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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.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. It is the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, and only the second disaster (along with Chernobyl) to measure Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. There are a number of factors that have to be considered when assessing the health effects of radiation exposure: for example land decontamination efforts, size of evacuation area, shielding by buildings and terrain and consumption of contaminated food.

Jan Beyea, from the US expert consulting service Consulting in the Public Interest, together with fellow colleagues has been analysing previous calculations of the subsequent nuclear accident in Japan, and believes that the number of predicted future mortalities from cancer is higher than originally predicted. ‘Health consequences predicted for the Fukushima Daiichi accident are dominated by “groundshine” gamma radiation from the decay over several decades of dispersed radioactive caesium. Although an individual’s risk is small, the mid-range, predicted number of future mortalities from cancer is closer to 1000 than the 125 figure calculated without considering long-term groundshine [gamma radiation emitted from radioactive materials deposited on the ground].’

What are the long-term consequences for public health following the 2011 disaster in Fukushima? A critical part of calculating the consequences of a nuclear accident is the treatment of the gamma ray dose from land contaminated with caesium-134 and caesium-137.  Radiocaesium isotopes can also be responsible for extra cancers that can be expected years after the initial exposure. It is these long-term doses in the environment that were not included in the original estimations.

Lynn Anspaugh, from the University of Utah, US, who works in the field of radiology and reconstructing radiation doses and who analysed the Chernobyl accident, agrees that Beyea’s research points out several inaccuracies in the previous work. However, he feels that the real question this work raises regards the future of nuclear power itself. ‘Both accidents had a root cause in poor judgments having been made by humans. If nuclear power is to have a future, its proponents must indicate how they can make such reactors fail safe and how they will assure that siting decisions do indeed take account of possible, or even likely, natural events.’

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/28/us-japan-nuclear-cancer-idUSBRE91R0D420130228

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3246178/

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/japans-quake/lessons-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-disaster

 

The main question: Solyndra scandal

Further researched: Solyndra, a California-based solar panel manufacturer, declared bankruptcy in August 2011 after having received $528 million in federal loan guarantees.Solyndra’s problem, according to outsiders, was that the product looked better when it was conceived than when it hit the market. Solyndra’s design avoided the use of silicon, a commodity that was selling at very high prices in 2009 when the loan guarantee was approved but crashed later.

 

 

 

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/solyndra/index.html

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2011/09/16/solyndra-the-logical-endpoint-of-obamanomics/

 

Last class me and my partner Andrey Kozlov were working on an experiment that consisted of relationship between shakes of a metalic ball in a glass cobe and energy that is produced from the shaking the ball; also we were supposed to make a data on the dependancy between how fast the shakes are and how much energy is generated. The experiment was based on Faraday’s Law. Here is outcomes we got:

 

 

Looking at the chart above it’s obvious that the more shakes are obtained, the more energy can be produced.

Natural Gas Hydraulic Fracturing (hydrofracking)

         Lately, the governments of all the countries started to realize that the problem of the pollution is needed to be faced and the alternative options are needed to be seeked in order to avoid the reduction of the oxygen level in the athmosphere and illuminate any health problems among people. Therefore new technologies along with population concerns started to work on the substitutes of the oil and coal. Here are some options that can be met in today’s world: wind and solar power, natural gas and hydraulic fracturing.

Hydraulic fracturing is the propagation of fractures in a rock layer by a pressurized fluid.

It uses millions of gallons of water, laced with a cocktail of chemicals, to fracture shale and release gas.

 “It is imperative that any drilling in the Marcellus Shale be environmentally sensitive and safe.

These reviews must demonstrate that health and environmental risks are adequately addressed and protected.”

-Governor Andrew Cuomo

    Although hydraulic fracturing as an optional choice of green-oriented energy(gas) supply have it’s positive consequenses, such as new employment, domestic supply, which doesn’t require foreign dependancy anymore, that introduces economic side of the innovation; also presents as a eco-efficient choice then the oil and coal, which puts it’s accent on the enviromental prospective, however the chemical contamination of the water from the drilling and the releases greenhouse gases are some of the concerns that hydraulic fracturing is followed by. While the main industrial use of hydraulic fracturing is in arousing production from oil and gas wells hydraulic fracturing is also applied:

• To stimulate groundwater wells
• To precondition or induce rock to cave in mining
• As a means of enhancing waste remediation processes, usually hydrocarbon waste or spills
• To dispose of waste by injection into deep rock formations
• As a method to measure the stress in the earth
• For heat extraction to produce electricity in an enhanced geothermal systems

Overall Hydraulic Fracturing is an alternative that can be view through and used as an option of the natural gas supply due to it’s less harm-capability, that is been researched by the scientists.

Resourses:

About Hydrofracking

http://greenliving.about.com/od/scienceandtechnology/a/Hydraulic-Fracturing-Fracking.htm