Month: November 2014

The Keystone XL Pipeline is an oil pipeline that Canadian company, TransCanada, is looking to try to build that will travel down through the United States. This pipeline, if built, will be starting in Alberta, Canada and travel all the way through the Gulf Coast of Texas. This pipeline would be 2,000 miles long. Of course, this is something that TransCanada will be trying to promote, but there does seem to be many down sides to having this pipeline run through the United States.

Some people think that the idea of “building the Keystone XL [brining] 830,000 barrels a day of Canadian crude oil to the Gulf Coast where it will be made into gasoline, diesel or aviation  fuel to be sold in the United Staes” is a great idea (BuildKXL). This may seem like a good idea for us as consumers, but what are all the downsides of this if it were to happen?  From the many possibilities, there could be water pollution, forest destruction, and pipeline spills.

Beginning with forest destruction, if this pipeline were to be built, large amounts of forest will have to be destroyed. Yes, this pipeline would be going in to serve a purpose, but the forest is something that serves a much greater purpose. In this quote, Friends of the Earth explain the importance the forests have to us and what would happen if they were destroyed, “The forests not only serve as an important carbon sink, but its biodiversity and unspoiled bodies of water support large populations of many different species. They are a buffer against climate change as well as food and water shortages. However, in the process of digging up tar sands oil, the forests are destroyed” (Friends of the Earth).

Pipeline spills and water pollution can happen together within the same time. If there were to be a pipeline spill, it could pollute the air, water, or even in the ground and kill anything that lives within the ground. Friends of the Earth  again explain how pipeline spills would affect the US when they say, “The probability of spills from this pipeline is high and more threatening than conventional spills, because tar sands oil sinks rather than floats, making clean ups more difficult and costly” (Friends of the Earth). Here they also mention cost. With any pipeline, this is a possibility, but this pipeline travels through many different rivers, states, various land, and many more places. The expense that would have to be paid if it were to spill is an extreme amount of money.

There are other ways we have been getting oil and I do not feel that the Keystone XL Pipeline is something necessary that needs to be built.

 

Sources:

http://buildkxlnow.org/

http://www.thegreenmarketoracle.com/2011_09_01_archive.html

http://www.foe.org/projects/climate-and-energy/tar-sands/keystone-xl-pipeline

Within the past week, our group has come up with some good ideas for what we are going to do for our experiment. We are doing an experiment on compressed air energy storage. We have come to the conclusion that our goal for this experiment is to have the high school students learn how to conduct this experiment, in a way that is not too difficult for them to try. We have come up with a slide show just to show how our experiment is going to work. That photo is shown below:

 

Above is what we are expecting our experiment to look like. Our objective for the students in this experiment is to find an alternate and cheaper way to store energy in other ways than a battery. This will teach the students sustainability, as well as how to be creative to come up with new ideas for energy storage. For this experiment, we have found all of the materials we need, including a high-pressure air tank, pipe, acting cylinder, piston, gears, generator, wires, and a small light bulb. Once all of these materials are together, we are having the students connect one end of pipe to high-pressure air tank, and the other to the acting cylinder. The acting cylinder will push its piston into the gears. The gears will move and turn on the generator. Wires connected to the generator will then turn on the small light bulb.

We will be conducting this experiment ourselves once our materials are shipped. Each group member has some sort of task so that nobody is left with nothing to do. Together, as we each complete our tasks, our experiment will come out a success! I feel that our group is excited to try this out, and have the high school students try it out as well.

This experiment was done to measure the voltage output of a generator using NXT and lab view on the computer. Every 30 second, we were to shake the generator while counting how many times it shook, and the computer calculated the voltages this put out. This lab was done to as well help us as students to understand Faraday’s Law. This law states that Changing magnetic fluxes through wires that are coiled is a way to generate electricity.

We began by taking the generator, counting for how many times we could shake it for 30 seconds, three times in a row. All of the data was put into an excel file, and we as a group made graphs to go with the data.

Our group personally did four different shakes, not just three. Counting the number of shakes as we were shaking it was probably the most difficult part of this. This started with zero shakes, then 77, to 71, and lastly, 150. The numbers we got after getting our sum for the voltages were rather large, but higher number of shakes meant the voltage number was larger.

          

 

The nuclear reactor at MIT was something that was very interesting to see. It was built in 1958, but upgraded again in 1975. A lot of the speaking was slightly confusing to follow, but I did learn a lot. The reactor itself is only about two feet tall, which is something I did not expect. I would have thought it would have been bigger! This reactor has a two loop cooling system. We learned that without a cooling system, the water could heat up because no heat would be being remove, and the water inside could start to boil which would not be good.

The water used is D2O, heavier for neutron reflection, and graphite is the outer reflection. Enriched U235 VALx metallic fusion is within the reactor as well. The primary loop of the reactor circulates at 2000 gpm while the second loop circulates at 1800 gpm. There are safety channels in the reactor as well, three on the power level and three on the reactor period. While the professor was explaining all of these part of the reactor, he was speaking about the Uranium, and anything higher than that on the periodic table of elements is man made.

One thing he talked a lot about as well was fission and how it works within the reactor. This is when there is splitting throughout the nucleus of atoms. If one neutron falls into the U235, fission is caused, and causes three more neutrons. They continue to multiply while this is happening. The nuclear reactor needs a constant chain reaction, so two of those neutrons must be removed.

When going on the actual tour, it was not what was really expected. Each of us was to wear something that could detect radioactivity, and once we had gone into the reactor it felt weird. It almost looked like a large storage room because there was so much stuff, and so many different buttons and control panels all over the place. We did have a chance to get to try and look into a window of the reactor, but I did not see anything. We got to go into the control room as well. It seems like working in there would be so much responsibility, needing to always be paying attention to what is going on. If anything were to happen, you would have to know what to do. Overall, it was a cool and interesting field trip and I did enjoy it.