Last Thursday Tom Vales, a professor at Suffolk University, came to class and introduced us three devices that use different types of energy. The first, the Stirling Engine was desgined by Robert Stirling with the purpose of substituting the steam engines. This engine is more efficient and safer compared to the steam engine because with steam engines, if the water gets too low, the heat causes the steam to increase and therefore it increases dramatically in temperature making it unsafe and unreliable. They are also capable of quiet operation and can use almost any heat source. They have a 20% efficiency, and is used mainly in submarines where they needed to be really quiet.
The second was a Mendocino motor, which is a solar-powered magnetically levitated electric motor. It works when light strikes one of the solar cells, causing it to generate an electric current thus energizing one of the rotor windings. This produces a magnetic field which interacts with the field of the magnet under the rotor therefore causing the rotor to turn. As the rotor rotates, the next solar cell moves into the light and energizes the second winding, creating a current in an opposite direction to the first thus maintaining the rotation.
There are a number of ways to make energy and Nikola Tesla a well-known engineer from Serbia who created Tesla coils among man other devices. The Tesla coils are high voltage/frequency generators Tesla coil circuits were used commercially in sparkgap radio transmitters for wireless telegraph until the 1920s, and in medical equipment such as electrotherapy and violet ray devices. Today their main use is for entertainment and educational displays, although small coils are still used today as leak detectors for high vacuum systems. The electrical discharges release ozone which in excess can be harmful.
I like the graphic that you included. It helped me picture how the Stirling engine works, watching the motor turn as liquid compresses and expands within.
I agree that the graphic was helpful in explaining how it worked. On all of them you did a really good job explaining their function and how the Tesla Coil originated. I though those were fun facts to know.
You have a lot of facts in this blog, which I think is great in helping explain how the devices work. It also makes the blog a lot more interesting when you have pictures to look at as well. All around, this was very well-written, and I learned a lot through it since I was not able to attend class the day Tom Vales came in.
I thought the pictures you used were very helpful and informative. I never knew about how the coil really worked and I felt very connected to the topic after Tom Vales’ discussion