Month: February 2016

Who is he?

Nikola Telsa was an Serbian American inventor and electrical engineer who used a coil to produce wireless energy in his innovative experiments such as electrical lighting, phosphorescence, or X-ray generation. Inventor Nikola Tesla was born in July of 1856 in in the village of Smiljan, Austrian Empire. He came to the U.S in 1884 to work with Thomas Edison for the Continental Edison Company in France, designing and making improvements to electrical equipment. In 1886, Telsa opened his own company with two others partners, Robert Lane and Benjamin Vail, and named his company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. In 1891, he invented “Telsa coil” which is an electrical resonant transformer circuit that still be used in radio technology nowadays. He died on January 7, 1943 in New York.

Coil?

Tesla’s coil was created for wireless technologies such as radios. Even nowadays,  the same technology is used for radios whether for our vehicles, or regular radios. The way it works is that it produces high voltage, low current, and also high frequency that alternates current electricity. Tesla’s AC hydroelectric power plants used to power cities. This is another one of Tesla’s powers transfer ideas which he thought it worked for the nation, but he not only wanted to transfer power within the nation but also around the world. This project began in the city of Niagra Falls, then he manage to power the city of Buffalo, New York. Thanks to his invention, his invention remains existing in today’s time.

Functionality:

1. The transformer boosts the voltage
2. The power source is hooked up to the primary coil. The primary coil’s capacitor will soak up to charge to develop the wireless energy.
3. The electric current will build up until the energy hit the the tipping point.
4. A hug voltage current will flow from the gap to the secondary coil.
5. The energy go back and forth between two point. On the secondary coil, there is a top-load which will shoot out the lightning when all the current is concentrated.

Conclusion:

Tesla was definitely a man of innovation with his idea of free accessible energy for everyone. Hopefully his great ideas will be used to solve some issues experienced by some people nowadays in terms of electricity.

sources:

“Open Source Plans for Modern Tesla Free Energy Generator Released to Public.” Open Source Plans for Modern Tesla Free Energy Generator Released to Public. Web. 18 Feb. 2016.

“QEG Resonance in Morocco – OPC: Aouchtam 04/28/14.” YouTube. YouTube. Web. 18 Feb. 2016.

Dickerson, By Kelly. “Wireless Electricity? How the Tesla Coil Works.”LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 10 July 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2016.

Goal:

The goal of this experiment is to acknowledge the relationship light intensity and the voltage output of the solar cell, as well as the relationship between  the wavelength  of light and the voltage output of the solar cell.

Equipment:

One solar cell
One voltage probe
One NXT adaptor
NXT with light sensor
One light source
Labview VI vi
Ruler
Colored film filters
Excel sheet

Set Up:

Plug battery on NXT with light sensor
Plug the NXT adaptor to NXT with light sensor through a USB cable (code number 1)
Connect voltage probe to a solar cell by cables (red-red) and (black-black)
Connect USB cable between computer and NXT with light sensor

The Experiment:

1st Part:

Open Labview
Put Solar on top of flashlight which is zero distance.
Use ruler to measure the distance between flashlight and solar cell.

Choose 4 more different distances to measure
Press START on the Labview program to record the voltage ouput
At the first experiment, we only got 10 numbers of data for each test
Open Excel File after each test to calculate the average those ten numbers to get one final result.
To calculate average, we tried to get the sum of 10 numbers then divided by ten.

results: Solar lab 1

2nd part:

Open the labview program
We chose 4 cm as the only distance in this experiment
There is 4 colored film filters: orange, light blue, dark blue, and light purple
Put each of them in front of the flashlight for each test.
Press START to record the data
Open Excel Spreadsheet and calculate average of 10 numbers for each color as what we did in the first experiment.
Finally, we came up with this result for the second experiment

results: SOLAR lab 2

 

Conclusion:

With this experiment, I learned that the voltage output can be afftected by distance and color. When the distance is far away from the light source, the voltage output will also decrease because the light is not powerful and strong at the longer distance. Additionally, even though the light source and solar cell stay at the same direction for the whole experiment, the voltage output can still be changed by the difference of light color. When we used dark color, the voltage  increased and vice versa. similarly to when we wear black and red in a warm day and feel more hot because dark colors can capture more temperature and energy than the lighter colors.

Gravity is a key element that allows us to run, stand or dance without difficulties. Gravity allows us to stay in land without floating upwards. “Discovered” developed by Isaac Newton he came up with laws and theories that makes it easier for us to understand it. He came up with the concept of inertia meaning that an immobile object will stay immobile and a mobile object will keep moving unless it get disrupted by something.

During the class we conducted an experiment, which exposed us to the laws of Newton.We were given a Lego robot, with a ruler measured in centimeters that had to be converted in meters, and weights that were measured in grams. The Lego robot had a tower that held a string with a whole where we can hook the weights. The computer system allowed us to adjust the power of our desire and also allowed us to adjust the mass. We did a total of 10 trials throughout the experiment. One set, we were instructed to remain the mass constant which made the acceleration change with the adjustment of power or (force). During our second set, our power or (force) remained constant, we had to adjust the mass for every trial and the acceleration was determined.

We needed to measure the initial height of the bottom to the pulley which was 37 centimeters, (.37 meters). With the product of heigh, acceleration gravity, and mass, we were allowed to find out the potential energy for each trial experiment.

FORCE at 75 :

FORCE at .18:

In conclusion this experiment was successful as it proved the relationship between mass, force, and acceleration proving that Newton was right.

 

Space X, or Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport service company created by Elon Musk in 2002. They creates, design and launch rockets to space. The most famous of rockets that they have created are the Falcon 9 and the Dragon Spacecraft.

The falcon 9 was designed and developed entirely in the twenty first century. It is a two stage rocket designed to transport satellites and the Dragon Spacecraft into orbit with its strong engines that generates an acceleration of 2.773 meters per second square.

In perpetual quest of Innovation, the company is working on a new rocket that will be even more powerful than the Falcon 9 called Falcon heavy that will have an acceleration close to 4.83 meters per second square. Those numbers are even more impressive as the more the ascension of the rocket increase the more fuel is burnt the less heavier it gets, same goes on for gravity which leads us to the conclusion that the rocket will reach a higher speed.

 

sources:

“SpaceX.” SpaceX. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

“SpaceX: First Private Flights to Space Station.” Space.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Dunbar, Brian. “Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX).” NASA. NASA, 08 Mar. 2013. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

 

 

GOALS:

This activity had a ultimate goal, that was to test and compare the accuracy between man-hand measurement and electronically-measured measurement. This was executed through a different set of experiments that lead to a final calculation of the margin of error between the computer and the human results.

How was it done:

The first step was connecting the robot that we used for the experiment to the computer through a USB port and configuring it with a program that would run it and take the measurements electronically. On the other side, my group and I used rulers to take the measurements manually. From, a straight line the robot was powered an travel a given distances with a given power. The time was the non-variable factor of the experiment and kept constant at 1 seconds. The  robot started from a point to another point on a straight axis and the distance was measured with a ruler and by the computer. The same procedure was repeated 3 times using different motor powers.

Results:

Conclusion:

By the end of the experiment, we noticed the proximity between our measurements and the computer’s was very big, proving that our margins of error were limited. Factors such as human error and frictions played a role in the margins of error but at different levels. Furthermore, the robot had a tendency to move a little bit backward after stoping and that tendency increased as we increased the motor’s power.

 

The energy grind of the U.S.A is the network by which the electricity produced by a power plant that generates electricity (e.g. Nuclear central) goes trough to reach our homes, offices and even the simple street lights. The electricity circulates at a really high voltage in the grid, which gets smaller and smaller the closer the electricity gets to us. From the 450,000 miles long high-voltage transmission lines the energy is transferred to substations which is a local redistributor of electricity in a smaller scale in terms of voltage. Here is a link of Video that will make the functioning of the Nation energy grid clearer : click on me

The U.S.A has grid system is composed of three small systems that are known as interconnections that distributes the electricity all over the country. The Eastern interconnection that distributes to the east of the Rocky Mountains, the western one that distributes to the Pacific oceans and the Rocky Mountains and the Texas interconnected that distributes to most the state.

 

However, the United States electric grid is aging and needs major changes and renovations in order to satisfy the demand. The renovation of the grid goes under the name of Smart Grid which consists of a new and more efficient of providing electricity with the most updated technologies such as automated capacitors, automated feeder switches and smart meters in order to limit the the waist and to maximize the electricity distribution and be more prepared to accidents such as bad weather in certain regions. More information on http://smartgrid.gov.

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In few years the U.S will beneficiate of a more efficient grid electronically controlled and regulates via new technologies and correlatively making the system more efficient.

sources:

“Top 9 Things You Didn’t Know About America’s Power Grid.” Energy.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2016.

“How the Grid Works || BURN Radio.” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2016.

“What Is the Smart Grid?” What Is the Smart Grid? N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2016.