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In the documentary, “Pandoras Promise” expresses to the viewer how the public lives in fear of using the dangerous amounts of powers that lye in the process of harnessing nuclear energy. Scientists that are pro nuclear energy fight for the process due to the little to no polution that it gives off, and the greater amounts of power that we can harness in comparison to the amount given off by fossil fuels. In that aspect, nuclear energy seems like the obvious choice to power the earth. However, when there is the slightest imperfection to the process, the surrounding environment and the people around it are punished by the magnitude of horror that comes to follow.

Putting their careers on the line, the scientists in the film put their jobs on the line to truly figure out whether or not nuclear energy is simply an energy we must live in fear of due to the failures we have witnessed; or if this is truly the technology that could save our planet.  Stone (director of the film) tells the personal stories of environmentalists and energy experts who have undergone a radical conversion from being fiercely anti to strongly pro-nuclear energy, risking their careers and reputations in the process. Stone exposes this controversy within the environmental movement head-on with stories of defection by heavy weights including Stewart Brand, Richard Rhodes, Gwyneth Cravens, Mark Lynas and Michael Shellenberger.

In the movie you are truly able to tell that the scientists do understand the benefits of using nuclear energy. Although nuclear energy is the better option when looking at how it does not negatively effect our climate and amount of energy is produces in comparison to fossil fuels; it has a powerful backlash on the environment when the process isn’t completed precisely. For instance the movie at one point focusses in on the worst nuclear disaster recorded in the world; which took place in the city of Chernobyl. This is considered the worst of all nuclear disasters due to the cost and the amount of casualties in effect of what happened. In 1986 the power plant in the Ukraine caught fire and exploded; in result of the disaster, there were large quantities of nuclear radiation spread all over the country from miles away.

Kenneth Benedict from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists states, “Nuclear power may indeed end up being part of the energy mix that leads to both a more stable climate and adequate livelihoods around the world. But the challenges posed by nuclear power like the risk of weapons proliferation and reactor accidents, and the need to securely store radioactive used fuel for many generations are not adequately addressed in the film.”(Wikipedia).

After watching the film I truly gained a new perspective on the use of nuclear energy. Previous to watching the film I was one hundred percent on board with hopping right into using nuclear energy. It advertises itself very well to the public eye. But once looking into the individual cases and seeing the powerful damage that it can do to both the earth and humans when miss used made me take a step back. I wouldn’t say that I am now apposed to using nuclear energy. I still believe that it is a great alternative that we will end up using in the future to prevent climate change and to make the earth a greener more echo friendly place. But before we move into using nuclear power more frequently, I believe that we should learn more about it and how to properly dispose of the nuclear waste post use, learn how to transport the energy into to the plants at a cheaper and more safe way, and to become more cautious with using such a powerful energy source. This technology is definitely the future for the human race. At the moment however, I believe that we are not ready to take the load off of fossil fuels and call nuclear energy our new primary source of energy.

I truly enjoyed the way director Stone put this movie together. He truly makes the viewer feel both the positives of nuclear energy, but also the cost of using energy when used improperly. To conclude this post I want to make it clear that I don’t believe that Stones goal with the film was to scare viewers away from standing with nuclear energy. The point of the film was to build awareness to those who back nuclear energy, but sincerely don’t understand the consiquences of the energy when misused. We are not ready at the moment to start mass producing this energy. But in time we will be ready and nuclear energy will make great change to the way we power our earth.

Just before spring break, our class took a trip to the Museum of Science with a list of exhibits to observe and talk about in class. The exhibits connect with the topic we are on in class at the moment; which is alternative energy sources. We were able to see exhibits on how wind and solar energy work, as well as a few exhibits that we were able to interact with that connects with our physics portion of the class.

This first exhibit I took a look at was the exhibit on how wind energy works. In the most basic terms one can use, wind turbines simply catch the energy of the wind and converts it into a form of energy that we are able to use. A turbine is very simple. It is made up of blades, a hub, low speed shaft, a gearbox, high speed shaft, electric generator, a yaw motor, and an electric controller. I wont get into how each piece of the machine plays its roll in the turbine, however I will talk about how the wind turbine works over all. The wind turbine is turned to face the direction the wind is blowing with the yaw motor. Once the wind turbine is put into place, the blades on the turbine are shaped in such a way to catch the motion of the wind, which in result the blades begin to spin on the turbine. While the blades are spinning, it is powering a generator inside of the turbine. Each turn powering the device more and more; it then uses the energy produces to power are needs just as fossil fuels do. The best part about producing energy with wind is that there is absolutely no increase to the green house gasses in our atmosphere.

After I then took a look at the exhibit which talked about the process of solar energy. The poster I read talked about how power plants use fossil fuels to create heat which then they use to boil water and create steam energy. Steam energy is simple, the steam rises and while rising it pushed a turbine which then generates electricity similar to the way that a wind turbine produces its energy. Solar energy is similar, however the sun is the energy source instead of fossil fuels. The process uses mirrors to focus sunlight at a central point, generating enough heat to boil water. From there the rest of the process of creating electricity is the steam energy generated from the boiling water. Such a simple fix can make such a large difference over all to the greenhouse gas effect that we put into are atmosphere by using fossil fuels that pump the carbons into the air. We have three different ways to collect the solar energy; towers, troughs, and parabolic dishes.

Geothermal energy is an incredibly green system of retrieving energy that the country of Iceland has been able to harness and use due to its geographical location on earth. Before we get into that, lets talk about what geothermal energy is. Geothermal energy is thermal energy generated and stored in the Earth. One is able to harness the energy through the inner layers of the earth that are warmer and you can extract this energy and use it for electricity or even heat energy. An example of how to harness the energy in the earth is through a process of drilling known as deep wells. Deep wells, a mile or more deep, can tap reservoirs of steam or very hot water that can be used to drive turbines which power electricity generators. There are 3 types of geothermal power plants in use today, and they are: Dry Steam Plants which use geothermal steam directly. Thermal energy is what we talked about in the last blog. A quick recap on thermal energy, is the energy that determines the temperature of matter.

This is an image of Iceland and how the natural heat from under the earths crust is rising to the surface in the form of stream.

During the course of the 20th century, Iceland went from what was one of Europe’s poorest countries, dependent upon peat and imported coal for its energy, to a country with a high standard of living where practically all stationary energy is derived from renewable resources. In 2014, roughly 85% of primary energy use in Iceland came from renewable resources. There of 66% was from geothermal. Generating electricity with geothermal energy has increased significantly in recent years. As a result of a rapid expansion in Iceland’s energy intensive industry, the demand for electricity has increased considerably.(Orkugardur).

Geothermal systems are home heating and cooling systems that gather heat from the earth. Geothermal heat pumps (GHPs) use the relatively constant temperature of sub-surface soil as the exchange medium. Beneath the Earth’s crust, there is a layer of hot, molten rock called magma. Heat is continually produced there, mostly from the decay of naturally radioactive materials, such as uranium and potassium. The amount of heat within the first 33,000 feet (or 10,000 meters) of the Earth’s surface contains 50,000 times more energy than all the oil and natural gas resources in the world combined.

Iceland was able to take this echo friendly step due to the location of the island country. The entire united states couldn’t run on just the geothermal energy source because of our geographic energy. This is why the United States and other countries around the world are working hard to find other resources such as wind energy, nuclear energy, hydroelectric energy and many more. Iceland is truly an inspiration to the rest of the world and a motivation to constantly try to improve how we power our planet.

“Harnessing Geothermal Energy.” Geothermal Energy. UF, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

“Geothermal | National Energy Authority of Iceland.” Geothermal | National Energy Authority of Iceland. Orkugardur, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

“Geothermal Heating and Cooling Systems.” – InterNACHI. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.

Thermo electricity is one of the newer more green ways for us as humans to power our day to day lives. Before we begin to talk about the devices that are used in the process; we should get to know how thermo electricity works. A thermal power station is a power plant in which heat energy is converted to electric power. In most of the world the prime mover is steam driven. Water is heated, turns into steam and spins a steam turbine which drives an electrical generator. It seems very simple but there are some roadblocks that make it hard to achieve the constant power in the process.

The tricky part about thermoelectric generators is that as you heat the hot side, the cold side of the generator heats up too.  In order to generate power with the a thermoelectric generator you need both a heat source and a way of dissipating heat in order to maintain a temperature difference across the thermoelectric materials. This is done with no moving parts by heating water in the PowerPot.  Water holds several times more heat than aluminum per pound, so it makes a wonderful heatsink.  Also, water never gets hotter than 212 F (100 C) at a boil, effectively limiting the maximum temperature of the “cold” side of the thermoelectric generator.  This is why you always need to have something watery in the PowerPot or else it is possible to overheat the thermoelectric generator (PowerPracticle). In basic terms what it is saying, is you need to be able to keep a consistency with the heat in the chamber that the water is flowing through in order to heat up the metal pipe that lays beside the hot water pipe.

This is an image of a thermo electric generator. I am showing you this because this gives you a visual idea of what is going on. As you can see at the top of the generator, heat is applied to the device. The heat transfers to the electrons which are in the four individual chambers below the heat source. The electrons will begin to speed up and move around showing they have more energy witch allows the heat to transfer to the bottom where the heats energy is released and used for electricity. In this case the goal was to power a phone by using the generator. It seems silly to go through all this trouble to simply charge a cell phone, however this device doesn’t require any fossil fuels or nuclear energy which makes the process safe for humans, and for the environment as well. It also allows us to avoid adding to the green house gasses in the atmosphere.

This is more so what the device would look like in person. The water would boil in the power transferring the heat or steam power which would spin a turbine send the mechanical energy through the cord in order to power the phone. The process is incredibly simple.

For this device focus on the image on the right. This is another way that the heat energy can be used. As apposed to using the heat to create electricity and can be used for the process of refrigeration. Thermoelectric coolers are solid-state heat pumps that operate according to the Peltier effect: a theory that claims a heating or cooling effect occurs when electric current passes through two conductors. A voltage applied to the free ends of two dissimilar materials creates a temperature difference (LetsStayConnected). An example a one of these devices is a refrigerator.

This is the basic diagram of how the refrigerator works using the refrigeration process.

“How Do Thermoelectrics Work | Power Practical.” Power Practical. POS, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

“Let’s Stay Connected.” How Do Thermoelectric Coolers Work? (TEC). II-VI Marlow, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

“How Does a Refrigerator Work?” Real Simple. Real Simple, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

Nuclear energy is the energy released during the process of nuclear fusion.  The nuclear fusion process, is a nuclear reaction in which atomic nuclei of low atomic number fuse to form a heavier nucleus with the release of energy. As of today, nuclear energy is considered as one of the most environmentally friendly source of energy as it produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions during the production of electricity as compared to traditional sources like coal power plants. Nuclear fission is the process that is used in nuclear reactors to produce high amount of energy using element called uranium. It is the energy that is stored in the nucleus of an atom (ConserveEnergyFuture).

Although the process seems simple and efficient, there are some cons with using nuclear energy to power the earth. For instance after the uranium is used, it needs to be disposed of, and the disposal of nuclear waist is not only dangerous; it is unhealthy for people to work around and unhealthy for the environment. One of the biggest issues is environmental impact in relation to uranium. The process of mining and refining uranium hasn’t been a clean process. Actually transporting nuclear fuel to and from plants represents a pollution hazard. Also, once the fuel is used, you can’t simply take it to the landfill – it’s radioactive and dangerous (ConserveEnergyFuture). There is also the fact that the nuclear power is used to make powerful weapons, and if we let this energy get into the wrong hands we could look at ourselves facing an overall nuclear war.

However nuclear energy is not totally bad. For instance, its more proficient then fossil fuels, we have enough uranium to power the earth for another 70 to 80 years, low pollution which would help the us with global warming, and it has lower operating cost then fossil fuels. For instance, A number of nuclear energy innovations have made it a much more feasible choice than others. They have high energy density as compared to fossil fuels. The amount of fuel required by nuclear power plant is comparatively less than what is required by other power plants as energy released by nuclear fission is approximately ten million times greater than the amount of energy released by fossil fuel atom (ConserveEnergyFuture).

In the past we have had some major issues with Nuclear energy that have created some major disasters in countries around the world. Lets look at what happened in the Ukraine in the city of Chernobyl. In the year 1986, he Chernobyl Nuclear disaster is widely considered to have been the worst power plant accident in history, and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale (the other being the Fukushima, Daiichi disaster in 2011). The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles.  The official Soviet casualty count of 31 deaths has been disputed and long-term effects such as cancers and deformities are still being accounted for (ProcessIndustryForum). This is the perfect example of how unhealthy having nuclear waist around humans can be. The workers in the plant have been effected with diagnosis of cancers and deformities. Although the energy is efficient, when misused or there is an error in the process; nuclear energy can be incredibly dangerous.

This will bring you to an ABC news cast in america talking more about the Nuclear accident that happened in the Soviet Union.

This doesn’t just happen to foreign countries around the world, even the United States has had its own issues with Nuclear Energy. In 1961, the US military built a nuclear energy plant known as SL_1, to experiment with the nuclear energy. It was only a low powered nuclear energy plant that was built in the state of Idaho (Wikipedia). Due to an improper removal of a rod of uranium, three operators were killed in the steam explosion/ meltdown that occurred. This is the only nuclear disaster that has occurred in the United States, however it is listed as the 7th worst nuclear accident according to Process Industry Forums top ten worst nuclear disasters around the world.

Works Cited

“Pros and Cons of Nuclear Energy – Conserve Energy Future.”ConserveEnergyFuture. Conserve Energy Future, 06 Mar. 2015. Web. 03 Mar. 2016.

“Top 10 Nuclear Disasters in the World.” Process Industry Forum Top 10 Nuclear Disasters Comments. Process Industry Forum, 20 May 2013. Web. 03 Mar. 2016.

“SL-1.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Web. 03 Mar. 2016.

Solar energy is emitted energy released from the sun that is then captured by solar panels which have the capability to absorb this energy and generate electricity from it (Webster). The solar panels are made up of photovoltaic (PV) cells, which convert sunlight into direct current (DC) electricity throughout the day. The direct current is then converted into and alternating current (AC) within the panel. Once converted, the energy is sent to the electrical panel in the building or home. The panel or the breaker box, uses the AC electricity and uses it to power devices in the home such as lights (SolarCity).

In 2010, Germany was clearly the world leader, and has only continued the trend. In 2009 alone, Germany installed 3.8 GW of PV solar energy capacity, and the country has added at least 3.3 GW of new solar capacity per year, and more like 6 GW per year between 2010 and 2012. “The combination of a proven feed-in-tariff (FiT) scheme, good financing opportunities, a large availability of skilled PV companies, and a good public awareness of the PV technology, largely contributed to this success,” European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) reported (PureEnergies). The United States only places fifth in using solar energy, we fall short to China, Italy, and Japan all in that order. However on a positive note, from research I was able to find that the U.S. solar industry continued on its record-breaking trajectory in Q2 2015 with 1,393 megawatts (MW) of installed solar capacity, making this the largest Q2 in history. As has been the case over the last 18 months, the residential and utility-scale markets led the way, installed 463 and 729 MW, respectively. Through the first half of the year, the solar industry has supplied 40% of all new 2015 electric generating capacity – more than any other energy technology. With more than 5,000 MW of installed solar capacity projected over the second half of 2015, the U.S. solar industry is expected to reach nearly 8,000 MW for the year, and 28,000 MW in total (SEIA).

This is a big step for the us as a nation to start moving forward with more green ways to power our everyday lives and to prevent global warming. Solar energy is a great way for us to avoid burning more and more fossil fuels which would decrease the amount of green house gasses we have already polluted into the atmosphere. Solar is far more reliable then other greener methods as well because of how constant the sun is a part of our everyday lives.

Citations

“Solar Industry Facts and Figures.” SEIA. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2016.

“Top 10 Countries Using Solar Power – Pure Energies.” Pure Energies USA. N.p., 15 Sept. 2014. Web. 26 Feb. 2016.

“Get the Facts About Solar Energy – How Does Solar Energy Work?” Solar Energy Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2016.

Materials

Flash light, Colored Lenses, Ruler, Solar Panel and Lego Robot

Objective

The objective of lab was to test in trials how light intensity and light color act as variables in a solar cell’s efficiency of generating a voltage.

How we did it

The way this experiment works is simple. We would aim are our light source (the flashlight), at our solar panel which was attached to our lego robots. The solar panel would measure the length of the beams that the light gives of when illuminating. Before starting the experiment we tested our solar panel by put the flashlight at a distance of zero centimeters and started the program just to see if the device was able to measure the different fluctuations of the wavelengths. Once we had a successful run we then were assigned to run the test from three different distances without using any color filters over the light, and then after three tests from a controlled distance using three different colors. My partner and I chose the distances of 1, 3, and 5 cm for our distance tests. What you will see when looking at our graphs is how much longer the wavelengths would measure when aiming the light from a farther distance from the solar panel, and when closer to the panel the wave lengths would be shorter. Through these first three runs, we were able to solve that the relationship between wave length and distance, is the fact that the longer the light needs to travel, the longer the wavelengths need to be to travel.

This is our data table for all the trials we did during our experiment. When you look at the table you will see all the different wavelengths measured by the solar panel from the three different distances, and the three different colors and how they effected the lights wave lengths.

After running our three distance trials with the control being the light source, we then focus attention on how the color of the light would effect the wavelengths from a controlled distance. The controlled distance for light that we chose was 0 cm. When you look at our data they all seem very close in comparison. When looking through the data closely however, you are able to see how the green and blue lights are more similar to each other and the same goes for the orange and pink lights. The blue and green colored lights had longer wave lengths when running the experiment. This brought us to the conclusion that the cooler colors (cooler as in temperature base not style), put off longer beams off light as apposed to warmer color such as the pink and the orange. This was a strange result because when looking up if the data was accurate, I read that warmer colors were suppose to have longer wavelengths as apposed to the cooler colors, Red being the longest wave lengths, and purple being the shortest. This was very disappointing to discover that the data was off in our test. The reason I think we were unable to see enough change in the data was because we used zero cm as our distance. If we were to do this experiment again, I would choose a further distance to allow the light to travel and see if the results would come out in a different manner.

Inventor Nikola Tesla was born in July of 1856, in what is now Croatia. He came to the United States in 1884 and briefly worked with Thomas Edison  before the two parted ways. He sold several patent rights, including those to his alternating-current machinery, to George Westinghouse. His 1891 invention, the “Tesla coil,” is still used in radio technology today. Tesla died in New York City on January 7, 1943 (Bio.com).

Tesla after working with Thomas Edison, found himself looking in AC (Alternating Current) Energy in the year 1887 at his company Tesla Electric Company. A year later, Tesla was successful and had created several different patents for his AC. He was in competition against Thomas Edison’s DC ( Direct Current) Which was set as the Nations standard electric for the time being. Until George Westinghouse got attracted to Teslas idea. Westinghouse was an engineer that was looking for a way to supply more energy to the country. Westinghouse and Tesla knocked out Edison’s DC power supply and AC became the power standard after the two were able to make several more patents including Tesla’s, Tesla Coil.

It is used to produce high-voltage, low-current high frequency alternating-current electricity. His coil is still used today to put out radio waves (Wikipedia).

“Nikola Tesla.” Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.

Just as power plants are needed to conduct the energy to give off electricity to homes, the human body need to store energy. The way humans are able to store energy, is by eating foods and hydrating. Our bodies digest the food we eat by mixing it with fluids (acids and enzymes) in the stomach. When the stomach digests food, the carbohydrate (sugars and starches) in the food breaks down into another type of sugar, called glucose (McCulloch). Our bodies are only able to give off as much energy as we can store, and everyone bodies are different.

When talking about powering the globe, we have several different sources that we use. Theres nuclear, gas, oil, and coal energy which are our primary sources of energy which all contribute to what is known as the greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere. Greenhouse gasses contribute to the idea of global warming. That is why we are looking for more “green” ways to power our globe. For example in the United States we have built tall wind turbines to generate energy. Essentially how they work are there is energy in the wind that turns two or three propeller-like blades around a rotor. The rotor is connected to the main shaft, which spins a generator to create electricity. The only problem with the system is that it is inconsistent due to the fact that it is’t windy every day.

The wind turbine is similar to the experiment we did in class. For a lab we ran tests with a generator that is similar to the shake weight. The device was a clear tube that contained a magnet inside, when the device was shaken up and down the magnet would travel up and down through the tube. This device was connected to our Lego robot that was then connected to our mac computers that we have access to in class. When shaken the lego robot with the computer program would measure the amount of energy that we were producing during our trial runs. Unfortunately my group tried several lego robots but for some reason we were unable to get a connection causing us not to be able to complete the experiment. If the experiment did work however, you would have been able to see the different amounts of power that each individual is able to put out due to the differences in energy consumption and body build of my group members. It is truly unfortunate that we were unable to get a successful device to complete the experiment.

McCulloch, David. “How Our Bodies Turn Food Into Energy.” How Our Bodies Turn Food Into Energy. Group Health, 1 Mar. 2014. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.