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This time Mr. Vale brought his Tesla Coil. The Tesla Coil was invented in 1891 by Nikola Tesla. The Tesla Coil produces high voltage and high currency alternating current electricity. In layman’s terms it creates massive awesome sparks! Tesla dreamed of one day every house having there own Tesla coil and using it to remotely power the whole home. This dream was never recognized for a number of reasons such as: it interferes with medical devices such as pace makers and there is no way to direct the energy and so a lot of it spills out into space.

Mr. Vale’s Tesla Coil was definitely not as big as the one in this picture, but it was pretty neat and surprising to see even on a smaller scale in the classroom. I really enjoyed it!

We were back using the robots in class. This time we used shake powered flashlights, that Mr. Vale rigged to plug into the robot where it read data about the voltage that was created.

We started out with a baseline. We didn’t shake it at all, this is seen at point “0”. From there we began running tests each time increasing our speed of shake. From the data on the chart it is clear that the more shakes in a period of time the more voltage is made. This makes sense if you think about the number of shakes normally powering the bulb of a flashlight.

For the Pulley Lab we went back to the robots. This time however instead of using the program to make the car run, we used the motor in the car to run a pulley. We added and subtracted weights to the pulley and recorded data. We used this data to make graphs.

Acceleration Vs. Mass

The more weight we put on the slower it accelerated…

Power Vs. Mass

Power and mass directly affect one another as seen in this graph. The more mass the higher the power.

Battery Power Vs. Mass

The more mass the less battery power is left.

Demand Response is a system of mechanisms set up to help manage the usage of electricity in response to the supply conditions. The Demand Response system informs when power is at high demand and low supply. This usually means that prices are high too so informing the customer not only helps to save them money it also encourages the reduction in demand. This reduction in demand saves from power outages and blackouts. The high demand times are most likely to occur in summer when most people have air conditioners running.

One may ask why, if supply is low and demand is high do they not build more power plants. The reason is for the environment, the most common type of power plants cause the emissions of greenhouse gasses. The energy being produced by these plants is not needed all the time, all it takes is the cooperation of the customers to respond to high demand times so that there is enough electricity to go around.

Mr. Vale put on a great show for our class the first time he came in. You can tell he is really passionate about science and it is really enjoyable to watch him present his gadgets. He brought with him a peltier device, a stirling engine, an electric bug zapper and a solar motor. He made sure to explain all the mechanisms and I found it to be really interesting. The stirling engine runs when gas within it is heated up, the heat can come from even your hand. The runs off of the polarity of metal and water. The solar motor was my favorite, it almost seemed like magic when he moved the light bulb towards it and it began to spin. He explained that the peltier device and the stirling engine are both very old. It was very entertaining to have Mr. Vale in classand I look forward to his next visit.

I consider myself to be a person slightly technologically challenged, and so when I learned that we would be working with robots in class I was a bit apprehensive. The Lego Mindstorm activity ended up being a great introduction to computer programing. Using a program on the computer we were able to have the robot run forward, backward and after some fine tuning make it run in a circle of specific size. At times using the program to make the robot do what you want it to was frustrating, but overall it was a fun and educational introduction to how robots actually work. I look forward to learning more about this type of technology and using it later on in the semester.

On February 20th of 2010 the BP oil spill, spilled 17 to 39 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. This spill had tragic effects on both the environment and the people who live and work near the area.

The eco system of both the Gulf and its coastline has been severely damaged. Recently after the spill it was reported that 150 endangered sea turtles and 316 sea birds were found dead as a result of the spill. All and all, more than 8,000 birds, sea turtles, and marine mamals were found injured or dead in the six months after the spill. It can only be expected that these numbers have risen substantially since. The large amount of oil spilled also killed many fish which hurt fishing communities and will continue to do so for years to come. In 2008 commercial fisheries brought $659 million in shellfish and finfish in 2008 giving you an idea of how reliant the economy of those communities is reliant on fish.

It is clear from this and the other oil spill that have occurred throughout history that off shore drilling is very risky business. I only hope that this event will strengthen the argument to decrease the usage of oil in this country to the point of actual change.

Sources:

http://www.nwf.org/Oil-Spill/Effects-on-Wildlife.aspx

http://www.gulfspilloil.com/the-sticky-details-bp-oil-spill-facts-that-you-should-not-forget

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/82/021/Sea_Life_Flocks_Tp_Coast_To_Avoid_BP_Gulf _Oil_Spill_As_Millions_of_Dead_Fish_Float_Ashore.html

After thoughts:

In researching for this blog post I was very surprised to see that there were very few recent articles on the updates of the BP oil spill. The spill has been sealed, but there is little coverage on how much damage has been done and what the long term effects will be as of now.

Researching this also brought to mind where I was during the week of the spill. At that time I was working on an organic farm in Sweden. The owners of the farm I would call very liberal, and their response to the event was that of an “I told you so” response to American ways. I found this very unfortunate because I saw how an event like this, one that many Americans feel angry towards, can cause foreigners to group all Americans in with the company that is responsible for this devastating event.

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