Solar energy is defined as a “radiant light and heat from the sun”, it is channeled using a “range of ever-evolving technologies” for example solar heating, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal electricity, solar architecture and artificial photosynthesis. There are two types of solar energy: passive solar and active solar. It depends on the procedure of how they capture, convert and distribute solar energy. They also have different use in the solar energy. The passive solar energy orientates the buildings to the Sun and selects materials with “favorable thermal mass or light dispersing properties”, it also designs spaces that naturally circulates air. The active solar energy used the photovoltaic panels and solar thermal collectors to harness the energy.

The technology for solar energy uses the sun’s energy and light to provide light, heat, electricity, hot water and also cooling for homes, businesses and industry.

President Obama announced that they are trying to build more support for the impact of global warming on our world. This is part of s broader campaign to build public support for an Environmental Protection Agency that will limit carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants and “is expected to create a major new market for zero-carbon carbon energy from sources same as wind and solar.”

All the effects that the world population has made over our planet regarding climate change are felt in all the corners of the world. The water is growing faster in dry regions, torrential rains increasing in wet regions, heat waves are becoming more common and much more severe. The wildfires are growing worst and the forests are dying under the assault from heat loving insects. “The White house,[…], wants to maximize its impact to drum up a sense of urgency among Americans about climate change – and thus to build political support for contentious new climate change regulation that President Obama plans to issue in June.”

“Today’s commercial solar cells”, most of the time made from silicon, convert sunlight into electricity with an efficiency of only 10% – 20%. Modules of today’s cells, “incorporated in the power grid” produces electricity. “Current standard cells have a theoretical maximum efficiency o 31 percent because of the electronic properties of the silicon material. New materials that are arranges in “novel ways’, can “evade that limit”, with some multilayer cells “reaching 34% efficiency”. Another idea that scientists have thought about to enhance efficiency involves the development in nanotechnology, the engineering of structures on sizes comparable to those of atoms and molecules, measured in nanometers”.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/us/politics/obama-to-give-push-on-climate.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/science/earth/climate-change-report.html?action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults&mabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C%5B%22RI%3A6%22%2C%22RI%3A16%22%5D&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DHomepage%26module%3DSearchSubmit%26contentCollection%3DHomepage%26t%3Dqry991%23%2F+National+Climate+Assessment+report

http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9082.aspx

India’s Solar Spree

The Fukushima Disaster happened after a major earthquake took place following a 15 meter tsunami that killed thousands of people and disabled all the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors. All these cause a nuclear disaster on March 11^th, 2011. All three cores largely melted in the first three days. This accident was rated “7 on the INES scale, due to high radioactive releases over days 4-6, eventually a total of some 940 PFq.” The earthquake in East Japan that had a magnitude of 9.0 at 2.46 on Friday 11 March 2011 had a very big impact. It did considerable damage in the region and the following tsunami made the mess much bigger. Eleven reactors were operating at the same time the earthquake hit and they all shut down automatically. None of the fukushima reactors were working at that time but the unit four became a problem five days after the disaster. The reactors proved that they were very vulnerable to the tsunami. The entire site was flooded by the 15-metre tsunami.

It was a catastrophic failure resulted in a meltdown of three of the plant’s nuclear reactors. The second day after the disaster happened the plant started to release big amount of radioactive materials. It became the largest nuclear incident since the Chernobyl disaster. It began to release around 10-30 percent of radiation slowly growing. In August 2013, it was stated that the “massive amount of radioactive water is among the most pressing problems that are affecting the cleanup process, which is expected to take decades.” Some of these have been released into the sea. Some people evacuated the area and this caused a huge amount of pollution that has been expanding further than Japan.

Source

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/japan-fights-back-year-after-2044537

The geothermal energy is heat that comes from the Earth. It’s considered to be clean and

sustainable. The resources of geothermal energy are, varying from the “shallow ground to hoy water

and hot rock found a few miles beneath the earth’s surface, and down even deeper to the extremely

high temperatures of molten rock called magma.”

Many places in the world are already thinking that geothermal energy is much less expensive and

affordable that might be able to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, and the global warming and

public health risks that result from their use. United States has an advantage unlike the other

countries because it has more geothermal capacity than any other country, “with more than 3,000

megawatts in eight states.”

The heat is produced under the earth’s crust where we can find a layer of hot and molten rock, this

layer is called magma. “The amount of heat within 10,000meters of Earth’s surface contains 50,000

times more energy than all the oil and natural gas resources in the world.” We can find the highest

underground temperatures in the regions with active and young volcanoes. The Pacific Rim, often

called the Ring of Fire for its many volcanoes, has many hot spots, including some in Alaska,

California, and Oregon.” Most of these regions are seismically active which in case of an earthquake

they can cause tsunamis.

It has been used for thousands of years for cooking and heating in some countries.

Sources

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/tech/geothermal-energy

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/how-geothermal-energy-works.html

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/geothermal-profile/

           The Stirling Engine was developed in 1816 as an “industrial prime mover to rival the steam engine”.It was invented by Rev. Robert Stirling who searched to develop a new alternative to the steam engines of the time, “whose boilers often exploded due to the high pressure of the steam and the primitive materials. It was primarily used in low power domestic applications for an extended period of time. The Stirling Engine is well known for its high efficiency, quiet operation, and how easy this engine can use almost any heat source.

          The Stirling Engine is considered a heat engine. It is operated by cyclic compression and expansion of air or other gas. The other gas is called a working fluid, which is a “pressurized gas or liquid that actuates a machines.”  The working fluid when working at different temperature levels such that there is a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical work.

      The main key inside of a Stirling Engine is that there is a fixed amount of gas sealed inside of the engine and it involves a series of events that “change the pressure” of the gas inside the engine, making the Stirline Engine work.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/stirling-engine1.htm

Sollar Cell Expt

The solar cell is considered as being an electrical device that basically converts the energy of light straight into electricity by so called photovoltaic effect, the solar cell is also called a photovoltaic cell.  It’s considered as being a form of photoelectric cell but for example when current, voltage, or resistance varies when the light is incident upon it but when exposed to light, it can “generate and support an electric current without being attached to any external voltage source, but do not require an external load for power consumption.”

A solar cell “ is a solid state electronic device that takes in light energy and converts it directly into electrical energy, is a sort of light bulb that is acting in reverse.”

Solar cells have made the research that we make nowadays possible. The regular blue or silver cell has a base of the element silicon. The moving electrons that bounce into the electrical circuit, are also known as electrical current, have the power to power electronic devices, especially the devices that have low power requirements.

During our experiment, we looked at solar panels and their relationship to different intensities and colors of light.

What we used:

-NXT CPU

-a solar panel

-a flash light

-3 distinct color filters

What we had to do:

We had to determine the relationship of distance to the intensity of light.  In order for us to figure that out we had to use different distances between the soar panel and the flashlight. The first time we applied this we didn’t use any filter. Then we started using the different colors of filters.  After running different experiments we concluded that the closer the panel is to the flashlight, the more energy it will receive.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell

Newton’s second law of motion is part of the three Newton’s laws of motion and they are considered physical laws that “together laid the foundation for classical mechanics. They were first set down in his Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis in 1687”. They all describe “ the relationship between a body and the forces acting upon it, and its motion in response to said forces.” They’ve all been expressed and different ways but the second law is F=ma. This means that the “vector sum of the forces F on an object is equal to the mass m of that object multiplied by the acceleration vector a of the object. Newton used the three laws of motion to try to explain and “investigate the motion of many physical objects and systems”. What the second law tries to explain is that the “net force on an object is equal to the rate of change which is the derivative of its linear momentum p in a inertial reference frame.”

F=net force applied

m= mass of the body

a=the body’s acceleration

The second law is only viable for constant mass systems. The mass may be taken outside the differentiation operator by the constant factor rule in differentiation. What Newton is trying to explain through this law is the force applied on an object when there is any movement. Similar to the first law, the time “derivative of the momentum is non-zero when the momentum changes direction, even if there is no change in its magnitude. Any mass that is gained or lost by the system will cause a change in momentum that is not the result of an external force.” Shorter what the second law is doing that it tells you “ how to calculate the value of a force.” This force is measured in Newtons and is “one of the fundamental physical properties f a system and it comes in many forms”. “It holds up for a staggering array of everyday situations and is a workhorse in modern science and engineering.”

Sources

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/may/11/what-is-newtons-second-law-of-motion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton’s_laws_of_motion

Electricity Generation is the first process in the delivery of electricity to consumers. The electricity generation is the process that generates electric power from other sources of primary energy. The basic principles of electricity generation were discovered by the British scientist Michael Faraday during the 1820s and early 1830. What he discovered is that the “electricity is generated by the movement of a loop of wire, or disc of cooper between the poles of a magnet”, and his method is still used today. Most of the time the electricity is generated at a power station by “electromechanical generators, primarily driven by heat engines fueled by chemical combustion or nuclear fission but also by other means such as kinetic energy of flowing water and wind.” The demand for electricity can be found in two different ways. The first method that is the most used ones is for public or private utilities to “construct large scale centralized projects to generate and transmit the electricity required to fuel economies.” Most of these projects cause and have caused unpleasant “environmental effects such as air or radiation pollution and the flooding of large areas of land.” Frequently these sites generate electricity as a byproduct of other industrial processes such as using gas from landfills to drive turbines.

Sources

http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/e/electricity_generation.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation

Out of all of the countries, Germany is considered as one of the best countries to embrace the Green Energy.  It is also very successful worldwide. The “share of electricity produced from renewable energy in Germany”, has increased to 25% in 2012, being at 6.3% in 2000. It reached 20.5% in 2011 that Germany used to produce electricity supply from renewable energy sources. Germany was called “the world’s first major renewable energy economy”. Germany is trying to reach 35% of electricity generated from renewables.  In Germany there are more than 21,607 wind turbines located in the federal area than in any other place. The Germany’s federal government is still working on creating a plan to increase the percent of renewable energy and they have a “particular focus on offshore wind farms.” One of the major challenges is the “development of sufficient network capacities for transmitting the power generated in the North Sea to the large industrial consumers in southern Germany.” One problem that Germany has onto fulfilling its dream are the “soaring electricity bills, rising carbon emissions and growing dependence on Russian gas.” which makes their job harder. Germany is still trying to find support form its neighbors European countries. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet “approved a plan last week to trim subsidies for solar and wind power.” But this created form problems in the European Union because of giving the German industry an “unfair competitive boost.”

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/18/germanys-green-dream/

       Dean Kamen was born on April 5th, 1951 in New Hampshire. He studied at Worcester Polytechnic Institute but he didn’t finish it. While he was in school, he was working on a private advanced research for the drug infusion pump called AutoSyringe, and that is why he dropped out before graduating.

He hold more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents. Most of them are used for innovative medical devices. His inventions has had an worldwide impact in health care.

    One of the products that is really popular nowadays, the Segway PT, was invented by Dean Kamen. The Segway PT is an “electric, self-balancing human transporter with a computer-controlled gyroscopic stabilization and control system.” (“Wikipedia”, 2014) This device consists of a long body and two wheels and is controlled by body weight. Once you lay back the Segway stops  and once you lay forward it goes faster and faster depending on the force you put towards the device. The Segway is used by consumers, business, law enforcement/security and robotics mobility platform. This device is considered a “green transportation”. It is a battery powered electric vehicle. They are driven by electric motors and can reach a speed of 12.5 miles/hour. The Segway PT has “electric motors that are powered by Valence Technology, a phosphate-based lithium-ion batteries, which can be charged from household current. It balances with the help of dual computers that run proprietary software, two tilt sensors and five gyroscopic sensors developed by BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre.” (“Wikipedia”, 2014) This is one of the best inventions and a little bit different from what he developed. Mostly of his inventions were for medical use but the Segway PT can help conserve fuels that we waste by using cars.

Dean Kamen has received multiple awards for his inventions and his efforts. Kamen was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2000, this award was for his advances made in medical care. He was also awarded Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2002, and D. Kamen was also inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2005.

Sources:

http://www.dekaresearch.com/founder.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway_PT

Our project is about wind turbine. During the brain-storming session we researched and tried to find an innovative way to create a unique wind turbine. Me and the students I’m working with for this project tried first to find a project for the final presentation of the Science and Building Innovation class. We used the resources provided in class and all the links and we thought the wind turbine might be the most interesting project to build. It seemed easy and we also find a lot of helpful links that will be used for this project.