An Energy Primer for Kids
- From: Vlado2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:07:35 -0700
INTRODUCTION TO THE ENERGY PRIMER FOR KIDS (4)
This booklet was written especially for my grandson so he may read it
from time to time and learn to figure things out on his own. It may
also be useful for his friends, schoolfellows and even parents.
This primer does not really dwell on the scientific method or any
elaborate science. It only points out what are the bare bone facts
and
where to go to look for more information. It may be useful in all
walks of life not only for scientific questions.
To start with take these pointers to your heart:
Whenever something is told to you, either in a talk, a book,
videotape, television, newspaper or advertisement the first thing to
ask is:
Is this all that people know about the subject?
If it turns out not to be - and most time it will -- ask yourself:
Why am I being told only part of the story?
I am sure if you had all the information you would be able to make
some decision on what to think about the subject.
This is especially important when the subject you are hearing about
has different sides to it.
Or when the information comes from an authority such as a Teacher,
Marine Drill Instructor, Policeman, Government Official, Priest, and
persons running for a political office who want YOU to do something
THEY want. Like writing a letter to a congressman or even to the
President, and they provide his address and mail the letter for you.
This does not mean that what they tell you to do is necessarily wrong
but it does mean that you should have the final say in what you
decide
to do after you hear them out.
SHORT ENERGY PRIMER
FOR QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ENERGY
Energy today is all about fuel. We can hardly do anything without
energy. Fuel is needed to move our cars to go from place to place,
powers the lawnmowers, air conditioners, refrigerators, ovens,
numerous hand tools, computers, and toys.
In the old days when we did not have much technology fuels were used
mainly to keep us warm.
In fact, there is still a saying in Italy where there is not much
wood: "If you are cold jump up and down a few times..."
You can certainly keep warm in this way. But it becomes somewhat
tiresome after a while and you do get hungrier. And food used to be
in
short supply too.
So people were looking for something else and they found out that if
you burned wood it gave away heat and you could keep yourself warm.
To be sure: you have to pick up the wood and carry it to the
fireplace. Or, if none is lying around, you may consider chopping
down
a tree. [Nowadays you'd have a problem with the Greens about that.
They are called Greens because they are green with envy over the
progress America has made in liberating people from physical labor.]
Chopping down a tree takes effort and energy, too. But not so much as
jumping up and down all the time.
You see: fuel, in the traditional sense, used to be something that
gave up more energy to you than you had to spend in getting it or
making it.
This does not mean that one can get from the fuel more energy that
went into making it. Over the years the Sun has put its energy into
the trees and that is the energy you are harvesting when you are
burning wood. The work or energy it took you to chop down the tree is
only a small part of "producing" your fuel.
It is similar with the gasoline that powers the cars. Over thousands
of years the Sun and, to an extent, Earth have been putting energy
into what today is called oil or petroleum. We get oil from deep down
in the Earth. The oil is then taken to refineries where it is heated
and changed into gasoline and other petroleum products. This takes
some energy to accomplish but that energy is only a small part of
what
you get from it when it is burning in the engine of a car, airplane,
a
stove or anything else.
Now people are saying that we are running out of the oil and other
energy resources. The actual numbers are not quite certain but it
stands to reason that in the end we will run out of the resources
placed at our disposal by Nature. Particularly when our friends in
India, China and the Third World discover the convenience of personal
automobiles and start using three to four times as much gasoline as
we
Americans do. And because they are in a hurry to catch up with us
they
may not be so careful about making such clean engines as we do.
People are also saying that burning all that fuel produces carbon
dioxide which floats up in the atmosphere where it creates some kind
of blanket because of which the temperature of the Earth is gradually
rising. The people who claim that are basing their conclusions on a
model of the atmosphere and predictions made by that model when
projected into the future.
These people say that their model establishes that the Earth is
getting warmer very rapidly. But they have not shown how they arrived
to their conclusions and, even more importantly, what data they have
used in their studies. Therefore no one can check their work.
Computer models they are using are very sensitive to the input data
and starting conditions.
These people keep their data under wraps because they say that if
they
made their data and their method known someone could use these and
show that they can be interpreted differently and that they made a
mistake and made wrong predictions. So they keep their data close to
their chests. And the rest of us are supposed to believe them when
they run around like Chicken Little crying that the sky is falling.
This is not a way scientists act.
Now one of the first things which I learned from my professor in
graduate school when I embarked on a new direction of research was:
"On discovering what looks new to you the first thing you have to do
is try to prove yourself wrong. If you tried and you still think you
are right then maybe you do have something new - or at least not yet
known."
You see, the people who prattle about global warming have not done
their homework as scientists. They have a selfish motive. They are
trying to sell exotic cars resembling Rube Goldberg's contraptions to
replace the time tested Detroit products. Of course they can never
make enough such cars - there simply are not enough materials around
to replace all the 160 million cars in America and many more in the
rest of the world. They are counting that the public, people like
you,
will never make their own calculations. And perhaps they are right -
many people seem to go along with them.
As the alarmist planted the seeds of worry in the population they are
trying to make their fears work to their advantage expecting that
people would look to them as leaders who will solve the problems they
say the Earth has because of burning fuels containing carbon.
Expectations of electric cars are dangled before the public with
claims that they will supposedly cause no pollution out of the
tailpipe. But an equal amount of pollution will simply occur in the
coal or oil fueled electric power plants needed to generate
electricity for the electric cars.
Other things that are promoted are the so-called "alternate fuels"
such as methanol or hydrogen, even.
The first thing that we must put to rest is that hydrogen is not a
fuel in the sense we talked about. It does not exist anywhere on
Earth
in nature. The closest free hydrogen is on Jupiter. Actually, I am
not
quite right - there's more of it closer-- on the Sun. But those
natural resources are somewhat remote and not readily accessible to
us.
We can "make" hydrogen by electrolysis of water. Water is the ashes
of
hydrogen combining with oxygen - a process we call burning. Molecules
of water, tiny particles of which it is made, are atoms of hydrogen
and oxygen tightly bound together. To separate them we must supply at
least as much energy as they gave up when they united and water was
formed. We do this by running electricity through the water and catch
the bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen that come out.
In practice it turns out that to make hydrogen in this way it takes
at
least 50% more of energy than you can ever get out of hydrogen. So
hydrogen can never be a fuel in the sense we talked about at the
beginning. It can only store part of the energy that is spent in
making it.
Now the question is where the energy for making that hydrogen - the
promised "clean fuel" of the future - will come from? The answer is:
for the needs of the automobile transportation alone it can only come
from burning the usual fuels such as coal or oil in electric power
plants. To fuel all cars in America the total electric power plant
capacity would have to double. Nuclear power plants, clean safe and
efficient, are for the time being ruled out because alarmists have
persuaded Americans not to build any more of them.
Hydrogen can also be made by treating natural gas with steam. That
process produce hydrogen as well as carbon dioxide. And plenty of the
carbon dioxide, too. That process also requires more energy than you
can ever get from the produced hydrogen. Those are the laws of Nature
which no political candidate can change. On top of that you still
have
to worry what to do with the undesired carbon dioxide. It is,
however,
easier to trap and put away the carbon dioxide in this process than
doing this separately in each individual automobile engine.
If we decide to run all of our cars on hydrogen someone will have to
worry about all that steam that would be unloaded by hundreds of
millions of cars into the atmosphere. So far no one has calculated
what effect would this have.
A word about the "global warming" bugaboo. Carbon dioxide, if it is
really found out to be the problem, is readily absorbed by
vegetation.
An excess of carbon dioxide may well result in more lush vegetation
which could in turn reduce the Earth's temperature. But all these
things require complex quantitative calculations which no one has
done
as yet.
As for the receding glaciers: Most of the Europe and North America
used to be covered by glaciers in the Ice Age. Those glaciers are
gone
by now and no one seems to miss them. Perhaps a warmer Greenland will
be a new promised land to settle with our friends south of the
border.
Whether the Earth is warming up or not and whether this is good or
bad
will in the end be decided by people who are much smarter than those
who are now crying "Wolf!" Then the people will decide what to do.
Always bear in mind that not all problems have a solution and that
there are some situations with which we have to learn to put up.
In fact all catastrophes need not be bad for everyone. Millions of
years ago an asteroid or some other celestial body crashed into the
Earth and caused such climate change that the dinosaurs were wiped
out. But small mammals survived and we evolved from them. We might
not
be even here if it were not for the catastrophe that wiped out the
dinosaurs.
The Moon with its tides will after a long time slow down the rotation
of the Earth so that the day will be a month long which will in turn
be longer than the present month. Now that will make the Earth much
warmer than the present doomsayers are predicting. After that the
moon
will be gradually pulled in closer to the Earth until it will come so
close that it will start falling apart and instead of the Moon we
will
have a ring around the Earth. Hopefully none of the debris will fall
on Earth but we are not sure about that.
Another thing we know about stars such as our sun is that when they
are about to run out of fuel they expand and become what is called
Red
Giants. The size of the Sun will become as big as to engulf the orbit
of the Earth and perhaps even that of Mars. That, of course, will be
the end of the Earth unless by then humanity figures out how to
control the processes that go on inside the stars and finds the
resources to do that. So these are the warming problems one may want
to worry about but none of them will arise in the time of our
generations.
As for our energy supply problem -it is far from hopeless. On the
contrary: people will soon realize that clean, safe and efficient
nuclear power plants are a good substitute for the diminishing supply
of coal and petroleum. The power generated in nuclear power plants
will not be cheap. Not because of the scarcity of nuclear fuel but
because specially trained persons will be needed to operate them
safely.
Nuclear power plants will only be used as a stop gap measure until
fellows like you grow up and succeed in making thermonuclear fusion
work.
Thermonuclear fusion occurs when hydrogen atoms come together at very
high temperatures, produce helium and release excess energy. That is
where Einstein's formula is applied with its full force. This process
is going on all the time in the Sun and the stars and there is no
reason why we should not some day figure out how it can be made to
work on Earth to our advantage. That will be a source of
inexhaustible
energy.
In the meantime: have no fear. The Earth is a big place and your
enjoyment of your home, automobile, television, airplane, water skis
and all things that make life pleasant will not bring down on you the
wrath of demons. Those who are trying to scare you so that they could
lead you by the nose will be found out for what they are and will
fail.
It is good to see all kinds of the videos and look at all kinds of
information. I myself read the most reactionary papers as well as the
most progressive ones. But fortunately I can still make my own
decisions about things.
I hope you do the same.
[The author, Vlado Bevc, is a graduate of the University of
California
at Berkeley where he received his Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering, later he was a postdoctoral fellow of the National
Academy of Sciences and Air Force Office of Scientific Research at
Oxford University in England, conducted scientific research for the
Department of Defense and the aerospace industry and held senior
staff
positions at the California Public Utilities Commission. He is a
contributing author to The Wiley Encyclopedia of Environmental
Pollution and Cleanup.]
Reply Reply to author Forward
You must Sign in before you can post messages.
To post a message you must first join this group.
Please update your nickname on the subscription settings page before
posting.
Please update your nickname on the subscription settings page before
posting.
End of messages
« Back to Discussions « Newer topic Older topic »
.
- Prev by Date: Re: Fuel efficiency not allowed in the US
- Next by Date: Re: Fuel efficiency not allowed in the US
- Previous by thread: Fuel efficiency not allowed in the US
- Next by thread: Gazprom aims for a slice of E.ON's British power plants
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
