Final Skills Quiz

1. How to create a blog
2. how to create a website
3. how to create pages on my website
4. how to track the activity on my webpage
5. how to add external links to my webpage
6. how link paypal with my website
7. how to link paypal with external vendors then add those links to my webpage
8. how to design and sell products online
9. how to link my website with internet search engines
10. how to add links to external sites on web pages
11. how to publish articles

Bio Fuels

Every year, nearly 30 billion barrels of crude oil are consumed! This averages out to around 82 million barrels each day. The reason this number is so high is because currently, crude oil is the best way to move transport vehicles. It is used in trains, ships, construction vehicles, cars, lawn equipment and many other things. The nice thing about oil is there is a lot of energy potential in a small amount of space. Unfortunately, our increased demand for oil is draining the oil reserves dry and is taking a tole on the environment with all the green house gasses being released. One solution to this problem would be to switch gas powered motors to electric powered motors which will then eliminate the need for fossil fuels. The biggest problem with this is electric powered engines are no where near as powerful as gas and diesel powered engines are. So the semi trucks, planes, trains and ships we rely on to bring in all our goods would not be able to function properly. Another problem with electric powered engines is they require extremely large batteries to go long distances. These batteries are very expensive to make and would most likely be worse for the environment in the creation and recycling of the batteries then the continued use of crude oil would be. Fortunately there is a solution to this problem that is both environmentally conscious and economical. The answer is bio fuels. Bio fuel uses a specialized form of algae that has been designed to consume sunlight and carbon dioxide and create a bi-product that can be separated into gas, diesel and jet fuel.  This is done by placing a small amount of algae into a tank and exposing it to sunlight. The tank can be connected to an exhaust line from a power plant to absorb the CO2 created, or it can be left open to absorb CO2 in the air. The process is slow at first, but once the batch of algae begins to grow, they begin to multiply very quickly. When the batch of algae is fully grown, it is then separated from the water that it was grown in and broken down into gas, diesel and jet fuel which can be used almost immediately. Another nice thing about bio fuel is it is cheap to produce. Because sunlight and carbon dioxide are free the only thing that need to be paid for is the equipment, labor and power needed to run the facility. Overall, bio fuels are a good solution to reduce the amount of fossil fuels being consumed year round. If you have any questions, please comment below. Thanks for reading!

Recycling

It seems like only yesterday when recycling was a huge hassle. You used to have two separate bins for plastics/metals and paper/cardboard. It used to be much easier to just toss all the recyclables in the trash rather than sort out all the materials for yourself. Today thanks to new recycling separation systems, this is no longer the case. The way this works is the recycling truck goes around just like before collecting all the recycling materials and bringing it to the separation plant. Next, all the materials are dumps then loaded on convener belts to be sorted. All along the belt, there are people removing non-recyclables such as plastic bags, organic materials and plastics that can not be sold to recycling buyers yet. They do this by throwing things like plastic bags into a vacuum directly above their work station, and tossing other non-recyclables off in a separate shoot. The first machine removes large cardboard boxes to be immediately bundled. After this, the rest of the material moves on to be hand sorted some more. Next the paper is removed from the plastics and metals. This is done by allowing the dense materials to fall to the next belt, while the office paper, news paper and adds are sent to the next hand sorting section then are bundled. The remaining materials (glass, plastic and metals) are then sent to a glass breaking machine to allow the metal and plastic to move on while the glass falls through the grate. Once the metals and plastics are removed from the glass, they go through another paper removing machine which uses electrical charge to remove any remaining paper and plastic bags. After this, the conveyor passes under a magnet to remove all steel products which are then bailed. The next steps are a little tricky. The conveyor belt passes under an optical scanner where it identifies and removes any remaining plastics to leave the aluminum products. And because this machine is not 100% accurate, there are workers who must sift out any other plastics and non-aluminum products from the mix. After all the plastics are collected, they are hand sorted where clear plastics, heavy plastics and soft drink bottles are all placed in different shoots. All materials that cannot be recycled are then sent to a landfill. Thanks for reading!

Hot Air

Recently I read an article on CNN explaining a new potential form of energy that harnesses the power of rising hot air. They used the example of how an attic is always hotter than the rest of the house because hot air rises. Well this new form of alternative energy intends to harness this energy using towers and a very large canopy. The canopy would work similar to how a hot air balloon works. He plans to eventually build a 2600 foot high tower with a canopy larger than a football field. And when it is all said and done, the air lifting and lowering the canopy will spin several turbines fast enough to generate 200 megawatts of power (enough to power 100,000 homes). And this is only one of the many benefits this generator will bring. The air powered generator doesn't need any water to function, unlike many other forms of energy. It will be generating energy during the day and at night, unlike solar power and tidal power, because as the air warms up in the morning, the canopy will rise turning the turbines, and when the air finally cools at night, the canopy will fall, once again spinning the turbines. And the final benefit is that it will work when there is wind or when the weather is calm unlike wind turbines. The reason this structure has not been built yet is because of the enormous cost of creating a 800 meter tall building would take years to offset the costs. It is estimated to cost $750 million to build the structure. Another concern for environmentalists is will the benefit of creating the 800 meter structure offset the environmental costs to haul in all the materials and to run gas powered machines day and night to create this building. The Mohammad Taslim, the spokesman for Enviromission assures that the benefits of this form of energy will far outweigh the costs. In fact he said the amount of CO2 released in the creating of this structure would be offset by the clean energy created in less than 3 years. Overall, this form of energy seems like a feasible option in theory, but until an idea like this gets funding, it will never become a reality. If you have any questions regarding this post, please comment below. Thanks for reading!

Wind Energy

Today, wind power generates approximately 5.7% of the total electricity used in America today and is currently the fastest growing form of energy generation in the world. According to the wind energy foundation's website, the wind energy produced in 2013 reduced the total amount of CO2 produced by the United States by 4.4%, which is equivalent to the emissions of 17 million cars in the same time period. The way windmills work is actually quite simple. A vertical fan is placed in a field that has high winds, and the wind spins the fan the same way that a pinwheel spins when you blow on it. The only difference is attached to the base of the fan blades is a fixed generator that uses friction to generate electricity. Thanks to windmills being so profitable, the technology has been able to improve greatly over the past decades. In fact, windmills today produce 15 times the energy that windmill produced in the 90's meaning they are much more efficient at turning mechanical wind energy into electricity. One benefit that wind power has over almost every other form of clean energy is it hardly uses any water in the generating process. This saves millions and millions of gallons of water daily. The only drawback to wind power is it is completely reliant on wind of course. And wind is often very unpredictable making the amount of power a windmill produces every day, or week, or year hard to determine. This means there needs to always be another electricity generator available at the windmill power grid to feed extra electricity into the grid when the windmills aren't preforming to par. Besides this one flaw, wind energy is an excellent form of clean energy that can hopefully put an end to the use of fossil fuels. The Wind Energy Foundation has a lot of interesting data regarding wind power, and I would highly recommend visiting their website to learn more about wind power. Thanks for reading!

Wave Energy

Yesterday, I gave you the rundown on how solar energy works and a few of its many uses. Today, I will be going over wave energy and how we are currently trying to harness it and turn it into usable electricity. First of all, there are two types of waves, wind powered waves and waves generated by other disturbances. Wind powered waves form when wind blows over the water and creates ripples, as more wind goes over the water, the waves either become higher or longer depending on the type of wind hitting it. So essentially waves are powered by the sun because wind is created when the heats up air molecules causing them to rise and cooler air molecules fill in the empty space causing wind. The other type of waves are caused when tectonic plates collide, or large amounts of ice fall off of an ice sheet, or from large mudslides into the ocean, or other non-constant events. There is also the tide which is caused by the moon, but this only happens twice a day and does not have the same potential as wind generated wave power. So the only consistent form of wave power that is actually even more reliable than wind power is wind powered waves. This is because the wind is not always blowing, but the waves will always be crashing in. So how is wave power collected? There are a few different ways to collect it, but the main ones are using pressurized air or pressurized water to turn a turbine. The way to pressurize air is to create a sealed container with only one exit for the air. On bottom side of the container, the water will rise sending the air through the small exit. This will send the air out a constant quick speed which will turn the turbine, then when the water leaves, the air will be pulled back though the small hole spinning the turbine again. The other way is to pressurize the water in a cylinder and again leaving just a small exit for the water to go. When the water is sent through this small hole, the jet stream will turn the turbine generating electricity. Both of these methods sound good on paper, but unfortunately it is still very expensive to create these wave powered systems. And at this time, it is still much more economical to use coal, oil, solar and wind power mainly because wave still only collects just a small portion of the potential energy sent in through waves. Perhaps as oil prices continue to rise, corporations will have more of an incentive pursue alternative energy, and maybe there will be a breakthrough in wave power. If you have any questions or comments, please post below. Thanks for reading!

Solar Panel Breakdown

Today, I will be giving you the quick run down on solar panels, how they work, what some of their many uses are, and some interesting facts regarding solar energy. Solar panels use heat energy from the Sun's rays disturb and release electrons in the panel. The way this is done is the solar panel is made up of a neutral material, silicone which doesn't release many electrons under extreme heat, and by adding a material like phosphorus to the mix which does easily release electrons easily, when the few electrons are released, they will have no where else to go. Solar panels have 2 layers like this with a barrier in between them to insure the electrons do not find a home on the other layer. When the electrons are released, they only have one direction to go, and that is into the conductor, usually copper, where the electrons then flow through the conductor into whatever is being powered. This is only a very simple explanation on how solar panels work. But if you would like some more information on this topic, I would recommend the How Stuff Works article on solar panels. Today, solar panels are used in many applications. They are used in everything from calculators to road signs to powering your home to NASA satellites. The applications for solar panels are almost limitless. In fact it is probably the form of energy available because solar energy is free and the sun won't stop shining for another 5 billion years. The sun gives off so much energy that if we collected just one hour of the suns rays, it produce enough electricity to power the world at its current energy consumption rate for a year! If you have any comments on this post or any of my other blog posts, please comment below or contact me via email. Thanks for reading!