Whatever we are curious to know - we have to earn money, too!

So here an off-topic link:
http://SteadyIncomeNow.com

have a look - Money makes the World Go Round...

Help! Our way of life is in danger!

An overwhelming percentage of our energy supply is based on finite resources. We use coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear fission energy, and – well, that's about it. Renewable energy covers only a few percent of the human energy consumption.

At the beginning of the Industrial Age, nobody cared. Making more and more energy accessible was the only concern then. The fossil energy resources seemed unlimited. And when in the fifties of the last century first ideas emerged about possible limitations of oil production, the solution seemed around the corner: Use nukes!

Now we are somewhat less optimistic. We know, for instance, that the raw material for nuclear fission energy is very limited, while the radioactive waste will have to be safeguarded for a few thousand years. And in the seventies, we had a small oil crunch which drove home on most people that there is no guarantee for continuous supply of fuel in ever increasing measure.

Oil production in the US has reached it's peak in the early seventies and is declining since. We cannot accurately assess the world wide oil reserves because most of them are in “strategically challenging” areas stretching from the near east to the Caspian Sea and further to Siberia where independent experts are not really welcome. Still the estimates of secure oil reserves are rather close: Between 35 and 41 years. Not too long indeed.

And natural gas?

Half of the world gas reserve is split between just three countries: Russia, Iran, Qatar (Emirates). It is mostly delivered via long pipelines – of course, they don't stretch across the ocean and don't reach the USA. The estimates are between 40 years (IEA = International Energy Agency) and 65 years (BP).

And coal?

Assuming the same consumption as today, coal will perhaps be around for another 155 years.

And all of these limited energy supplies, when used, pollute our atmosphere with CO₂ or even worse substances.

So what now? Just get depressed? Give up our way of life? Bow in penitence?

Bullshit.

We need more optimism than ever, and we are more than justified to be optimistic.

Do we REALLY want to spend energy? Or pollute the environment?

Nope.

We want our homes warm in winter and moderately cool in summer. We want to get around without having to fold ourselves into a rice bowl. We want to be able to take a shower occasionally instead of scratching the dirt off our skin. We want to enjoy life and not be bullied by anybody.

As a matter of fact, all this is not possible without energy consumption. So what? - Let me tell you what:

1. More than before, we take care now that we get our money's worth. If we have to pay for energy, we want to get the most out of it and not let it run with our money. If a car can satisfy our needs – I mean: in a generous way – with 48 miles a gallon, why accept a car which yields only 12? If a house can be built so that no heating is needed even in the coldest winters, why accept a shack which does such a lousy job protecting us that we have to burn a thousand gallons oil a year? If a new fridge pays for itself in the first year, why keep the old energy waster?
   
   Energy conservation does not have to curb our well-being.

2. More than before, we use sustainable energy like bio diesel, wind- and solar power. The sun sends us more than enough energy, we must only learn to capture it. Another way to produce energy is under development, that is nuclear FUSION power.
   
   With new technology, new jobs are around the corner.

Conclusion: Mankind has what it takes to live up to the situation. There are alternatives to burning fossil energy. Even with better energy conservation, much more energy will be consumed in the future than today (China, India, other developing countries), and it is very well possible to do so without the destructive side effects of the old technology. We are open for new ways, let's elect leaders who lead us our way. Let's spend our economic resources for innovation, not war.

See you

Thomas Oestereich

A Consideration...

given the fact that most problems understanding physics are routed in problems understanding maths, what do you think - shouldn't someone (me) start writing a maths helper?

And am I right to suppose that most pressing would be to get "infinitesimal calculus" explained, I mean derivatives and integrals?

If I did it, I would not give it away for free (well knowing that pupils will copy it and give their friends, so I wouldn't earn money anyway). But if something doesn't cost anything, it isn't worth anything. Just downloading a math helper wouldn't do the charm, some personal effort (reading) is still required. So demanding a couple of dollars would definitely a better strategy than giving it for free.

Your comments on this idea are most welcome!

All the best
Thomas Oestereich
http://physics.global-momentum.net

Almost an Oil Crunch in Europe

You may be aware of the important role oil plays today. You may even belong to those who speculate that some (bellicose) aspects of US foreign policies, often criticized by Europeans, are somehow linked to securing constant oil imports into the country. So it may be some mischievous relief for you to learn about the headlock some European countries found themselves in recently, albeit only for a couple of days, from Monday, Jan. 8th, until Thursday, Jan. 11th.

What happened?

Because of the trouble with OPEC oil, European countries, too, have started looking for other suppliers. As they share the continent with one of the largest oil-rich countries on the globe, Russia, what could have been a more obvious solution than getting the oil from there! In the case of Germany, a whooping 35% of the countrie's oil supply is arriving from Russia via pipelines. Normally, that is.

Russia is definitely not identical with the deceased Soviet empire. The latter was serving treaties very reliably and could be trusted as a furnisher of whatever goods. But although Moscow is no longer the capital of a superpower, the mighty there still demand a high degree of submissiveness of its neighbours and when they occasionally feel they don't get it, they don't hesitate to bully them. And even worse, they don't bother any more whether or not their actions affect third parties with whom they have contracts.

And now it was White Russia, hitherto a much-loved friend of Moscow, with one of the last European dictators still in power. White Russia was naughty. They just didn't want to accept the massive price hike Russia wants to impose on the oil the Russian GASPROM trust sells them and delivers through the pipelines which have been built in the Soviet era. And in the arguments resulting from this dialectically antithetic situation, the White Russians retaliated and declared they would start imposing fees on the oil which just transits the country on its way to the west. At the same time, they canceled their own oil orders. Which prompted Russia to allege oil theft and shut down all pipelines going in the direction to White Russia, so cutting off not only White Russia, but as well Western Europe.

Well, you can imagine that the governments in the affected western European countries have been fast to assert that oil reserves are high and the winter warm, and that there are pipelines from Russia which don't cross White Russia ... but they nevertheless didn't shy away from telling both countries that this was not the way they were supposed to act. They even threatened Russia with "consequences", very impressive indeed.

That was the official part.

But this demonstration of dependence on Russia and its caprices regarding the vital supply of energy has stirred up much more public movement. All the atom energy lobbyists felt their time had come to go against the decision some countries (like Germany) have taken to get out of atom fission energy. All solar power energy and renewable energy lobbyists made their point. All the environmentalists re-stated that saving energy is a must. All the coal lobbyists underlined that it would be really bad to say good-bye to the most important home-made energy (which is subsidized with billions of Euro every year).

But ONE voice was missing: Nobody talked about accelerating the development of nuclear FUSION energy, sometimes referred to as "magnetic energy", which by its very nature is much safer than today's nukes are.

But now everything is back to normal, up to the next time when Russia, Persia, Venezuela, ... (your preferred oil supplier goes here) goes crazy.

Don't worry, be happy. And definitely put physics into your daily life!

Thomas Oestereich
http://physics.global-momentum.net

New Energy Management in Maritime Navigation

I have recently stumbled on an article in my local newspaper ("Der Tagesspiegel", Berlin, Germany, Jan. 5th 2007) about how to save fuel costs of ships. In short: Employ wind power and slow down.

The fuel consumption of a ship rises with the third power of its velocity, that's why slowing down just 10% can save a quarter of the fuel normally consumed.

To exploit renewable energies for ships, there are very interesting methods around. My personal choice for the most interesting one is with us since the twenties of the last century: The Flettner-rotors, named after the engineer Anton Flettner who developed them.

Flettner-rotors are big vertical cylinders, turning around their axis' (not much energy required to keep them spinning). They make the wind pull a ship ahead even when the wind blows from a side, and they are roughly ten times more efficient than sails.

Some research teams follow a completely different approach to reduce fuel consumption: They monitor weather and sea currents, and on that base propose optimized routes for ships e. g. between Europe and the US which help saving fuel. Let nature do the work.

Unfortunately, those energy saving methods have a price tag attached to them which consumes nearly all the financial savings of lower fuel consumption - at todays fuel prices, that is. But as I have mentioned in my last blog, they WILL rise, and the alternative ways will become competitive. Very competitive indeed, as their costs will reduce once introduced in large scale and once the experience gained gets them improved and simplified.

Look forward to many blossoms of human creativity!

Thomas Oestereich

http://physics.global-momentum.net/

Energy-energy-energy...

we depend on it. Why we need more of it all the time - I did explain why, see my first blog entry. But although we need more energy all the time, and the supply falls back behind the demand, we don't have to pay ever increasing prices. Why? Because rising prices let's say of oil shift up the commercial break-even point of alternative forms of energy. Methods of energy production which are not employed today, will be employed once higher oil prices make them financially interesting. With this additional offer of energy to the market place, the demand for oil is curbed, the price hike slowed down and finally stopped and even reversed.

Reversed, why? - As experience shows, every technology we employ is improved while it is in use and gets cheaper over time.

The warning the "Club of Rome" pronounced in the seventies, that resources are limited and growth of our economies consequentially has to come to a halt eventually, this warning may have had little visible effect. But it did raise interest in alternative ways of production. It has given the various environmentalist organisations a stronger legitimacy. And it has helped to get funds for research into alternative resources, notably energy resources. So today, we have many ways to replace traditional sources of primary energy - some in first applications, more still in their laboratory stage.

Once we start using them on a broader base, i. e. outside the laboratories, we develop skills and production methods which make them more and more worthwhile. We can see this today with wind energy and solar energy. And we will see this tomorrow with hydrogen motors and electricity producing hydrogen fuel cells.

But these are only the most spectacular methods to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Nearly every day we hear of other activities in the same direction. At present, unfortunately, most cost at least as much money as they save.

So for our politicians, it's the choice: Either

• let fuel prices skyrocket so that all the alternative energies and energy saving strategies "naturally" become competitive, or
• fund those new ways for a while so they help keeping fuel prices low - comparatively low, near today's level.

The other sides of these two coins are:

• Strangle economy by high energy costs, or
• either take taxpayer's money away from those who get it today or incur higher debts.

What are they most likely to do? They will incur higher debts for all kinds of consumptive activity and just invest as little as possible in innovative technology.

Please, please prove me wrong!!

Let's Copy Mother Nature

Who would have thought that a part of our society so un-environmentally geared as the automotive industry would take vital interest in nature? And still it is true:

• The trunkfish is used as a model for the form of a car - a "bionic car" (Daimler-Chrysler).
• The microscopic surface structure of the lotus blossom has become an example for car lacquer and wheel rim coating.
• Parts of the sheet metal structural elements of cars get small hexagonal embossings because this principle gives the aforementioned trunkfish its stability, and - of course - improves the stability of cars.
  
• The root system of trees delivers the design example for new gearboxes which show greater stability with less weight.
• The skin of a frog's foot is the model on which tires are built for a safer grip on wet road surfaces.

Why do they pay so much attention on nature's ways? Because nature very often finds an optimum between minimal use of resources (material, weight) and maximum output (resistibility, strength). How this? Because of the power which created these "solutions", the power of the evolution.

This realization didn't leave the engineers unimpressed. If the evolution of species has led to better solutions than direct design calculation, then why don't we use the same strategy and improve our results?

Well, we do. Here an example:

For engines to be powerful, a lot of air must be supplied for the combustion process. The ducts which lead the air impede the flow. To get the best possible solution with minimal impedance, engineers do not only look at the way how rivers float, but as well use an active evolution strategy: They let a virtual liquid flow through a calculated tubing system in a sufficiently powerful computer. The simulation today is good enough to correctly show areas of turbulence or stagnation (dead water) which have to be avoided. The form of the tubing is then varied in small random steps. Whenever a variation improves the flow characteristics, it is maintained and becomes the starting point for the next variations. Else the variation is revoked.

This same strategy is used on many fronts of technical development, not just that of cars.

So we should not allow any fundamentalists to cut our youth off from insight into the principles of evolution, because we need these youngsters at the forefront of progress.

Think about it!

Thomas Oestereich
http://physics.global-momentum.net

Helium Voice or Helium Stimme

Using helium to fill decorative balloons for kids parties has become quite common those days. And many people know that breathing helium and then talking renders a funny Micky Mouse voice.

Two points:

1. Do you know why this happens?
2. Do you know why breathing helium is dangerous?

To the first: a) Because of its low molecular mass, in helium the speed of sound is much higher than in air. But the size of the voice box and hence the wavelength of the sound are the same. With higher speed of progagation, the same wavelength corresponds to a higher frequency. Higher frequenzy means higher pitch. b) The helium gas is lighter and less viscous than air. So the voice folds vibrate faster as the resistance of helium against their movement is lower than that of air. c) The sound of our voices is composed of many different components with different frequencies. In helium, the resonance frequencies are higher, so the higher pitch components are heard more loudly than in air. All three influences together produce the famous helium voice.

To the second: While helium is nontoxic, it is nonbeneficial, too. What we need from the air we breathe is the oxygen, which is somewhat above 20% of the gas mix we call air. Helium is an inert gas, so it does not undergo chemical reactions. For just this reason, it is no replacement for oxygen in our body's metabolism. We cannot survive in an atmosphere of helium. Filling our lungs deeply with helium can make us lose conscienceness very fast, and even irritate our breathing reflex.

If you don't want to jeopardize your life or that of your guests, just play other jokes, not the "helium stimme".

All the best
Thomas Oestereich

The Secret of Oscillations

Have you ever seen a pendulum swing? The pendulum of a grandfather's clock, maybe? Or of a cuckoo clock?

Keep your eyes at the weight. No, don't get hypnotized. It swings left-and-up, it stalls, halts, reverses, goes down and speeds up, with maximum speed it then passes the lowest point, goes right-and-up, stalls, ... and so on.

What is happening from the perspective of energy?

At its lowest point, the pendulum has the highest speed. A mass moving at any velocity has some movement energy, called "kinetic energy". Again an ancient Greek word. But where is the energy going when the pendulum gets slower, finally halts?

Yes, you are right. Because it has risen in position, the pendulum has acquired the possibility to fall down again. It has acquired energy of position, oftentimes called "potential energy". This happened because it moved against the attractive force of the earth, its momentum lifted it against its weight. The weight slowed it down and finally accelerated it in the other direction.

The interesting point here is that the energy changes form without any incentive, so to speak. Normally energy only flows in or out or anywhere when and if something called "entropy" rises along the way. But here the energy goes from kinetic energy to energy of position and back to kinetic energy and... and so on. Permanently? Well, not really, because the joint of the pendulum is not completely free of friction, and because, at least in the case of an old-fashioned clock, the pendulum swings in air which as well causes "dissipation" of energy. It's a damped oscillation. That's why the clock has to push the pendulum at every swing a little bit to make up for the damping.

But if you have seen a really great pendulum like let's say the one in the Griffith Observatory near LA, a pendulum a couple of storys high with a really heavy weight at its end, then you know that friction can be practically non-existent. Once moving, that pendulum will swing for days without any push.

So there really is a special process here, energy swings back and forth between two states, and the loss of energy out of the system is not the reason for this constant transformation (because it can be made arbitrarily small without affecting the main process). So it is justified to regard the entire pendulum as just ONE system containing energy, the more so as you cannot only reduce the kinetic energy or only the potential energy.

Why is this so interesting? Because this same principle is the basis for so many beauties of nature of which we are part. Just think of waves in a pond into which you have thrown a stone. Water is going up and down. There is an additional element though: The water waves move ahead - what the clock (hopefully) doesn't do. Another example: Light, light is an electromagnetic "pendulum", the energy swings from a magnetic field into an electric field and back. And light waves have the same property, they swing while propagating. And the entire swinging system is just one entity which keeps a certain amount of energy.

So the secret of oscillations and waves is that energy swings in them between different states, kinetic and potential, magnetic field and electric field, back and forth.

Why is this property of oscillations so special that it is worth mentioning at all? Well - wouldn't it be great if energy in the state of fuel, which we transform into the state of movement of our car, at the end of the day came back as fuel again? But nay, here energy is transforming due to an "incentive", namely the production of entropy. So you wouldn't expect the fuel to come back into the tank by itself, would you?

Oscillations ARE special.

For more thoughts and resources have a look here:

http://physics.global-momentum.net

Regards
Thomas Oestereich

Climate Change - how to curb it?

Every day man-made circumstances make the earth lose 100 different species of plants and animals, 100,000 acres of arable land, millions of tons of fertile soil (by erosion). Still we continue to blow hundred million metric tons of greenhouse gas into the earth's atmosphere - every day.

The greenhouse gases are but a fraction of the entire spectrum of chemicals we release into our own environment. We cannot help to take up some of them into our very bodies. We are what we eat.

But most of the damage we do to the earth is somehow related to our need for energy. The heating up of our planet is probably the most dangerous consequence of what we are doing.

So what? Is there a solution?

Let's go to the good news now: Yes, there is a solution. Actually a bundle of solutions. Let's concentrate on the two most promising ways out of desaster we have, both related to energy production without pollution:

Already now, mankind starts to use solar energy. There are wind wheels in many countries today, and wind energy is just a form of solar energy because the sun is what drives the weather. All renewable energy is solar energy in a way. When we talk about solar energy, we refer to what the sun sends us in our time. The fossil energy (coal, oil) we use is solar energy, too, but from millions and millions of years ago.

But aside from wind generators and renewable fuels like bio-diesel and bio-ethanol, there are as well more and more solar electric plants which convert sunrays to electricity, and others which rather collect heat and replace fossil fuels for heating.

The other solution is little talked about. It is nuclear fusion energy which contrary to contemporary nuclear power plants, rather than splitting big atoms into smaller ones, fuses small atoms to yield bigger ones. It is the very same physical process which makes the sun produce its energy for the next 4.5 billion years.

What we need is quite obvious, and sad to say, we will need the governments to step in. We cannot rely on private initiative and spread of reason. We need (more) programs to help solar energy, and we need a bigger effort to finance fusion energy. With the latter, the scientists have now reached a very important breakeven point: The process produces more energy than it consumes. But at the present day level of finance, the scientists say, they will need another fifty (50!!) years before we can expect the economic breakeven, that is before we can expect the first fusion power plants to go active.

Way too long.

Energy - how come we need more and more?

Well, if you have ever been in highschool, you have probably run across a subject called "Physics". And there you have been told that energy can neither be created nor destroyed: Law of conservation of energy.

So what is it they are all talking about, "source of energy", "energy crisis", "energy conservation" and so on - if you can neither create nor destroy it, how can there be sources and how shortages? How come that energy is conserved under all circumstances and we still constantly need more of it? What happens with the energy once we have used it if we are not annihilating it?

Easy. Let's look at another vital ressource: Water. Yes, it is different. Yes, water can be "made" and "destroyed". But in actual fact, this does not happen on a big scale. So we are nearly right if we say: Water is neither created nor destroyed. Still water can be in short supply, and I am not only talking about the earth's deserts here.

For instance: With all the people moving to the US West Coast, water supply has become an issue there.

Now let's aks the same question: What happens to the water once we have used it if we are not annihilating it?

The answer is quite evident, what do you think?

You drink something. Even if it is a sugary softdrink of any kind, if it satisfies your thirst, it has to be basically water. And then, where does it go after you drink it?

Or think of laundry. Fresh water enters the washing machine, cleans the wash, which then is tumbled dry. And the water?

May be you take a shower once in a while. Clean water leaves the shower head,... well you know the process. Finally it goes down the drain.

Yes, you got it. Some evaporates (sweating, heat-drying), most remains liquid, but is degraded.

When we use water, we degrade it. So after being used once, it cannot immediately be used again, not even the part we recuperate in liquid form. It has to be processed one way or another. Partly, mother nature takes care of it, lets the sun evaporate it and lets the atmosphere re-condense it to droplets which are clean - at least before they pass through polluted air. We may need to help and do some of the re-processing in sewage plants. Additionally we may have to purify the water after it has been "rain" or "river water". And then we can use it again.

We are washing stuff with water. Could we clean water with water? I don't know if this is done somewhere, but let's just assume it'd be possible: You have a bathtub full of dirty water. You have found a way to transfer the dirt of the bathtub water to some other water. Would only make sense if the cleaning water which has to receive the dirt is a smaller amount than the bathtubful of dirtwater which you are about to purify. In the end you have less dirt water, but it is dirtier than the bathtub water was because the dirt is now more concentrated. This does not sound like a way we would chose to reprocess "used" water, what do you think?

Now: Energy? Similar - up to a certain point.

Just like water, we degrade energy once we use it. And similar to evaporation, some of the energy we use does not end up in the final form we expect it to take on, but rather gets lost on the way.

But differently from water, we are very limited in our ways to reprocess energy. We can only reprocess energy for another run through our machinery of needs, under condition that we degrade some energy. It is like cleaning dirty water with water. As the dirt has to remain somewhere, no matter how you transfer the dirt to the water-cleaning water, you will always end up with at least some dirty water. Alongside with the cleaned water, you could at best end up with a smaller amount of dirtier water than you had before the treatment started. The dirt is now more concentrated.

And that's precisely the situation: As a matter of principle, energy can only be "washed" with energy. We have no other "sewage treatment". In the case of water, we have a nice short word for the essence of degradation: Dirt. Unfortunately, we only have a word derived from ancient Greek in the case of energy: Entropy. Very sorry for that. To make things even worse, this type of "dirt" even gets more in any kind of process, so you do not only have to "wash out" entropy from energy to prepare it for re-use, but the very "washing" process produces some more "dirt".

So what is the answer to our initial question "how come that energy is conserved under all circumstances and we still constantly need more of it"?

The answer is: Because we degrade energy in the process of using it as it goes to a state with higher entropy. Unlike water, energy cannot be reprocessed completely because we can only reduce entropy at one place when we increase it at another place, and we have even to accept that the overall entropy increases.

Still we should try and re-use as much energy as possible, because the entropy production we have to accept along the way is normally smaller than it is when we use "fresh" primary energy, and we are saving our energy ressources. Saving primary energy is the key to keeping fuel prices at bay.