Confused on how to convert to kWh

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Saigon

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Can someone please explain this to me. I don't get how a unit of energy can even be converted to a unit of power.

A problem I was doing said 2500 Cal = 2.9 kWh. If someone could show the dimensional analysis for this that would be great.

Thanks!
 
Cal and joule are units of energy. Force times distance. Force, of course, is mass times acceleration.

Energy = F x d = m x a x d = kg m^2 / s^2

Watt and hp are measures of power. How much energy gets used per unit time. How quickly energy gets used.

Power = energy / s = kg m^2 / s^3

Now you are concerned with kWh. Kilowatthours. Kilo is just a prefix. In unit analysis, two words next to each other (or separated by a hyphen like kilowatt-hour) are multiplied together. This is a unit of power multiplied by a unit of time. This is just energy again!

kWh is what the electric company sells you each month on the electric bill. They sell you energy. Turn on a 60W lightbulb for an hour, or a 120W light bulb for half an hour, it is all the same to them. Your electric company could sell you electricity in joules.

When my friends and I had trouble with this concept, we joked that you could measure power in "kilowatthours per hour", and that seemed to help some of us.
 
For homework fun, Intensity is measured as Power per unit Area. It is why a sound is 4x less intense when you are twice as far away.

Now work out the dimensional analysis on Intensity (in kg, m, s) and then try to wrap your head around that concept.
 
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