When you put 10,000 HP on a small boat

You are looking at the fastest boats in the world. These are Top Fuel dragsters that can accelerate from 0 to 430 km / h in 3.5 seconds. These are compressor-supercharged V8 engines that run on nitromethane (CH3NO2).

Mathematics behind nitromethane:

– to burn 1 kg of gasoline you need 14.7 kg of air
– to burn 1 kg of nitromethane you need 1.7 kg of air
– 1 kg of gasoline has 42-44 MJ / kg of energy
– 1 kg of nitromethane has 11.3 MJ / kg of energy

If these facts you put in the equation, you calculate that nitromethane gets about 2.3 times as much energy from the engine as gasoline.