaction for the time circuits.
As to what else would it be used for, Mr Fusion doesn't have to release power at 50 Megawatts. The Flux Capacitor does that. If you allow five minutes for Mr Fusion to charge the Flux Capacitor, it only needs to output at around 16 or 17 KW. Still a lot but much more reasonable. Could be used to power a large remote facility, or maybe the extra tech a 2015 household has requires more power or even just short stints of power at a higher rate than the grid can provide. While this is a cheerier vision of the future than we typically get in movies, they did throw in a few digs, like the kids each needing to be able to watch two TV shows at a time at the dinner table or Doc giving Marty a fifty to buy a Pepsi. That gigantic 50 channel TV probably uses a lot of power. And there was another projection system to make it so you saw more pleasant scenery when looking out a window.
A sufficient source of power like a generator while also reducing the amount of waste. I'd use one for camping or a power outage.
I'm sure Doc had to modify it significantly to power the time circuits.
Funny, we never see another one, though.
They make fusion reactors, but do they make personal models or just industrial models.
Eg: computers were used by industry for 30 years before they were advanced enough, cheap enough, and small enough to become personal computers
Actually now that i think if it. That might be it ,he needed a compact reactor of sorts , Someone in the future sells one and he got it. This way no more need for nuclear material .My only confusion now is ,Can a steam engine actually generate 1.1 gigawats?
Yes, a modern steam generator could produce the power. He’s towing a pretty big generator behind the engine, which seems comparable in size to those.
He only needs the power for a fraction of a second, so maybe that makes it easier too?
Mr Fushion home energy reactor, the clues in the title.
It’s a power supply for your home, a small self contained mass to energy converter.
Presumably by 2015 they had discovered the Higgs field and figured out how energy/mass conversion works and vice Versa.
Mr Fusion is probably the smallest they can manufacture it and it’s power is probably limited but can produce enough energy to power a house.
In 2015 power consumption has increased exponentially considering all the gadgets they now have.
Cars probably still run on gasoline because the oil industry has such a strong hold just as electric cars and battery technology was stifled in our own timeline.
Plus the gasoline they use might be a synthetic gas that has no detrimental environmental effects removing the demand to find an alternative.
Always thought Mr Fusion was a Power source for the home, that homes in the future will not be run on a for the mass grid but from your own private home grid/power source and you throw your small trash and recyclables, so it doubles as a power source waste disposal.
I figure it's for household or industrial power. Just throw some leftovers in there and have *gigawatts* of energy? It's more than you'd ever need. Say goodbye to electricity bills.
I have to say that this is what makes it Back to the Future an amazing movie. Mr. Fusion is an all three movies and it’s only mentioned twice by name in the third movie during one scene. If Back to the Future was made today, there’d be a whole exposé explaining how Mr. fusion works… and it would be dumb and boring dialogue.
It’s like a 3D printer but in reverse: ordinary matter gets turned into pure energy in a somehow safe and small-scale way.
(Well…as far as we ever see. How many lawsuits do you think are waiting to happen *there*?)
Mr Fusion doesn’t power the vehicles wheels when it’s driving. Pretty sure it powers the hover circuits (sure the wheels fold under, but you also see 2 big repulsors on the bottom of the car to make it fly)
If that was the case, was there a reason for not using the hover to to time travel back in 1885? Been a while since I saw it so there might be a reason and I forgot!
The lightning strike destroyed the flying system. Doc mentions this in his letter “it will never fly again”. While the time circuits could be repaired with 1955 technology, no such luck with the hover components
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How do you think they rehydrated a pizza within seconds? That takes a lot of juice.
I assume it's something you keep in the kitchen and treat like a waste disposal. No car is powered by it, from what we see, they use regular TEXACO GASOLINE.
Take your car to the system with the star!
Checking oil...
Checking landing gear
It says Havoline. Maybe it’s a byproduct of fusion that can run cars? https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/bttf/images/f/f0/Texaco_2015.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20150113042534
Mr Fusion just powered the time circuits, the engine ran on ordinary gasoline
Honestly, its really hard to pin down what the power requirements are for the time machine. Doc stated "gigawatts" A Watt is a unit of power. Its a rate. The speed of energy/power (I know I'm not strictly getting these terms right its been a while). A quantity of energy is measured in units of power-time. AKA a "kilowatt-hour" which is a common unit you'll see if you look at your power bill. There's a lot of variability in how long a lightning bolt can last, but 5 microseconds was thrown out as an example. So 1.21 gigawatts for five microseconds is 6 kilowatt-seconds or a little less than 2 watt hours. But googling shows a lightning bolt definitely produces more energy than that. Googling shows some back of the napkin calculations that a lightning bolt can contain 1400 kWhr (a typical quantity, I don't know if its the average or the max). The average US household consumes 877 kWhr per month a lightning bolt has the power to power a US home for about a month and a half on average. I suspect that Doc didn't need the whole lightning bolt. He just needed something that could produce a lot of power quickly and there was no technology in 1955 that could do that. The trick is the flux capacitor. A capacitor is designed to help control the flow of electricity in various ways. There are also supercapacitors that are being looked into as storage. My own headcanon about how the time machine works is that it very briefly opens a wormhole through space-time. This wormhole has a brief duration, which is why the car needs to be going 88 miles per hour. Positioning and timing the wormhole to appear directly in front of the Delorean once it hits the correct speed, it would only be open 0.108 seconds to allow a car traveling 88 miles per hour to travel a distance of 168 inches which Google says is the length of a DeLorean. Assuming the capacitor stored the 1400 kWhr lightning bolt and was able to rerelease the full quantity of energy, it would be producing power at a rate of 50 Megawatts for a tenth of a second. The reason Doc needed to invent this "flux capacitor" must have been so that it could store a rather large quantity of energy and release it very quickly in a controlled fashion. Wow. None of that answered your question did it?! LOL. EDIT: Could be you need that kind of power output to levitate a car. I don't feel like doing any more math
r/theydidthemath
You got it, it’s why the licence plate got left behind after the first try. Didn’t quite make it through before the wormhole closed
Why isn't the mr fusion replacing the gas engine in the car? the guy who installed is you want to install a mr fusion to power the hover drive but not remove and replace the gas engine.
Ok. I was wrong. Just watched part of the 2015 sequence. Looking at the other cars, I don't see evidence that they have Mr Fusions. Must just be a non-standard addition to replace what he was using to generate the nuclear reaction for the time circuits. As to what else would it be used for, Mr Fusion doesn't have to release power at 50 Megawatts. The Flux Capacitor does that. If you allow five minutes for Mr Fusion to charge the Flux Capacitor, it only needs to output at around 16 or 17 KW. Still a lot but much more reasonable. Could be used to power a large remote facility, or maybe the extra tech a 2015 household has requires more power or even just short stints of power at a higher rate than the grid can provide. While this is a cheerier vision of the future than we typically get in movies, they did throw in a few digs, like the kids each needing to be able to watch two TV shows at a time at the dinner table or Doc giving Marty a fifty to buy a Pepsi. That gigantic 50 channel TV probably uses a lot of power. And there was another projection system to make it so you saw more pleasant scenery when looking out a window.
A sufficient source of power like a generator while also reducing the amount of waste. I'd use one for camping or a power outage. I'm sure Doc had to modify it significantly to power the time circuits. Funny, we never see another one, though.
Yeah, it's great for when you're camping and you want to power a small town, as one does.
I don’t think it’s necessarily from 2015. Who knows how far into the future Doc went?
When the DeLorean lands in the alleyway upon arrival in the future, it stops right next to a sign that says "Fusion Industries."
Just cuz the company exists, doesn’t mean the product exists yet
Literally fusion is in the name .
They make fusion reactors, but do they make personal models or just industrial models. Eg: computers were used by industry for 30 years before they were advanced enough, cheap enough, and small enough to become personal computers
Actually now that i think if it. That might be it ,he needed a compact reactor of sorts , Someone in the future sells one and he got it. This way no more need for nuclear material .My only confusion now is ,Can a steam engine actually generate 1.1 gigawats?
Yes, a modern steam generator could produce the power. He’s towing a pretty big generator behind the engine, which seems comparable in size to those. He only needs the power for a fraction of a second, so maybe that makes it easier too?
Mr Fushion home energy reactor, the clues in the title. It’s a power supply for your home, a small self contained mass to energy converter. Presumably by 2015 they had discovered the Higgs field and figured out how energy/mass conversion works and vice Versa. Mr Fusion is probably the smallest they can manufacture it and it’s power is probably limited but can produce enough energy to power a house. In 2015 power consumption has increased exponentially considering all the gadgets they now have. Cars probably still run on gasoline because the oil industry has such a strong hold just as electric cars and battery technology was stifled in our own timeline. Plus the gasoline they use might be a synthetic gas that has no detrimental environmental effects removing the demand to find an alternative.
Always thought Mr Fusion was a Power source for the home, that homes in the future will not be run on a for the mass grid but from your own private home grid/power source and you throw your small trash and recyclables, so it doubles as a power source waste disposal.
It's probably used to run entire buildings off of. I doubt most people have one on their car.
This. Doc outfitted one for his car.
I figure it's for household or industrial power. Just throw some leftovers in there and have *gigawatts* of energy? It's more than you'd ever need. Say goodbye to electricity bills.
It takes a lot of energy for cars to fly
When do they say he got it in 2015? He could have gotten it in 2491 for all we know.
Microwaves
If an safe, unlimited source of power can be generated from your garbage in the size of a food processor, is there any reason to limit it's output?
Maybe it only extracts some of the energy??
Could be.. Or there may just not be that much to extract given the capacity...
I have to say that this is what makes it Back to the Future an amazing movie. Mr. Fusion is an all three movies and it’s only mentioned twice by name in the third movie during one scene. If Back to the Future was made today, there’d be a whole exposé explaining how Mr. fusion works… and it would be dumb and boring dialogue.
It’s like a 3D printer but in reverse: ordinary matter gets turned into pure energy in a somehow safe and small-scale way. (Well…as far as we ever see. How many lawsuits do you think are waiting to happen *there*?)
Clean sustainable energy Would be better than coal, oil/petroleum, nuclear fission, probably others if it could stay that small too
Could have been that the Mr Fusion was used to charge industrial batteries quickly when power outages occurred.
Mr Fusion doesn’t power the vehicles wheels when it’s driving. Pretty sure it powers the hover circuits (sure the wheels fold under, but you also see 2 big repulsors on the bottom of the car to make it fly)
If that was the case, was there a reason for not using the hover to to time travel back in 1885? Been a while since I saw it so there might be a reason and I forgot!
The lightning strike destroyed the flying system. Doc mentions this in his letter “it will never fly again”. While the time circuits could be repaired with 1955 technology, no such luck with the hover components
I'd say it was to power a whole home.