It was interesting to see right in front of me how past and current energy sources actually function. Of course the demonstrations Vale presented to the class are miniature forms of real life energy conductors. So you cannot expect the demonstrations to provide energy for the Prudential building, but will conduct enough energy for small motors, small voltage lighting. The point of Vale’s demonstration was for the students in the class to learn about the new alternative sources of energy, and how they actually look like when operating seriously. It is important that we learn from this because we all know the traditional energy sources such as oil, coal, and natural are eventually going to run out. As time proceeds, human demand will eventually run out of traditional energy sources. What is important to do now is trying to teach everyone on earth if possible, about alternative energy sources. We can either prepare ourselves for when the time comes, we are already use to using new energy sources. If we work at the rate of those who do not believe in science theories, it may be too late for us.
Vale started off his demonstration by showing how some people, and/ or places are using thermal energy to convert it into electricity. He used a coffee maker to heat up water. He poured hot water from the coffee maker into one cup, and poured cool water into another cup. He put the cups next to each other and put a figure with two metal legs into the cups. One leg was put into the warm water, while the other leg was put into the cool water. At the top of the figure, there was a red thing that would spin after the metal pieces charged up, enough to conduct heat into energy. What happened was, the hot water because of the high temperature, made the water molecules to move faster. The cool water of course, because it had a low temperature, it had slow molecules. The metal legs, being a good form of conduction, managed to use the molecules to turn the red fan on top of the figure as you see in the picture above.
Vale also used the source of fire to conduct energy and spin a very small gold pully as you can see in the picture above. It is a small metal that sits on top of a lit candle. The flame is not so close but close enough so that the heat and be transferred to the metal piece. I believe the closer the flame is to the metal piece, the more heat that is involved. The more heat, the more energy the metal piece will be able to conduct. Once the metal piece has been charge with enough heat after a certain amount of time, the gold tiny pully that is on top will continue to rotate. What I did notice which i thought was a disadvantage was that this demonstration took longer than the other energy conductors. That may not be so important for a demonstration during class but for an actual real life situation, the amount of heat may be critical.
This is a picture of Vales Mendecino Motor, in which he invented and built himself. This is one of my favorite demonstrations because, it may be hard to tell through the picture but the stick with the solar cells wrapped around is actually floating on its own. What causes this to happen is, four magnetic blocks are placed on four corners. They are placed evenly so that the stick with the solar cells is equally balanced. There are small magnets on the stick as well which repels from the block magnets. The stick will stay still without any movement but once the light hit the cells, the actual stick begins to rotate. The speed depends on the distance of the light from the actual solar cells. The shorter the distance the stronger the light intensity. I am amazed how simplistic and complex these creations can be. All you have to know are the fundamentals and the rules of science, and almost anyone can create different ways to use these sources to create renewable energy.
What I found interesting the most was the wireless energy from the years of 1800’s. Not only does that demonstrate the history of science but it shows how humans use to function. It also helps me understand why now in days, if we move too far from our wifi router, we end up losing the connection. As you can see form the pictures above, there is a bucket wrapped around by Tesla coil which was invented by Nikola Tesla. Must have been a real pain to wrap the coil around the bucket. As Vale got closer to the bucket, the stronger the light became inside the object he held in his hands.