What The Frack?

As the years have passed, scientists have found out how destructive, we as humans, truly are to the environment and how if we do not change our ways, we will keep destructing it.  Along with figuring this out, they have discovered and engineered more ways to create and harnass energy.  Unlike coal, many of these new ways use clean and efficient methods to create all that energy we use.  Some examples are solar, wind, or nuclear.  There is also another, hydrofracking, which is at heart, a natural process that we essentially just speed up and alter to get the gas, oil, or other substances that we want.

Hydraulic Fracturing (hydrofracturing), is a method for extracting natural gas for the purpose of creating ‘cleaner’ energy (“What Is Hydrofracking?”).  The method is different then the typical drilling for natural gas that we are used to becuase of both the mechanics of it and that is more economical than the other (“What Is Hydrofracking?”).  Its pretty basic to understand, especially if you ever took earth science.. Which I hope we all did if we passed elementary/middle/high school and are in college at this point (at least thats the standard in NJ).  But anyway.. We all know that rocks (in this case shale) and all that other earthy good stuff is beneath us and all these 50 story buildings we’ve built on the surface.  It goes deep and its everywhere… Which can be good in some ways for us, like being able to steal some gas from it.  When this shale settled down into its nice little place, it naturally fractured and created air ways/pockets that can then fracture some more with the help of us little humans (“Natural Gas”).

To get the gas that we want, we take a wellbore and drill it all the way down to that shale, but unlike normal drilling we turn it horizantally in this case so that it can go into the fractures in the shale and make them open, releasing that gas that was already there (“Natural Gas”).  In addition to the drilling, to further the fractures and to keep them open the companies use water and chemicals mixed with sand that they inject into the veins and pockets (Kaplan). These chemicals are meant to make the process more efficient and economic, but can ultimatey hurt the people’s health and the environment (“What Is Hydrofracking?”). Now this is where the method gets all its haters… like many other things in the world.  There are always people that will be against something, many of those times for goo reasons, sometimes not so much.

In this case, residents in the states, or area of a hydrofracking site, tend to hate the method and are campaigning against it.  The residents find a problem with the high volume use of water, which can be 6-8 million gallons and what that use of water can do to both the water supply and the environment as whole (“What Is Hydrofracking?”).  Also, the chemicals that the companies use as ‘proppants’ can be rather harmful instead of ‘clean’ or environmentally friendly.  So the question now is, is this method good or bad? Worse than coal or oil use? Or worth the somewhat detrimental effects that occur?  When you read about why the activists are so against the method you start to wonder these questions and may start to side with them. But you also start to think about that method.. that one thats nuclear.. and that if goes wrong can harm many.  We still use that one, even though we have seen the harmful effects (Chernobyl, TMI, Fukushima).  In the case of nuclear energy, we apparently find that the benefits outweigh the dangers; which is something that I fully believe becuase as long as we build the plants properly and are prepared for events such as earthquakes, it is fine and more helpful than harmful.

If these chemicals will end up harming us in the process of this method, is it really worth it, or can we think of any other ways to gain gas and energy? I mean we all know that universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (don’t forget all the foreign equivelants too!) are turning-out hundreds of scientific geniuses yearly.  Engineers, biologists, researchers, etc., with the amount of knowledge these men and women have, I think we can find other methods, or further this one to be more environmentally friendly.  All methods at the beginning were not 100% full proof, and have all been improved and are now much better; something that I think is possible for hyrofracking as long as we put the time and energy into it.

References

Kaplan, Thomas.  “Millions Spent in Albany Fight To Drill for Gas.” Nytimes.com. 25 Nov 2011. Web. 13 Feb 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/nyregion/hydrofracking-debate-spurs-huge-spending-by-industry.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all>

“What Is Hydrofracking?” Peacecouncil.net. 2012. Web. 13 Feb 2012. <http://www.peacecouncil.net/NOON/hydrofrac/HdryoFrac2.htm>

“Natural Gas Hydro-Fracking in Shale.” CitizensCampaign.org. 13 Dec 2011. Web. 13 Feb 2012. <http://www.citizenscampaign.org/campaigns/hydro-fracking.asp#frack>

Shake, Shake, Shake, Shake Your Flashlight

Any one who has a dad like mine, has already seen self-powered flashlights for a long time.  I mean, my dad is one of those that lives, I mean lives, at Home Depot or Lowes. And becuase he has that disturbing relationship with a store, like make of us girls do with our respective stores, I have seen every type of tool, old or new in my 21 years.  This includes that flashlight that you shake a little and, Voila! It lights up the room like you have 4 of those big circle batteries ( C or D) in it.  What a snazy little concept engineers in the world have thought of, an everyday product that we can all use without having to ruin the environment even more.

Okay so, the point of that little blurb was just to get you into the topic a little..  Now we get to the juicy stuff of generating electricity simpley by shaking a flashlight.. or having a turbine’s blades spin.  In class we did a lab that revolved around this concept of generating energy without having to harming the environment like with coal.  In the lab we had a flashlight that generated energy by shaking it back and forth.  We took the flashlight and attached it to the NXT ‘brain’ and that to the computer so that we could read the energy output from the flashlight.  Once we had everything hooked up we had to shake the light at 4 different paces, from no shaking, to slow, to fast.  With this we can see the difference that the pace and amount of shakes will make in creating energy.

During class we learned that the Faraday’s Law states that changing magnetic fluxes through coiled wires generate electricity (currents and voltage).  With running the laband creating the below spreadsheet and graph, we see that the more time we shook it in that 30 second interval of the NXT reading, the more energy we created.  This occurs because the more times the magnet within the flashlight passes the coil that is also in the flashlight, the more times the magnetic field has changed (or the polarity), and thus energy is created.  So if you shake the light 10 times in the 30 second interval, not much energy would be created becuase the magnet passes the coil only 10 times, but when you do it 70 times, the sum of the square of the shakes (becuase some numbers ended up negative, it was necessary to square it) is 112, a much higher voltage than with the lower amount of shakes.  The increasing motion of the trendline shows all of this in a simple visual.

Mass and Speed and Acceleration! Oh My!

This past week in class we did some physics-type experiments… some of my most hated moments in high school were in physics. Trying to learn all the equations and plugging them into each other? Not a fun day for me… Blowing things up and making rockets though? Way more me. This experiment was much more simple in comparison though, just a pulley system where we calculated things like acceleration, mass, battery discharge, speed, power level, etc.

To get all of these numbers, we took the pulley system (a pole, with a NXT arm, with a string going to the top where there was another wheel) and added weights to the string at the top.  First we left the same weights on there, which was .2 kg of mass.  With this we changed the power level 4 times to get some different results.  We then did the opposite where we left the power level at 50 and changed the mass 4 times.  You can see the results in the picture below.

The following graphs will show what we ended up comparing and what those results were.  Many of these results are obvious things that we see on a daily basis but don’t really think about.  Like if a girl who was 15 were to try and pull a piano across the city by hand vs. Bruno Mars, a grown man doing it in his music video.  Obviously Bruno (A grown man with more weight and strength) could do it, well he could do it easier at least, than the 15 year old girl that weighs no more than 120 lbs.  All of these results will be common sense when you look at and think about them.

When comparing the acceleration to the power level, we saw an increase.  This graph to to the left shows that with the trendline obviously moving up rather than down.  When we increased the power level on the motor, the acceleration increased as well.  This is becuase something will accelerate faster if there is more power behind it.

Next we compared the acceleration to Mass (w/fixed power level).  This showed us that when you increase the mass of something, the slower the acceleration will be, as the trendline shows in its decreasing motion.  Somewhat like the graph above, but with mass now, obviously if you add more mass to something its going to take longer to start moving.  Like in that Freddie Munez movie on the Disney Channel when we were 10, he put weights into his box car and it went slower.

In this graph, we see that the trendline is increasing again like the first one.  This shows that when we increased the power level from 25 to 55 the power used increased too.  This is something that more obvious than the rest.  If you are going to make something go faster or more powerful, in this case the motor pulling the weights, than the power that is needed to do this will also increase.  Like when we try to heat our apartment, the bill goes up an arm and a leg when we increase the heat becuase the heater needs more power to the system to heat the apartment more.

This last graph goes along with the one from above where we showed that the higher the power level, the more power is needed behind it.  This, however, shows it differently.  Instead, now we have increased the mass in increments.  Like above, when you increase the power level, the power used increases, here though, it is when you increase the mass.  The more something weighs, the harder it is to pull/push, and the more power you’ll have to put into it.  Now that I explained that, we can get into the actual point here.. When you use more power (even if the power level stays the same more power is needed becuase of the mass increase), that motor uses more of its battery to back that power used.  So here we increased the mass and it used more of the battery becuase that little NXT arm couldn’t pick up .2kg all that easily, it needed some extra help with power, using more battery.

These graphs are pretty easy to understand just by looking at them, even without my wordy explanations.  If you just look at them and think about it, you can see it.  With that, you could easily look back onto your day and pretty much use any of these rules we just showed to explain things that happened.  Like why that T bus took forever to go when the light went green, but that line of little smart cars next to you all hit their pedals and moved like the speed of light. If you didn’t get it… Its becuase that T bus had more weight in it and took longer to accelerate. Well now you’re all ready to explain your daily complaints in a scientific way and why you’ll never pull up behind a T bus in Boston again!

Helicopter Mom Here for Good Reasons

We all know that there is this saying of how the government controls everything we do, see, and hear…  In some ways that is 100% true, even with gas mileage. Who would have ever thought?  Most of us think the government’s “helicopter mom” persona is ridiculous and always bad, but in this case it turned out, shall I say, awesome?  The guidelines from Obama’s administration have only tried to help both us as people in saving money and the world in saving gas emissions.  These new standards are supposed to lower carbon dioxide emissions from cars by 1/3 in the next 4 years, while lowering the amount of oil barrels used by 1.8 million (“Obama Unveils”).

Making a U-turn on Auto Emissions

When first reading about this it sounded like it was a bad thing, where the industry was trying to increase the gas mileage across the country to add stimulate the economy by buying gas and increasing gas prices.  That’s just my pessimistic, politics oriented brain though.  When you actually start to read the information and the regulations, you understand that is meant to be a good thing to help lower gas emissions.

One of the actions that Obama took when he came to office was to create stricter regulations in the automobile industry regarding gas mileage.  This was allowed by the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations, that began in the 1970s.  long time ago, the automobile industry would have hated this and revolted against it, but this time they were right with Obama, whether for selfish reasons or environmental reasons, it helps us all (Vlasic, “Carmakers”).  For the long-term, Obama’s new regulations require an increase from 27 miles per gallon to 54.5 mpg by 2025 (Vlasic, “Carmakers”).  For the short-term the government is hoping for an increase of 30% from 27 mpg, approximately 35.5 mpg on average for cars and light trucks (“Obama Unveils”).  These regulations were put in place for both economic and environmental reasons, to decrease consumption of and expenses on gas while at the same time decreasing the emissions into the air and, overall the negative effect that car usage has on the environment.

To meet these standards, most automobile companies have worked harder on their ‘small’ fuel-efficient and hybrid cars more than other models.  “An electric car is powered by an electric motor instead of a gasoline engine.  The electric motor gets energy from a controller, which regulates the amount of power—based on the driver’s use of an accelerator pedal. The electric car uses energy stored in its rechargeable batteries, which are recharged by common household electricity (“Electric Cars”).  While the electric car runs only on electricity, the hybrid is fueled by gasoline and uses electricity to make it more  efficient (“Electric Cars”).

We have seen electric, fuel-efficient, and hybrid cars for years already, but they keep getting better with the adjustments necessary for the failing environment.  I remember watching 7th heaven when I was in middle school and it having an electric car, something somewhat new back then.  Now you see every other person with that or a hybrid car, hoping to help the environment.  It has become one of the easiest ways to help save the environment without breaking the bank for the average person.  It ends up being a win-win situation because most people actually end up saving money with them.

In reality, much of America’s cars have already been above the standards in Miles Per Gallon.  In 2009, cars averaged 32.6 mpg, a rather large difference to the expected 27 mpg (Vlasic, “Obama Reveals”).  Knowing this, we can see that the industry has already met and exceeded the standards, and will probably keep pace with this.  But as we all know, just because the industry will be able to meet the standard, does not mean, we as consumers will see this.  More likely, we will see the cars that are up there in mileage, around 43 mpg, but not the highest (Vlasic, “Obama Reveals”).  This is because those cars will be too expensive both to manufacture and to buy, so many of the cars on the market will average 43 mpg, respectable in both mileage and most likely, price.  Either way, as these regulations get stricter, emissions will lower and the effect on the earth’s atmosphere will become less negative.

References

“Electric Cars: A Definitive Guide.” Hypbridcars.com. 2012. Web. 5 Feb 2012. < http://www.hybridcars.com/electric-car >

“Obama Unveils Mpg Rule, Gets Broad Support.” MSNBC.com. 19 May 2009. Web. 5 Feb 2012. < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30810514/ns/us_news-environment/t/obama-unveils-mpg-rule-gets-broad-support/#.Ty7MUBzyH3U>

Vlasic, Bill. “Carmakers Back Strict New Rules for Gas Mileage.” New York Times. 28 July 2011. Web. 5 Feb 2012. < http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/business/carmakers-back-strict-new-rules-for-gas-mileage.html?pagewanted=all >

Vlasic, Bill. “Obama Reveals Details of Gas Mileage Rules.” New York Times. 29 July 2011. Web. 5 Feb 2012. < http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/business/energy-environment/obama-reveals-details-of-gas-mileage-rules.html >

An Economic Way to Stay Cool

When first trying to figure out what demand response was, my first thoughts were something that had to do with the economy, kind of like ‘demand-pull’ and ‘cost-push’ inflation.  They sounds a lot like each other, but demand response has to do with electricity, not inflation.  Reading about it and learning what it is though, it seems like it works in the same ways those theories do, “when demand is high and supply is short, power interruptions can sometimes be the result” (“What is Demand Response”).  This means there is a need for a way to reduce supply when there is no demand, and heighten supply when there is high demand.  This solution is Demand Response.

Demand response was created for the purpose of lessening the use of energy when it is not needed and using it more when it is needed.  When we don’t need to use electricity for washing and drying, the electric company shuts the line to it off, saving electricity and allowing for it to be used somewhere else (if in an emergency) or nowhere at all (if energy use has skyrocketed) (DemandSMART).  To get a good understanding and visual of the concept, go here http://www.enernoc.com/solutions/demand-response.php.  It is a demonstration of what the company EnerNOC does for it members specifically, but at the same time shows what demand response is.

This program allows for less electricity to be used, saving energy and money at the same time.  It was a win-win situation for environmentalists/scientists and economists.  It is one way to help cope with the already seen effects of global-warming and a simple and easy way to try and prevent more of it from occurring, albeit in a fairly small portion.  This program is mostly needed and is mostly used in times of heat waves and during the summer.  It allows for the companies to cut off electricity to unnecessary things automatically (a system is installed for automatic control) such as washers, and move that to appliances such as Air Conditioners.

During emergency events such as heat waves, the demand for electricity obviously heightens, and the response must be increased as well.  For example, this past summer we experienced some very hot days where we all wanted our air conditioners to be blasting.  This, however, means that more electricity needs to be used, and companies may not be able to keep up with this need on top of the regular need.  Demand response helped to mitigate it and allow for all the air conditioners to keep working and help people cope with the heat.  The companies were able to do this by lowering lighting, shutting down pumps, and etc. (Behr).  The program is mostly used in commercial buildings by companies, with growth in the residential sector.  To help with energy consumption it is definitely a good idea to install the system that allows for demand response in your household.  Much like solar panals, this program eventually saves you, as a consumer, money, and sometimes even pays you back for trying the new idea.

As we all know already, population is growing rapidly, and so is the need for energy.  However, energy and resources can not keep with this rapid growth.  Scientists and economists alike hope that this program will be a way to help cope with the rapid growth  in the future.

References

Behr, Peter. “Demand Response Helped Some Regions Conserve Electricity During Heat Wave.”  New York Times. 27 July 2011. Web. 30 Jan 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/07/27/27climatewire-demand-response-helped-some-regions-conserve-89838.html?pagewanted=all

“DemandSMART.” EnerNOC, Inc. 2012 Web. 30 Jan. 2012. < http://www.enernoc.com/solutions/demand-response.php >

“What is Demand Response?” Pacific Gas and Electric Company. 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <http://www.pge.com/mybusiness/energysavingsrebates/demandresponse/whatisdemandresponse/>

Engineering for Dummies..Not Really

While in high school, I was apart of the FIRST robotics team at my high school.  The funny thing though is that I am the worst at anything science or math related.  I did more of the business side, marketing, and etc, with some building, but no design or actual engineering.  However, during those years I was also a mentor of the 5th and 6th graders for the younger robotics program, FIRST Lego League.  This program used NXT robots that were to be programmed by the students to do certain tasks on a board with certain structures.  For example, they had to build and then program the robot so that it had an arm to pick up a lego truck and move it somewhere else on the board.  All tasks had to be done in certain constrained time period.  Coming into class and realizing that we would be using the NXT robots, I was rather excited because I had done this before.

I was sorely mistaken though, our robot was not going to turn out like the 6th grader’s one above, even though we are all in our 20s and they’re all 12.  It has been over 3 years since mentoring or doing anything engineering related, and I certainly forgot most of what I learned.  Reading the instructions and listening to what we have to do, I’m thinking “oh this will get done so fast”, but I was wrong.  The program, LabView had changed since the last time I had used it and had gotten far more complicated than I remember.

After figuring out where to find everything though, it got much much easier to use.  We finally put all the little lego pieces on and made car-type contraption, after dropping and losing them quite a few times.  First we just kept going it as fast as we could and seeing it lurch and had a good time with that.  Then we finally got to our actual assignment of having it go in a circle.  That was a difficult one because we were trying to figure it out before anyone told us what to do.  I can say that we had some trouble with it since we had no idea that to get it to go in a circle it needed to have two different speeds for the wheels.  After getting that figured out, we made one wheel a power of 75 and the other 25 by changing the specific ports on the program, we got it to go in a circle, only to have to go back to a different assignment of getting it to go straight.  This was what we were supposed to do the whole time apparently…

We got the robot to lurch quickly and slowly and had to measure the distance on the actual table and what the computer calculated it would be to find the percentage error.  We found the circumference of the wheel to be .172m, which we plugged into the computer while running the computer for one second.  This allowed for LabView to determine the distance, .174m.  We then ran it again and measured the distance on the actual table, which was .175m.  The figure out the percent error, we used the equation:

With our information, the equation was: .175m – .174m / (.349m/2)

.001m / .1745m  = .0057

This showed that the percent error for the distance was .57%, not that bad in my opinion because there will always be some sort of error when measuring by hand.

Fukushima Daiichi

It has been almost a year since Japan was thrown “into the most severe crisis since World War II” (“Japan Quake”).  In early March of 2011, Japan had a severe earthquake, reaching a magnitude of 9.0.  This earthquake, the largest in Japan’s history, then caused tsunami waves to rise and engulf many of the areas surrounding Tōhoku and Miyako.  The earthquake also caused a set of nuclear meltdowns and the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl incident in 1986.

When the earthquake and tsunami hit, many of the reactors shut down automatically, while others did not because of a failure of the cooling system (Kinver).  The reactor can be shut down and nuclear fission can be stopped; however, there is still an abundance of heat, which is what the cooling system is needed for.  In Fukushima, reactor 1’s cooling system failed to operate, and the back up generators were not working either.  Because of the lack of back up generators, the cooling of the reactor could not occur, creating potential for a nuclear meltdown (Kinver).

At first, Japan thought that everything would be fine and there was no cause for concern because they had been pumping water into the reactors and trying to keep them cool and trying to prevent an actual meltdown.  “A meltdown occurs when nuclear fuel rods cannot be cooled, thus melting the reactor core and causing a release of radioactivity” (“Six Days Later”).  Japanese officials and analystsfelt there was no reason to worry because even if there was a meltdown, no radioactive material should escape because the plants were built specifically to prevent that from occurring. This changed though when the first reactor went into meltdown and caused an explosion on March 12th (Black).  This explosion caused a minor leak of radioactivity (within the legal limits) in the local area of Fukushima, which made the government evacuate only the local areas.  Two days later, another explosion occurred, this one at reactor 3.  It has been observed that both explosions occurred because of a hydrogen build-up, in addition to their cooling systems failing (“Japan Quake”).  During this time, officials mentioned that the cooling system at reactor 2 was also failing, causing concern for a third explosion.  This third explosion occurred on March 15th, causing the radiation level to exceed the legal limits and causing an evacuation of much of the surrounding areas.  The radiation levels were high enough to get into water plants and cause concerns for infants.  The government could not control the spread of it, causing problems for the rest of Japan.  Food and water was contaminated throughout the country, and the area had been evacuated for months.  Over the year, the radiation levels lowered, but there was still some in the air in September.  We obviously, and thankfully, can not compare this to the disaster in Chernobyl, where people still can not live in the area and radiation caused unbelievable amounts of illnesses and deaths.

It was not until December of 2011 that the Prime Minister could say that the reactors and plants were stable and people could begin to come back to the area.  This was only possible with what we now know as the “Fukushima 50”, who stayed back to help control the disaster and preventing and uncontrolable meltdown of Chernobyl proportions.  The question now is whether many of these people want to come back to this area, in case anything triggers the reactors to start up (Tabuchi).  As of right now, only 8 of the 54 reactors in Japan are operating becauseof the communities fears of more disasters.

The disaster has caused international debate among officials, analysts, and scientists on the safety of nuclear power.  Some think that nuclear power’s benefits outweigh the dangers, while others, like many in Japan, feel that it is not worth it and that we should do more with renewable energy instead.

Refrences

Black, Richard. “Struggle to Stabalise Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Plant.” BBC.co. 13 March 2011. Web. 23 Jan. 2012. < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12726628>

Kinver, Mark. “Japan Earthquake Triggers Nuclear Shutdown.” BBC.co. 11 March 2011. Web. 23 Jan. 2012. < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12711707 >

“Japan quake: Fresh explosion at Fukushima nuclear plant.” BBC.co. 14 March 2011. Web. 23 Jan. 2012. < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12729138 >

“Six days later, Japanese still confronting magnitude of quake crisis.” CNN.com. 16 March 2011. Web. 23 Jan. 2012. <http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-16/world/japan.disaster_1_nuclear-plant-reactors-nuclear-crisis/2?_s=PM:WORLD>

Tabuchi, Hiroko. “Japan’s Prime Minister Declares Fukushima Plant Stable.” New York Times. 16 December 2011. Web. 23 Jan. 2012. < http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/world/asia/japans-prime-minister-declares-fukushima-plant-stable.html >

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