FOR SCIENCE

President’s Climate Action Plan

The President’s Climate Action Plan was released by the United States Executive Office of the President in June 2013. The plan is divided into three sections, which are cutting carbon pollution in America, preparing the U.S. for the impacts of climate change, and leading international efforts to address global climate change.

“We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” The book started with a quote from President Obama, which stated that all of us should take the responsibility for the climate change because we need to give our future generations a good environment to live.
In 2009, President Obama made a commitment to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. While Obama Administration has doubled generation of electricity from wind, solar, and geothermal, and by establishing historic new fuel economy standards. He also proposed additional steps to help America lower it’s carbon pollution. For examples, deploying clean energy, building a 21st-century transportation sector, cutting energy waste in homes, businesses, and factories, reducing other greenhouse gas emissions and leading at the federal level. In my blog, I will focus on deploying clean energy, cutting energy waste in homes, businesses, and factories and building a 21st-century transportation sector.

Deploying Clean Energy

The first thing this category talked about is cutting carbon emission from power plants, because they were accounted for about 1/3 of all domestic greenhouse emission, and there were no regulation for the power plants. So, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum directing the Environmental Protection Agency to set carbon pollution standards for both new and existing power plants. And he also encouraged power plants to use clean energy resources and better technologies and accelerated clean energy permitting for power plants.  To continue America’s leadership in clean energy innovation, the government increased the funding for the agencies that did clean energy research, development, and deployment by 30 percent, which is approximately 7.9 billion dollars. And with 7.9 billion dollars, the agencies would now be able to do more research, and more experiment. And if they could get results from the funding, then the funding would be worth, because cutting carbon emission was very important for our environment and future generations.

cutting energy waste in homes, businesses, and factories

Energy efficiency is one of the clearest and most cost-effective opportunities to save families money, make our businesses more competitive, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So the Administration went ahead and established a New Goal for Energy Efficiency Standards. As we live in America, we use a lot of appliances in our house, such as refrigerators, dishwasher and etc. The new energy efficiency standards would decrease the standard energy efficiency for appliances, which would help cutting the energy consumptions by households. Also, it would reduce the greenhouse emission because we would not use as much energy as before. For the big buildings, which also used a lot of energy from day to day. The Better Buildings Challenge was designed for them, and the plan would help American commercial and industrial buildings to be at least 20% energy efficient by 2020. And the outcome of the plan was also significant, “it would save $58 billion in energy savings per year”. As a student at Suffolk, the new building Somerset was also a green building, which means it was energy efficient, and I am proud of that.

Building a 21st-Century Transportation Sector

The meaning of building a new transportation sector was also significant, because transporting was one of the most important thing in our daily life. According to the plan, “Heavy-duty vehicles are currently the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions within the transportation sector”, which meant reducing carbon emission from heavy-duty vehicles was also very necessary. Therefore, the Obama Administration finalized  a fuel economy standards for Model Year 2014-2018 for heavy-duty trucks, buses, and vans. And after 2018, they would partner with  industry leaders to further reduce the fuel consumptions  for heavy-duty trucks through the application of advanced cost-effective technologies. Besides vehicles that move goods, the Administration has also established  a fuel economy standards for passenger vehicles. And these standards required an average performance equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. And the Administration concluded that the new standard would save the average driver more than $8,000 in fuel costs over the lifetime of the vehicle and eliminated six billion metric tons of carbon pollution. Which were great for both drivers and our environment.

In conclusion, there are much more operation plans to the President’s Climate Action Plan, and all of them are great. Indeed, we need to cut energy consumptions, and establish a energy efficient society. The plan also talks about prepare the nation for the climate change because we should. Furthermore, the climate change is not the problem that one nation could bear, but a problem that all human should face. And by leading and motivating other countries, we would then share our knowledge and solve the problem together for a brighter future.

Museum of Science

On March 11,  we took a field trip to the Museum of Science in order to see four exhibits that show information related to what we are learning in class. These exhibits were “Catching the Wind”, “Conserve @ Home”, “Energized!” and “Investigate!”.

The first exhibit I visited was “Catching the Wind”, and it was all about wind and wind turbines. We have been using wind power for thousands of years, for examples, we used windmills to grind grain around the year 500 A.D., we used wind power to sail, and in the modern day, we used wind power to generate electricity.

the picture above shows all of the components inside a wind turbine, which is exactly what we learnt from the class. As the wind turns the blades, the mechanical energy goes to the electric generator, which generate electricity for us to use. There are five wind turbines on the Museum’s roof, and one of them generates 2,218 kWh and saves 2,706 lbs. CO2 emissions annually.

The second exhibit I went was “Energized”, and this exhibit showed us where energy came from. Unfortunately, As we were promoting renewable energies, only 8% of energy came from them, and 83% of our energy use was still account to fossil fuels. The exhibit also summarized pros and cons of some major forms of energy, such as fossil fuels, hydropower, nuclear, solar and wind. There were also some hand-on activities available to visitors, and on of them was that the visitors should power the city using combination of difference kind of energy without putting too much emission to our environment.

Next, I went to the “Conserve @ Home”, and this exhibit was all about what we could do to conserve energy, save money and protect our environment in our daily life. One of the fact that shocked me was that using rechargeable battery can save about 800 disposable batteries. And I though from now on, I should use rechargeable battery instead disposable batteries. Because it helped save energy and material to make disposable batteries.

Then I saw a family was in front of a hand-on activity called “Turn Your Energy Into Light”, and as the boy turning the wheel around, the LED bulb lighted. But after the father switch to incandescent bulb, the boy could barely light the light bulb. After they gone, I examined the site, and found that incandescent light bulb actually required 40 watts of energy to light up, where LED bulb only need 8 watts of energy.

The last exhibit I went was “Investigate!”, and there were full of kids because stuffs there were actually very fun. I was drawn into a toilet, which would told people how the toilet worked after activity. But the kids were flushing the toilet on and on, so I had to go to other place. The second thing that got my attention was “Experiment with Drains”. It was about what affect the direction of the water spiral down a drain. And like some of people believed, I though it depended on the hemisphere and the spinning of the Earth. But after doing the experiment, I found that the water did not spiral if I did not flick the water with a stick. And I was always wrong about this. Then I began to think about why did it happen, and I though it was probably about the direction of force applied to the water, and the force may still be there even if the water was calm.

I left the Museum at one p.m. after visiting some other exhibits because I had class later that day. Overall, it was a very nice field trip to visit the Museum of Science, and I also learned a lot during this visiting. From the things that connected to our course, to conserving energy and protecting environment in our daily life. And also to discover the fact that I was always wrong about.

Nuclear Disasters

The first thing that comes to my mind about Nuclear Disaster is the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster. The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the town of Pripyat, in Ukraine, which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities of the Soviet Union. On 26 April 1986, a power surge during a test procedure resulted in a criticality accident, leading to a powerful steam explosion and fire that released a significant fraction of core material into the environment, resulting in a death toll of 56 as well as estimated 4,000 additional cancer fatalities among people exposed to elevated doses of radiation. As a result, the city of Chernobyl was largely abandoned, the larger city of Pripyat was completely abandoned, and a permanent 30 kilometers exclusion zone around the reactor was established. The main cause of the disaster was the poorly design of the plant, and also the disqualification of the control rods.

The other nuclear disaster is the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, it was an event that happened in Japan in March of 2011. A major earthquake triggered a 15 meter tsunami that disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors and caused a nuclear accident. Within the first three days all three cores were largely melted and high radioactive releases occurred over the next three days but after two weeks they were stable with water addition and by July they were being cooled with recycled water from a new treatment plant. In addition to having to cool down the reactors, it was essential to try to prevent the release of radioactive materials, in particular the contaminated water leaked from the three units.

The nuclear disasters have so much negative impacts on both organisms and environment that we should always think about how to make them safe before we build a nuclear power plant. One way that to make sure that is safe is to check the design of the power plant, so have scientists from other countries to work together to see if that design actually works. And then, we should also make the outer cell to be tough enough, so if the reactor explodes we could still be able to minimize the danger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale#Level_7:_Major_accident

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx

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

Pandora’s Promise

The Pandora’s Promise is a movie that talks about whether to use nuclear power. It opened with a scene involving people protesting nuclear power and really works to show that while it continues to be a controversial issue in the world today. Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest way of generating energy, but it has many negative side. Many people feared about nuclear energy, because it connects to nuclear bomb, and also those disasters in the history.

Throughout the movie, there are different nuclear disasters presented that really show the devastation that can occur as a result of not properly handling nuclear power and the importance of constantly working as efficiently, precisely, and safely with nuclear energy as possible. They provided a lot of important information that is very convincing in proving that nuclear energy is a viable option for a better, greener future and that we need to get rid of the stigma of danger and focus on the safe and clean energy source that nuclear can be.

Iceland and Geothermal Energy

During the course of the 20th century, Iceland went from what was one of Europe’s poorest countries, dependent upon peat and imported coal for its energy, to a country with a high standard of living where practically all stationary energy is derived from renewable resources. In 2014, roughly 85% of primary energy use in Iceland came from indigenous renewable resources. Thereof 66% was from geothermal.

From the picture above, we see that among all of the energy from geothermal, 43% of them goes to space heating, and 40% of them goes to generating electricity. In sum, these two sectors distributed over 80% of the nation’s geothermal energy usage, because electricity is the most useful energy for us to use, and space heating is also important for people to live in a cold environment.

This is a geothermal vertical loop system, basically, the liquid or air on the pipe gets heated from our earth, and then goes back to our house by using a heat pump. There are also some other kinds of loop, for examples, horizontal loop, slinky loop, pond loop and well loop. Which are installed depend on the situations.

Generating electricity with geothermal energy has increased significantly in recent years. As a result of a rapid expansion in Iceland’s energy intensive industry, the demand for electricity has increased considerably. From 1970-2013. The installed generation capacity of geothermal power plants  totaled  665 MW_e in 2013 and the production was 5.245 GWh, or 29% of the country’s total electricity production.

The idea of generating electricity from geothermal energy is similar to getting the heat. We just need to install a turbine and generator on the ground. And we can have the turbine spin through the steam on the lope and generate electricity from the generator.

Right now, Iceland is implementing The Iceland deep drilling project, which is a long term project focusing on harness geothermal energy below the several kilometers to reach hydrothermal fluids at temperatures ranging from 450°C to ~600°C. And with the energy, they will be able to generate much more electricity to use in the future.

References：

http://www.nea.is/geothermal/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Iceland

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/geothermal-profile/

Solar Energy

Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, solar thermal energy, solar architecture and artificial photosynthesis. As now we care more about our planet, and CO2  emission, our society is progressive towards energy independence from fossil fuels and instead are accessing energy through wind, solar, geothermal and wave energy. And according to the International Energy Agency, by 2050 the sun could well be the world’s biggest source of electricity.

In 2015, the U.S. solar industry installed 7,286 megawatts of solar power in 2015, which increase of over 1,000 megawatts of solar photovoltaic installations compared to 2014. One of the leader of America’s leaders in renewable energy is Prologis, You may not know about Prologis, which at 97.54 megawatts trails only Walmart in the amount of installed rooftop solar capacity in the U.S. Despite the low profile of its buildings and its brand, Prologis is the world’s largest owner and operator of warehouses, with a portfolio of thousands of nondescript one- and two-story buildings around the world. Boasting 700 million square feet of space  in 21 countries. In order to make use of their idle rooftop of storages, they install solar panel on them, and generate energy for daily operating use. They also sell excess energy to the energy supplier, which create another way of making money for their company. To date, Prologis has put solar panels on more than 100 buildings around the world, with a combined capacity of 140 megawatts. The company plans to add about 15 megawatts of solar capacity per year through 2020—a growth rate of about 10 percent annually.

The idea of installing solar panel to rooftop is not very new, and the only thing that matters is the scale. With so many warehouses Prologis have, Prologis has put itself on top of the game, and find a way of making money with their idle rooftops.

The problem with renewables is that we are never guaranteed a constant supply of sunshine, wind or wave power. NextPV, an International Joint Laboratory between France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Tokyo come out a idea of harnessing solar energy by placing solar panels on balloons and sending them above the clouds. For which, Jean-Francois Guillemoles, senior researcher at the CNRS predicts the solar panels can get five times more energy in the upper air. According to the project, the solar balloon would be able to produce electricity during the day, with a battery continuing to generate electricity at night.

I see a future on installing solar panels on balloons, because a lot of technology is already available. And I believe NextPV will figure it out soon, and provide our society a new way of getting solar energy.

Resource:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/14/harvesting-solar-6km-in-the-air.html

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/22/us-has-a-record-breaking-year-for-solar-power.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2016/01/prologis_which_runs_warehouses_is_a_huge_leader_is_solar_energy_huh.html

Solar Cell Lab

On Feb 19, 2016, I performed a lab about solar cell and energy with my teammate Daniela. In this experiment, our goals were to find the relationships between the voltage of the solar cell and the light intensity, and also between the voltage and 4 difference colors of light.

In order to do the lab, we need a flashlight, a solar cell, a voltage prone, a NXT with light sensor, a ruler, and four colored film filters. After we connected the NXT with computer, and active it, we ran the program solarlab1.vi on LabVIEW. Now, we were ready to roll.

In the first set of the experiment, we made our variable to be the light intensity. Thus, we turned on the flashlight, and let the light go directly to the solar cell with 0 cm away for 30 seconds. Then, we performed the same experiment with other four distances, namely 2 cm away, 4 cm away, 6 cm away, and 8 cm away. After that, we exported all of the data from the lab data file to Excel, averaged the voltages and constructed a graph for the first set of the experiment.

We then concluded that the voltage of the light and the distance of the light source were inversely related based on the graph we had.

Then, we moved on to the next set of the experiment. in this set of the experiment, we were asked to discover the relationship between the color of the light and the voltage. Therefore, we used color film filters to completely blocked the light from the flashlight. But this time, we kept the distance fixed for all types of color, which are red, green, purple and blue. After we performed each color of light for 30 seconds, we gathered all of the data and constructed a graph on Excel again.

Based on the chart above, we saw that green light generated the most voltage, followed by purple, blue and red. The experiment was very interesting, and I really enjoyed working on it.

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla  was a Serbian inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.

Tesla was born on July 10, 1856, in what is now Smiljan, Croatia. Tesla’s interest in electrical invention was spurred by his mother, Djuka Mandic, who invented small household appliances in her spare time while her son was growing up. In 1884, Tesla moved to America, and began to work for Thomas Edison whose DC-based electrical works were fast becoming the standard in the country. However, several months later, the two parted ways due to a conflicting business-scientific relationship.

After struggling with life, in 1887, he finally developed the alternating current system and filed several patents for his work. Meanwhile, his AC system was very interested by George Westinghouse, who later bought his patents for $60,000 in cash and stock. After the war of currents blew out, Tesla did not care so much, and he kept working on his work, and patented several more inventions during this period, including the “Tesla coil,” which laid the foundation for wireless technologies and is still used in radio technology today. In addition to his AC system and coil, he was also a pioneer in the discovery of radar technology, X-ray technology, remote control and the rotating magnetic field—the basis of most AC machinery.  

Current work and technology in Remote Control

A remote control is a component of an electronic device such as a television set, DVD player, or other home appliance, used to operate the device wirelessly from a short distance. Remote control is a convenience feature for the consumer, and can allow operation of devices that are out of convenient reach for direct operation of controls.

In our daily life, we use a lot of remote control technology, like controlling cars, TVs, cameras and etc. The following video demonstrates how  remote control technology works.

Remote control makes our lives easier than before. And I still remembered when I was a kid, I had to walk to the TV to change the channel. Now, we can do it with one click.

Reference

http://www.biography.com/people/nikola-tesla-9504443

http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/nikola-tesla

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/inside-rc.htm

Generator Lab

On February 12th, 2016, my teammates Baoying, Ruan and I performed a generator experiment. The generator consists of a magnet, which will travel back and forth through Our through a coil of wires. Our goals of the experiment was to study the Faraday’s Law, which is stated that changing magnetic fluxes through coiled wires generate electricity. And also the relationship between the numbers of generator shook, and the sum of the squares of the voltages the generator generated in a 30 seconds interval.

In order to perform this experiment, we used a voltage probe, a NXT and of course, the generator. We connected the wires from the generator to the probe, and connected probe with NXT, and finally, connected probe to the computer.

Now, we opened the generator_lab.vi on the LabVIEW, and it would record the voltage the generator generated for us. And we were ready to shake. In the first time, I shook the generator 20 times in 30 seconds. And then, we opened the data recorded on excel. We saw 30 data in the excel, which meant our experiment was successful. We then did another 4 sets of experiment with 30, 40, 50 and 60 times in 30 second interval.

After that, we opened the excel and rearranged the data to make it clear. Then, we used the excel power function to square the voltages from each set of experiment, and summed up all of the square of the voltages in each set. Therefore, we were able to construct a graph about the relationship between the sum of the square of the voltages and number of shakes. Following is the graph and data from the experiment.

When we did the experiment, we had different people shaking the generator every time. And when we did 20 shakes, and 60 shakes, we shook the tube at a faster rate compare to others. And the 50 shakes, our girl did it at a very slow rate. As a result, we concluded that the voltages generated from the generator was depended both on the rate of shaking, and the times of shakes. In particular, the faster we shake the tube, the more voltage will be generated. And the more times we shake, the more voltage will be generated.

In conclusion, the experiment was very interesting, and fun. And it also reminded me of taking calculus courses. Because I did not have a lot of knowledge about physics, but the instructor usually gave examples of flux and vector filed in physics world. Which I had no clue what was going on. After the experiment, I now understand much more about both calculus and physics.

Space X

Space X, or Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport service company that was founded by Elon Musk in 2002. As a private company, it designs, manufactures, and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. And the goal of the company is to revolutionize space technology and bring people to live on other planets. The company also accomplished a lot of achievements with two of their vehicles, one is Falcon 9 rocket, and the other one is the Dragon Spacecraft. Also, they are still working on Falcon Heavy, and they describe it as” The world’s Most Powerful Rocket”.

Falcon 9

Falcon 9 is the first rocket completely designed and developed in the 21^st century. It is a two-stage rocket designed to transport satellites and the dragon spacecraft into orbit. The Falcon 9 has a mass of 541,300kg, so it has a weight of 5304740N or 5304.74kN.(w=541300kg X 9.8 m/s^2 =5304740 N) In order for the rocket to moving upward against the force of gravity, the rocket needs to have very powerful engines. So, the company incorporates 9 Merlin Engines in the first stage, which gives the rocket a 6,806kN thrust at sea level.  Therefore, the net force moving upward when liftoff would be 1501.26kN.(6806kN+(-5304.74kN)=1501.26kN) By the Newton’s Second Law of Motion: F=ma, the Falcon 9 then has an acceleration of 0.002773 km/s^2 or 2.773 meters/s^2.(a=1591.26kN/541300kg=0.002773 km/s^2)

Falcon Heavy

Falcon Heavy is the newest rocket the company is working on, and it will be lift off later this year. From the data provided by the company, it has a mass of 1,394,000kg, which is more than two times greater than Falcon 9. So, how many engines it needed in order to lift off? Well, as we see in the photo above, it has 3 cores in the first stage. And the company says it has 27 Merlin engines, which provided 20,418kN thrust at sea level. Now, let’s calculate the weight of the giant rocket: 1,394,000kg X 9.8ms^-2=13661200N, or equivalently 13661.2kN. Now follow the same mechanism as we did before: 20418kN-13661.2kN=1,394,000kg X acceleration, we have acceleration=4.85 meters/second^2

In conclusion, we know that while the rocket burning fuels to provide the energy, it’s mass decreases. And as the altitude increases, the gravity also decreases. So, as a result, the acceleration of the rockets would eventually increase because the decrease in mass and the increase in the force.

Resources:

http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/03/26/merlin-engines

http://www.spacex.com/falcon9

http://www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy

http://www.spacex.com/