Lorelei Scarbro tells about a plan to save the area’s last intact mountain, where she lives, with a wind farm.
n Appalachia, almost 500 mountains have been blown up for coal mining. Coal River Wind Project proposes leaving the mountain intact for a wind farm to provide long-term renewable energy to the US. Reducing our dependence on coal is not only better for the environment, say Coal River Wind, but economically profitable for local citizens and companies in Appalachia.
I’ve seen this effect with a piece of day glow orange Plexiglas I have, the edges appears very bright. the dye captures some of the sun’s ultra-violet and converts it into visible light. Then the light bounces between the surfaces of the plastic and exits at the edges, somewhat like what happens with fiber optic cables. At least this is what I think is going on. This video on National Geographic is short on scientific detail and long on manufacturer’s claims.
The expensive silicon that does the actual conversion from light to electricity is attached only to the outer edges of the panes. There it collects the color light they are designed to be the most sensitive to. These panels can be used as colorful windows, and are said to be able to disperse harmful heat away from the silicon. But their main advantage over regular solar cells is the ability to generate electricity without being in direct sunlight.
The latest version of Phun is due out today. It is now called Algodoo Phun. I had the pleasure of being asked to participate in the beta testing. The feature you will notice most is that you are now able to apply textures (png image files) to the objects. Aside from these textures this virtual puppet could have been made in the old version. But Phun5.25, has a lot of new features including attraction and repulsion, and celestial gravity. The drawing tools are greatly improved you can now have hollow or “holy” shapes. There is a cut tool a gear tool, and you are able to add and subtract shapes. Also improved are your selection option. Everything now has a context menu, which is pretty slick once you get used to it.
I use Camstudio a free open source video screen capture app. The results are pretty pixelated, and both programs require a lot of RAM, resulting in the Phun simulation playing sluggishly on my computer, while it is being recorded. So this robot dancer looks a lot better in Phun than it does in this YouTube clip. The frame rate is much higher and the vector graphics are really sharp. Plus the puppet really can dance, it’s scary how alive it seems when you have the right beat behind it.
Get Agodoo Phun at phunland.com. (they are having server problems, but will probably be fixed soon)
Update, 11/14/08: Don’t buy these LED bulbs. Three of the four lights I bought in July no longer work. I suspect it must be a problem with whatever device converts the 120 V AC to lower DC voltage, that the LEDs need. I should take a hammer to these bulbs to see what’s inside. Does anyone else have experience with these bulbs? I was hoping to cut down on my energy usage and ended up generating more electronic waste. Yikes! Could they all have been from a defective batch, was that why they were being sold so cheaply?
Update 9/9/08 : I can’t recommend these lights. I eventually bought 4 of them. One has stopped working and one works intermittently. I suspect it must be a problem with the internal wiring of the individual LEDs. Possibly the transformer that converts the AC to DC. Whatever, at 13 bucks a pop and only lasting a couple of months they are not worth it.
I bought this LED light bulb today in one of those ubiquitous small lighting shops you find around town. It was $13, which is about a third of what I’ve seen the same item for on the web. The packaging is very strange, it doesn’t list a country of origin and the only marking on the bulb are the numbers 1129. It claims to be 1.8 Watts, and I can believe it, because it hardly gets hot at all. You can comfortably touch it, even after it has been on for several minutes. The light is a bit towards the blue, but it is not unpleasant. I think it will be a good reading light.
MIT professor Daniel G. Nocera has discovered a relatively non-toxic catalyst for efficiently separating oxygen from water, thus leading to effective fuel cell storage of solar, wind, and tidal energy.
