Solyndra was a manufacturer of cylindrical panels of thin-film solar cell based in Fremont, California.  This company was very important to the United States because the government was funding the company for more renewable energies. However, in September 1st of 2012, the company closed down due to bankruptcy.
Through the usage of President Obama’s stimulus bill, the Department of Energy funded this company with millions of dollars. But the problem was that the government didn’t really know the money problem that the company was going through. After the company closed down, the government officials when into the company’s history and later found out that the company had tons of loans and could not have survived as long as they did if they didn’t have the funding from the government.
At the end, this event was an important case because it shows how President Obama is suffering and desperate to improve the economy by spending money and showing the public how much work he is doing but it’s not working too well. Also, it also adds doubts to the people if what President Obama is doing is right.

REFERENCE:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/09/the-solyndra-scandal-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/245186/

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-09-18/news/ct-met-kass-0918-20110918_1_solyndra-loan-guarantee-obama-fundraisers-obama-white-house

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/opinion/the-phony-solyndra-scandal.html?_r=0

Objective:
The point of this experiment is to show that you can create electricity using  difference in water temperature. Through this experiment, we want to prove that coal and oil aren’t the only energy sources to create energy and using thermoelectric can be very eco-friendly and can prevent environmental problems because it doesn’t produce any greenhouse gases.

Materials:
– Two containers
–  Two metal bars
–  One fan
–  One thermoelectric sensor
–  Hot & Cold water

Procedure:
1. Place the two containers next to each other.
2. Then place the each of the metal rods in each of the containers and using a clipper, clip the two metal rods together.
3. When the two rods are clipped, place the thermoelectric sensor between the two rods.
4. When the rods are clipped together, place the fan at the top of the sensor which is hooked onto the sensor.
5. After everything is placed, pour in the hot water in one container and cold water in the other container.

Side-Experiment:
While the experiment is operating, place a voltage-meter to see how much electricity is going through the wire. In addition to this, we will experiment to see if the larger the difference in temperature will give us different results.

Expectation/Hypothesis:
We believe that the temperature difference will cause the fan to spin and the larger the difference, more electricity will form.

During the summer and winter, we tend to overuse electricity because it’s either too hot or too cold.

For instance, during the winter in Boston and other northeastern region, it gets extremely cold. It sometimes reach below zero degrees Celsius.  When you feel very cold, you feel like turning up the heater to be warmer. But at the same time, your next door neighbor will be doing the same thing. At this point, it doesn’t seem like a very big deal, however if you see the pattern, the next door neighbor of your neighbor will be doing the same thing. As you go on with this continuous pattern, the whole state would be having their heater turned up all the way. This means that there will be a lot of electricity being used at the same time. For heaters to be on, electricity must be used to run the machine as well as heat the air that it takes in. As a result, this causes the air to be not warm but rather mild and in some cases, causes the heater to not work for a certain amount of time because the demand is higher than the supply.  To prevent the loss of too much electricity, some companies does a way of preventing over-usage of electricity by responding to the people and companies by demand response.
Demand Response is when a company would limit our electricity usage at specific times of the day during emergencies or  high electricity prices.
But in some cases, the customers/companies can  engage in demand response to receive some payment for helping companies save energies for others.

References:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/demand-response.htm

http://www.ecsgrid.com/demand-response-programs/what-is-demand-response-and-how-does-it-work

http://pearcalifornia.com/what-is-demand-response-program

Background:
Solar Energy is not a mainstream renewable energy source yet. However, as we demand more energy, we must move our focus on going green rather than just burning coal and oil. As a result, solar energy will be one of our choices at the end.

Objective:
In this experiment, we experimented on different factors to see in what condition we would get the most energy/electricity from the solar panel.
The two factors that we saw were the distance between our light source and the solar panel and the other factor was how color affects the amount of voltage we will produced.

Experiment One:
In our first experiment, we tested how distance between the light source and the solar panel would affect the result of the outcome.
The Graph: (Below)

Results:
From this result, we can see that as the distance increases between the energy source and the solar panel that the voltage decreases.

Experiment Two:
This experiment, we checked to see what color filter would increase the amount of voltage that would be created. In this case, we picked three colors. (Red Blue Violet)
Graph (Below)

Result:
From this experiment, we can see that having red filter is the most efficient way to produce electricity  and having the purple filter is the worse filter to have since it goes negative.

Overall:
Our experiment this week was about creating energy through the usage of generators.
We used Faraday’s Law which states that changing in magnetic fluxes through movement of magnet and coiled wires will create an electricity. Our goal was to prove whether if Faraday’s Law was true and if so, how does it change depending on different number of shakes or how change in strength of the shake can cause different results.

Experiment:
For this experiment, we manually created energy by using a hand-held generator. As we shook the generator, the magnet inside will move through the coiled wires which would produce electricity. To see different results, we shook the hand-held generator in different frequencies. With a program called LabView, we were able to  see and compare how number of shakes gave us different voltages.

Result:
From the result that we have calculated, we can see that as we increased the frequency of the shakes or the numbers of time we shook, the voltage output also increased. First of all, it proves that the movement of magnet going through a magnetic field will create an electricity and second of all, we have proven that the increase in number of shakes increases in creation of electricity.

Opinion:
Although this is not a very continuous and efficient way to make an electricity but if we can somehow utilize this ability to make our electricity, then it would help our environment tremendously.

As a field trip this week, we went to the Museum of Science with our SF-197 class. It was a very interesting experience because there were a lot of stuff that I have never seen before. There were mathematics section, wildlife section, electricity section, and etc. It was overall exciting and interesting to see, however what caught my eyes were the daily show. The topic of daily show changes every month but the topic for this week was a newly invented technology called VGO.

It all started with a story of 6 year old Devon.
Since Devon was born, he has been suffering through serious allergy problem and the only thing that he can touch or eat are potatoes, corn, baby food, and few other food. Because of his condition and how serious the problem is, he is not allowed or it is not safe for him to go out or even attend school. At a age of 8 (second grade) is when we start learn our basic english, math, communication skills and sciences but in his case, he cannot learn these important skills because of his health. However, through different scientific experiments and technology, he can go to school now. Not physically but through the usage of a robot called the VGO. By using VGO, he can manually control this robot to attend every class. On this robot, there is a screen that shows his face and four speakers that releases sounds as Devon speaks to a microphone from his house. If he ever needs to raise his hand, he can click a button and it would flash some lights that indicates that he is raising his hand. With this new technology, he can now talk with friends, answer questions in class and even hangout or talk to his friends during breaks and lunch.
When I saw this presentation at the beginning, I thought it would be those typical presentations where the speaker would use large and scientific words to sound smart to explain about the experiement, but that was not the case. He explained to us as simply as he can to grab our interest and show that this is what is happening in our engineering/technological field these days and how it is evolving everyday. In addition to his well spoken explanation, he also showed us how the  robot works. Although it looked hard, it was very interesting how the controlling mechanism is  slowly developing to be easier and easier. This gives some opportunities to not only kids and teenagers but to elders that cannot move from their beds or etc.
From what I have seen at the Museum of Science, I felt like this robot was the best and hope that these robots will evolve even more in the future.

This week, Dr.Shatz introduced us to our final project for this class.
We are suppose to create and present a powerpoint considering about sustainability to high school students as our final project. As a group, we decided to make our topic to be “Sustainability and Renewable/Green Energy.”

We aren’t really sure what we are doing specifically because it’s our first time meeting up together and talking about our topic but we have a broad idea of what we want to do with our project. We would start off talking about climate change and all the subtopics. Such as causes, effects, solutions, and what we are doing to prevent climate change to proceed even more.
Furthermore, as an experiment we are planning to create a hand-held generator but we aren’t really clear what we really want to do. I hope we can create something very original other than just copper wires and magnet. Something that would make everyone surprised about our experiment.  We will keep working and refining our topic as well as our experiment next week.

Overall Discription:

On
March 11, 2011, Japan was struck by 9.0 magnitudes around 2:46 pm and after 30
minutes into the disaster, coast of north-eastern side of the Japan was hit by
a 15 meter tsunami. The strength of the tsunami was enormous. It washed away many
towns and cities entirely and killed over 19,000 people.  The coastal ports were totally destroyed and
there were only outlines of the buildings near the coast. Out of the stuff that
the tsunami destroyed, the most devastating damage done by the tsunami was the tsunami
hit on the nuclear reactors located on the coast of Fukushima. There were four
reactors along the coast but the most damaged nuclear reactor was the “Fukushima
Daiichi Reactor”. These four nuclear reactors were extremely important for the
Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO, because the reactors supported significant
amount of electricity production around Japan. When the tsunami hit the
reactor, it automatically disabled 12-13 back-up generators and the cooling
system shut down. This led to build up of heat within the reactor and
eventually caused the nuclear reactor to go through a meltdown.

Result (in Japan) :

– About 2,400 workers were exposed to high frequency of radiations as a result
of recovery work at the Fukushima Plant.

-Three TEPCO employees at the Daiichi and Daini plants were killed from the
earthquake and tsunami.

-There are no reports of death or radiation sickness from the nucler accident.

– Though the sea water to cool down the nuclear power plant is contaminated,
the radioactive materials inside the reactor are safe.

-Approximately 150,000 people were evacuated.

Result (Out Japan):

-Countries with nuclear power plants are trying to be eco-friendly (ex:
Germany)

-Nuclear Power Plant is being held as the new problem all over around the world

-Protests against nuclear power plants has increased drastically

Opinion:

I feel like having nuclear reactors are one of the steps towards completely
going green. As of right now, creating electricity with only eco-friendly
technologies is impossible so while we are searching ways to create more
efficient tools, we will need nuclear power plants. However, when we are
finally able to find something that can be replaced with nuclear power plants, I
would love to push towards going green rather than risking something like this

SOURCES:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/fukushima_accident_inf129.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18718486
http://www.oecd-nea.org/press/press-kits/fukushima.html
http://world.time.com/2012/07/05/report-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-was-manmade/

Overall:
This week, through our usage of LegoMindstorm Experiment, we learned were able to learn about Newton’s 2nd law, the law of conservation of energy, velocity and acceleartion, and power.

Definitions:
Newton’s 2nd law – force = mass x acceleration
The law of conservation of energy – the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. Also, energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Velocity – the speed of an object and a specific direction of the object.
Acceleartion – the rate at which the velocity of a body changes with time
Power – the rate at which work is performed or energy is converted

Program (we used in this lab):

Results:

Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion (F = mass x acceleration)

Law of Conservation of Energy:

(Potential Energy = mass x gravity x heightCalculations)

Power:

From this experiment we can analyze that;

1. As mass increases, acceleration decreases.
2. As power increases, acceleration increases
3. As matter increases, battery drainage increases
4. As power level increases, the power increases.

History of Automobiles (How everything started):
The first automobile/steam-powered self-propelled vehicle was created in the 18^th
century by a French inventor named Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot. Although it was
fascinating, his invention was impractical and was very inefficient. The
vehicle would stop every ten to fifteen minutes to build up steam power and would
only go up to 2.5 miles per gallon.

Advancement of Automobiles (Brief):
Compared to Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot’s “automobile”, our present vehicles are much more
advanced. For example, our vehicles these days are able to run at least an
average of twenty miles per gallon, smaller, and finally safer than before.

Even more Advancement:
After all these advancement in cars, such as GPS, light-sensor headlights,
eco-friendly mode, we are now focusing on how to be more efficient with our mileage.
The reason why we do not have an efficient car is because of several
components. Some of them are heavy weights, usage of gasoline, and the materials
we are using to make cars.
As we watch the news or read an article on the newspaper, we can identify that the
new trend these day is to get a hybrid or an electrical car. These newly
invented cars are extremely efficient and last longer than our usual cars. One
of the examples would be a Toyota Prius. It runs at least 35 miles per gallon
and releases less than 50% of the carbon dioxide and other pollutants. In addition,
it can run nearly 600 miles before needing to refuel.
From these results, it is better for us and our future generations to start being
eco-friendly not because it increases our gas mileage but also because it makes
our world a better environment to live.

How we can increase our mileage:
Although these facts are important, there are people that just bought a new car, or can’t
afford to buy another one. For those people, there are still ways to increase
your mileage.

1.Start driving as soon as you turn on.

2.Avoid unnecessary idling

3.Change your oil

4.Try to avoid having extra weights on the car

Positive & Negative Aspects:
Positive
– More mileage, long-term benefits, less pollutant emission

Negative
– Extremely costly

REFERENCES:
http://gengreen.org/

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt064.shtm

http://askville.amazon.com/Car-manufacturers-ability-make-cars-gas-mileage/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=12696172