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Things started to click in my group right from the start. We were all on the same page in regard to what we wanted our experiment to be about and what we wanted to focus on. We decided to do an experiment based on sustainability since it was a topic we all liked very much and we wanted to do something with solar heating since it seemed like the most fun in the moment.

 

Right then, we started our research for interesting looking experiments that were based on what we had decided previously. We came across a bunch of them but none seemed like the right one until we saw the solar heating experiment. It had all the requirements we were looking for: it used solar heating, required lab view and lego mind-storm.

Like I said, we all agreed from the very first beginning, we didn’t take that much time brainstorming as we did planning our next steps and organizing ourselves for the tasks that were coming ahead. We had nothing more to discuss on the subject of the experiment since we all loved it. It appealed to us because it is the first step of many to explain ways in which we can save energy and reduce pollution. Solar heating can reduce the amount of electricity we use which is one of the if not the biggest sources of pollution in the world.

          

The auto industry is becoming more and more concerned with manufacturing their automobiles in a way that’s more fuel-efficient. Automakers used to focus mostly on making smaller cars since they take up less gasoline, but volatile gas prices and tighter federal standards for fuel economy has them working on fuel-efficient vehicles that show a wider range of weights and sizes.

Under the new federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, the auto industry has agreed to produce fleets of vehicles that average 35.5 miles a gallon by 2016 and 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025 (Laiser, St. Louis Post). The EPA expects that by 2025 fuel economy standards will have increased significantly and greenhouse gas emissions will have been reduced by half. This is also good news for vehicle owners since it is expected they could save an average of $8,000 and oil consumption will be reduced by more than 2 million barrels a day by 2025.

Some of the approach automakers are taking into making vehicles more energy efficient include making lighter cars by cutting down on steel and other heavy materials. According to the Department of Energy, reducing a vehicle’s weight by 10 percent can improve fuel economy by 6 to 8 percent. Alternatives for steel, which makes up about 60 percent of a vehicle’s total weight, include aluminum, magnesium and carbon fiber. Aluminum is the second-most common material in cars on the roads today after steel. But auto manufacturers have said they intend to double their use of aluminum by 2025, Lowrey said. Alternatives like aluminum itself appear to be as safe as steel, the safety car crash test remained unchanged.

There are changes being made right now that show promise for the future and helps reduce the print the auto industry leaves on Earth. “Today’s new vehicles are cleaner and more fuel efficient than ever, saving American families money at the gas pump and helping to keep the air that we breathe cleaner,” said Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation.

References:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-boost-gas-mileage-automakers-explore-lighter-cars/

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/auto-industry-makes-strides-toward-improving-fuel-economy/article_2d050408-95db-561b-97fc-b84c708829d4.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry

There has been a shocking decline in vaccination rates among kindergarten-age children. More and more parents refuse to vaccinate their children increasing their chances of catching diseases more rapidly and easily. In California for example there have been 61 cases of the measles so far this year. The state been identified by the Centers for Disease Control as a national trouble spot and all while also dealing with a whooping cough epidemic. The belief parents have against vaccination is really based on nothing, or at least not based on science. They just claim that they read it or heard it somewhere and they believe in it. “It’s one they’ve thought about deeply. They’re reading all about this and making what they feel is the best-informed decision they can for their child.” Murphy says in favor of the parent’s side, claiming their decision is not based on ignorance. But in reality it is based on ignorance, they are clearly not considering how their decisions against vaccination affects their neighbors’, family members, and other children. Vaccines are made to help us and make our bodies stronger against the millions of deadly bacterias and diseases out there, after all the years of them existing they have not given us any reason to doubt them.

In Disneyland, one of the if not the world’s biggest amusement park, up to 12 cases of measles were reported. This case undermines the anti-vaccination argument that leaving children unimmunized affects only those who haven’t received shots. This shows how fast diseases can be spread especially in places where people from all over the world visit and where they are being highly exposed. It’s like we are going back in time instead of moving forward and explore new technology to avoid being exposed to deadly diseases altogether. This are rare cases however, because despite all the noise 93.4% of parents will or have already fully vaccinated their children.

 

References:

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-vaccination-crisis-20140903-column.html

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-antivaccination-update-the-measles-crisis-strikes-disneyland-20150108-column.html

https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/champions-children-main-page/impact-your-support/emergency-support/infographic-thinking-big

 

 

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.

 

Ex-President George H. W. Bush created the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). The purpose of this initiative was to send humans to explore Mars and find a possibility of life in another planet other than Earth. In 2004, the Bush administration started to say that by 2020 there would be a manned mission to Mars, but they needed to raise a billion dollars more. Budget issues started to arise and things got pushed back but raising NASA’s budget would help accomplish everything they haven’t been able to before. Budget issues are the most important part in order for this to happen, if this issue were to be resolved then by 2030 manned missions to Mars would become possible. Bush really though that in order for the U.S.A to become leaders of the world they had to become leaders of space first and that it was our destiny to explore. “Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn to unknown lands and across the open sea,” Bush said “We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey.”

There have even been created non-profit foundations like Mars One whose goal is to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Crews will depart for their one-way journey to Mars starting in 2026; subsequent crews will depart every 26 months after the initial crew has left for Mars. It is an initiative to make everyone’s mission to go to Mars and create a life there. They have literally taken Bush’s plan and it is already set in motion and it has become a reality. By this time they have already selected the first crew to travel and by 2017 they will begin their trainings.

 

References:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3950099/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/bush-sets-new-course-moon-beyond/#.VuEAf1IdLzI

http://www.mars-one.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Exploration_Initiative

The purpose of this experiment was to understand the relationship between light intensity and the voltage output of the solar cell, as well as the voltage’s output relationship with the wavelength of light. We were given one solar cell, one voltage probe, a flashlight, one NXT adaptor, a ruler and three colored film filters. With the help of Lab View the data needed for this experiment.

To change the intensity of the light we changed the proximity in centimeters between the flashlight and the solar cell. We started first by providing the solar cell no light at all. Then we put the flashlight at 1cm of distance from the solar cell, then 10 cm, then 20 cm, and at last a distance of 30 cm. Each time we obtained lower results meaning that the higher the intensity of the light, the more photons are going to be generated, therefore more current and voltage. Photovoltaics generate constant electricity; they work through the photons that land on the metal, adding energy so its electrons will follow.

 

Our next step in the experiment was to see how the different colored filters affect the voltage output. We grabbed a purple, light pink, and green filters and put it between the solar cell and flashlight and indeed each filter gave us a different result.

 

 

This is a documentary film by director, Robert Stone that makes the green case for nuclear energy in regard to the energy sources’ controversial beliefs. We have made believe that nuclear energy is synonymous with global disaster thanks to the atomic bomb and meltdowns like Fukushima. This film makes us wonder about nuclear energy and its effect on society that suggests we should stop worrying about it and start to love it. Stone argues that nuclear is a hugely efficient and relatively clean energy source that is now vitally needed, as billions of people in emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil are hungry for power. And while wind turbines and solar energy panels are the most environmentally friendly source of getting energy they simply don’t meet even a fraction of the urgent needs.

In the film we could see the personal stories of environmentalists and energy experts who went from being fiercely anti to strongly pro-nuclear energy, and how they risked their careers and reputations in the process. They show how this technology that we fear the most could save our planet from climate catastrophe and can provide the energy who billions of people in third world countries need to get out of poverty.

So maybe nuclear energy is not that bad after all and once again we are given more proof that we must consider all angles of a problem before completely discarding it as harmful and useless.

Well-known scientist, Michael Faraday ‘s law states that changing magnetic fluxes through coiled wires will generate electricity. The greater the change in the magnetic flux, the greater is the currents and voltages. For the experiment we were provided one generator (a magnet that moves back an forth inside a coil of wire), one voltage probe, an adaptor and we used LabView and Excel to record our data.

We started by running our data without moving our generator at all (0 shakes), and began gradually shaking it, each time faster than the previous one. After 0 shakes, we did 24, 56, 83, and 100 shakes. The purpose of it all was to measure the voltage output of the generator.

 

 

As a result we could notice that the faster we shakes the generator, the more voltage was produced.

Isaac Newton, probably one of the greatest scientists of all time, formulated the basic laws of motion. His first law, the law of inertia states that an object will remain at rest to at a steady motion in a straight line unless an external force is applied. Because of friction and gravity this law is not obvious on Earth, but in Space it is. Aristotle thought the natural state of objects was at rest, Galileo questioned this and Newton disproved it.

Newton’s second law of motion states that force is equal to mass times acceleration. Force is set by the power level so for a mass that does not change, if you increase the force acceleration goes up. And if you increase the mass, acceleration will go down.

When a force is applied to change the speed or direction of an object, work is done against inertia. Inertia is the property of an object to stay in rest or in constant straight line motion. To change energy we apply work. During our experiment, this happened when we lifted the weights to change the mass. Work is equal to the force times distance. Work and energy are related. When work is done there is a change in energy since energy is the ability to do work (Joules).

Battery Discharge is directly proportional to energy. Some of that energy was lost during the experiment by the turning of the wheels also known as frictional losses. The kinetic energy was transformed to potential energy which is energy that a body has and has not spent. Power equals work divided by time. The greater the power, the faster it will go.

Natural Gas Hydraulic Fracturing also known, as hydro-fracking is a technique in which a pressurized liquid fractures rocks. The process involves injecting high pressured ‘fracking fluid’ (mainly water) into a borehole to create cracks in in the deep-rock formations therefore freeing more easily natural gas, petroleum and brine. This technique however is highly controversial in many countries because while it provides economic benefits and easier access to hydrocarbons, the environmental impacts it causes outweigh everything else. Such impacts include risks of ground and surface water contamination, air and noise pollution, and potentially trigger earthquakes along with consequential hazards to public health and the environment.

In early 1987, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded that hydraulic fracturing can contaminate and has contaminated groundwater. According to EPA former employees, evidence of the negative impact of fracking was systematically removed from congressional reports to support the energy industry. Therefore the growth of hydraulic fracturing in the United States and the continued exposure to the many chemicals involved in energy development is expected to increase over the next few years, and with uncertain consequences.

Potential sources of for ground and surface water exposure to toxins and toxicants include: 1) the drilling and fracturing phase; 2) improper treatment of wastewater, including spills during transport; and 3) failure of cement wall casings. Some of the toxins released from this process have cause poor health outcomes such as cancer, blood disorders, nervous system impairment, and respiratory issues. Miscarriages and stillbirths have also been associated with these toxins.

There have been several reported cases from families affected by hydro-fracking. For example: In 2008, Charlene Parish of Bee Branch from Arkansas reported contamination of drinking water during hydraulic fracturing of a nearby natural gas well owned by Southwestern Energy Company. Her water smelled bad, turned yellow, and filled with silt.

Also in 2001, two families in Colorado reported a water well blow-out and contamination of their drinking water during hydraulic fracturing of four nearby natural gas wells owned by Ballard Petroleum, now called Encana Corporation. Their drinking water turned gray, had strong smells, bubbled, and lost pressure. One family reported health symptoms they believe are linked to the groundwater contamination.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_hydraulic_fracturing_in_the_United_States

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amall/incidents_where_hydraulic_frac.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing