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Tidal power
Content objective:
What are we learning? Why are we learning this?
content, procedures, skills
Vocabulary objective
Tier II: High frequency words used across content areas. Key to understanding directions, understanding relationships, and for making inferences.
Tier III: Low frequency, domain specific terms
Building on what we already know
What vocabulary & concepts were learned in earlier grades?
Make connections to prior lessons.
Ocean tides are caused by tidal forces.
What are “tides”?
Types of tidal power
Tidal barrages may be the most efficient way to capture energy from the tides.
Here, a dam utilizes the potential energy generated by the change in height between high and low tides.
In this example, the motion of the water spins a propeller.
image from technologystudent.com/images5/tidal1.gif
The spinning propeller spins an axle, which transmits the motion up to the generator.
Inside the generator, this motion is used to rotate wires inside a magnet (or vice-versa)
The wire feels the magnetic field changing;
this produces an electrical current inside the wires.
Thus we have converted the energy of moving water into electrical energy.
Tidal fences
Turbines that operate like giant turnstiles.
The spinning turnstiles spins an axle, which transmits the motion up to the generator.
Inside the generator, this motion is used to rotate wires inside a magnet (or vice-versa) as shown above.
Tidal turbines
Similar to wind turbines but these are underwater.
The mechanical energy of tidal currents is used to turn turbines.
These are connected to a generator that produces electricity
Other possible designs
Many other designs are possible, for instance:
Fluid Pumping Apparatuses Powered By Waves Or Flowing Currents
Great animations
Many types of tidal energy convertors (European Marine Energy Centre)
Advantages of tidal power
Environmentally friendly
Relatively small amount of space
Ocean currents generate relatively more energy than air currents. Why? Because ocean water is 832 times more dense than air. It therefore applies greater force on the turbines.
Disadvantages of tidal power
High construction costs
The amount of energy produced is not constant per hour, or even per week.
It requires a suitable site, where tidal streams are consistently strong.
The equipment must be capable of withstanding strong tides and storms.
It can be expensive to maintain and repair.
Related topics
Why Is There a Tidal Bulge Opposite the Moon?
Hydroelectric power
Content objective:
What are we learning? Why are we learning this?
content, procedures, skills
Vocabulary objective
Tier II: High frequency words used across content areas. Key to understanding directions, understanding relationships, and for making inferences.
Tier III: Low frequency, domain specific terms
Building on what we already know
Make connections to prior lessons from this year.
Introduction
Hydropower is obtaining any kind of power from the movement of falling or fast-running water.
Hydroelectric power specifically refers to any way of using this power to create electrical currents.
Let’s look at a building by a river or small waterfall; the flow of water turns a wheel.
(This image from technologystudent.com)
technologystudent.com
An axle from that wheel transmits motion to the inside of the building.
That motion is transmitted thru belts, pulleys, wheels, and gears.
This was often used to grind grains such as corn, wheat, oats, etc.
It also could power many other types of pre-modern machines.
(This next image from salisburyhistoricalsociety.org/the-power-of-water/ )
Example: This could power sawmills.
Since ancient times, hydropower has been used for:
irrigation (machine pumps water from a stream over to a field)
gristmills (grinds cereal grain into flour)
sawmills
textile mills
trip hammers
dock cranes
ore mills
In the late 19th (late 1800s) century, hydropower became used for generating electricity.
The first commercial hydroelectric power plant was built at Niagara Falls in 1879. Schoellkopf Stations
Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company
Harnessing the Niagara River’s power in 1901
Niagara Falls, mill district 1900 colorized
In 1881, street lamps in the city of Niagara Falls were powered by hydropower.
How does energy relate to waterwheels?
Water that is up high has a lot of PE (gravitational potential energy.)
As the water falls down, it loses height, thus it loses PE.
Yet it gains speed, and thus gains KE (kinetic energy, i.e. energy of motion)
That’s true for any moving object, by the way: What is the relationship between an object’s height. its PE, and its KE?
Here, the KE is transformed into rotational motion.
This motion spins an axle, which rotate wires inside a magnet (or vice-versa)
The wire feels the magnetic field changing;
this produces an electrical current inside the wires.
Thus we have converted the energy of falling water into electrical energy,
How dams produce electric energy
Build a dam to create a large body of water, at a higher altitude.
(See left of this diagram.)
Open a path for the water to enter an intake, which brings the water downhill.
At bottom of this ramp the falling water’s KE is turned into rotational motion.
That rotational motion is converted (partially) into electrical energy.
(some of the energy is lost due to friction in the moving parts and gears.)
A device that does this is called a generator.
For more details see http://www.wvic.com/content/how_hydropower_works.cfm
How much hydroelectric power are we using?
Hydroelectric power stations in the United States are currently the largest renewable source of energy, but the second for nominal capacity (behind Wind power in the United States).
Hydroelectric power produced 35% of the total renewable electricity in the U.S. in 2015, and 6.1% of the total U.S. electricity.
The United States was the 4th largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world in 2008 after China, Canada and Brazil. Produced hydroelectricity was 282 TWh (2008). It was 8.6% of the world’s total hydropower.
Hydroelectric stations exist in at least 34 US states.
The largest concentration of hydroelectric generation in the US is in the Columbia River basin, which in 2012 was the source of 44% of the nation’s hydroelectricity.
Hydroelectricity projects such as Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, and the Tennessee Valley Authority have become iconic large construction projects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectric_power_in_the_United_States
Why is hydroelectric power limited?
-
the best places for it have long been exploited
-
it restricts river navigation
-
impoundment floods lands with alternative uses
Is hydroelectric power a form of perpetual energy?
If you live for less than a hundred years, it might seem that way!
We never will run out. But no, it won’t last forever. See this answer from Physics.stackexchange.com – Energy-of-a-waterfall
Most waterfalls will continue flowing, at least intermittently, for hundreds or thousands of years.
They are effectively powered by the Sun which is expected to continue radiating energy to drive this system for much much longer.
Wait, how are the sun powered? Well, won’t the water in the river eventually run out? Sure – unless it rains every so often (which it does.)
But why does it rain? Because elsewhere on Earth the Sun has evaporated water, turning it into clouds.
We’ll have new rain as long as we have weather, which is as long as we have our Sun.
Each waterfall can therefore supply a very large amount of energy.
However only at a very limited rate – i.e. power output is limited by the flow rate of the river that feeds the fall.
The reasons that this is not infinite include:
Over time, rivers erode their beds and change their routes
the Sun itself has a limited lifetime (without the sun we’d lose weather, including rainfall, and rivers.)
Resources
Tsongas Industrial History Center
Power to Production is an interdisciplinary program designed to help students
achieve state and national standards in History/Social Science, Science and
Technology, and Mathematics. Tsongas Industrial History Center, U. Mass Lowell.
Wind power
Content objective:
What are we learning? Why are we learning this?
content, procedures, skills
Vocabulary objective
Tier II: High frequency words used across content areas. Key to understanding directions, understanding relationships, and for making inferences.
Tier III: Low frequency, domain specific terms
Building on what we already know
Make connections to prior lessons.
Wind energy (or wind power) refers to the process of creating electricity using the wind, or air flows that occur naturally in the earth’s atmosphere.
Modern wind turbines are used to capture kinetic energy from the wind and generate electricity.
There are three main types of wind energy:
Utility-scale wind
Wind turbines that range in size from 100 kilowatts to several megawatts, where the electricity is delivered to the power grid and distributed to the end user by electric utilities or power system operators.
Distributed or “small” wind
Single small wind turbines below 100 kilowatts that are used to directly power a home, farm or small business and are not connected to the grid.
Offshore wind:
Wind turbines that are erected in large bodies of water, usually on the continental shelf. Offshore wind turbines are larger than land-based turbines and can generate more power.
from: American Wind Energy Association
resources
Wind Turbines: TeacherGeek
How much area would renewable energy require?
—–
regional wind systems
Power = rate that energy is transformed from one form to another.
There are two basic types of wind turbines:
Horizontal-axis turbines
Vertical-axis turbines
also see https://blog.arcadiapower.com/types-of-wind-turbines-being-used-today/
GIF created by Ssgxnh for Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAWT_and_VAWTs_in_operation_medium.gif
Airfoils on roofs: AeroMINE
Why Rooftop Wind Power Hasn’t Really Worked—Until Now. The surprising secret to unlocking the energy’s potential? Airfoils. By Caroline Delbert, 4/2/2020 Popular Mechanics
Rooftop Wind Power Might Take Off by Using Key Principle of Flight
A new device could open more areas to wind production by using stationary airfoils instead of twirling turbines. Andrea Thompson, Scientific American, April 21, 2020
Rooftop wind power might take off using a key principle of flight, , Andrea Thompson, Greenbiz, April 23, 2020
Do wind turbines kill too many birds?
From the article “Wind Turbines Are Not Killing Fields for Birds” on Statista, Sep 3, 2019
President Trump continues his years’ long dispute with wind turbines, claiming that wind turbines diminish home property values, cause cancer, and “kill all the birds.”
Wind turbines have not been found to diminish home values of nearby properties or cause cancer. According to numbers aggregated by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, cats are a bigger scourge to the overall bird community than wind turbines. The most recent estimate places the number of bird deaths at the paws of cats at 2.4 billion.
Collisions from wind turbines on land killed a small fraction of birds in comparison to the damage that cats and glass buildings cause to the general bird population. Land wind turbines were responsible for over 200,000 bird deaths while collisions from building glass are estimated to be responsible for nearly 600 million bird deaths. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not provide estimates for deaths resulting from offshore wind turbines.
As the wind power industry grows and expands, the renewable’s relationship to its environment is coming under more intense scrutiny. While the relationship between wind turbines and different types of bird populations, particularly apex birds, is understudied, there is some evidence that turbines can hurt those populations.
Hawaii, home to many endangered species, has taken extra steps to protect species that could be vulnerable to wind energy. The state requires all potential wind projects on both private and public land to have permits and conservation plans for the bird and bat population. Hawaii also documents animal mortality data from independent, third-party experts, with some wind farms subjected to steep fines for killing any federally protected birds.
As wind turbines become more common, reforms in this spirit could help alleviate some of the drawbacks of the new energy source.
Learning Standards
Benchmarks, American Association for the Advancement of Science
In the 1700s, most manufacturing was still done in homes or small shops, using small, handmade machines that were powered by muscle, wind, or moving water. 10J/E1** (BSL)
In the 1800s, new machinery and steam engines to drive them made it possible to manufacture goods in factories, using fuels as a source of energy. In the factory system, workers, materials, and energy could be brought together efficiently. 10J/M1*
Solar power
Content objective:
What are we learning? Why are we learning this? content, procedures, skills
Vocabulary objective
Tier II: High frequency words used across content areas. Key to understanding directions, understanding relationships, and for making inferences.
Tier III: Low frequency, domain specific terms
Building on what we already know
What vocabulary & concepts were learned in earlier grades?
Make connections to prior lessons from this year.
Solar power – From Sun to Earth
The sun is powered by nuclear fusion.
It produces vast amounts of power every second.
How does energy get from the sun to the Earth?
There are only 3 ways that heat can move from one place to another:
Conduction, convection, and radiation:
Conduction
The transfer of heat through matter by molecular activity.
Energy is transferred by collisions from one molecule to another.
Atoms have to be vibrating up against other atoms, like this:
The Sun doesn’t touch the Earth, so we don’t get solar energy thru conduction.
Convection
The transfer of heat by circulation within a substance.
Takes place in fluids, like the ocean and air, where the atoms and molecules are free to move about. And in solids, such as Earth’s mantle, that behave like fluids over long periods of time. Boil water, or oatmeal. Hotter liquids rise, cooler liquids descend.
But for all intents and purposes, there is no atmosphere between us and the sun. It’s pretty much vacuum.
So we don’t get solar energy thru convection.
Radiation (by Electromagnetic Waves)
The sun emits electromagnetic (EM) waves.
They come in all sorts of wavelengths. Some we perceive as visible light.
Other wavelengths of EM waves are what we call X-rays, radio waves, infrared, etc.
EM waves are not like water waves. They don’t require a medium (like water or air) to travel through.
They travel through the vacuum – empty space – at 300,000 kilometers per second.
THIS is how energy from the sun gets to Earth.
Disambiguation/Vocabulary
“Radiation” is a word with many meanings – it doesn’t necessarily mean nuclear radiation, or anything that could give you cancer
Drop a stone in water – waves radiate out from where the stone hits. This is physical radiation.
People doing the wave in a crowd – the motion radiates from one side to another.
Solar radiation travels out in all directions from its source.
Solar energy reaches Earth by radiation.
How much heat energy is in sunlight?
View this clip from “James May’s Big Ideas.”
This parabolic mirror reflects infrared, visible and UV light energy from the sun, onto a focal point, producing about 1000 watts of power/square meter.
Types of solar power
Photovoltaic Systems – produce electricity directly from sunlight.
Energy 101: Solar PV (photovoltaic)
Solar Hot Water – Heating water with solar energy.
How Solar Water Heaters Work
Passive Solar Heating and Daylighting – Using solar energy to heat and light buildings.
Passive Solar Heating and Daylighting
Solar Process Space Heating and Cooling – Industrial and commercial uses of the sun’s heat
Many people believe that we must use mostly fossil fuels or nuclear power for energy production, because renewable energy (solar, wind) takes up far too much land area. But has anyone done the math?
With today’s new, better solar panels, how much area would we need to cover in solar panels? As a class, let’s discuss this:
How much area would renewable energy require?
Natural gas power
Content objective:
What are we learning? Why are we learning this?
content, procedures, skills
Vocabulary objective
Tier II: High frequency words used across content areas. Key to understanding directions, understanding relationships, and for making inferences.
Tier III: Low frequency, domain specific terms
Building on what we already know
What vocabulary & concepts were learned in earlier grades?
Make connections to prior lessons from this year.
This is where we start building from.
We can burn natural to release heat, and use that heat to create heat (e.g. cooking) or electrical power.
Burning natural gas is a chemical reaction called combustion.
In physics, power has a very specific meaning. It is the rate that energy is transformed from one form into another form.
How was natural formed?
Molecules
It is a mixture of hydrocarbon molecules
Mostly methane (CH4)
And some other higher alkanes (acyclic saturated hydrocarbons)
And some small percent of CO2, N2, H2S (hydrogen sulfide,) or He
..
Oil Power
Content objective:
What are we learning? Why are we learning this?
content, procedures, skills
Vocabulary objective
Tier II: High frequency words used across content areas. Key to understanding directions, understanding relationships, and for making inferences.
Tier III: Low frequency, domain specific terms
Building on what we already know
What vocabulary & concepts were learned in earlier grades?
Make connections to prior lessons from this year.
This is where we start building from.
What’s the difference between petroleum and oil?
“Oil” is a general name for any kind of molecule which is
nonpolar
that just means that its electrons are evenly distributed
PHET Polar molecules app
liquid at room temperature
of course, it could become solid if cooled, or evaporate if heated
Molecule has one end which is hydrophobic and another end which is lipophilic
The hydrophobic end likes to stick to water molecules. But hates sticking to oils.
The lipophilic end likes to stick to oil molecules, but hates sticking to water,
Made with many C and H atoms
Oils are usually flammable. Here we see oils in an orange skin interacting with a candle.
So Petroleum is?
It is a mix of naturally forming oils, which we drill from the Earth, and use in a variety of ways.
We can burn it to generate electricity, or we can use it to make plastics, asphalt, tar, etc.
Petroleum is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid found in geological formations beneath the Earth’s surface.
How was petroleum (“oil”) formed?
Here’s a cool video on petroleum (“oil”) and gas formation
Oil and gas formation, EarthScience WesternAustralia
So what is oil really made of?
While you are free to skip this section, it is pretty cool to see what oil is really made of. It is a bunch of different organic molecules.
Petroleum is made of thousands of different molecules. Some of them exist as gases, others as liquids, and others as a solid.
The gas molecules include heavy hydrocarbons like pentane, hexane, and heptane.
The liquid molecules include various forms of alkanes (paraffins),
cycloalkanes (naphthenes,)
Ball-and-stick model of cyclobutane, Wikimedia
asphaltenes – these are a complex mix of beautiful organic molecules.
Here we see two versions of the same molecule. This first view shows the outline, showin connections between one atom and the next.
a
This next view is the exact same molecule, except now showing the shape more realistically (each atom is roughly sphere-shaped.)
These two images are from Murray R. Gray, What are asphaltenes in petroleum, oil sands, and heavy oil? sites.ualberta.ca/~gray/ Links%20&%20Docs/ Asphaltenes %20web%20page. pdf
How do take this complex mess, and get the parts that we want?
and then cracking the hydrocarbons
here is one part of the cracking process
How is the energy in oil turned into electrical power?
We can burn oil to release heat, and use that heat to create electrical power.
Burning oil is a chemical reaction called combustion.
In physics, power has a very specific meaning. It is the rate that energy is transformed from one form into another form.
Smog – a bad side effect of burning oil and coal
While a small portion of the SO2 and NOX that cause acid rain is from natural sources such as volcanoes, most of it comes from the burning of fossil fuels.
The major sources of SO2 and NOX in the atmosphere are:
-
Burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity. Two thirds of SO2 and one fourth of NOX in the atmosphere come from electric power generators.
-
Vehicles and heavy equipment.
-
Manufacturing, oil refineries and other industries.
Winds can blow SO2 and NOX over long distances and across borders.
.
Learning Standards
Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework
Grade 6: HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY Interpret geographic information from a graph or chart and construct a graph or chart that conveys geographic information (e.g., about rainfall, temperature, or population size data)
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGE IN EUROPE, 1800–1914 WHII.6 Summarize the social and economic impact of the Industrial Revolution… population and urban growth
Benchmarks, American Association for the Advancement of Science
In the 1700s, most manufacturing was still done in homes or small shops, using small, handmade machines that were powered by muscle, wind, or moving water. 10J/E1** (BSL)
In the 1800s, new machinery and steam engines to drive them made it possible to manufacture goods in factories, using fuels as a source of energy. In the factory system, workers, materials, and energy could be brought together efficiently. 10J/M1*
The invention of the steam engine was at the center of the Industrial Revolution. It converted the chemical energy stored in wood and coal into motion energy. The steam engine was widely used to solve the urgent problem of pumping water out of coal mines. As improved by James Watt, Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer, it was soon used to move coal; drive manufacturing machinery; and power locomotives, ships, and even the first automobiles. 10J/M2*
The Industrial Revolution developed in Great Britain because that country made practical use of science, had access by sea to world resources and markets, and had people who were willing to work in factories. 10J/H1*
The Industrial Revolution increased the productivity of each worker, but it also increased child labor and unhealthy working conditions, and it gradually destroyed the craft tradition. The economic imbalances of the Industrial Revolution led to a growing conflict between factory owners and workers and contributed to the main political ideologies of the 20th century. 10J/H2
Today, changes in technology continue to affect patterns of work and bring with them economic and social consequences. 10J/H3*
Coal power
Content objective:
What are we learning? Why are we learning this? (content, procedures, skills)
Vocabulary objective
Tier II: High frequency words used across content areas. Key to understanding directions, understanding relationships, and for making inferences.
Tier III: Low frequency, domain specific terms
Building on what we already know
Make connections to prior lessons.
What is coal?
A combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock
Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements; chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
From High School Coal Study Guide, U.S. Dept. of Energy, http://www.energy.gov,
How is coal used?
Coal is primarily used as a fuel. While coal has been known and used for thousands of years, its usage was limited prior to the Industrial Revolution.
With the invention of the steam engine coal consumption increased. As of 2016, coal remains an important fuel as it supplied about a quarter of the world’s primary energy, and two-fifths of electricity.
Some iron and steel making and other industrial processes burn coal.
How was coal formed?
Over many years, in some locations, dead plant matter decays into peat.
Peat may be converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial – this takes place over millions of years.
Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands—called coal forests—that covered much of the Earth’s tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous/Pennsylvanian (from 360 to 300 million years ag0) and Permian times (from 300 to 250 million years ago.)
However, many significant coal deposits are younger than this and originate from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.
This beautiful infographic shows us how coal is formed over time.
Here we see the process over time.
Types of coal
Lignite – the lowest rank of coal, most harmful to health when burned.
sub-bituminous coal – used primarily as fuel for steam-electric power generation. Slightly less polluting.
bituminous coal – a dense sedimentary rock, usually black. Used as fuel in steam-electric power generation. Used to to make coke. Historically used to raise steam in steam locomotives and ships.
anthracite coal – The highest rank of coal. Hard, glossy black, used primarily for residential and commercial space heating.
From High School Coal Study Guide, U.S. Dept. of Energy, http://www.energy.gov,
So what is coal really made of?
What if we looked deep inside coal, and could see the molecular structure? It is a complex array of different organic molecules.
Recall that coal was made from piles of ancient plants. Plants are made of cellulose, and that is just made from a bunch of linked sugar molecules.
Check this out – this cellulose molecule is really just a bunch of sugars bonded together.
Now, under millions of years of heat and pressure, cellulose molecules break down and reconnect into other shapes.
As such, coal has way more different shaped molecules than oil.
Think of coal as a bunch of five-sided and six-sided rings of carbon.
They are often hooked together with an O (oxygen) atom.
- General Chemistry: Principles, Patterns, and Applications, 5.5 Energy Sources and the Environment
Energy Sources and the Environment
All sorts of shapes are possible; there are millions of them.
Here is another example.
From Wikimedia, Struktura chemiczna węgla kamiennego
How is the energy in coal turned into electrical power?
Burn coal to release heat, and use that heat to create electrical power.
Burning oil is a chemical reaction called combustion.
In physics, power has a very specific meaning.
It is the rate that energy is transformed from one form into another form.
_________________________________________________________
Coal is pulverized (D)
and burnt in a furnace (C).
The heat energy released is used to heat water into super hot steam which is then used to turn turbines (B).
The turbines drive the generators (A) which produce electricity.
The steam is then condensed and recycled.
The chimney labeled “F”, known as a condensing tower, releases water vapour and is part of the recycling of steam.
The chimney labeled “G” is attached to the furnace and releases carbon dioxide and ash.
Text and GIF above from http://www.dynamicscience. com.au
Here is another animation (source unknown, found at gifer. com) of how coal is used to create electrical energy.
____________________________________________
Turning coal into natural gas
Burning coal creates a lot of air pollution.
Coal gasification turns it into a kind of natural gas that burns more cleanly.
Read more: Scienceclarified.com Real life chemistry
Smog – a bad side effect of burning coal
Huge amounts of SO2 get into the atmosphere from power plants burning sulfur-containing coal or oil.
Smog is air pollution that reduces visibility. The term was first used in the early 1900s to describe a mix of smoke and fog.
The smoke usually came from burning coal. Smog was common in industrial areas, and remains a familiar sight in cities today.
Today, most of the smog we see is photochemical smog. Photochemical smog is produced when sunlight reacts with nitrogen oxides and at least one volatile organic compound (VOC) in the atmosphere.
Nitrogen oxides come from car exhaust, coal power plants, and factory emissions.
The Great Smog of London, or Great Smog of 1952
Image found at makeagif
How we partially ended smog in the modern world with EPA regulations.
Human-caused atmospheric changes
Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste
How elections are impacted by a 100 million year old coastline
Environmental social justice
Learning Standards
Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework
Grade 6: HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY Interpret geographic information from a graph or chart and construct a graph or chart that conveys geographic information (e.g., about rainfall, temperature, or population size data)
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGE IN EUROPE, 1800–1914 WHII.6 Summarize the social and economic impact of the Industrial Revolution… population and urban growth
Benchmarks, American Association for the Advancement of Science
In the 1700s, most manufacturing was still done in homes or small shops, using small, handmade machines that were powered by muscle, wind, or moving water. 10J/E1** (BSL)
In the 1800s, new machinery and steam engines to drive them made it possible to manufacture goods in factories, using fuels as a source of energy. In the factory system, workers, materials, and energy could be brought together efficiently. 10J/M1*
The invention of the steam engine was at the center of the Industrial Revolution. It converted the chemical energy stored in wood and coal into motion energy. The steam engine was widely used to solve the urgent problem of pumping water out of coal mines. As improved by James Watt, Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer, it was soon used to move coal; drive manufacturing machinery; and power locomotives, ships, and even the first automobiles. 10J/M2*
The Industrial Revolution developed in Great Britain because that country made practical use of science, had access by sea to world resources and markets, and had people who were willing to work in factories. 10J/H1*
The Industrial Revolution increased the productivity of each worker, but it also increased child labor and unhealthy working conditions, and it gradually destroyed the craft tradition. The economic imbalances of the Industrial Revolution led to a growing conflict between factory owners and workers and contributed to the main political ideologies of the 20th century. 10J/H2
Today, changes in technology continue to affect patterns of work and bring with them economic and social consequences. 10J/H3*
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is a way of extracting power from the heavy, unstable atoms of radioactive metals.
What’s the difference between regular metals and radioactive metals?
There are many types of non-radioactive metals:
Aluminum (Al,) Iron (Fe,) Calcium (Ca,) Sodium (Na,) Potassium (K,) Magnesium (Mg,) Gold (Au,) Platinum (Pt,) and many more.
These metals are stable – left alone, they would exist forever.
We once thought that all matter was like this:
Unless acted upon, matter is forever. It doesn’t disappear from the universe.
10.0 pounds of aluminum, gold, iron, or anything won’t someday become 9.99 pounds, right?
Atoms don’t just up and go away, right?
But in the late 1800s, Henri Becquerel, and Pierre and Marie Curie, discovered that some atoms were spontaneously emitting very tiny particles.
These particles were radiating outwards.
And there was no external power source – so what was powering this?
Clarifying language:
Hey, what does “radiating” mean?
Consider drops of water fall into a pond or stream.
That creates waves; we say that they are radiating outwards.
What else does “radiating” means?
Comedian Leo Anthony Gallagher smashes foods as part of his act.
Here, food particles are radiating outwards from where he smacked it.
What else does “radiating” means?
For radioactive atoms – tiny particles fly off from disintegrating atoms.
Some of these particles are ionizing: they ionize other molecules.
If DNA in your cells is ionized then they could become cancerous.
In radioactive metals, special conditions make these normally invisible forms of radiation become visible, like this chunk of uranium:
And yes – as time goes by, this chunk is getting slightly less massive (even if it take years to accurately measure this tiny decrease.)
This process is now known as alpha decay:
Uranium atoms will, at some random moment, spontaneously break apart into smaller pieces.
Weird -> the total mass of pieces on the right side is slightly less than the total mass on the left.
Where did that “missing mass” go? It turned into energy!
That energy makes the tiny pieces move very fast, gives them kinetic energy.
This energy also creates photons – particles of light.
This is radioactivity.
What can we do with this phenomenon?
We trap and transform this energy to create electrical power.
Here we see the glow of Cherenkov radiation as a nuclear fission reactor starts up.
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/seeing-a-nuclear-reactor-start-up-is-cooler-than-my-sci-1596286481
Many ways to generate nuclear power
1. nuclear fission of uranium
Some uranium atoms are not stable.
They spontaneously break apart (“fission”) into smaller pieces.
Missing mass has been converted into photons (particles of light)
Here is a typical nuclear power plant
The uranium is inside the reactor (far left)
The heat from this reactor boils water (see the steam generator.)
Steam then goes to a turbine; it spins the turbine.
Let’s look at some short animations:
Nuclear Reactor Diagram GIF
and
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PWR_nuclear_power_plant_diagram.svg
This rotational motion can then spin an axle
That axle can rotate wires inside a magnet, or vice-versa.
That produces an electrical current inside the wires.
Thus we have converted radiation energy into electrical energy,
Videos
Nuclear Power – How it works
Nuclear Energy Explained: How does it work? Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
2. nuclear fission of Thorium
The general idea here is the same as for uranium.
We just use a different radioactive metal, thorium.
Thorium is far more abundant, easier to process, and much safer to use.
It doesn’t sustain the kind of reactions that occur in an atomic or nuclear bomb.
Thorium reactors can’t blow up.
Makes very little radioactive waste, and the little that it does make degrades safely, in a shorter period of time.
It’s waste can’t be used to make nuclear weapons, so there is no fear of nuclear weapons proliferation.
So why aren’t we using it?
… research into the mechanization of nuclear reactions was initially driven not by the desire to make energy, but by the desire to make [atomic] bombs. The $2 billion Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb sparked a worldwide surge in nuclear research, most of it funded by governments embroiled in the Cold War.
And here we come to it: Thorium reactors do not produce plutonium, which is what you need to make a nuke. How ironic.
The fact that thorium reactors could not produce fuel for nuclear weapons meant the better reactor fuel got short shrift, yet today we would love to be able to clearly differentiate a country’s nuclear reactors from its weapons program.
… Thorium’s advantages start from the moment it is mined and purified, in that all but a trace of naturally occurring thorium is Th232, the isotope useful in nuclear reactors. That’s a heck of a lot better than the 3% to 5% of uranium that comes in the form we need.
Then there’s the safety side of thorium reactions. Unlike U235, thorium is not fissile. That means no matter how many thorium nuclei you pack together, they will not on their own start splitting apart and exploding.
If you want to make thorium nuclei split apart, though, it’s easy: you simply start throwing neutrons at them.
Then, when you need the reaction to stop, simply turn off the source of neutrons and the whole process shuts down, simple as pie….
… There are at least seven types of reactors that can use thorium as a nuclear fuel, five of which have entered into operation at some point. Several were abandoned not for technical reasons but because of a lack of interest or research funding (blame the Cold War again). So proven designs for thorium-based reactors exist and need but for some support.
– The Thing About Thorium: Why The Better Nuclear Fuel May Not Get A Chance, by Marin Katusa , Forbes, 2/16/2012
Here we see the difference between a uranium fission and a thorium fission nuclear power plant.
Thorium – World Nuclear Association
The Thing About Thorium: Why The Better Nuclear Fuel May Not Get A Chance. Forbes.
3. Nuclear fusion (several types)
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers our sun, and all stars in the universe.
Inside a star, gravity pulls billions of tons of matter towards the center.
Atoms are pushed very close together. So close that sometimes two atoms will fuse into one, heavier atom.
The mass of this new atom is slightly less than the mass of the pieces that it was made of in the first place?.
Where the did missing go? It effectively becomes energy – which we see as photons, or as the heat/motion energy of other particles.
As an example, here we see deuterium fusing with tritium.
The resulting product has less mass than the parts going in to the collision.
That missing mass we see becomes 3.5 mega electron-volts of energy,
For more details see Stars are powered by nuclear fusion.
How can we possibly replicate the energy of stars here on Earth? For the last 70 years people have been steadily working on creating and sustaining nuclear fission in the laboratory, and the process actually works!
Not surprisingly it has been extremely challenging to do this well.
In this device, called a torus, engineers have designed extremely powerful electromagnets. These create a super-powerful magnetic field, strong enough to contain the hot plasma.
We see the plasma contained inside as a glowing blue gas.
At the present time we can not use nuclear fusion as a practical way to produce energy, but research is continuing at a steady rate.
Advantages of nuclear fusion – ITER
Conclusion:
In practice we are only using nuclear fission of uranium. Research on thorium fission reactors is slowly proceeding, and we expect to see such reactors operating within the next 20 years. (We could do it much sooner if governments sustainably funded more reserach.)
Research on fusion reactors is slowly proceeding, but we don’t expect to see such reactors operating soon. It is unclear at the moment when such reactors will be practical.
Nuclear power and cancer
In theory, during an accident, radiation released from nuclear power plants can increase the background rates of cancer, perhaps dramatically. It has long been expected by opponents of nuclear power that it’s use would be highly dangerous.
Yet in the 60 years of it’s use, the number of actual accidents, Soviet designed tragedies like Chernobyl (an event in a class by itself, due to deliberate malfeasance), and even Fukushima Daiichi, the tsunami-damaged nuclear reactor site, have caused far less damage and death than coal, oil and other sources of power.
Surprisingly, simply burning coal releases more radiation into the environment than running a nuclear reaction. Similarly, getting into an airplane to fly away from Fukushima Daiichi caused thousands of Japanese citizens to be exposed to even more ionizing radiation than if they had simply stayed at home – as airplane flights make one rise above most of the atmosphere, thereby increasing one’s exposure to natural background radiation from space.
There is also the intriguing phenomenon of radiation hormesis: low doses of ionizing radiation (just above natural background levels) are beneficial.
Low level radiation activates cellular repair mechanisms that protect against disease.
These mechanisms are not activated in absence of ionizing radiation.
The reserve repair mechanisms are hypothesized to be sufficiently effective as to not only cancel the detrimental effects of ionizing radiation – but also inhibit disease not related to radiation exposure.
This counter-intuitive hypothesis has captured the attention of scientists and public alike in recent years.
Radiation hormesis (Wikipedia)
There is no environment without some level of background radioactivity. What society needs to do is become familiar with the statistics, so it can make informed choices on how much power to generate/consume, and where this power should come from.
Coal releases more radioactivity than nuclear power
External links
Nuclear energy is our best option for fighting climate change – The Logic of Science (Facebook post)
Apps
What is fusion app: from PHD comics
Science and Discovery channels no longer teaching science
At one time, the development of the Science Channel, the Discovery channel, and Animal Planet, was a major force for good in public education.
However, in the last decade the people running these networks have made very clear that they do not value education or scientific responsibility whatsoever. Both of these networks are now focused solely on making money, often by deliberately programming pseudoscience, crank theories, and even outright hoaxes, such as
“Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives” hoax
“Mermaids: The Body Found” hoax
(This is a placeholder for a future article.)
A painfully funny analysis of the situation from the popular webcomic, SMBC:
By Zach Weinersmith, from SMBC, Aug 16, 2014
.
Learning Objectives
A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (2012)
Implementation: Curriculum, Instruction, Teacher Development, and Assessment
“Through discussion and reflection, students can come to realize that scientific inquiry embodies a set of values. These values include respect for the importance of logical thinking, precision, open-mindedness, objectivity, skepticism, and a requirement for transparent research procedures and honest reporting of findings.”
The Discovery of Global Warming
The idea that manmade caused global warming could occur isn’t new. Most people don’t know this, but this was first understood as far back as the late 1800s! This is because it is basic physics: adding more greenhouses gases into an atmosphere increases the amount of heat that it will hold.
Dr. Spencer Weart is a historian specializing in the history of modern physics and geophysics. Until his retirement in 2009 he was Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) in College Park, Maryland, USA, and he continues to be affiliated with the Center.
Spencer Weart writes in the summary overview to his book:
In 1896 the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius published a new idea. By burning fossil fuels such as coal, thus adding CO2 to Earth’s atmosphere, humanity would raise the planet’s average temperature. This “greenhouse effect,” as it later came to be called, was only one of many speculations about climate change, and not the most plausible.
The few scientists who paid attention to Arrhenius used clumsy experiments and rough approximations to argue that our emissions could not change the planet. Most people thought it was already obvious that puny humanity could never affect the vast global climate cycles, which were governed by a benign “balance of nature.”
In the 1930s, measurements showed that the United States and North Atlantic region had warmed significantly during the previous half-century. Scientists supposed this was just a phase of some mild natural cycle, probably regional, with unknown causes. Only one lone voice, the English steam engineer and amateur scientist Guy Stewart Callendar, published arguments that greenhouse warming was underway. If so, he and most others thought it would be beneficial.
In the 1950s, Callendar’s claims provoked a few scientists to look into the question with far better techniques and calculations than earlier generations could have deployed. This research was made possible by a sharp increase of government funding, especially from military agencies that wanted to know more about the weather and geophysics in general.
Not only might such knowledge be crucial in future battles, but scientific progress could bring a nation prestige in the Cold War competition. The new studies showed that, contrary to earlier crude assumptions, CO2 might indeed build up in the atmosphere and bring warming. In 1960 painstaking measurements of the level of the gas in the atmosphere by Charles Keeling, a young scientist with an obsession for accuracy, drove home the point. The level was in fact rising year by year.
(This essay covers only developments relating directly to carbon dioxide, with a separate essay for Other Greenhouse Gases. Theories are discussed in the essay on Simple Models of Climate.)
The Discovery of Global Warming: A hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change.
Books
The Discovery of Global Warming: Revised and Expanded Edition, by Spencer R. Weart, Harvard University Press, 2008
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