Energy & Place
How does energy production and consumption impact place?
How does your sense of place, environmental ethic and understanding of our energy needs influence your perception and decisions relating to energy production and consumption?
How does your sense of place, environmental ethic and understanding of our energy needs influence your perception and decisions relating to energy production and consumption?
Energy & Place was a joint project between our science and humanities classes. As a result, the latter is linked above.
Infographic Reflection
-What were you trying to convey to your audience through the creation of your infographic? Explain your rationale for focusing on this particular topic/question.
The purpose of my infographic was to use the United States-Russia Highly Enriched Uranium Purchase Agreement as a vector of information transfer concerning the superior energy-density of uranium and nuclear energy's role in the de-nuclear weaponization of the world. I am pro-nuclear energy and I saw this agreement between the United States and Russia as an agreeable way to demonstrate a portion of my rationale when considering this topic. The idea of turning weapons made to destroy cities into the electricity that is their lifeblood is quite intriguing and is therefore a fine way to transmit this knowledge. Nuclear energy is the cleanest, cheapest, densest, most powerful, and safest energy source currently exploitable by humankind. It is also the energy source that has the greatest potential to replace fossil fuels in the near future. My sense of place, environmental ethic, and current level of understanding of the demand for energy by the people of this planet and its inevitable growth result in my support of the proliferation of this technology.
The purpose of my infographic was to use the United States-Russia Highly Enriched Uranium Purchase Agreement as a vector of information transfer concerning the superior energy-density of uranium and nuclear energy's role in the de-nuclear weaponization of the world. I am pro-nuclear energy and I saw this agreement between the United States and Russia as an agreeable way to demonstrate a portion of my rationale when considering this topic. The idea of turning weapons made to destroy cities into the electricity that is their lifeblood is quite intriguing and is therefore a fine way to transmit this knowledge. Nuclear energy is the cleanest, cheapest, densest, most powerful, and safest energy source currently exploitable by humankind. It is also the energy source that has the greatest potential to replace fossil fuels in the near future. My sense of place, environmental ethic, and current level of understanding of the demand for energy by the people of this planet and its inevitable growth result in my support of the proliferation of this technology.
Capstone Lab Reflection
-What did you learn about the nature of science by researching, designing, conducting, analyzing and writing about your own investigation? How has this shaped your perspective about science and scientists?
I learned that scientific procedure just about never works the first time. While I was aware of this before, it hadn't been so apparent until now. The goal of my procedure was to extract potassium from a banana. However, the procedure did not go as planned (details can be found above) and no potassium and thus no results were recovered. This shed light on the extreme dedication and persistence demonstrated by personnel working in the scientific field due to their ability to persevere through failure. I also learned that failure is nearly as good as its opposite as long as the mistakes in the procedure are identified and fixed. Each is one more thing not to do. Novel science as a whole can be thought of like programming. It's all trial and error unless you are lucky.
I learned that scientific procedure just about never works the first time. While I was aware of this before, it hadn't been so apparent until now. The goal of my procedure was to extract potassium from a banana. However, the procedure did not go as planned (details can be found above) and no potassium and thus no results were recovered. This shed light on the extreme dedication and persistence demonstrated by personnel working in the scientific field due to their ability to persevere through failure. I also learned that failure is nearly as good as its opposite as long as the mistakes in the procedure are identified and fixed. Each is one more thing not to do. Novel science as a whole can be thought of like programming. It's all trial and error unless you are lucky.
Materials Science Project
Elevator Pitch
Summary
Materials science is a field that gets glossed over by most people and really doesn't get the attention it deserves. It has given us everyday things like steel, nylon, and plastic, and forecasts for the future in the form of carbon nanotubes, graphene, and high temperature superconductors. In comparison to these previous materials, the subject of my project may seem drab, ordinary, and very dry, it is when it is immersed in seawater that it gets interesting. Sharks have small jelly-filled sacks on their snouts called the ampullae of Lorenzini. Sharks use these to detect electric and magnetic fields to hone in on muscle spasms of injured fish. The materials I researched are what is called electropositive, so they release electrons into another conductive material and generate an electric field. Studies have shown these can be used as shark repellents by overloading the shark's electroreceptors. It is much like a loud noise or bright flash of light in a dark room. It could make one flinch or be uncomfortable.
Materials science is a field that gets glossed over by most people and really doesn't get the attention it deserves. It has given us everyday things like steel, nylon, and plastic, and forecasts for the future in the form of carbon nanotubes, graphene, and high temperature superconductors. In comparison to these previous materials, the subject of my project may seem drab, ordinary, and very dry, it is when it is immersed in seawater that it gets interesting. Sharks have small jelly-filled sacks on their snouts called the ampullae of Lorenzini. Sharks use these to detect electric and magnetic fields to hone in on muscle spasms of injured fish. The materials I researched are what is called electropositive, so they release electrons into another conductive material and generate an electric field. Studies have shown these can be used as shark repellents by overloading the shark's electroreceptors. It is much like a loud noise or bright flash of light in a dark room. It could make one flinch or be uncomfortable.
Project Reflection
Our past, present, and future have and will continue to be shaped by and of the materials we discover and utilize. An example is steel and canvas. When the Europeans, whether they knew it or not, discovered steel, it gave them a huge advantage over everyone else. It allowed them to make weapons far superior to any other in the world at the time giving them the upper hand, especially in the Americas. Canvas composed the sails that allowed them to get there. If Atahualpa and the Inca had discovered these materials first, then it would have been them who sailed across the ocean and garrotted King Charles V.
It seems that as time progresses, materials become more advanced. Most of these advancements have been the result of changes on the atomic and molecular scales. At the time, no one knew that it was because of too much tin and thus to rigid a matrix of atoms that the Liberty Bell cracked. It seems that everything can be explained on the molecular level, and it is only a matter of time before the efforts to manipulate this impossibly tiny world take full swing. People are worried, however, that if not aimed right, this swing may crack the bell. But how does it work? Why does this micro-world affect the macro one we live in now? These questions can be explained quite simply with an analogy. Legos and clumsy Mega Bloks are the same thing. One is, however, too large. This impedes the ability to be precise and make more amazing things. There is a problem in this example, however. If in scale to the Legos, a human would be about 316,000 miles tall. That is about halfway to the Moon. As a result, if we could play with Mega Bloks while punching the Moon, we would be pretty content. Legos are stronger than wood blocks because they are manipulated on a smaller scale. Nanotechnology could be the Legos of the future. By manipulating things with more precise attention to detail, we can make better things. Nanotechnology is the ultimate level of attention to detail.
Most materials can be grouped into a handful of categories. These are ceramics, network solids, polymers, and metals. These are all grouped by appearance and bonding type can be predicted. Ceramics are usually ionically bonded and are thus crystalline while network solids, although crystalline, are covalent. By changing the type of bond, we can make materials that suit our needs. Different bonds interact differently. Ionic bonds form between metals and nonmetals. The non-metals have high electronegativities so they tend to take electrons. Metals have low electronegativities and therefore lose electrons to the nonmetals. Both atoms are now charged (ions). Ionic bonds tend to form lattices and crystals because the ions organize themselves due to their charge. Covalent bonds form when two atoms have the same or very similar electronegativities and share electrons as opposed to taking them. Covalent bonds tend to exist in liquid or gaseous forms and evaporate easily. This is due to the very weak amount of attraction between molecules leading to blurry phase-changes. Polar bonds are a kind of covalent bond but the electrons are shared unevenly. These simply have more defined phase-changes. Network solids are covalently bonded crystals. Carbon forms these quite frequently. An example is diamond. These are incredibly hard but are weak when it comes to collisions and other dynamic movements. If you hit a diamond with a hammer, it will shatter. Metallic bonds are similar to covalent bonds because they share electrons. Because metals are conductive, the electrons are allowed to freely move about the substance. This means that in a metal, each atom is effectively touching every other atom in the substance. This means that metals are held together well so usually have high melting points, but are not usually brittle because the atoms are not bonded to one or two other atoms. Basically, the atoms don't care as much about each other. This makes them malleable.
Extremely small things may seem like all there is to material science. There are things, however, on the macroscopic level that can be useful. For instance, you could build a bridge out of the strongest material known but if the design is faulty, the bridge will fall. This is a weaker analogy because the bridge design is not really materials science, but is still relevant. Aspects in the visible range are still important, but are explained by smaller mechanisms. For instance, if one was making a mirror, a shiny material would be ideal. A lot of things are shiny. Many metals are shiny but can also be beaten into sheets. This means production can be cheaper and the metals would be an ideal group to choose from. If you are trying to make a mirror and the right group is chosen, this means nothing if the metal corrodes and looses its lustre or if it isn't colourless. Basically, none of this matters if your mirror is toxic or yellow.
Now we have talked about incredibly small things, things that are visible, and Legos. What about the middle ground? 'Normal' microscopic things matter too. the things materials scientists do when trying to mimic biology fits into this category. Tiny scales on the skin of sharks are naturally hygienic and people in the medical field are trying to mimic these qualities in counters and other equipment in hospitals. The wings of the blue morpho butterfly have tiny nanostructures that are shaped like wavy french fries stacked next to each other. Blue wavelengths of light fit into the spaces between the waves of the fries and bounce back out but others wavelengths don't. This makes the wings appear a bright iridescent blue. There is no pigment and the wings, if backlit, are brown.
As you can see, this arrangement of extremely small technologies has a very large role to play in the future of humanity, if we make it that far. There is an endless amount of applications for these things that have yet to be thought of. The immensity of applications for this new kind of technology is proportionate to how small some of them are. While it may be true that you shouldn't sweat the small stuff, the small stuff is all there is.
It seems that as time progresses, materials become more advanced. Most of these advancements have been the result of changes on the atomic and molecular scales. At the time, no one knew that it was because of too much tin and thus to rigid a matrix of atoms that the Liberty Bell cracked. It seems that everything can be explained on the molecular level, and it is only a matter of time before the efforts to manipulate this impossibly tiny world take full swing. People are worried, however, that if not aimed right, this swing may crack the bell. But how does it work? Why does this micro-world affect the macro one we live in now? These questions can be explained quite simply with an analogy. Legos and clumsy Mega Bloks are the same thing. One is, however, too large. This impedes the ability to be precise and make more amazing things. There is a problem in this example, however. If in scale to the Legos, a human would be about 316,000 miles tall. That is about halfway to the Moon. As a result, if we could play with Mega Bloks while punching the Moon, we would be pretty content. Legos are stronger than wood blocks because they are manipulated on a smaller scale. Nanotechnology could be the Legos of the future. By manipulating things with more precise attention to detail, we can make better things. Nanotechnology is the ultimate level of attention to detail.
Most materials can be grouped into a handful of categories. These are ceramics, network solids, polymers, and metals. These are all grouped by appearance and bonding type can be predicted. Ceramics are usually ionically bonded and are thus crystalline while network solids, although crystalline, are covalent. By changing the type of bond, we can make materials that suit our needs. Different bonds interact differently. Ionic bonds form between metals and nonmetals. The non-metals have high electronegativities so they tend to take electrons. Metals have low electronegativities and therefore lose electrons to the nonmetals. Both atoms are now charged (ions). Ionic bonds tend to form lattices and crystals because the ions organize themselves due to their charge. Covalent bonds form when two atoms have the same or very similar electronegativities and share electrons as opposed to taking them. Covalent bonds tend to exist in liquid or gaseous forms and evaporate easily. This is due to the very weak amount of attraction between molecules leading to blurry phase-changes. Polar bonds are a kind of covalent bond but the electrons are shared unevenly. These simply have more defined phase-changes. Network solids are covalently bonded crystals. Carbon forms these quite frequently. An example is diamond. These are incredibly hard but are weak when it comes to collisions and other dynamic movements. If you hit a diamond with a hammer, it will shatter. Metallic bonds are similar to covalent bonds because they share electrons. Because metals are conductive, the electrons are allowed to freely move about the substance. This means that in a metal, each atom is effectively touching every other atom in the substance. This means that metals are held together well so usually have high melting points, but are not usually brittle because the atoms are not bonded to one or two other atoms. Basically, the atoms don't care as much about each other. This makes them malleable.
Extremely small things may seem like all there is to material science. There are things, however, on the macroscopic level that can be useful. For instance, you could build a bridge out of the strongest material known but if the design is faulty, the bridge will fall. This is a weaker analogy because the bridge design is not really materials science, but is still relevant. Aspects in the visible range are still important, but are explained by smaller mechanisms. For instance, if one was making a mirror, a shiny material would be ideal. A lot of things are shiny. Many metals are shiny but can also be beaten into sheets. This means production can be cheaper and the metals would be an ideal group to choose from. If you are trying to make a mirror and the right group is chosen, this means nothing if the metal corrodes and looses its lustre or if it isn't colourless. Basically, none of this matters if your mirror is toxic or yellow.
Now we have talked about incredibly small things, things that are visible, and Legos. What about the middle ground? 'Normal' microscopic things matter too. the things materials scientists do when trying to mimic biology fits into this category. Tiny scales on the skin of sharks are naturally hygienic and people in the medical field are trying to mimic these qualities in counters and other equipment in hospitals. The wings of the blue morpho butterfly have tiny nanostructures that are shaped like wavy french fries stacked next to each other. Blue wavelengths of light fit into the spaces between the waves of the fries and bounce back out but others wavelengths don't. This makes the wings appear a bright iridescent blue. There is no pigment and the wings, if backlit, are brown.
As you can see, this arrangement of extremely small technologies has a very large role to play in the future of humanity, if we make it that far. There is an endless amount of applications for these things that have yet to be thought of. The immensity of applications for this new kind of technology is proportionate to how small some of them are. While it may be true that you shouldn't sweat the small stuff, the small stuff is all there is.