Lady Ada tells me that there's an interesting new material that's been developed. It is an alloy that develops a magnetic field in proportion to its temperature. There are some immediate implications to this, most startlingly that it is now possible to turn heat into electricity.
This produces electricity because electricity is produced by a varying magnetic field near a loop of copper wire. Traditional power plants use a spinning magnet -- the wire is exposed to different magnetic fields as the magnet turns. This system would instead produce a magnetic field that changed as the temperature did. As it heats up, the field gets stronger, and as it cools off, the field gets weaker. So if you left it in the sun, it would start to heat up starting a little after dawn, until sunset, when it would be quite hot indeed. After dark, it would cool off. Cyclically, this would produce power, over a longer frame than solar cells because there are no moving parts.
However, the sun isn't the only thing that heats this thing up. You could use car exhaust, fire, nuclear waste, or in colder climates, even just grabbing it periodically. (Less than pleasant, though). The possibilities are literally endless, as heat is the most entropic form of energy, therefore almost all energy-using processes will produce heat. And now that heat can give you some of its energy back as electricity.
Showing posts with label Materials Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Materials Science. Show all posts
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Materials Science in computing
When I first started using computers, you could buy a 10 megabyte harddrive. "That's amazing!" people of the time exclaimed. "That's like ten really high density floppies!" Last year, I bought a 1 terrabyte harddrive, literally100,000 times the capacity of the first. The larger drive worked pretty much the same way. What changed was the material in the platters, which has been studied continuously to improve the capacity. The newer drives can store more ones and zeros on the same amount of magnetic ribbon. (It also rotates faster, and has a more sophisticated attachment system that transmits the data faster. I could do without this -- I did work for a while completely off live-cds, which are way slower than hard drives, when my big hard drive died.)
So, materials. Typically, you start with chemistry. Is the a more interesting way we can arrange the atoms so that it works better? (Sometimes yes, sometimes no.) In the hard drive's case, we've had to make smaller and smaller magnets, which started with mostly iron, but are now mostly a platinum and chromium alloy.
Mechanics have changed slightly. More plates, smaller magnets, more sophisticated magnet-arm. Not nearly as much as the chemistry.
So...thumbs up for chemistry, even though I suck at it. And that it bears little resemblance to the chemistry most people took in high school or college, with the many tubes of bubbling colored liquid. Making a new material alloy is still chemistry.
So, materials. Typically, you start with chemistry. Is the a more interesting way we can arrange the atoms so that it works better? (Sometimes yes, sometimes no.) In the hard drive's case, we've had to make smaller and smaller magnets, which started with mostly iron, but are now mostly a platinum and chromium alloy.
Mechanics have changed slightly. More plates, smaller magnets, more sophisticated magnet-arm. Not nearly as much as the chemistry.
So...thumbs up for chemistry, even though I suck at it. And that it bears little resemblance to the chemistry most people took in high school or college, with the many tubes of bubbling colored liquid. Making a new material alloy is still chemistry.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Plastic bag recycling
Paper, or plastic? When people in America buy groceries, they tend to buy about a week's worth at a time, and this is more than can readily be carried by hand. So markets typically provide bags for easy carrying. Almost all of these are immediately thrown away once the groceries are safely in the refrigerator or pantry. Those that are kept are reused once, again to hold something.
This wouldn't be a problem, except that stores go through thousands of bags per hour, and the plastic bags will remain in their current form for geological periods of time. Should they blow loose, they clutter up (and ugly up) the nearby environment, and harm turtles when they blow into the ocean, and the turtle confuses them with a tasty jellyfish.
The bag can be recycled, by melting it down and running it through an extruder to give it a new shape. But Discovery news reports that a laboratory in Illinois can turn them into fuel. For not much more energy than recycling them would take.
The lab heats them in an airless environment, until the atoms dissociate from each other. The hydrogen is siphoned off for the many uses of loose hydrogen, and the carbon forms into "microspheres," (which sound a lot like buckyballs), which have a thousand-and-one uses. The lab hopes that this will change the economics of plastic bags, such that hobos will cheerfully gather waste bags for money. Quickly, the landfills would empty, and no more would a turtle choke to death on something that existed only for hauling a bunch of food for a few hours at most.
This wouldn't be a problem, except that stores go through thousands of bags per hour, and the plastic bags will remain in their current form for geological periods of time. Should they blow loose, they clutter up (and ugly up) the nearby environment, and harm turtles when they blow into the ocean, and the turtle confuses them with a tasty jellyfish.
The bag can be recycled, by melting it down and running it through an extruder to give it a new shape. But Discovery news reports that a laboratory in Illinois can turn them into fuel. For not much more energy than recycling them would take.
The lab heats them in an airless environment, until the atoms dissociate from each other. The hydrogen is siphoned off for the many uses of loose hydrogen, and the carbon forms into "microspheres," (which sound a lot like buckyballs), which have a thousand-and-one uses. The lab hopes that this will change the economics of plastic bags, such that hobos will cheerfully gather waste bags for money. Quickly, the landfills would empty, and no more would a turtle choke to death on something that existed only for hauling a bunch of food for a few hours at most.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Recycled Antibiotics
LCD screens are pretty cool. They use less power than the old cathode ray tube monitors, take up far less space on a desk, and remain razor-sharp for years at a time. (Remember having to "degauss?") Too bad they're full of poisonous stuff that will surely leak into the ground when the screen goes bad and you throw it away.
Discovery news reports that one of the ingredients in LCD screens can be made into a very powerful antibacterial substance, one that utterly destroys bacteria, yet is perfectly safe for human use.
The discovery comes from the chemistry department of the University of York, United Kingdom. Apparently Polyvinyl alcohol, found in the electronics, can be treated inexpensively to produce a powerful antiseptic. This will cause broken LCD screens to no longer be thrown away -- you'll be gleefully selling them to chemistry labs, who'll be remaking them into useful things for hospitals.
Discovery news reports that one of the ingredients in LCD screens can be made into a very powerful antibacterial substance, one that utterly destroys bacteria, yet is perfectly safe for human use.
The discovery comes from the chemistry department of the University of York, United Kingdom. Apparently Polyvinyl alcohol, found in the electronics, can be treated inexpensively to produce a powerful antiseptic. This will cause broken LCD screens to no longer be thrown away -- you'll be gleefully selling them to chemistry labs, who'll be remaking them into useful things for hospitals.
Friday, July 2, 2010
New Battery Technology
Much of the modern world depends upon batteries. We have more and more portable gadgets that require batteries for the electrical power they consume. (Since requiring a wall-plug would make them significantly less portable.) Good batteries could also free us from the tyranny of gasoline, having cars powered by electricity made by whatever fuel source is cheapest this week.
Discovery News is reporting that a new battery technology would make batteries with ten times the capacity of the previous lithium-ion batteries, thus allowing your gadgets to run ten times as long. Hallelujah.
The new discovery isn't all rainbows and sunshine, though. It's difficult and expensive, involving carbon nanotubes laid exactly-so, so these miracle batteries would cost an order of magnitude more than the ones you have now. You may gain huge benefits, but you'll pay through the nose to achieve them. At least until the technology improves, and the batteries get so commonplace, that they get cheaper and cheaper.
Still, one step closer to decent electric cars, laptops that run for days at a time, and pacemakers that require much less maintenance. Everybody wins.
(Also, this is post #500. Woot.)
Discovery News is reporting that a new battery technology would make batteries with ten times the capacity of the previous lithium-ion batteries, thus allowing your gadgets to run ten times as long. Hallelujah.
The new discovery isn't all rainbows and sunshine, though. It's difficult and expensive, involving carbon nanotubes laid exactly-so, so these miracle batteries would cost an order of magnitude more than the ones you have now. You may gain huge benefits, but you'll pay through the nose to achieve them. At least until the technology improves, and the batteries get so commonplace, that they get cheaper and cheaper.
Still, one step closer to decent electric cars, laptops that run for days at a time, and pacemakers that require much less maintenance. Everybody wins.
(Also, this is post #500. Woot.)
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Unbreakable Iphone
Everyone who's ever owned a phone with a touchscreen knows the problems that the screen can develop. Many of them break if dropped, or if poked the wrong way, and the fix is both annoying and expensive. Especially if it breaks a lot. Both parts and labor quickly add up to princely sums.
Discovery news reports that research has produced a flexible screen that is very difficult to break. Cell phone owners worldwide rejoice. Your phone is less vulnerable to all kinds of things now, from accidental drops, leaving it in your pants while they run though the wash, to a too-hard poke.
The secret lies in graphene, a carbon-chain molecule that provides the new screen with both strength and flexibility, which should protect it the way a tree survives a hurricane: by flexing away from damaging shocks.
Discovery news reports that research has produced a flexible screen that is very difficult to break. Cell phone owners worldwide rejoice. Your phone is less vulnerable to all kinds of things now, from accidental drops, leaving it in your pants while they run though the wash, to a too-hard poke.
The secret lies in graphene, a carbon-chain molecule that provides the new screen with both strength and flexibility, which should protect it the way a tree survives a hurricane: by flexing away from damaging shocks.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Cheap Solar Cells
Via Lady Ada, I have learned that a new technique has been pioneered to make inexpensive and powerful solar cells by depositing more effective chemicals on top of the traditional silicon.
Silicon solar cells are about 10% efficient. That is, of all the solar energy that hits them, 10% becomes electricity, and the other 90% is turned to heat. With the chemical additive, the cells are now 40% efficient. The main problem in the past was that the expensive additive was very fragile, and tended to break while being put in place, when ruined the cell.
With the depositing trick, the fragile layer builds up on top of the silicon, which tends to hold its shape. The best of both worlds is thereby achieved. This should make solar power cheaper.
Anything that helps us get more energy with less pollution, I'm all for it.
Silicon solar cells are about 10% efficient. That is, of all the solar energy that hits them, 10% becomes electricity, and the other 90% is turned to heat. With the chemical additive, the cells are now 40% efficient. The main problem in the past was that the expensive additive was very fragile, and tended to break while being put in place, when ruined the cell.
With the depositing trick, the fragile layer builds up on top of the silicon, which tends to hold its shape. The best of both worlds is thereby achieved. This should make solar power cheaper.
Anything that helps us get more energy with less pollution, I'm all for it.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Mad Materials Engineering
When I was in the 8th grade, my lab partner and I had finished with our experiments for the day. I was one of the smarter kids, and he was also ahead of the curve, so we finished long before everyone else. Bored, we then noted that we had a hot plate and some chalk. What was blackboard chalk, anyway? We saw it every day, and still had no idea where it came from. (Besides "schools.") We decided to do an experiment.
We put the chalk on the hot plate, and watched it carefully. Was it an organic compound, that would burst into flames, or an inorganic compound that would melt? (In either case, we watched carefully so that we could quickly unplug the hot plate, extinguish any flames, and cool it back to a safe temperature when needed.) Before we got that far, our teacher interrupted by sending us both to the principal's office for unauthorized experiments, where we both got chewed out. That jerk.
Since then, I've learned that blackboard chalk is Calcium Sulphate, and it is usually made by processing a natural rock called Gypsum, crushing it up and pressing it into a stick. It is inorganic and does not catch fire. It melts at 1460C, a temperature we would not have achieved with a high school hot plate. Gypsum is also processed into Drywall, a housing compound that makes the house more difficult to set fire to, a definitely desired property.
I think it would be nice if there was a lab that just played with materials to invent new ones. The funders would get the patent on anything the lab discovered. Various chemical, nanotechnology, and heating and cooling experiments would surely invent some new interesting material.
Expert researchers would be preferred, because they would already have some knowledge about what kinds of experiments would be most effective, and that's worth the extra cost of hiring them.
We put the chalk on the hot plate, and watched it carefully. Was it an organic compound, that would burst into flames, or an inorganic compound that would melt? (In either case, we watched carefully so that we could quickly unplug the hot plate, extinguish any flames, and cool it back to a safe temperature when needed.) Before we got that far, our teacher interrupted by sending us both to the principal's office for unauthorized experiments, where we both got chewed out. That jerk.
Since then, I've learned that blackboard chalk is Calcium Sulphate, and it is usually made by processing a natural rock called Gypsum, crushing it up and pressing it into a stick. It is inorganic and does not catch fire. It melts at 1460C, a temperature we would not have achieved with a high school hot plate. Gypsum is also processed into Drywall, a housing compound that makes the house more difficult to set fire to, a definitely desired property.
I think it would be nice if there was a lab that just played with materials to invent new ones. The funders would get the patent on anything the lab discovered. Various chemical, nanotechnology, and heating and cooling experiments would surely invent some new interesting material.
Expert researchers would be preferred, because they would already have some knowledge about what kinds of experiments would be most effective, and that's worth the extra cost of hiring them.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
An Age Paradox
My hard drive is one year old. I bought it in 2008. But the oldest file on it dates back to November 24th, 1997. How can I have a file that's 11 years older than the drive? Good question.
For you see, in the past 11 years, I've upgraded several times. Sometimes it was because I had money and a newer, faster, bigger, better hard drive was for sale. Other times it was because the drive was in imminent failure, and I had to upgrade or lose my files forever. My newest drive is 1 (manufacturer's) terrabyte, which is larger than anyone could have even dreamed of in the past.
But as for my file, I have kept it all these 11 years by copying it. Each time I got a new drive, I would format the new drive, copy over all my files, and then erase the old drive. Depending on how good the old drive was, I could move it to another computer, use it as a scratch drive, or just destroy it and throw it away.
So how did I get a file older than the hard drive? Well, when I copied the files over, they kept their times. After all, copying the file doesn't create it all over again, it makes a new file last modified at the time of copying, but created at the time as the original file. This makes sense, right? The copied file is not new information. So because of this, I can have a file back from 6 copies ago. Or 100. Or several million.
In related news, people are worried because of how information is stored on hard drives and CDs, which will all be completely dead within ten years. Unless this is archived, there is a good chance that it will be lost forever, and future historians will have a massive gap with this portion of history.
This need not be the case. Egyptian stonework, 4000 years old at this point, is as legible today as when it was carved. (Although it has deteriorated slightly. It used to be much prettier.) 4000 years is quite impressive in the face of 10.
I do have to wonder about what to chose to preserve. Everything ever posted on the Usenet networks has now been preserved by Google, using massive effort to save every last byte of it. And while some of it is significant history, much more of it is pointless trolling, flaming, and spamming. This is also being preserved at great expense. Perhaps Google does not want to appear biased in their preservation.
I mean, we do not have every, say, medieval manuscript ever made. Many were erased as a way of recycle paper, or tossed in the fire because some lord decided it was useless, or left in a warehouse until it rotted away. Would it impoverish future historians to not have some of the lamer groups (Hypothetically let's say: alt.flame.picard-is-better-no-kirk-is-dammit) to read and see how much excessive free time some 20th century humans had?
For you see, in the past 11 years, I've upgraded several times. Sometimes it was because I had money and a newer, faster, bigger, better hard drive was for sale. Other times it was because the drive was in imminent failure, and I had to upgrade or lose my files forever. My newest drive is 1 (manufacturer's) terrabyte, which is larger than anyone could have even dreamed of in the past.
But as for my file, I have kept it all these 11 years by copying it. Each time I got a new drive, I would format the new drive, copy over all my files, and then erase the old drive. Depending on how good the old drive was, I could move it to another computer, use it as a scratch drive, or just destroy it and throw it away.
So how did I get a file older than the hard drive? Well, when I copied the files over, they kept their times. After all, copying the file doesn't create it all over again, it makes a new file last modified at the time of copying, but created at the time as the original file. This makes sense, right? The copied file is not new information. So because of this, I can have a file back from 6 copies ago. Or 100. Or several million.
In related news, people are worried because of how information is stored on hard drives and CDs, which will all be completely dead within ten years. Unless this is archived, there is a good chance that it will be lost forever, and future historians will have a massive gap with this portion of history.
This need not be the case. Egyptian stonework, 4000 years old at this point, is as legible today as when it was carved. (Although it has deteriorated slightly. It used to be much prettier.) 4000 years is quite impressive in the face of 10.
I do have to wonder about what to chose to preserve. Everything ever posted on the Usenet networks has now been preserved by Google, using massive effort to save every last byte of it. And while some of it is significant history, much more of it is pointless trolling, flaming, and spamming. This is also being preserved at great expense. Perhaps Google does not want to appear biased in their preservation.
I mean, we do not have every, say, medieval manuscript ever made. Many were erased as a way of recycle paper, or tossed in the fire because some lord decided it was useless, or left in a warehouse until it rotted away. Would it impoverish future historians to not have some of the lamer groups (Hypothetically let's say: alt.flame.picard-is-better-no-kirk-is-dammit) to read and see how much excessive free time some 20th century humans had?
Sunday, May 24, 2009
The Gold Market
I've been seeing a lot of commercials for gold, as an investment lately. They're really stupid. "Gold is worth so much money, it'll probably go up even more! Buy some, it has never been worth zero!"
Okay, what they're saying is technically true. Gold's price has climbed to over $800/oz due to psychotic libertarians and republicans buying the crap out of it to outmaneuver what they see as the imminent collapse of the federal banking system. If I believed them, this would be one of the less stupid currency exchanges to go for.
However, gold's price isn't guaranteed to go up, and the commercials always neglect to mention that sometimes gold prices go down. Especially if the supply increases (due to finding more reserves, or more people selling), or if interest decreases (who would want gold if they could collect, say, 14% interest on a sweet, sweet bank cd?). And that "it never has been worth zero" will be of little comfort to the investor who buys it at $900 per ounce and then has to sell it at $20 per ounce because they needed groceries.
No, I think now is the time to be SELLING gold. Anything golden that you have and don't want anymore, sell it. You'll get ludicrous amounts of money for a metal whose primary selling points are that it's shiny, noncorrosive, and conducts electricity well.
This situation is, of course, made worse by "gold is money" libertarians who slobber over the idea of paying for their necessities with solid gold coins that they mint themselves. The federally backed dollar annoys the living crap out of them on the grounds that it would be valueless without the government, which they hate.
For the sake of national sanity, I think somebody has to crash the gold market. You can do that by introducing huge amounts of gold into circulation. How? Let's say you've already sold all your unwanted stuff.
There are flakes of gold in seawater. Boil away the water, sort away the other minerals (mostly sodium) by chemical means, and collect the gold. This would work well with previously described desalinization machines. There is gold in some soils, extracted by complicated cyanide chemistry. Much of this is in California. The 1860 gold rush only removed half of California's gold, and now the other half is being extracted now that it's worthwhile. And there's gold in space.
According to NASA, our solar system is rich in gold. The four terrestrial planets should have gold at around the same rate as earth, as should the solid moons of the gas planets. NASA should get a good geologist, and start harvesting Martian gold. It'd pay the year's budget, a definite cause to rub it in Congress's face.
There's gold in the deep crust, but that's kind of hard to work with. Shift through volcanic lava? No thanks.
All the gold ever produced by humankind would, if melted and cast together, be a 14 foot cube. It would fit in the average American living room, but be so heavy as to shatter the concrete slab, or, if there is a basement, rip through the floor and fall through. It's about time that a 15th foot be added. Not because gold is wonderful, but to end the insanity.
Okay, what they're saying is technically true. Gold's price has climbed to over $800/oz due to psychotic libertarians and republicans buying the crap out of it to outmaneuver what they see as the imminent collapse of the federal banking system. If I believed them, this would be one of the less stupid currency exchanges to go for.
However, gold's price isn't guaranteed to go up, and the commercials always neglect to mention that sometimes gold prices go down. Especially if the supply increases (due to finding more reserves, or more people selling), or if interest decreases (who would want gold if they could collect, say, 14% interest on a sweet, sweet bank cd?). And that "it never has been worth zero" will be of little comfort to the investor who buys it at $900 per ounce and then has to sell it at $20 per ounce because they needed groceries.
No, I think now is the time to be SELLING gold. Anything golden that you have and don't want anymore, sell it. You'll get ludicrous amounts of money for a metal whose primary selling points are that it's shiny, noncorrosive, and conducts electricity well.
This situation is, of course, made worse by "gold is money" libertarians who slobber over the idea of paying for their necessities with solid gold coins that they mint themselves. The federally backed dollar annoys the living crap out of them on the grounds that it would be valueless without the government, which they hate.
For the sake of national sanity, I think somebody has to crash the gold market. You can do that by introducing huge amounts of gold into circulation. How? Let's say you've already sold all your unwanted stuff.
There are flakes of gold in seawater. Boil away the water, sort away the other minerals (mostly sodium) by chemical means, and collect the gold. This would work well with previously described desalinization machines. There is gold in some soils, extracted by complicated cyanide chemistry. Much of this is in California. The 1860 gold rush only removed half of California's gold, and now the other half is being extracted now that it's worthwhile. And there's gold in space.
According to NASA, our solar system is rich in gold. The four terrestrial planets should have gold at around the same rate as earth, as should the solid moons of the gas planets. NASA should get a good geologist, and start harvesting Martian gold. It'd pay the year's budget, a definite cause to rub it in Congress's face.
There's gold in the deep crust, but that's kind of hard to work with. Shift through volcanic lava? No thanks.
All the gold ever produced by humankind would, if melted and cast together, be a 14 foot cube. It would fit in the average American living room, but be so heavy as to shatter the concrete slab, or, if there is a basement, rip through the floor and fall through. It's about time that a 15th foot be added. Not because gold is wonderful, but to end the insanity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
