Years ago, I had the chance to return to college and took it. I spent 10 years in the work force and left my job to return as a full time, “non traditional” student. My high school career was… really not a career, more like an idle hobby, but I had a chance to do better at college. I discovered physics.
My trained profession was as a “millwright”. I learned to work with metals and machinery and college presented new answers to some of the questions I had experienced as a blue collar worker. In all honesty, the classes I had disdained in high school, I loved college. Unfortunately, I only had the opportunity to finish 3 full semesters. Long story…. Which now brings me to the reason for this page, here I am a person, who knows how to build things and loves physics… what can we do with this? Let’s build stuff!
I wish to use these pages to discuss ways to generate energy that are renewable, flexible and portable. I hate to use the PC term “green”, sounds too… lame. The goal here is, what can we come up with that doesn’t rely on someone else supplying the “fuel”, at a premium. What are the forces that are readily available, cheap and effective…
Solar: If you really thing about it, we have an nuclear furnace at our disposal a large portion of the day. The sun has SO much power, even beyond simple warmth. We have a daily provision of heat and photons for our enjoyment…
Wind: I live in Kansas and it sucks in somewhere else, so we have quite a bit of wind we can play with. Down part of wind is it’s not predictable or constant, but plentiful and fairly priced. On another note, what can we do when we compress it?
Magnetics: We use magnets everyday in almost everything. Motors, TVs, speakers the list goes on, but is there anything else we can do with them?
Gravity: Talk about a constant source of energy. Gravity is the one constant that doesn’t change, period. Gravity accelerates objects and a rate of 9.81 M/s, or 33.? Ft/s. Accelerates, big deal here, very big deal.
Water:Water, ol’ H2O, is amazing stuff. Hard to believe that, the most important resource to life on this planet is a combination of Hydrogen (explosive) and Oxygen (catalyst). Hydrogen and Oxygen combined in nothing short of explosive and tasty with ice!
What would you like to play with?
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2 responses so far ↓
Jamie Norris // May 15, 2008 at 5:42 pm
If you make a VTW, it better be short. And not scary. Please?
deana331 // May 16, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Well, he could SHARE power with us and I’d let him put a taller one in our yard, of course the cable to yours would be rather extensive….