Month: April 2013

We use electricity everywhere and everyday. The life of a modern person can’t be imagined without power nowadays. Everything, like Cell Phones, Computers, any Electrical Devices require it.

One of the examples, that illustrates the people’s dependancy on the power is Hurricane Sandy, that occured in 2012 and caused a lot of damages and electricity break-downs particularly in New York. In that city the level of water reached so high that metro were flooded and what most significant is that Stock Market was shut down for a day. Reading newspapers and realizing how much people were affraid of the situation, not only on a local level, when residents were booking flights to get away till the disaster is settled, but also on the international and national level, where the importancy of the Stock Market is high and any issues can cause financial transactions problems. The illustartion exposes how much people are dependant on the convinience of having electricity 24/7 and how much efforts they trying to put to avoid it.

“Demad response is a the Smart Grid R&D Program, designed by power industries to develop modernization technologies for demand response and help to design, test, and demonstrate integrated infrastructures with the ability to dynamically optimize grid operations and resources and incorporate demand response and consumer participation. “http://energy.gov/oe/technology-development/smart-grid/demand-response

This program is designed to make the supply of the electricity affordable, convenient as well as “green” . For example, installed sensors can perceive peak load problems and utilize automatic switching to reduce power in strategic places, removing the chance of overload and the resulting power failure.

 

   Me and my classmate Andrei Kozlov were working on the experiment about Newton’s 2^nd Law, exploring what the significance of it is and how to apply it.

Based on theory, Newton’s 2^nd law of motion is F=ma, which can be interpreted as the acceleration of an object depends on two variables – the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object. Also all the forces that exist are not balanced. Using computer application and wired devices to that computer for the experiment, we transfered data from the application to the Excel sheet, put it together and found a relationship between Acceleration and Mass and how Power changes upon the changes in Mass quantity and Acceleration.

This is what kind of data we got and using the Scatterplot and Trendline, the colleration can be followed:

 

 

 

In today’s world the average person can’t be imagined without a car. Now almost everybody has at least one auto. However since demand on automobiles increased, the demand for efficiency and affortability increased as well. People want a smaller car to find parking easily in the busy city and fuel-efficient car to have a high mileage-per-galon.

 

Since 1975, fuel economy standarts didn’t change as much till lately, when The Obama Administration increasing requirements for automobile industry to expand average of 34.1 mpg to 54.2 mpg.

 

« Your 2025 car probably won’t get anything close to that kind of mileage (unless you drive a hybrid or electric car).» as Forbes contributor Micki Maynard wrote. This means that electrical, chargable, plug-in, natural gas  hybrids are taking over the roads and the more people want them because of  it’s affortable usage.

 

“Gas prices and miles per gallon claims are now top consideration points for new car shoppers when buying a car, playing a much bigger role than they did 10 years ago,” observed  Karl Brauer, editor in chief of Total Car Score. “Given that the average car on the road is 11 years old, consumers will be encountering all-new fuel efficient technology when they research their next vehicle.”

 

New changes over time would make cars less costly and there would be less concerns about it’s pollution.

Sources:

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/08/27/tough-government-gas-mileage-rules-good-for-drivers-auto-industry

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-17/better-gas-mileage-thanks-to-the-pentagon

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/08/30/10-ways-automakers-are-helping-you-spend-less-on-gasoline/

One of the classes we devoted to the Museum Of Science, which was a great experince and an opportunity to get ideas for the upcoming final project.

The exhibit that was mostly paid attention, was on wind and solar energy as an efficient alternative to gas and oil. There were a lot experiments, that were showing how wind or solar energy generates and why they are most prefferable from environmental point of view.

For example, there was an experiment which consisted of the panels with ingraved glass in it and the flash lights that can be pointed at the panels from a certain angle ,which helps to get the reflection in one point, where a little lamp was and the more reflection of the light is pointing to the lamp, the lighter it gets.

Having an opportunity to go to the Museum made my imagination and ideas of how wind and solar energy works, despite having google at any time. Also put me on a right track of the final experiment.

 

2 classes ago me and my group started to work on the class final project. We decided to experience the wind energy. As an alternative source of energy it’s a pretty reliable and non-extinct, which means it  would be always there and once the technology for the wind energy supply is built, there is almost no worries about finding alternative. Ot the other hand, not all the places around the world have as much wind due to climate and geographical diversity, therefore the places that don’t have as much wind would need the source of energy, that can be afortable and reliable in that particular place.

Giving a little of the introduction, on what our project’s focus is, I would proceed with letting know that we working on mini-model of the Wind energy supplier machine and the results are still in the progress.

During one of our Science and Innovation classes, Professor Shatz surprised us with an unique opportunity to meet Pr. Vales, who is an expert in physics and who was introducing different kinds of machines and engines, that he came up with and how they work.

Some of them were  stirling engine, which is a heat engine, that operates by cyclic compression and expansion of air at different temperature levels and produces air. Also we’ve seen Mendocino motor, which is a solar-powered magnetically levitated electric motor. It has magnetic which converts light into electricity.

 

Lastly, we got a chance to go to his office , that was full of different types of motors and gadgets. I, personally, was voluntered to help with any experiment Tom had to show us, which was also pretty exciting.

 

All the machines can be found in his store, unfortunatelly, I didn’t get the name of it.

 

Thank уou Tom Vales for an amazing class.