Tom Vales a fellow professor at Suffolk came in to give us a presentation. He showed us alternative energy sources and other forms of energy. Tom holds annual presentations for electrical light shows to be presented and along with his fellow buddies, does experiments and tricks-but he remembers to wear his ear plugs because the crackling is so loud it could even damage your hearing. The four models he focused on: Jean Peltier’s thermoelectric cooling method, the hot-air engine, the Piezo effect, and the Mendocino motor.

Vales lectured us on was the Peltier effect. Peltier made an astounding discovery when he “joined copper wire and bismouth wire together and connected, then to a battery.” While one of “junctions of the two wires” got hot, the other got cold. Like this he created the effect that could power a low efficient refrigerator. The principle that is most important about this experiment is that “In essence, the Peltier effect shows that electricity can cause a heat  difference at the junction of two different metals connected together.” Vales told us this is what beer coolers essentially use as a function to keep beers cool.

Further, we learned about Nikola Tesla and the Tesla coil. (http://www.teslasociety.com/teslacoil.htm), give alittle info on Tesla coil.

“The Tesla coil is one of Nikola Tesla’s most famous inventions. It is essentially a high-frequency air-core transformer. It takes the output from a 120vAC to several kilovolt transformer & driver circuit and steps it up to an extremely high voltage. Voltages can get to be well above 1,000,000 volts and are discharged in the form of electrical arcs. Tesla himself got arcs up to 100,000,000 volts, but I don’t think that has been duplicated by anybody else. Tesla coils are unique in the fact that they create extremely powerful electrical fields. Large coils have been known to wirelessly light up florescent lights up to 50 feet away, and because of the fact that it is an electric field that goes directly into the light and doesn’t use the electrodes, even burned-out florescent lights will glow.”

I liked Mr. Vales presentation because it showed me a different way of thinking about sustainable energy instead of just thinking in terms of solar panels and wind turbines.