Last week Suffolk’s own Tom Vales gave a demonstration of the power and maintenance of high voltage. His first characterization tied into commonplace uses of such energy throughout history, namely the Sterling Engine and its gas compression mechanisms. Invented to replace the steam engine, Vales made note of the differences between energy today and in the 1800s: “if you had anything that required power, you didn’t have a whole lot of energy options.” The Stirling Engine was the first main alternative to the steam engine and has become the first of many innovations since.

Vales continued to speak of the Mendocino motor as well. Created in California, the Mendocino motor operates by means of magnetic repulsion. Silver disks support the motor, and as long as the top piece is cold and bottom warm it will operate through its magnetism, solar cells, and dc motor theory. Current runs through the coil and transfers through the magnetic field and can even be manipulated by a shining light.

Tesla coils were another huge progression made. Eponymously named for Nikola Tesla, the Tesla coil (shown above) is a tightly wound apparatus designed to enable electric current to pass through and create electricity. As you can see, Tom is demonstrating this and the electricity’s potency by holding out a conductor. He also used a comb electrode (similar to the “violet ray”) to comb his hair and showed its colors to be result of argon gas.

Perhaps the most interesting point made by Tom concerned phony apparatuses colloquially known as “quack medical devices.” The tesla coil itself has earned this title, as Tom explained that “transmission of energy doesn’t work today because these coils put out lots of garbage; anything with microprocessors just destroys signal.” With the perpetual influx of radio waves and transmissions of all sorts, there is not enough clarity for the tesla coil to function as it did in Tesla’s era before peripheral interference became so widespread. Even so, Tesla became a martyr of electricity– despite over 700 patents, helping George Westinghouse “electrify” Niagara Falls, and having friends such as Mark Twain, Tesla has become overshadowed by Thomas Edison as the ostensible father of electricity. In truth, Edison had an incomparable advantage in staff, funding, and news coverage around his studies that Tesla outright rejected, for his sole desire in life was his studies. This is a notion Tom clearly respects and understands, as Tesla’s true contribution to our modern day society can only be truly understood by those who attend to these studies as he did. Thanks to Tom for the demonstration and dialogue throughout.

Now that we have finished up our shake probe experiment, we’ve transitioned into an alternative method of electricity generation: solar energy. Although a very popular option among the eco-friendly, it has notable drawbacks that we seek to address here. Most significantly is the fact that it is solar energy: the sun isn’t up 24 hours a day everywhere on the planet, so this energy must be stored and used with as few resources as possible to sustain it.

Here’s what we used:

1 solar cell

1 voltage probe

NXT adaptor

NXT (light sensor)

1 light source

Ruler

3 Colored film filters

Labview VI

To better understand solar energy, we will measure the outputs of both the solar cell’s voltage and the light intensity of the NXT’s light sensor.

Here’s how we did it:

1. We first opened up the solarlab.vi as usual procedure goes.

2. After setting up the experiment, we tested the apparatus with no light being shone on it.

3. Conducted similar testing at distances varying from 2 cm to 38 cm as well as with 3 different color filters each.

4. Ensure recording of data in our Excel sheet, posted below.**

**Graphs unavailable due to email issues. Instead, graphs’ representations will be discussed in paragraph form later on.

solar ex

The vi software enabled us to record voltage and light intensity of the solar cell and light sensor, respectively. As said results indicate, the greater the distance between the light source and solar panel. This can be attributed to the loss of usable energy because of the longer distance and increased time it takes for light to move from the source to the panel.

In regard to changes from different colored filters:

Yellow far and away produced the highest voltage at a number of given speeds, best represented and graphed at 5cm with a voltage of .13927. This became abundantly clear when compared to the turquoise and red filters, which recorded voltages of .10078 and .12664 respectively. Adding in our perception of no filter accruing the highest voltage, we postulated that the lighter the color, the higher the voltage. Perhaps this has a minor aberration due to the lucidity of yellow compared to the much more deep turquoise and red, but our graphed findings do indeed conclude that the brighter (and closer) the better for voltage delivery.

Despite the countless adventure movies in which the hero travels to Mars or encounters a Martian, our reality does not hold as bizarre space travel initiatives.

Lets trace our contemporary initiatives from the George W. Bush Presidential Administration to our present day situation. Bush aimed to create a perception of space and its phenomena as the “new course” for American exploration and excellence, as Miles O’Brien and John King in 2004 reported Bush as saying that  “with the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration — human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond.” The modern day pursuit of Mars has been greatly promoted by Bush, even if not as much in budget action as in his spoken message.

NASA itself seems to echo this same hopefulness. Just two weeks ago it announced in a news release that it plans to launch its first Mars rover from California in March of 2016 to research more on the development of rocky planets. The release continues to explain that “Mars offers an opportunity to find clues no longer present on Earth about how rocky planets such as Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury formed and evolved.” By discovering more about Earth’s very own development, NASA will be better able to assess further requirements for sustainability on Mars.

Perhaps the most fascinating and most direct approach to interplanetary life is the Mars One Project. This not-for-profit organization has begun and administered several conceptual models for the prospect of solar system travel. They have had over 200,000 applicants for the 24 available spots on board their mission. According to their website, those who are ultimately chosen will be split into six teams of four and train for 10 years for a mission “not yet feasible or funded.” This certainly hurts Mars One’s credibility, as it seems to hold opposition to NASA’s long term plan for 2030 even without the logistics and scholarship to back up their own plan. That being said, its important to keep background in mind when regarding such initiatives as Mars One.

If you want to hear real feasibility on the prospect of Mars, listen to what Miriam Kramer of space.com has to say. Kramer asserts that the mission is certainly possible so long as key changes are implemented, citing that a “NASA-led manned mission to Mars is feasible if the space agency’s budget is restored to pre-sequestration levels. Putting the first humans on the Red Planet would also require international cooperation and private industry support.” In a nutshell, it boils down to funding, derived from both the federal budget and private sector investment; 2013 brought a relatively mere $17.7 billion– a significant amount until you learn that it is actually $59 million short of the preceding year. Mars has been proven possible in the abstract and continuously more so in reality, and it boils down to a societal agreement to place the funds in the hands of those who can make this initiative a reality.
Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/14/bush.space/

http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1784

One-Way Ticket To Mars? 200,000 Applicants To Be Narrowed To 24

http://www.space.com/24268-manned-mars-mission-nasa-feasibility.html

The past several weeks have consisted of our probe experiment. The probe is a representation of Faraday’s Law, which is a law of electromagnetism predicting how a magnetic field will interact with an electric circuit to produce electromotive force (EMF). As stated in the lab, “the greater is the change in magnetic flux, the greater are the currents and voltages.” The faster you shake the tube, the greater the generated voltage. Conversely, the slower you shake the tube, the lower the voltage generated.

On March 4, our class ventured over to MIT’s plasma reactor lab in Cambridge. A member of its team, grad student Paul Ennever, gave us a presentation and tour on the many facets of plasma and its practical potential for sustainability.

Our mass-pulley experiment provided us four objectives and concepts to work with:

1. Newton’s Second Law: Force= Mass multiplied by Acceleration. The acceleration of an object produced by a net force is directly proportional to the magnitude of the direct force not just in the same direction, but also in an inverse proportion to the object’s mass.

2. The law of conservation of energy: total energy of an isolated system remains constant because energy can only change form, never lost.

3. Velocity and Acceleration: although quite similar, the distinction between these measurements is crucial to determine full results of the lab experiment. Speed determines the rate of motion of an object (magnitude component), while velocity determines the direction of said object (magnitude and direction).

4. Power: the power level sets the force on the masses. By setting the power level of the motor, it applies torque to the motor wheel and results in a particular force used to lift the masses. As seen in our findings below, the higher the power level, the higher the force.

If you have trouble viewing the graphs, use this link:
http://web.cas.suffolk.edu/faculty/lshatz/Sustainability_class/Lab1.htm/.

As evidenced above, the greater the mass, the greater the battery drainage. This is where the importance of work is seen: with a heightened gravitational effect, there is a inherent requirement for increased power and velocity needed to move the object. The inverse of this is when you apply force to an object and it doesn’t move because you didn’t apply any work to it.

We calculated the power used by dividing potential energy by time, which equals mgh/time. A secondary finding here is that when we decreased power level, the acceleration decreased concurrently. Also interesting was the inverse proportion in the decreasing of mass and its increasing of acceleration. Each of these findings falls in line with Newton’s Second Law.

At its essence, this experiment has shown us the direct and inverse proportions amongst power level, acceleration, work, and velocity and their relations to the efficiency of an object such as the pulley mechanism. Our findings are crucial to bear in mind regarding the climate change debate because these same sustainability fundamentals are involved in creating a more efficient, greener source of energy. A perpetual energy source, although not yet conceived, is certainly the goal of our efforts in transcending the finite resources we depend on today.

Robert Stone’s documentary, Pandora’ s Promise, offers an off-the-mainstream take on nuclear energy and its potential for sustainability. Its association with disaster and peril is largely attributed by its inception into the world as the atomic bomb- the very picture of mankind’s most perilous concept ever brought to fruition. The phrase “nuclear project” often brings to mind events such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, and Three Mile, among others. However, as the documentary points out, these disasters have overshadowed the successes and potential seen in other aspects of nuclear usage, like the USS Nautilus and traveling wave reactor (TWR).

Stone and fellow converted pro-nuclear environmentalists do a thorough job sifting through popular belief to reinforce the potential in nuclear energy. A topic in the movie which seemed especially pertinent to me concerns the USS Nautilus and its Light Water Reactor (LWR) power source. While, yes, this ship was built with commercial purposes (to control Europe’s nuclear market) and the contemporaneous “Atoms For Peace” plan has generated for waste than anticipated, it has opened the door to enhanced procedural mechanisms for nuclear plants. Precautionary cooling systems and containment buildings have become staple implementations which the world did not have during the disaster at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.

The key to an objective analysis of society’s relationship with nuclear sustainability requires that society know that energy must come from somewhere, whether it be coal, oil, gas, or any other various possibility yet to be discovered. When presenting the case for or against nuclear energy it must be directly relative to its alternatives– all of which are far from ideal long term solutions currently. Robert Stone keenly makes this distinction throughout his documentary. He explains that although nuclear is expensive, financial costs are no longer able to be the primary concern as the environment continues to take a growing toll. Its not perfect, but neither are the alternatives in gas, oil, or coal. A “comparative absolutism” perspective should circumvent the nuclear debate, as we must make progress forward in steady, linear increments nonetheless.

Despite the difficult path to a perfect energy source, Pandora’s Promise reminds us not to discount nuclear energy’s great potential and to look beyond its common perception of terror and instead of hope. As Stone has asserted in light of the documentary, “Can you be an environmentalist and pro-nuclear?…In light of climate change, can you be an environmentalist and not be pro-nuclear?” This sentiment provides the debate’s required essence and mindset making progressive steps forward.