Sarah's Science Blog (SCI.184)

Lego Mindstorms | Experiment #4 & #5

Last Monday we conducted two experiments, the first included measuring the thermal energy created when heating oil and water simultaneously. We focused on using the heat energy equation, H = Cp*m*∆T

Before the experiment, we found out the mass density of oil (.92) and water (1.0) as well as the specific heat of oil (2.0 J) and water (4.184 J).

We added 80ml of oil and water to their own beakers and placed them on a hot plate. We then plugged probes and submerged one in each liquid. The probes were hooked up to the Lego Mindstorm which recorded all of the data for us.

Because of some issues with the hot plate, the liquids did not change temperature as much as we thought, and according to the data, our water had a higher temperature than the cooking oil. We found this a little odd since it takes longer to heat water than oil. There seems to be a large margin of error in this experiment and it would take a few more in order to see results that really make sense.

After the data was recorded, we calculated the difference of the end temperature from the start temperature, and we received a difference of .80978 for the oil and .201135 for the water.

We then calculated it further, which required the mass density and specific heat, and received an energy calculation of 67.39621 for water and 119.1996 for oil. The percentage difference is 55.52473.

The second experiment focused on solar energy, which required us to use a small solar panel and a flashlight to measure the voltages created by the height and intensity of the light. As usual, we had the VXT program collect the data, which recorded about 30 voltages each time.

We tried varying the height of the light for the first few trials, starting at 0in, and then moving to 5in, and finally 10in. After that initial run, we decided to just gather voltage data of 0in, but switched from plain bright white light, to using different color filters. We used five filters total; teal, orange, pink, indigo, and green.

We found that the orange filter produced the highest voltage average, while the plain white light did not.

Lego Mindstorms | Experiment #3 – Energy

Last week, we continued our experiments using the Lego Mindstorms, only this time, we hooked it up to a flashlight to measure the energy generated with the magnets inside of it.

This particular flashlight had loose magnets inside that when you shook them, it would create the energy needed to keep them lit. Devices like this are becoming increasingly popular since it cuts down on needing batteries or other sources of electric power.

After hooking up the flashlight to the robot, we opened the .VI file that would measure and record the power we generated by shaking the flashlight. We had a few errors in the beginning, but were able to have three successful trials in which the data was used for our graph. For the three trials used, we shook the flashlight in a different rhythmic pattern (fast, slow, and staggered) to see if that would also make a difference in the generated energy, but I think that more than three trials will be needed in order to find conclusive results.

We took turns shaking the flashlight for 30 seconds, and since we had different rhythms each time, we had a different number of shakes. The program kept track of the energy in a spreadsheet in Excel, where we then used the SUMSQ function to make our calculations. In the first round, Jason counted 85 fashshakes which calculated to 153.4535 volts. My trial had a count of 32 slow shakes which was calculated to 53.09822 volts. Lastly, Rosemary’s trial had 29 staggered shakes (three shakes, then a moment of rest continued for 30 seconds) which calculated 36.59198 volts.

We then put this data into a graph and included a linear trendline. The more shakes, the more energy is produced, so it would make sense to shake the flashlight more if you wanted to keep it bright longer.

Alcator C-Mod at MIT

Last Monday we visited MIT to view the Alcator C-mod, one of only three in the country. Though this one is the smallest, it is funded and used for research by the U.S. Department of Energy.

We learned about a few topics in the presentation, including the design of the Alcator C-mod, which is in part a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped device that contains plasma and particles in a magnetic field so they can be fused together. Without it, it would take 100 million tries until you got one fusion, so the shape allows the particles to continue circulating to increase the change of fusion.

Though the machine cannot yet create energy, the presenters at MIT seemed sure that someday it would. Other disadvantages they mentioned along with it not having any results thus far were cost and finding structural materials that won’t become radioactive. It’s odd to see so much assurance in something that hasn’t brought any real results to date, and I wonder if it will really work, or if someone will create “the next big thing” that will give us a new renewable energy source. From my point of view, it seems a bit like a money pit, but then again I’m not a scientist/researcher at MIT!

It’s nice to see such dedication to a project and it seems like the people we met that are working on it are genuinely interested in trying to make their goal a reality. (You don’t see that every day, that’s for sure.)
Overall, the fieldtrip was pleasant. I would have liked to see the machine in action, (though my childish expectations want to see sparks and laser beams popping out everywhere, I know that’s probably not what it looks like.) I wish I had more of an understanding in the science behind what is going on, but I think they did a pretty good job filling us in to the best of their ability, since most of us aren’t science majors.

Demand Response

When one thinks of the cost of electricity usage, many think that the rate is calculated based on the average day-to-day use of electricity, and never realize that the rate actually changes due to peak times of the day where power is worth more.  This is where demand response comes in.

The U.S. Department of Energy established demand response in order to motivate customers to change their habits when it comes to electricity. An appliance is never truly off if it’s still plugged in, so millions of people across the globe are wasting money by leaving items such as cell phone chargers and toasters plugged into outlets all day when they’re not even home using them.

Supply and demand on the electricity grid need to be in balance at all times to avoid an outage. System operators pay very close attention to the electric usage at all hours of the day so that the supply can always be met with the demand. If the supply runs short, demand response moves in (D.O.E.).

There are two types of demand response, economic and emergency. Economic demand response is when demand increases and the cost to acquire supply increases. “Economic demand response lowers that average cost by providing incentives for customers to use electricity off-peak.  For example, many utilities offer time-of-use electric rates, which are higher during the day and lower at night” (Energy DSM). Emergency demand response occurs when electricity peaks in the middle of the day due to unusually hot or cold weather, and the supply sometimes isn’t always available. When this happens, electric utilities call on their emergency resources to avoid outages (EnergyDSM).

Many companies such as EnerNOC, Comverge, and CPower are leaders in demand response, offering numerous programs to energy end-users (Tweed). CPower’s program helps companies lower their energy usage while making significant revenue and environmental benefits. Their chart, showing peak times, is quite helpful in understanding demand response and their role in energy consumption and management.

Overall, I think demand response is a positive thing if regulated. It’s nice to see companies like EnerNOC, which is Boston-based, managing energy use in a city where electricity bills are through the roof. EnerNoc is current load management is about 5 gigawatts after buying two other companies, and is a role model for staying ahead in such a competitive field.

Works Cited

“Benefits of Demand Response and Recommendations.” energy.gov. U.S. Department of Energy, n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. <www.oe.energy.gov/DocumentsandMedia/congress_1252d.pdf>.

Tweed, Katherine. “The Top Five Players in Demand Response : Greentech Media.” Green Technology | Cleantech | Green Energy – News, Research, & Resources. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/top-5-demand-response/>.

“What is Demand Response?.” EnergyDSM.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. <http://www.energydsm.com/demand-response/>.

“demand response | demand energy | smart grid | cpowered.com.” energy management | energy demand response | cpowered.com. CPower, n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. <http://www.cpowered.com/demand-response.php>.

Lego Mindstorms

Working with the Lego Mindstorms has been a really great opportunity to have these past two classes. My group had a few troubles getting some of the pieces together in the beginning, (we seemed to have a few things backwards…must’ve been a case of the Mondays.) Once we had everything put together and plugged in, I wasn’t too sure what we would be doing with them, I had never been one for programming, but the software used for the Mindstorms seems to cater to both amateur and advanced users. I will definitely need more time with the program to really get the feel for it, (and maybe a manual too…) but sticking with basic power functions eased my worries.

On the first day with the Mindstorms, we only had time for some basic functions, such as going forwards and backwards, left and right, and speed control. On our second meeting, we learned how to create an entire string of commands and also how to loop it so it can happen more than once. It wasn’t long before our robot began doing our own routine that included a short little musical number throughout the motions.

Later, we calculated the diameter of the tires before measuring the distance traveled by the robot. The wheel circumference was .1700m, and the distance we measured was about 15cm or 16cm. The problem with measuring the robot in this fashion is that you will never have the ruler perfectly at the back or front of the tire. The robot also does not travel in a perfectly straight line, so as it leans, the person doing the measurement leans, so there’s a large margin for error in this situation. We did not repeat this experiment with other power modes, nor did we calculate the number of wheel turns since we then moved onto the next experiment.

Next, we programmed the vehicle to participate in a small challenge to make the robot travel clockwise in a one-meter circle, travel counter-clockwise, do both and make a sound, and then we programmed both tires to opposite directions as our unique trajectory. It was a bit challenging trying to choose speeds for each tire in order to make the robot travel in the one-meter circle. We started a 40 seconds, but then dwindled down to using about 20 seconds for the circle, it was difficult to measure due to the cramped space in the classroom, so if we were to do this again I’d want to pick an open area (where I can also mark off a meter circle on the floor in tape) and make the robot travel the circle. For the tire speeds, the power modes for the first one we chose were 85 for one side and 70 for the other. We then tried power modes of 55 and 40, and then power modes of 65 and 65 for the opposite moving trajectory.

Overall, I did enjoy working with the Mindstorms and hope to do more with them in the future. It is unbelievable the amount of power that these small machines possess! And I know that it’s going to take a lot longer than a few classes to get the hang of the program and learn more of its features, but this class provides a nice sampling to robotics that I probably won’t receive in any other class that I take at Suffolk. (And I think I finally understand why my father, an electrical engineer, gets so excited when he used to talk about working with the Mindstorms when he was in college!) It’s certainly a nice break from textbook readings!

Homework I – BP Oil Spill Response

On April 20^th, 2010 an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico caused a leak so massive that nobody expected it to last over five months. The rig, owned my Transocean and leased by British Petroleum, entered a battle with the U.S. government and other marine forces on who was to blame, and more importantly, who was to pay for the clean-up.

Naturally, BP was to blame for not recognizing warning signs before the explosion, which killed 11 workers and injured another 17. Two days later, the rig sank 5,000ft and reports spread of a 5-mile long oil slick. The U.S. Coast Guard estimated over 5,000 barrels of oil was spilling into the ocean per day after a third leak was discovered on the 28^th of April.

It didn’t take long for Louisiana to declare a state of emergency, as most of its coastline is now covered with oil. Researchers across the country begin predicting when the oil will hit other parts of the country, particularly the Florida Keys. Wildlife preservers start to rescue and clean up oil-ridden birds and dig up unhatched eggs of endangered sea turtles and release them into the other side of the Atlantic.

By May, BP produces a plan to use undersea robots to create a containment chamber, which has never been attempted at such a depth. This method fails and they’re off to the next idea, a “junk shot” which pumps shredded tires and golf balls into the well at a high pressure.

As the summer rolls on, many researchers believe that the spill is now spilling 20,000-70,000 barrels per day. By June, the barrel count tops at a shocking 1.5-2.5 million. The spill turned into a media frenzy as the reports progress on the nightly news and Americans across the country begin to show their displeasure in a number of social networking platforms, “Many Americans are angry by what they see as the government’s slow response to their country’s worst environmental disaster. Mr. Obama has been scrambling to show he is doing everything he can. But the government doesn’t have the technology to stop a spill at such depth, forcing Mr. Obama to rely on BP to fix it” (Belfast Telegraph).

It takes BP five months to finally contain the spill, using a mixture of mud and cement to seal the leaks, clean-up costs now near over $10 billion, bringing the total cost of the spill to $40 billion and an estimated 4.4 million barrels were leaked during the three-month period peak of the spill (Guardian).

The monetary damages alone don’t cover the endangerment Transocean, BP, and other responsible parties caused to the wildlife in the area and to the workers helping to clean up the spill. It is estimated that thousands of Americans will suffer in some way physically and mentally from exposure to the crude oil and other harmful chemicals, while animals like the brown pelican, sperm whale, dwarf seahorses, sea turtles, crabs, and herons will continue to suffer due to their tainted habitat (Huffington Post).  (Many of these animals were also recently brought off the endangered species list, only to be put back on it after the spill.)

It is evident that we need to look at past spills (like the 1989 Exxon-Mobile spill in Alaska) as a framework to see how everything will (or won’t) play out over time, but since the Gulf spill is the largest marine oil leak of all time, it will take decades before we see results in the clean-up efforts led by BP and the U.S. government. Until then, it’s only a matter of time before we start to see the harsh side effects of the accident.

Works Cited

” BP oil spill timeline | Environment | guardian.co.uk .”  Latest news, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk . N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2011. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/29/bp-oil-spill-timeline-deepwater-horizon>.

“Animals Most Endangered By The Gulf Oil Spill (PHOTOS).” Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2011. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/02/gulf-animal-photos_n_634379.html#s109866&title=Brown_Pelicans>.

Cope, Jerry. “Spill Commission Concludes Dispersants Are an Acceptable ‘Tradeoff’.” Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2011. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-cope/poeple-wearing-plastic-ba_b_809912.html>.

“Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.” Encyclopædia Britannica. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2011. <0-www.britannica.com.library.law.suffolk.edu/EBchecked/topic/1698988/Deepwater-Horizon-oil-spill-of-2010>.

Miller, Aubrey , and Goldman Lynn. “Gulf oil spill exposes gaps in public health knowledge.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 182.12 (2010): 1290-1292. Print.

“Obama vows to ‘make BP pay’ for oil spill damage.” Belfast Telegraph 16 June 2010, Final ed., sec. News: 6. Print.

Safirstein, Peter, and Leigh  Smith. “Environmental Class Actions: A Look at the Gulf Oil Spill.” CADS Report 21.1 (2010): 1-17. Print.