Ask Slashdot: Classroom Eco-Projects Suited To Alaska? 157
First time accepted submitter shortyadamk writes "I just started a new job where I will have to visit many high school science classes and have the students participate in 1-3 day projects regarding sustainable energy and environmental sciences (in order to promote the regional universities' programs). I've looked at a number of the boxed projects available online and many of them are solar projects; my biggest issue with that is that we are in rural Alaska and much of the time I'll be visiting classes will be in the winter (when we have very little sunlight — and even if we did it would be too cold to go and play in). I'm curious if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for demonstrations and projects that can be done in the classroom and do not require sunlight. One other catch is that the project has to be small enough to fit in a suitcase or plastic tote; we don't have any roads connecting the villages so I will have to fly the project from school to school with me."
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As it will be winter, why not use a snowmobile ? You could bring a lot of things with you :)
Where are you? (Score:2)
Other options include wind, tidal, and wave energy sources. These may be interesting simply because of the technical challenges posed by the local conditions.
Three specific resources I would look into:
- The Anchorage School District used to have a Science Resource Center with modular prepackaged lessons. Assuming the center still exists I would suspect they may have some great ideas and probably would have some lesson plans they
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Wolf hunting (Score:1)
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Heheh. Sara Palin is dumb and stuff. Hehehe. Hehehe.
Biofuel (Score:3, Interesting)
Heat some fresh wood chips in a test tube with a gas burner. Transfer the liquid to a small distiller (the kids already know this one from their dad's shed) and collect the burnable methanole fraction. Use it for a direct methanole fuel cell an charge a RC car.
To expound on that... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been a while since I learned about Alaska, but don't they have significant methane trapped in peat moss? That could be a good tie in to the methanole fuel.
Another option would be to get a miniaturized steam engine. People may think they are antiquated, but steam is what generates almost all of the electricity in this country. The heat can come from geo-thermal, nuclear, solar salts, coal, etc... but it all does the same thing: boil water.
-Rick
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While frozen land has plenty of sequestered carbon in the form of methane and peat.. the poster was asking about "eco" projects, which is quite opposite from your answer. You may have as well suggested an eco project based on drilling for oil. :-) Releasing all that trapped methane and carbon is the -last- thing humanity needs (although as the planet warms... it may release all of it anyways... the feedback loop danger that we're ignoring).
Regarding the poster's question, I believe Stirling engines work in
How about a Stirling Engine instead of steam? (Score:2)
Living in Alaska myself, my first thought was perhaps a miniature biomass CHP(Combined Heat&Power) utilizing a stirling engine.
Basically, you burn wood, the heat drives a small stirling engine that generates a few watts, with the waste heat recovered to help heat the home.
20% electricity, 60% heat.
Re:Biofuel (Score:4, Interesting)
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Of course you must keep in mind that in the Arctic the available biofuels are the fat from whales,walrus, seal, bears and caribou.
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Yeah, set up a digester that takes biodegradable material and generates methane. Should be cheap enough to leave a plastic tub or three at each school so they can continue to observe/monitor and look at the effects of input material, temperature and the like on the rate of gas prodduction.
Xix.
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A biodigester that needs heat to keep it running ... has probably already failed at it's aim of being eco-friendly. And given the economies of scale and of heat production/ heat loss, to get sufficient scale to have the digester carry on working through an Arctic winter, it would probably have to be a lot bigger than can b
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Since this is Alaska, where there's many sources of biomass, how about one of the umpteen Open Source stove projects, some of them need only a few tin cans.
http://www.biochar-us.org/TLUD%20blueprint.html [biochar-us.org]
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Since the tree lines runs through the state. Yes, Alaska has lots of trees – but vast areas lie north of the tree line. Since he talks about flying into remote areas I would guess he would be far, far north. I would lay odds that the students have access to wood chips – but it is no guaranty.
Most of Alaska well below tree line (Score:1)
Since the tree lines runs through the state. Yes, Alaska has lots of trees – but vast areas lie north of the tree line. Since he talks about flying into remote areas I would guess he would be far, far north. I would lay odds that the students have access to wood chips – but it is no guaranty.
I don't think the tree line is where you think. Note that it is the dark green line, not the orange line:
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/tree-line-in-the-arctic [grida.no]
There is no shortage of remote settlements below the tree line. And above the tree line you will find mostly oil industry workers.
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Never been there have you (Score:2)
So the "far north: that the posted question eludes to is either treeless or has a few little black spruce that might be about as tall as you are. Using a black spruce from anywhere near the arctic circle as a "renewable resource" is laughable. A spruce tree 1" in diameter that is that far north is probably 100+ years old.
Do you need real sun now? (Score:1)
Do the boxed solar projects actually require real sun in order to be educational? I mean, would the principles be evident to the students if you shone an electric light at solar panels indoors?
There's an awful lot of sunlight in Alaska during the summer, and the students should have long enough memories to know that.
Low-Power horticulture (Score:4, Interesting)
Get an LED light and some tiny starter pots and seeds.
I can help you out with that.
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For bonus points, how about powering them from a small wind turbine like this one? [instructables.com]
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LED growing lights, while low-power, are not all THAT low-power. They are also very picky about their power input.
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Use a battery to buffer the input and a high-efficiency voltage regulator to modulate it correctly. Underpowering them won't have any ill-effects. Use a switching voltage regulator to maintain a 4V power supply and a current limiting resistor. Optionally, you could use a big honking capacitor (e.g. I have some 20,000 uF caps that were salvaged from a large UPS) instead of a battery.
Most importantly, each component in this system provides a teaching opportunity.
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4V supply would kill the red diodes which typically operate at 2.4-2.6V. The blue ones would survive having a typical 3.4-3.6V operative voltage.
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I was thinking white, though now that I think about it, red and blue make more sense for grow lights. Still, the idea stands sound, even if the details need fine-tuning.
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Get an LED light and some tiny starter pots and seeds.
I can help you out with that.
I think the students might smoke the pot, so you might want to bring a lot.
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If grown locally, far, FAR lower versus the cost of the shipped tomato.
Ask the University (Score:2)
Why not ask the university? Seriously, any student or professor worth knowing will take five minutes and try to think up a program or two.
Obvious Wind Power or Maybe Thermoelectrics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Another thought is thermoelectrics via Seebeck and Peltier Effects [wikipedia.org]. I think you can pick up cheap little thermoelectric kits [tellurex.com] that are horribly inefficient (10%?) but if you could coordinate with the school, you might have access to a heat exhaust or something nearby where you could set up the device and show the kids that you can harvest some of the energy coming off the exhausts. Failing that, you could boil a pot of water and position it over it? If it's cold as hell outside, you might even be able to just push it up against a window?
Really, it's just be important to get the kids thinking critically about where energy transfer is lost and how it can be harvested. Most importantly I would stress the efficiency analysis so they realize why your little device isn't the answer to all their problems (but with enough research and knowledge they might find a better solution). You know, give them a little lesson on initial cost versus return and figure out how long it would take your device sitting there at that external temperature for you to fully recoup your cost.
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I think you can pick up cheap little thermoelectric kits [tellurex.com] that are horribly inefficient (10%?)...
ALL Peltier coolers are horribly inefficient. 10% efficiency is a pretty decent one, in fact.
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Obviously you could pack up a small turbine and multimeter and take it outside and show the kids the power generation.
The kind of temperatures you'd be talking in the winter, I wouldn't want to take kids outside any more than I had to.
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My wife teaches High School science in Anchorage, if its above 10 F they can go outside for school work.
In the winter, the dark is more of a hinderance to working outside than the cold.
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Anchorage is quite a way south though. It routinely goes way below 2F is the average *high* in January. -13 is the average low.
Lovely in summer though!
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Anchorage is more moderate because of proximity to the sea.
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I meant to say that IN FAIRBANKS it routinely goes way below. That's where 2F is the average *high* in January. -13 is the average low.
As you say, it's warmer in Anchorage.
I assumed since the OP is flying around, he'd be in the wild north. (Although Anchorage is hardly Manhattan :) )
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With a small turbine you don't need to go outside. You could use a fan to simulate the wind, or simply turn it manually. Or have the kids blow really, really hard. :oD
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Try your snowsuit at -40 degrees. Temperatures where if you chuck a mugful of freshly boiled water in the air, it's frozen before it hits the ground.
Granted, it only gets that low a few times a year in Fairbanks, but I'd personally be trying to stay indoors as much as possible even at, say, 30 below.
I bet the Eskimos (as you're encouraged to call them in Alaska) stay indoors as much as they can in those temperatures. Hunt on dry land in the summer; hunt on the sea ice in spring until it thaws. Store stuff a
also ask on otherpower at fieldlines.com (Score:2)
Also ask on www.fieldlines.com
That's where a lot of renewable energy people hang out. (Among them is "Wild In Alaska", who built a wind turbine out of a scrap garbage disposal motor to power his pickup camper.)
Obvious choices for Alaska are:
- Wind power.
- Thermoelectric on exhaust from wood-burning house heating systems.
- Heat engines ditto. Sterling or steam. (Note that these are mainly experimental at this point. No commercial systems are available as far as I know for generati
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Main available energy resources are wood, crude oil, natural gas, and animal fat.
Of course, efficiently burning wood from properly managed forestry, is green energy. The tree you grow to replace the one you burned, fixes equivalent CO2 to that which you released in the burning.
The same could be said of animal fat, I suppose, depending on the energy sources used in rearing the animal.
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Why are the Alaska schools hosting and promoting this? Alaska is NOT a good site for renewable energy:
Sure it is, properly managed. It's just not the same solutions as for the lower 49.
Solar works well in the summer, 23 hours of sunlight can do that. In the winter, my current choice would be biomass fired CHP.
Bicycle-powered stuff? (Score:4, Insightful)
I recall seeing somewhere a stationary bike apparatus, e.g. "treadmill", which triatheletes use in the off-season. It's a frame that you put your own bicycle onto, and then pedal away like there is no tomorrow.
The frame I saw folded up into something pretty small and easily portable. I don't know if bicycles are as popular in Alaska as they are in the lower 48, but if so then perhaps a student would volunteer their own for a few days during your presentations.
You'd want to modify the apparatus so that it could be used to power a lamp, or something else that you would likely find at each destination. In fact, purpose-built treadmills-as-power-generators probably exist.
A nice side-effect of such an apparatus is that it tangibly illustrates just how much power even a small lamp consumes, considering how hard students need to pedal to generate the electricity required. You could demonstrate that CFL lights use less electricity by demonstrating that they don't have to pedal as hard to light it, and could show that the excess electricity of the incandescent lamp is converted to heat with a simple non-contact, IR thermometer like those sold at Radio Shack. Then swap the lamp for an X-Box, etc. etc.
Teaching students to use less electricity is an even better goal than teaching them new ways to generate it.
choice (Score:2)
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Alaska is pretty crappy for solar.
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_national_lo-res.jpg [nrel.gov]
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_csp_national_lo-res.jpg [nrel.gov]
And not great for wind
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/US-50m-wind-power-map.jpg [nrel.gov]
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Possible options (Score:1)
Simplest would be a laptop with the right software. I don't know what might be available software-wise, but a little research should turn up something.
Is there a reason you can't use a grow light instead of solar power from the sun?
For an elaborate solution, assuming you have internet access from the remote sites... Do a 'Silent Running' type Biosphere somewhere sunny, with robots that can be remotely controlled to perform tasks as needed in this biosphere. The students would love it and you would get go
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Is there a reason you can't use a grow light instead of solar power from the sun?
Because he has only 2-3 days per site. Nothing will sprout while he's there, which means either a lame presentation, expendables that he has to leave at each site, and/or additional work for the teacher after he leaves.
Also, at the high school level I don't think you'd hold someone's interest with a heat lamp and a bean sprout in a styrofoam cup. Well, you MIGHT hold their interests, but probably not for reasons that the school's administration would sanction. :)
Those solar projects are perfect in the Winter (Score:3)
You have them build them, check out the results, and then you can say "Now you know why solar isn't a panacea for our energy needs."
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Firstly - don't expect high school kids to know what "panacea".
Secondly - don't teach kids that they should go looking for panacaea.
Solar power is no help to Alaskans in the winter. In the summer though, many homes and businesses could run on their own solar panels. It wouldn't eliminate their reliance on fossil fuels -- but it would reduce it.
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I knew what a panacea was when I was in middle school.
Then again, I did get beaten up a lot...
Re:Those solar projects are perfect in the Winter (Score:4, Informative)
And then summer comes, and the issue with solar is dumping all the extra energy you're collecting because you're usually collecting an excess of your needs.
Something simple (Score:1)
How about an infrared camera and those foam things you stick behind AC wall sockets?
Take the IR camera outside to see where the biggest losses are.
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microbial fuel cells (Score:3)
here's one: http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Microbial-Fuel-Cell-MFC-Part-II/ [instructables.com]
You can google up a bunch of alternatives, and buy simple kits if your budget runs to that. But the ingredients are cheap, you could save money kitting up a bunch yourself.
Genetics (Score:3, Interesting)
ironic really (Score:1)
Bring a Compact Sun Lamp (Score:3)
Still think the Sun Lamp idea is funniest and quite realistic given the craze to trade food for energy and other such nonsensical ideas.
Uphill challange (Score:5, Interesting)
Your problem is actually the countries problem. Green Energy works good in some spots and not all. Solar, Wind, Tidal, Hydroelectric, all have good and bad locations. More portable energy, Coal, Oil, Nuclear. Can be planned for and allocated and distributed anywhere for 24/7 usage, however tends to carry a larger environmental cost (Or just crazy people who fear it blindly like for Nuclear).
I remember in school an important lesson that most people do not get about environmentalism. Everything you do has a trade-off. How many fish die in those Tidal/Hydroelectric power. How many trees will you need to knock down for you Solar/Wind farm and what do do about night/no wind... There isn't any golden ticket for free energy they all come with a cost. Right now we are seeing the Fossil Fuels have been giving off there costs for too long and is making the problem worse.
You should be teaching those kids about trade offs, not some magical future tech that will solve all our problems. Explain how to generate electricity how we use different types of energy. How usually when changing one energy to an other there is often a loss to a different form of energy that isn't useful. How to store energy, batteries, flywheels, springs... Heck show them when you stretch a rubber-band it gets warmer, and if you let it contract it gets cooler.
You need to train kids to be think clearly environmentalism not envionuts and go out wasting more resources to stop all the evils that come up.
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I remember in school an important lesson that most people do not get about environmentalism. Everything you do has a trade-off.
Hush. He's supposed to plant anti-capitalistic dreams in these children's heads, not give them actual facts and numbers.
If you show that the most efficient energy source is also the cheapest, then the kids may realize that subsidizing wind farms with tax money depletes our resources more than traditional forms!
The core of the environmental movement today is making Americans to feel guilty for their existence, and then using this guilt to extract money from them. Al Gore has done it by selling carbon credi
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If you show that the most efficient energy source is also the cheapest...
The cheapest energy source is the one where you can push most of the cost to someone else. Preferably, either a future someone else, or someone else in another country.
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This is exactly why we should be pouring all this ill-conceived "green" energy funding into fusion. Wind energy just feels so absurd knowing that you could cover texas in turbines and still not come close to meeting our energy demand.
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>(Or just crazy people who fear it blindly like for Nuclear).
Unnecessary trolling. If you think nuclear is feared without merit, you are not being honest with anyone including yourself.
I am aware of the pro-nuclear argument for the last few decades that failure problems are ALL due to "those old reactors, not the new designs". Allowing that argument to slide, you still have a basic fact that neither the original design manufacturers NOR the investors are interested in paying to upgrade or refit those old
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I never said that there isn't problems with nuclear, or that is is free of trade offs.
But really compared to fossil fuel sources Nuclear is much cleaner and safer, and it is also portable as it can be placed anywhere.
The problem is when someone says how about nuclear energy, you get a bunch of uninformed morons fearing a nuclear blast, or it spewing out radiation killing everyone withing a 3 mile radius, thus preventing the nuclear plant from being created and either being replaced by or prolonging the oper
Wintertime projects (Score:3, Funny)
Random ideas (Score:4, Insightful)
Rocket stoves and fuel efficiency.
A thermal camera along with a study of various insulators such as foams, plastic, types of glass panes.
Make some kind of DIY motor that runs on snow. Should work given temperature differences. And has a nice "But that's impossible!" factor.
DIY paper recycling.
DIY plastic bag recycling by boiling them in a pan. You can make nice strong plastic this way. Heck bring a mold and make some kind of knick knack they get to take home. Be sure it has a logo and website stamped on it somewhere.
Turn a small DC motor into a wind-powered generator.
Organic Batteries (Score:2)
Maybe something to do with organic batteries? I don't have any hands on experience, but they do exist, and some don't involve toxic chemistry. I sort of vaguely think there are even some very minor practical applications in some places. At the very least, you should be able to gin up enough power to light an LED or spin a small motor from a kit you can carry in your suitcase. Maybe you can even generate/store power from/in something cobbled together from local materials at the school.
Non-engineering projects? (Score:3)
1-3 day projects regarding sustainable energy and environmental sciences
Most/all of the answers have been mostly boxed engineering demos, not actual science projects.
The most obvious science project I can think of is gathering a whole bunch of snow, melting it, and figuring out what is inside it other than H2O.
I have done this, and there is a whole heck of a lot of pollen, and all manner of strange dusts under a microscope. Also just plain ole dirt. And its fun to "core sample" once you've got multiple snowfalls. Its easy to see distinct layers.
I'm thinking your suitcase and budget are not big enough for chemical analysis but a Really good trinocular microscope with video output to a TV is probably realistic. Add some ruled counting slides (forget the proper terminology, sorry) and some buckets / beakers to melt the water, maybe a tiny centrifuge and test tubes to concentrate "whatever"... Get yourself a wide collection of variable pore size filter papers and the chemistry gear to do vacuum filtration thru the various sizes.
Final advice, don't collect the yellow snow.
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Get yourself a wide collection of variable pore size filter papers and the chemistry gear to do vacuum filtration thru the various sizes.
Whoops forgot the last line. Then take a couple drops of each filtration level and incubate some agar petri dishes and see what if anything grows. Bacteria, molds, possibly nothing. Those cultured plates also look interesting under the microscope.
Thermal Leak Detector (Score:1)
I live in Maine and insulation is a big thing here in the winter. Buy one of these http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-TLD100-Thermal-Detector/dp/B001LMTW2S
Go around the school, or class room and look for thermal leaks, ask students to find ways to solve these leaks. You can even map out areas that are most common to thermal leaks.
Easy Demo (Score:2)
Maybe you could create a shoe box sized demo refrigerator that had a copper plate on the back and insulation on the front and sides such that the copper plate side would be exposed to the outside air to keep food cold while allowing the interior heat not to escape due to the insulation in the front and sides of the mini fridge.
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or you could just set it in a box outside
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"or you could just set it in a box outside"
The kids probably do that from time to time in Winter at home. We fairly routinely stash stuff in the snow on the table on the deck in Winter and Vermont is warmer than most villages in rural Alaska..
Thermal Detector (Score:2)
Campfire Power (Score:2)
wave power (Score:2)
Since your flying from village to village your probably looking at southeast and/or a Aleutian islands. One thing those kinds of places have in abundance is waves. Perhaps you could find or create a wave generator demonstration kit.
rate of crude oil degradation in various temps (Score:2)
Dumb them down (Score:2)
Congratulations on your new global-citizen-indoctrination job. I'm sure you'll do well, but you first need to understand that the "eco-project" that you're expected to present is NOT supposed to teach science or critical thinking or anything along those lines - instead, it should emphasize the importance of the students' sacrifices for the common good, reliance on appointed "experts" for the amount of sacrifice required, and their total submission to the global leaders for guidance in every aspect of their
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Mine exploded about half way down this page, I'm gonna stop buying the expensive ones :-(
Contact Existing Programs (Score:2)
I would amplify some of the comments suggesting a non-engineering solution by saying that, if you have not already done so, you might capitalize on some existing programs already extant in the state. Among these, there are or two LTER Schoolyard [lternet.edu] programs in Alaska. Schoolyard is the outreach and education component of the National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network [lternet.edu]. The Bonanza Creek LTER [uaf.edu] and their Schoolyard Program [uaf.edu]is hosted at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and, although
Interview village elders (Score:1)
Saline Battery Experiment (Score:1)
I suggest you do some research about it.
The saline solution in several glasses creates a charge at the right temperature.
Worked great for me several years ago lol
Garbage reactor (Score:2)
energy efficiency science (Score:1)
Fuel cells (Score:1)
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Long Term Heat Storage (Score:1)
One of the most needed technologies for regions beyond +-60 degrees latitude is long term
stable and controllable heat reservoir storage.
Knowing what kind and how much insulation to use to store a specific number of
calories for an indefinite period of time is a major experiment.
Also, what types of materials are best for storage of heat.
If you can store heat. You can use it later.
I'll go with the guy on the Sterling engine (Score:1)
I don't know if you can find this as a project "in a box", but ... As a 50 year plus resident of Alaska and someone that used to be involved with the oil industry and later alternative energy, I have always been fainated by the possibilities of the Sterling engine since first learing of it.
Most seem to think of the Sterling as a "heat" engine, I've always looked at it as more of a tempurature differential situation. Not that difficult to find, even in Winter.
You might also check out "Micro Combined Heat
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how mis-informed can one individual be?
so a teacher asks for help and you slam him? if you have no constructive ideas, please don't post.
I lived in Alaska for 4 1/2 years starting in 1971. I was very fortunate to have a high school physics teacher that was very interested in real, usable, inexpensive energy conservation projects. We weren't eco-nuts, just kids learning valuable lessons. We covered subjects as wide ranging as berm-housing to geo-thermal to solar energy. As pointed out by jellomizer all
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I would not want a teacher anywhere near my kids who's effort includes looking a a few solar projects out of a book and running to slashdot.
Your experience sounds fine, sounds like you had a teacher who cared, this one however has the imagination of a brick, the professionalism of a bum, and sofar has spent a whole 2 paragraphs of effort to figure out what they are going to do.
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I dont ask a random community to secure my future from my incompetence, I ask other professionals in the field
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Depends on whether he's flying in a commercial airliner, or more likely, in some dude's little 2-seater, in which case it wouldn't be a problem.
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It's been said that getting a 100% of all our energy needs for the next thousand years wouldn't reduce the Earth's core temperature one degree so it's a potential long term solution.
Wow, makes you think...even if that's assuming no increase in energy use that's damn impressive.