Monthly Archives: January 2013

SCI-184 Lab experience

Last week(01/23/13), I had my first lab experience in my Science and Innovation class. We were given a task to build a robot which would be further controlled by a PC program allowing the robot to move in the student given directions. Me(Andrei Kozlov) and my colleague Marina Sidenko had been building it for an hour or so, but we managed to do this and the robot was working successfully! This class(01/30/13) we were given the task to measure the diameter, circumference, rotation, rotation 2. The results are:

Circumference is 0.157 which is computed by using the formula “Pie” * Diameter

a) Rotation is 558 and Rotation 2 is 554, wheel rotations is 1.55. One rotation is 360 and 1.55 is 558 or 554, according to the data which was obtained during the experiment.

b) The time was set for 1 second (1 second = 1000 milliseconds).

c) The distance the car moved is 0.25. Depending on how the car needs to travel, the turns can be obtained during the process.

We have used a ruler to measure the distance and came to conclusion that the distance = 30 cm(0.3m). This identifies the discrepancy between manual and automatic results which are 0.3 m and 0.25 m.

Then we have changed the Power in VI from “75” to “80” and the distance became 35 cm (0.35m). The automatic measurement is 28 cm (0.28m)

 

Being involved in this experimental precess was an interesting and unusual experience for me, I really enjoyed it!

Hurricane Sandy and how global warming may have contributed to its destructiveness.

Hurricane Sandy approaching The Statue of Liberty.

For the past several centuries humanity has experienced a lot of natural disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis and even earthquakes. Millions of people died because of such events but nothing changed ever since. In the 21st century the amount of natural disasters seems to grow and the recent events which have occurred in the  Caribbean and the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States during late October 2012 have shown that we’re not protected by the modern technology and that we need to start thinking about the reasons behind such disasters. “Preliminary estimates of losses due to damage and business interruption are estimated at $65.6 billion (2012 USD), which would make it the second-costliest Atlantic hurricane, behind only Hurricane Katrina. At least 253 people were killed along the path of the storm in seven countries. The severe and widespread damage the storm caused in the United States, as well as its unusual merge with a frontal system, led the media and several government agencies to nickname the hurricane Superstorm Sandy.” – Article by Wikipedia clearly shows us how dangerous can such disasters be for humanity, but the most important question is if the hurricane could be caused by the Global Warming effect. For now, it is already clear that the climate change may have contributed a lot to Sandy’s impacts worse than it could have been.

Hurricane Sandy in NY.

There are several ways how the climate changes might have changed the impacts: sea level rise; anomalous warm sea surface temperatures; and possibly because of an unusual weather environment that some scientists think started the rapid disappearing Arctic sea ice. Let’s have a detailed look on these possible cases.

Firstly, “Water temperatures off the East Coast were unusually warm this summer — so much so that New England fisheries officials observed significant shifts northward in cold water fish such as cod” – Mentions huffingtonpost.com. This leads us to a conclusion that Hurricane Sandy might have used such environment because it is the ideal energy source for the hurricane.  Secondly,  an anomalous weather pattern in the northern hemisphere made Hurricane Sandy much more worse as well as for many other people on the East coast. Thirdly, scientists came to conclusion that the recent frequent events might be related to the loss of Arctic ice, which could be one of the most visible consequences of modern global warming. “Global warming heated the water of the Gulf and Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in greatly increased energy and water vapor in the air above the water. When that happens, extremely energetic and wet storms occur more frequently and ferociously. These systemic effects of global warming came together to produce the ferocity and magnitude of Hurricane Sandy.” – States George Lakoff, professor of linguistics in his blog(http://blogs.berkeley.edu).

 

These conclusions clearly show us that recent man-made Global Waming has contributed quite a lot to Hurricane Sandy and if we still keep not caring about this problem – the disasters which might occur in future might be fatal for everyone on the Earth.

Germany’s green energy policy.

Nowadays the problem of pollution and global warning is infestating more and more countries. Such problem is taken very seriously in Germany. Billions and billions of Euros are invested into ecologically clean plants and other industrial projects. The “Institute for Energy Research” shows us that “by 2030, Germany will have spent more than 300 billion Euros on green electricity. And consumer groups are complaining that about 800,000 German households can no longer pay for their energy bills”. If this rise in energy prices continues, household energy bills could exceed the rent that German citizens pay for housing in parts of the country and this analysis is not very promising. All of us know that renewable technologies are not economic compared to traditional fossil fuel technologies. Spiegel.de noticed that “Germany’s four leading electrical grid operators — RWE, E.ON, Vattenfall and EnBW — announced on Monday that they would be hiking by 47 percent the charge to consumers that goes into financing subsidies for producers of renewable energy”. This clearly means that more and more people will have trouble and disbalance with their financial status and overall income and as a result the economical situation might get worse if the switch to the clean technology will be rapid. Electricity prices are expected to increase by over 10 percent next year—the largest increase in a decade. Germany is building one of the world’s most ambitious clean-energy strategies. It supports and advertises renewable energy by granting fixed prices for the electricity that facilities such as wind- and solar-power plants produce. “Germany already produces more than 25% of its electricity from renewables such as wind and solar power, but is planning a complete exit from another low-carbon energy source, nuclear power, over the next 10 years because of safety concerns. It plans a further, even more radical expansion of renewable energy to replace nuclear energy and fossil-fueled power plants, with the aim of sourcing 35% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and more than 80% by the middle of the century” – states the Wall Street Journal. Overall we can say that the Green energy policy in Germany is very successful and promising but the prices on it are way too high for most German people, but if the changes to the new green energy technology in the country will be slow and planned – the country will definitely benefit both economically and ecologically.