Solar Power - Activity - www.TeachEngineering.org. Summary In this activity, students learn how engineers use solar energy to heat buildings by investigating the thermal storage properties of some common materials: sand, salt, water and shredded paper. Students then evaluate the usefulness of each material as a thermal storage material to be used as the thermal mass in a passive solar building.
Engineering Connection Engineers design technologies that can turn sunlight into electricity to power households and businesses. Educational Standards Each TeachEngineering lesson or activity is correlated to one or more K-12 science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) educational standards. All 100,000+ K-12 STEM standards covered in TeachEngineering are collected, maintained and packaged by the Achievement Standard Network (ASN), a project of JES & Co.
In the ASN, standards are hierarchically structured: first by source; e.g., by state; within source by type; e.g., science or mathematics; within type by subtype, then by grade, etc. Procedure. Here Comes the Sun: America's Solar Boom, in Charts. This post first appeared at Mother Jones. Sunrise at Shirahama Ohama Beach, in Shirahama, Japan. (Photo: Izu navi/flickr CC 2.0) Last week, an energy analyst at Deutsche Bank came to a startling conclusion: By 2016, solar power will be as cheap or cheaper than electricity from the conventional grid in every state except three. That’s without any changes to existing policy. And solar energy is already going gangbusters. Still, solar is a bit player, providing less than half of 1 percent of the energy produced in the United States. So what’s the holdup? Some numbers that tell the story: Sources (Image credits: Shutterstock (Earth, USA); Maurizio Fusillo/Noun Project (solar panel); Okan Benn/Noun Project (car); Q.
Eat Low Carbon. Monkey Puzzle #11 - The Exit Issue by Nate Jordon. Monkey Puzzle Press needs your help for the final print run of its literary arts journal: Monkey Puzzle #11 - The Exit Issue. The new issue is already designed and ready to launch - for a free preview, click here - but we are short on funds for a print run and want to release the last issue of Monkey Puzzle in another full-color, eye-catching, perfect bound book available through Amazon, Small Press Distribution, and of course our website. But without reaching our goal, our only option will be to release it as an eBook. Edited by Nate Jordon, Jordan Antonucci, and Nicholas B. Morris, Monkey Puzzle #11 features 90+ pages of cutting edge short-stories, poetry, flash fiction, photography and artwork from contributors around the globe.
Monkey Puzzle Press is an independent trade publisher based out of Boulder, Colorado. Thank you for your interest, and thank you for your support! Newly Invented Off-Grid Solar Grill Can Store Energy and Cook at Night Without Electricity. The Wilson Solar Grill can not only cook your food when the sun is out during the day, but it can store that heat energy and so you can cook your food at night. How you ask? The solar grill uses a fresnel lens to heat Lithium Nitrate. (Lithium nitrate “is the lithium salt of nitric acid. It is made by reacting lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide with nitric acid.“) ~Wikipedia It will store the heat energy for up to 25 hours released as a convective heat at temperatures of 450 degrees F. In the future, these could be commonly used for backyard cooking at home: This is a concept product. Please see the reference links below. (Via WE SUPPORT ORGANIC) Leave Comments Comments.
In Homes. File Scrub 1 ::::: EE ... us_energy_homes-basics In Homes Basics The ability to heat and cool is one important accomplishment of modern technology. Our ovens, freezers, and homes can be kept at any temperature we choose, a luxury that wasn't possible 100 years ago. But keeping our homes comfortable uses a lot of energy. Lighting is also essential to a modern society. Compact fluorescent bulbs, or "CFLs," have made inroads into home lighting systems in the last few years.
Appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, and dryers are also more energy efficient than they used to be. The amount of energy we use in our homes mainly depends on the climate where we live and the types and number of energy consuming devices we use. Videoabout changes in home heating.) The number and variety of ways we use energy in homes is changing rapidly. It is increasingly common for homes to use multiple televisions and computers. Types of Energy Used In Homes Use of Consumer Electronics Increasing. The Monkey Trap | (personal website of Nate Hagens)
Elementary Curriculum Resources. Energy Infobooks are the resource for many NEED activities and include an introduction to energy, information on major sources of energy, new technologies, energy conservation, electricity, climate change, and other energy information. They are available on four reading levels and are revised and updated annually. Blueprint for Success (e-publication) This essential gusdide helps educators develop effective energy education programs.
It provides an outline of a basic energy curriculum unit and matrix of all curriculum options. also included within the Blueprint for Success is a sample work plan and suggestions for energy outreach activities to conduct other classes, schools, families, and communities. the Youth Awards Program Guide and Application Form can also be found in the Blueprint for Success. ElectroWorks Teacher GuideElectroWorks Student Guide This guide includes background information and hands-on experiments to explore the basic concepts of atomic structure and electricity. Shared Automation – Up to 90% Reduction in Vehicles | The Viodi View. Removing up to 9 of every 10 cars from the road is the promise of sharing automated vehicles, according to University of Texas, Austin research from Dan Fagnant and Dr. Kara Kockelman. In the above interview, Fagnant, now an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Utah, discusses what he means by Shared Automated Vehicle (SAV). In their modeling, they found that private investors could achieve a return on investment of 43%, even with a $70,000 base price for the automated vehicle.
Their research paper details their SAV model and discusses the implications of such a service in Austin, Texas. Fagnent and Kockelman looked at real-world streets, modeling things such as the routes, number of vehicles against parameters such wait time and vehicle miles traveled. One conclusion is that the SAV approach significantly reduces the amount of land required to support the automobile, freeing it up for other uses and offering the potential for more livable cities. Like this: Solar City and Tesla Combine Manufacturing Plans. At an event hosted in New York this week by Solar City, CEO Lyndon Rive and chairman Elon Musk announced that within five to 10 years every set of solar panels that Solar City installs will come with a battery pack to help deal with the intermittency of solar power—one of the key factors limiting its use.
Musk says his company Tesla Motors will supply at least some of those batteries. Solar City, one of the largest solar panel installers in the United States, announced earlier this year that it intends to build the country’s largest solar panel factory in New York. The company currently installs and leases solar panels, and it already sells small battery packs for backup storage to some of its customers.
Rive and Musk, who are cousins, also said at the New York event that within the same time frame electricity from solar power would become cheaper in the U.S. than power produced from natural gas. Other ambitious solar and battery projects have failed in recent years. Pay-as-you-go solar startup signs up 100K solar users in East Africa. Pay-as-you-go solar products — that tap into cell phone infrastructure and micropayments — are slowly emerging across rural Africa, and India.
This week startup M-KOPA announced that the company has now signed up 100,000 customers for its cell phone enabled solar service, and also recently launched its third-generation solar product. I profiled the company earlier this year and they had reached the 65,000 customers mark as of April, growing at a rate of a thousand systems per week or 5,000 per month.
They had been trying to kick start that growth and move to a rate of selling closer to a thousand solar systems per day. A M-KOPA retailer hands out flyers about the solar product. Courtesy of M-KOPA, Georgina Goodwin. Co-founders Nick Hughes and Jesse Moore left their cushy jobs at Vodafone with an idea that M-PESA could be used as a backbone for financing assets for Kenyans. A shop owner lights up his shop with a solar system sold by M-KOPA. New York Says It's Time To Flip The Switch On Its Power Grid. A worker repairs electrical lines in Plainview, N.Y., after Superstorm Sandy in 2012. A proposed plan to overhaul the state's power grid could help the system better withstand severe weather and enable energy to be stored and managed more efficiently. Bruce Bennett/Getty Images hide caption itoggle caption Bruce Bennett/Getty Images A worker repairs electrical lines in Plainview, N.Y., after Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
A proposed plan to overhaul the state's power grid could help the system better withstand severe weather and enable energy to be stored and managed more efficiently. Bruce Bennett/Getty Images In the power business, it's all about managing the peaks. During the hottest days of summer, electric utilities run at full capacity to keep giant cities comfortably cool. The New York State Public Service Commission is trying to flatten those peaks. It would also upend the way the utility business has operated for more than a century.
How the National Grid responds to demand. SCRiM :: Participants. AirWaterGas | What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and What We Hope to Learn about Oil & Gas Development. A Wind Turbine Inside A Floating Blimp Can Bring Power Anywhere. Not all wind turbines are alike. While the great majority are large steel towers fixed to the ground, a few are shaped like gliders, kites, and blimps, and move around freely. Take the Buoyant Airborne Turbine (BAT), developed by Altaeros, a four-year-old company in Massachusetts. The BAT is a 60-foot-diameter helium aerostat with a three-blade-rotor spinning inside. It rises 1,000 feet off the ground and sends back power via high-strength tethers. Altaeros recently announced a $1.3 million demonstration project in Alaska that will supply power to about a dozen homes. See a company video here: The BAT is aimed at remote regions where power is more expensive, and where other forms of alternative energy are hard to achieve, co-founder Adam Rein says.
The Alaska project, which is partly funded by the Alaska Energy Authority’s Emerging Energy Technology Fund, will test the viability of the technology and give a sense of costs. Floating a turbine at 1,000 feet has its advantages. National Science Foundation (NSF) Events - Science: Becoming the Messenger. Event Science: Becoming the Messenger Limited to Institutions & Universities in Kansas--More workshops will be offered in other locations January 27, 2011 7:30 AM to January 27, 2011 6:00 PM The Oread, Lawrence View video The National Science Foundation (NSF) will be holding a workshop, "Science: Becoming the Messenger" on January 27, 2011, at The Oread near the campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence. We are extending an invitation to principal investigators (PI), early career researchers and engineers, graduate students, postdocs, public information officers (PIO) and communications staff from institutions and universities in Kansas who would like to learn to communicate effectively to a broad audience.
Today, across academia and the research community, there is a growing interest in science communication. Seminars and training workshops are, accordingly, springing up to meet this need. For a specially selected group of researchers, there will be a second day on January 28th. Untitled. Flipgrid Terms of Service University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development Learning Technology Media Lab (LTML) Last updated December 9, 2013 1. General Terms and Conditions. 1.1 By accessing the Flipgrid Site (the “Site”) or and using any features of the Site, including software and downloads (collectively, the “Services”), you will be agreeing to abide by these Terms of Service.
These Terms of Service are a binding contract between you and Regents of the University of Minnesota (the “LT Media Lab”, “us,” or “we”). You represent and warrant that you have all the right, power and authority necessary to enter into these Terms of Service, including granting us the rights and licenses granted below. 1.2 Only individuals who are not barred from accessing or using the Site under the laws of the United States or other countries including the country in which you are resident or from which you access or use the Site. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
About Nara. Scientists from public universities, government laboratories and private industry from throughout the Northwest, and beyond, are joining together to focus on developing ways to turn one of the region's most plentiful commodities—wood and wood waste—into jet fuel. Led by Washington State University, the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA) will take a holistic approach to building a supply chain for aviation biofuel with the goal of increasing efficiency in everything from forestry operations to conversion processes.
Using a variety of feedstocks, including forest and mill residues, construction waste, as well as new energy crops, the project aims to create a sustainable industry to produce aviation biofuels and important co-products. The project includes a broad alliance of private industry and educational institutions from throughout the Northwest. NARA's Five TeamsTo meet its mission's goals, the Alliance is broken down into specific areas of focus: A Human Ecological Approach to Energy Literacy through Hands-On Projects: An Essential Component of Effectively Addressing Climate Change. « Journal of Sustainability Education. February 5th, 2013By Anna E. Demeo, David P. Feldman, and Michael L. Peterson Key Words: Sustainability Education, Human Ecology, Energy Literacy, Hands-on; Project Based PDF: Demeo et al., Winter2013 Abstract: Mitigating climate change is among the most urgent challenges humans face.
There was a time in the not too distant past when only engineering students were computer literate upon graduating from college. Addressing public conceptions of energy production as well as behaviors of consumption are paramount in the effort to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, which is by far the largest contributor to climate change (Smil 2006). Human ecology is the science of interrelationships between people and the environment. The challenge for educators is to go beyond traditional teaching that relies heavily on the one-way transmission of information by allowing students to participate in significant, real-world projects as a way to learn useful knowledge (UNESCO 2005). Practicum Courses Class. Energy and Human Ecology. Energy and human ecology. Energy and human ecology.