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In MCU Iron Man, the 3GW power output of the Arc reactor is channeled through 3 18AWG wires
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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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Shitty Movie Details
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Suuuuuper high voltage, almost no current needed.
Still gonna have heat that will melt the insulation and at extreme voltage it will arc through the insulation.
Heat is a function of current, not voltage.
But yes, insulation would need to be extreme.
Ohms law means you can algebraically substitute V = I * R
P = i^2 * R
P = VI
P = V^2 * R
Should be P = V^2 / R, but other than that, yes exactly.
Everyone saying "it scales with voltage" or "it scales with resistance" are describing different sides of the same coin. At the end of the day, the thing we're talking about is just power, you can pick and choose whichever version of the power formula that you want.
Heat is actually a function of power, which is voltage times current.
Yes, but the power dissipated by a wire is, roughly speaking, a function of current, with the voltage across the wire depending on the current and the wire resistance (Ohm's law). For a wire, you use P = I^2^ R, and for a load, you use P = V^2^ / R.
In other words, the current through a wire is dependent only on the load and its power supply, while the voltage across it depends on both the current and the size of the wire. Hence, it's cleaner to talk about the current
This is why AWG charts always give a current rating, not a power rating:
You're right, current is a fine proxy for practical purposes like sizing wires and such. I was just being a bit pedantic in that heat fundamentally is power dissipation.
Joule's first law (also just Joule's law), states that the power of heating generated by an electrical conductor equals the product of its resistance and the square of the current. Heat is a function of current, not total power.
See Blue_Morpho's comment above. The things you're describing as the product of resistance and the square of the current is power.
Heat is literally power dissipation. Saying "heat is a function of power" is essentially a tautology.
Yeah that insulation is only rated for 600V, try again
Like Tony Stark lets ratings stop him.
Ratings mean nothing to Tony Stark, and the very laws of physics look the other way when he glares at them. He probably just licks the terminals to see if it's on.
Tony Stark doesn't care about cable ratings, it's the cables that do care about Tony Stark's (movie) ratings.
That was my immediate reaction too, but then I wonder how you could possibly insulate such extreme voltage