Climate change issue is no longer from the past. It’s here causing health problems mainly those related to heat stress, air pollution, extreme weather events, and many others. Not only this; the climate change already cost the American economy about $100 billion in 2012. With no doubt, climate change is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed before it’s too late. And here where president Obama comes to establish the Clean Power Plan.

Climate change is empowered mainly by the carbon pollution which occupies 84% of the total greenhouse emission in the United States. The other 16% includes other gases like Methane, Nitrous Oxide, and fluorinated gases. As it appears in the diagram, 40% of carbon dioxide gas emission comes from power plants. The president’s plan basically reduces greenhouse gas emission by replacing fossil fuel with renewable energy sources to generate power, and uses the generated power more efficiently. This plan should cut about 30% of the U.S. greenhouse emission by 2030.

Today, the U.S. is progressing in the field of green energy. In the last decade, the electricity generated from air power has tripled in the U.S.; the solar power has increase more than tenfold; And the U.S. is wasting less energy by developing more fuel-efficient vehicles and building more energy-efficient homes. Keeping the level of progress along with the guideline to cut air pollution will not only make a better environment, but it will make a better economy also. The more a country relies on renewable energy, the closer it gets to be energy-independent. Energy-independence means tens of hundreds of thousands of new jobs will be created for Americans to grew the economy.

Health benefits from this plan are not less than the economic benefits. Though, the economy increases proportionally with the increase of public health. The plan will help to avoid up to 6,600 premature deaths, up to 150,000 asthma attacks in children, and up to 490,000 missed work or school days, which worth about $93 billion in the public health.

This plan is made to lead the United State to go green, and then to lead the world to go green. Global Warming is not a national problem, it’s an international issue that needs all the world to join in in order to solve it. And since everybody is joining in sooner or later, there must be a leader. Today, The United States of America is stepping forward to take the lead.

A robot; the first things come to my mind when I think of this word are androids⁽¹⁾ like R2D2⁽²⁾ and C3PO⁽³⁾ from Star Wars, the Japanese robot ASIMO⁽⁴⁾, and the high-tech robots Boston Dynamics⁽⁵⁾ develops. Such robots are very interesting to watch documentaries about, but they are too sophisticated to try building them. However, I got the chance to build my Lego-Mindstorm robot which is relatively very small and simple, but it’s still called “a robot,” a big word in my mind.

Building a Lego-Mindstorm robot starts with structuring the robot itself, and then programing and testing it. The robot was structured as a car that uses two motors to move and a mainframe processor to operate the motors according an uploaded program. Since the entire robot parts are made, the robot only needed to be assembled according to the instructions of “Basic Car Building Using NXT Lego Kit”. Following instructions to build your own robot! It doesn’t really sound that much interesting, but in fact, it is very interesting. Building the robot was a team work which gave me the chance to discuss some aspects of the car design with my partner. For instance, we discussed why we’re using only one non-motorized wheel in the front instead of two, and why we’re using a motor for each of the two rear wheel while we could have used one motor to move both wheels. This made the building experience much more interesting than just following instructions.

After assembling the robot parts, programming the robot was the next step. Using the software LabVIEW, we created a simple program to move the car forward, backward, and in a circle. LabVIEW has built-in little programs and tools that we put together to make a complete program for the desired task. We used a little program for each motor to run it forward and backward on different power levels. It didn’t take much time till we’re done programming and we’re ready to have a little contest. Even though the contest wasn’t serious, it gave everybody in the class the spirit of achievement. Every team was programming and testing, and reprogramming and testing again. During this time, the class was very active and dynamic. This was my favorite time in my experience building the car robot. I felt very excited to test our robot with the other teams and very satisfied about the results.

The last activity with the robot was using a program to measure the distance the robot run through and measure the same distance using a ruler, and then comparing the two results to find the percent error. It is basically collecting and analyzing data which, believe it or not, is something I love very much. I am already familiar with Microsoft Excel so I used it to record and analyze my measurements data.

In short, I enjoyed every bit of my experience building the car. I learned something new, I made a good team, and I built “a robot,” a big word in my mind.

⁽¹⁾  An android is a robot or synthetic organism designed to look and act like a human, especially one with a body having a flesh-like resemblance.

^{(2) – (3)} R2D2 and C3PO are science-fiction androids that appear in Star Wars movies.

⁽⁴⁾ ASIMO, is acronym for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. it is a humanoid robot designed and developed by Honda.

⁽⁵⁾ Boston Dynamics is an engineering company that specializes in building dynamic robots and software for human simulation.

The automobiles industry is one of the biggest industries in the world, and as many other industries, automobile manufacturers are being challenged economically. Moreover, the industry is facing new challenges to satisfy the new rules Obama administration issued in 2012. Automakers now are required to improve the gas mileage to about the double by 2025.

Car-makers are approaching the challenge from different angles. Most cars nowadays are lighter, smaller, and more aerodynamic which are big improvements in the use of building materials. However, the big improvements are in the engines. All new cars running on gas are using turbo chargers; some care companies started to make hybrid engines; some others are developing high performance rotary engines for cars.

Hybrid Engines:

Hybrid-Electric Engine is a new technology used to improve fuel efficiency and performance in cars. Vehicles use this technology are called Hybrid-Electric Vehicles or (HEVs). This kind of vehicles is designed to a gasoline engine combined with an electric motor. Based on the external conditions, the car computer operates both the engine and the motor on different ratios to obtain a better performance and high fuel efficiency.

Features of HEVs:

–         Regenerative Breaking. The motor can apply resistance on the wheels to slow the car down. In return, the energy transferred form the wheels to the motor is converted into electricity to charge the battery.

–         Electric Motor Drive/ Assist. Accelerating, passing, and hill climbing is easier in HEVs since the motor provide more power to add on the power from the gasoline engine. In some cars, the electric motor can run the car by itself when driving with low speed.

–         Automatic Start/shutoff. HEVs has the ability to shut itself off when stopping and starts again when moving to minimize wasted energy.

Rotary Engine:

The rotary engine was invented in 1957 by the German Felix Wankel. Even though the idea of the Rotary Engine is very old, using it in cars is very new. The Rotary Engine is smaller than any traditional combustion engine, has less components, much lighter, and more fuel efficient than any gasoline engine. This engine is so powerful that it can run a racing car on track with two combustion chambers only.

This is a video to simplify understanding of the Rotary Engine main components and how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BCgl2uumlI

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