Talk:Orders of magnitude (voltage)

5V = typical computer/electronics voltage?

I doubt that 5V is the typical computer voltage: ATX-PSUs contain these voltages: +3.3V, +5V, +12V, +5Vsb, -12V and sometimes also -5V. Actually in modern PCs the biggest part of the PSU output is on one or more +12V rails, because these rails are used to power the CPU and GPU on modern PCs. +3.3V is chiefly used for memory and the bus system (including suppling power to PCI/PCIe devices), +5V mostly for periphals (i.E. drives), +5Vsb is used for standby power and -12V and -5V are rarely used, because most modern PCs don't contain things like RS232 or ISA anymore. You can read more about this topic in Power supply rail. Internally, the components (especially the ICs) use a lot of different voltages, ranging from under 1V to 12V. So think, there is no "typical" voltage fo computers, but on modern computers 12V is the closest to "typical", because normally most of the PSU output is at 12V. --MrBurns (talk) 16:30, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes - and that whole section is much too detailed and technical for an "Orders of magnitude" article. All we need is one - or at most two - examples of familiar things that have five volts floating around in them. All of that stuff about vacuum tubes, drive bays and IDE/PATA is WAY too detailed. Order of magnitude articles are supposed to relate these numbers to things like "football fields" (area), "library of congress" (information content), "statue of liberty" (height). IDE/PATA drive bays doesn't really work. For the more extreme values of the table, it's often necessary to resort to more technical/weird stuff - so for megavolts and microvolts we can get a bit more complicated. I think the USB bus is a pretty good choice. SteveBaker (talk) 19:13, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, then the +5V should be described as USB-voltage like it is now, not a "typical copmuter voltage", which should is removed: It could be inserted as something like 1V - 12V (or maybe 12V, if it has to be a single voltage), but I am happy with the table now. --MrBurns (talk) 23:40, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

10^27 V is the Planck Voltage —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.88.249.116 (talk) 17:02, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

That's interesting. Do you have a source for that? SteveBaker (talk) 19:22, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Table Division for Micro & Milli

I suggest that the "micro" range in the left column be extended downward to include all the ranges that show the micro volt prefix (uV) to 1-^5. Though not incorrect, it is uncommon to use .05mV instead of 50uV. It depends upon what range of voltages you are working with at the time, but in isolation it looks strange saying that 50uV is in the mV range. I don't know how to change it. Regards, -- Steve -- (talk) 19:27, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Expansion needed

Young and Freedman's University Physics with Modern Physics 13th edition, page 762, states that voltmeters measuring as small a voltage as 10^-12 have been attained. This article doesn't even go down that low!

Philologick (talk) 11:02, 4 December 2017 (UTC)