Earth's climate will absolutely change because it has never not been changing. That's why the whole "climate change is real" argument is so asinine. Of course it's real. The only question at all is anthropogenesis. But even without anthropogenesis, the climate is guaranteed to change adversely for humans -- because that's what Earth's climate does.
In one hundred thousand years, the climate will absolutely 100% be different -- with or without humans, industry or fossil fuels.
And the chances of Earth remaining in a human-friendly, temperate zone indefinitely are zero.
What humanity needs to come to grips with is that our planet was not designed for us. The opposite is true: We were designed for a brief, fleeting set of climatic conditions that with 100% certitude will not persist indefinitely.
Even more highlevel observation than that; whenever there is some sort of exploitable resource, that is a possible evolutionary niche, and eventually some organism will find a way to exploit it. Dead trees, for example, represent a source of organic carbon which is exploited by various fungi and bacteria. Well, buried fossil hydrocarbons represents such an exploitable resource, and some organism did evolve to exploit it. Of course, when a niche is no longer available, due to the loss of the resource or due to its being unexploitable because it has become associated with some harmful agent, then the organism has to find another niche, which usually requires some evolutionary alterations. In the case of humans, evolution can be cultural as well as genetic, but the basic principle is still self-evident.
Or to put it another way, humanity is just entropy's way of disposing of all the potential energy in fossil fuel. After that, we're superfluous.
And the Democrat party contains anti vaxxers. Trying to act like somehow the Democrats are better than the Republicans in science matters is pretty silly.
While all political parties have their wingnuts, only the GOP routinely nominates theirs as presidential candidates.
There's a difference between having idiots as members of your party and having idiots as leaders of your party.
When you get a debateful of Democratic presidential candidates to raise their hands when asked who doesn't believe in vaccination the way you can get a debateful of Republican candidates to attest to their disbelief in evolution, then you'll have a case. Meanwhile, fun quiz; what was the affiliation of the candidate who told us "I've heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines,"?
Here's the thing.. we all know sugary carbonated beverages are bad for us. Even artificially sweetened ones, it seems. Obviously, carbonated beverages contain carbon dioxide, extracted from the atmosphere. So.... we continue to make carbonated beverages, but rather than sell them to people, we just pump them into the ground, solving two problems! In fact, we can pump them into old oil wells after the oil is all gone!! Thinking outside the box, people!
Even engineers in the real nonsoftware sense have to be certified. credentialed, licensed, whatever. You can't just spend all your highschool spare time in your room designing bridges and then get a job as an engineer. So the field has credibility.
Yeah, the 1.35 or 1.4 number is total bull$#@!. Almost everything these days will run on the 1.1-1.2 of NiMH, as you point out. Even at that point, the remaining energy in a common alkaline (manganese dioxide) AA cell is nowhere near 80%. Alkaline goes "over the cliff" - the sharp point at the end of the discharge curve where there's no energy left and the voltage plummets - at about 0.8-0.9V. Even at 1.1V, there's only about 10% of the energy capacity left for a typical alkaline.
Look up "alkaline discharge curve" pretty much anywhere. Typically these will plot output voltage on the Y axis and amp-hours on the X axis. The energy remaining is the area under the curve to the right of where you're looking (because energy is measured in watt-hours, and voltage * amp-hours remaining is watt-hours). As you extract more energy (move right on the X), your voltage drops. When you hit a certain point... boom! straight to the floor.
Most battery powered devices these days either have a switching regulator that deals with this issue, or they use a low quiescent current, low dropout regulator and a big enough battery stack that can keep the supply rail where it needs to be until the batteries hit their dead point. While not strictly a scam, it won't do much good in most modern devices (and will actually decrease performance in well-designed ones, as I'm sure the switcher in these has a non-zero quiescent current, and an efficiency below 100%).
[That interpretation of my comment] is, of course, ridiculous because the business we were in was making PCs, and almost from the start I had them at home and my wife played Scrabble with time-sharing machines, and my sixth-grade son was networking the MIT computers and the DEC computers together, hopefully without doing mischief, using the computers I had at home. Home computers were a natural continuum of the "personal computers" that people had at work, in the laboratory, in the military.
Following this sidepath... it's similar to the original concepts of home electric motors, which was not considered worth doing until electric illumination brought electricity home. If you look at the first sketches, ads, etc. for the concept they had a huge motor in the basement running everything via a series of belts and gears and shafts, analogous to Olsen's big computer running the whole house. In practice, of course, that wasn't as useful as little dedicated motors everywhere embedded in the gadgets so you don't think of them as motors explicitly, analogous to the small dedicated computers he saw coming.
Save more on 401k, Roth-IRA; leads to tax reduction.... And set your goal to be financial independence.
Do you (or anyone else) have suggestions on how to get started on this? I'm still pretty early in my career and have taken some of the easy obvious steps to saving, but feel like finance planning is full of dark and twisty passageways (likely filled with grue).
Is it worth trying to find a local personal finance adviser you can sit down with face-to-face? Where would you look for someone like this? Suggestions for types of investment and retirement accounts, and how much you should put away?
I realize it's a deep subject but appreciate any comments. Thanks.
Stay out of the stock market, invest in mutual funds. I don't know anything about ETFs and all the various other fund types, and since you don't either, you'd probably do best to do as I do, and stick to retirement plans, either a 401k through work or an IRA you buy yourself.
If your company offers a 401K get in on it. They usually have lower fees than you can get yourself, because of their immense size. On a related note, obviously if your company offers matching contributions to your 401K, contribute enough at very least to get all the match, even if it hurts now.
At the beginning of your career you'll probably be making less money than you would later on, and probably paying less in taxes, so this is a good time to put your money in a Roth 401K if your company provides it. A Roth is where you invest the money AFTER paying taxes, but cash it in tax free (rather than the usual 401K which is before taxes but you pay taxes when you cash in). The power of compound interest, long time periods, and tax free capital gains come to play with a Roth, so you want to leave it as long as possible before cashing it in. Divide your future income streams into what you want to cash in first, and which later. (Not necessary immediately, but as you build your plan over the years) Remember that Social Security provides more per year if you wait longer before starting to draw it, so that's another you might want to put in the middle category, since you have to start drawing when you're 70 but if you can avoid drawing earlier, you're rewarded. If your company doesn't offer a Roth 401K only a regular IRA, you'll have to think about starting a Roth IRA (same idea but your own doings, not through your employer). Again, remember that the Roth's great advantages are long time, and tax free withdrawals, so the earlier in your career they start the better. They're less awesome when you start them in your peak taxpaying years, like 5 years before you retire. Remember that it's not like a mortgage, you can plow some money into a Roth IRA for a year or two or five or ten, then stop and let it coast. You don't need to keep up payments. You can convert back and forth from a nonRoth to a Roth, but there are taxes involved.
there are two basic routes; invest in managed funds that try to maximize the return but charge high fees for it, or invest in index funds that just track the overall market but charge low fees. Not a real clear advantage either way as long as you invest in good funds, but for simplicity you might lean towards doing the index fund thing. The big name in index funds is Vanguard, the big name in managed funds is Fidelity, but either place sells both kinds (I think) and there are another dozen or so places selling funds, some are good, some suck. But generally for the middle of the road starter without experience, if your employer offers Vanguard plans, just get into their index plans is simple and as good as any other plan. But pay attention to fees. 6% return per year with a 2.5% fee isn't better than a 5% return with a 0.5% fee.
The other variable is allocation; i.e. what the plan invests in. The basics are stocks vs bonds, but there are others, like real estate, etc. Within each there are subcategories; large capital stock vs small capital, domestic vs int
They will try to have your jobs
They will steal from you desk/wallet/anything
They will spread false claim about you
They will try to...
Guy applies for a job, boss says "You're hired! You can start tomorrow!" The guy says, "I have some things I need to get done, can I start Monday instead?" Boss says sure. As they exit the office the boss calls out "This is our new employee, he's starting Monday". Everybody looks up, then goes back to work. Monday AM the guy comes in, the boss asks "Where were you all last week?" The guy says "You said I could start today. You even announced to the whole office I'd start Monday" The boss says "Let's just see about that." and opens the office the door and hollers "Did anybody here hear me say this guy could start today?" Nobody says anything. They go back into the office and shut the door. The guy starts to stammer out an explanation but the boss says "Relax, it's OK, I know I told you to start today" They guy asks, confused, "Well, what was all that about, then?" The boss says "I just want you to know the kind of people you'll be working with"
My advice... don't have sex with the office cleaning lady in your desk area. That sort of thing is generally frowned upon, even if it's not explicitly stated in the office rules.
1. Start saving early.
2. Live below your means.
3. Keep debt to a minimum. Never put on a credit card more than you have in your savings account.
4. Debt isn't evil, but you should treat it as if it was. Keep it to a minimum.
5. If you're buying a house, don't take out a mortgage for more than three years gross salary. And when you do get a mortgage, get a fixed mortgage.
6. Invest as much as possible in low expense ratio index funds.
7. Open up a Roth IRA early and maximize my investment in it every year.
8. NEVER use an investment advisor. Read a book instead. (Common Sense on Mutual Funds by Bogle is an excellent start. If you want something simpler, The Boglehead Guide To Investing)
9. NEVER buy investments through your insurance company.
10. When you start having kids, start a 529 plan for each ASAP.
11 NEVER use an investment advisor.
12 Invest as much as possible in low expense ratio index funds.
13 NEVER use an investment advisor.
Caveat: investment advisor does not mean Certified Financial Planner, who are not tied to any particular financial company and have no interest in selling you anything.
$200,000 sounds insane for an old computer. OK it's a fairly rare computer that has some historical value, but even a fraction of that amount would be quite high.
Stop thinking about it as a computer, start thinking about it as an antique. It is the beginning of the company with the highest market cap in the world and whose products are a household item. If you have an "Apple I" billions of people will recognize the product or the company, perhaps even more than a Picasso or Da Vinci. It is a very tangible, practical showpiece that doesn't easily decay or require tons of maintenance that is very rare - 63 are known to still exist - but not so uniquely rare as to all be locked up in an art museum, nor so huge and impractical as the first computers.
Compared to other showoff pieces it doesn't have any nasty history like old artifacts stolen from somewhere, it doesn't involve rare or endangered animals, it's somewhat nerdy but I'd consider it similar to owning a genuinely antique car. You might only drive it for a parade or not at all, but it's the classic "I got something you don't got" which is the essence for rich people who want to impress other rich people. The manly verison of women who pay 10x as much to wear a designer dress - which sometimes is neither prettier nor more practical - but more exclusive.
I have one of the original bits used in the prototype. This one's a 0.
We do. We need more people in STEM generally, even if it results in too many people in STEM, because it's a lot better to have people trained to think rationally than not.
Totally true, but it's also a lot better to have people trained to think compassionately and kindly than not. The two are compatible. Not to suggest that you were suggesting they're not. But for all those guys who scoff at any attempt to get schoolkids to think beyond xenophobia and callousness as a step towards superstition and magical thinking and irrationality, for some reason.
Can't the electric company supply both AC (for home appliances) and DC (for electric cars)? They could also add a state tax to the DC meter charging 1.5 cents road tax for certain amount of kWh charged by the vehicle. Gasoline cars pay 30 cents per gallon for road tax, so it's time for EVs to start paying too.
Some buildings used to be hooked up to DC instead of AC. Not sure if it was the same power company or not. The last one I knew of was a Boston University women's dorm in the 70s; supposedly it was being supplied from the same source as the subway lines, but that I can't confirm.
Yeh, for anything that produces heat, and hence requires a lot of power, this really isn't going to work. 250A cabling to a little electric fire place is a non-starter.
I've found the power brick to my laptop is just what I need under the blanket on a cold night, a replacement for the obsolete hot water bottle. No I'm not kidding. And yes, I am sad and pathetic.
I'm buying a massive house that is 1/3 the price it should be (ie, very good shape structurally, but is still half the price of per/square of "poor" quality; very high quality home, just hasn't been remodeled in many decades. Brand new roof though...heh). I'll be removing most of the sheetrock and replacing half of the wiring already, and am installing solar. I can't find a solar company that seems comfortable with DC circuits, low-voltage or otherwise. Coming off the solar it will be already DC; converting from DC to AC just to convert back to DC is likely why they claim the 20-40% loss - you're not losing in conversion just once, right? So then I just need some sort of power stabilizing factor - such as running through a battery or whatnot - thus why I clicked on this article at all. Any already know of a good book or resource with which I could inform myself before spending a good deal of money?
OK, just thinking outside the box here; produce AC directly from the solar cells by having them on two sides of a rotating plane thing, hooked up in opposite polarity, then spinning it at 60 rps!
I recommend you go to Youtube and look for videos showing 110 volts AC vs DC with a knife switch to see the important difference. Hint: "zero crossing". You can't just splice your whole house into the same voltage of DC expect anything to work the same. Sure, your incandescent lights would work, but the wall switch wouldn't be able to turn it off, and might even start a fire from the arc. There's a reason that data centers use 48VDC and no higher.
Also to go from triac/scr type dimmers to giant rheostats again is not a good step.
With homes having high load devices with large motors(washing machines, compressors in heat pumps, etc) and the large resistive loads like electric heaters, stoves, etc DC just is not the answer. Even with DC there would be a need for DC-DC converters which work by converting to AC... So given how easy it is to move AC voltages around and up/down I would think the question would be how do we optimize the losses in conversions. Maybe we need 5KHz instead of 50/60Hz.
Suppose we just have one giant 110 or 220 volt motor in the basement, and route the mechanical power around with a clever set of belts, gears, shafts, etc.? Still thinking outside the box!!!
Forgive me if I have this wrong, but if we start wiring houses for low voltage DC, won't this mean huge fat copper cables to deal with the current implications of a washing machine or oven pulling tens, even hundreds of amps because of Ohms law?
We can use copper girders instead of studs in the walls, and let them carry the current. Just thinking outside the box.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly this.
Earth's climate will absolutely change because it has never not been changing. That's why the whole "climate change is real" argument is so asinine. Of course it's real. The only question at all is anthropogenesis. But even without anthropogenesis, the climate is guaranteed to change adversely for humans -- because that's what Earth's climate does.
In one hundred thousand years, the climate will absolutely 100% be different -- with or without humans, industry or fossil fuels.
And the chances of Earth remaining in a human-friendly, temperate zone indefinitely are zero.
What humanity needs to come to grips with is that our planet was not designed for us. The opposite is true: We were designed for a brief, fleeting set of climatic conditions that with 100% certitude will not persist indefinitely.
Even more highlevel observation than that; whenever there is some sort of exploitable resource, that is a possible evolutionary niche, and eventually some organism will find a way to exploit it. Dead trees, for example, represent a source of organic carbon which is exploited by various fungi and bacteria. Well, buried fossil hydrocarbons represents such an exploitable resource, and some organism did evolve to exploit it. Of course, when a niche is no longer available, due to the loss of the resource or due to its being unexploitable because it has become associated with some harmful agent, then the organism has to find another niche, which usually requires some evolutionary alterations. In the case of humans, evolution can be cultural as well as genetic, but the basic principle is still self-evident.
Or to put it another way, humanity is just entropy's way of disposing of all the potential energy in fossil fuel. After that, we're superfluous.
And the Democrat party contains anti vaxxers. Trying to act like somehow the Democrats are better than the Republicans in science matters is pretty silly.
While all political parties have their wingnuts, only the GOP routinely nominates theirs as presidential candidates.
There's a difference between having idiots as members of your party and having idiots as leaders of your party.
When you get a debateful of Democratic presidential candidates to raise their hands when asked who doesn't believe in vaccination the way you can get a debateful of Republican candidates to attest to their disbelief in evolution, then you'll have a case. Meanwhile, fun quiz; what was the affiliation of the candidate who told us "I've heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines,"?
"you could get dragonfly's a meter long" So a dragonfly's *what* exactly would be a meter long?
A dragonfly's fly a meter long. That would be scary.
Here's the thing.. we all know sugary carbonated beverages are bad for us. Even artificially sweetened ones, it seems. Obviously, carbonated beverages contain carbon dioxide, extracted from the atmosphere. So.... we continue to make carbonated beverages, but rather than sell them to people, we just pump them into the ground, solving two problems! In fact, we can pump them into old oil wells after the oil is all gone!! Thinking outside the box, people!
Even engineers in the real nonsoftware sense have to be certified. credentialed, licensed, whatever. You can't just spend all your highschool spare time in your room designing bridges and then get a job as an engineer. So the field has credibility.
that when companies lay off expensive workers and hire cheaper newbies who are not H1bs to replace them, they don't bother with the training part.
get 3 volts for an led out of a single 1.X v cell
Yeah, the 1.35 or 1.4 number is total bull$#@!. Almost everything these days will run on the 1.1-1.2 of NiMH, as you point out. Even at that point, the remaining energy in a common alkaline (manganese dioxide) AA cell is nowhere near 80%. Alkaline goes "over the cliff" - the sharp point at the end of the discharge curve where there's no energy left and the voltage plummets - at about 0.8-0.9V. Even at 1.1V, there's only about 10% of the energy capacity left for a typical alkaline.
Look up "alkaline discharge curve" pretty much anywhere. Typically these will plot output voltage on the Y axis and amp-hours on the X axis. The energy remaining is the area under the curve to the right of where you're looking (because energy is measured in watt-hours, and voltage * amp-hours remaining is watt-hours). As you extract more energy (move right on the X), your voltage drops. When you hit a certain point... boom! straight to the floor.
Most battery powered devices these days either have a switching regulator that deals with this issue, or they use a low quiescent current, low dropout regulator and a big enough battery stack that can keep the supply rail where it needs to be until the batteries hit their dead point. While not strictly a scam, it won't do much good in most modern devices (and will actually decrease performance in well-designed ones, as I'm sure the switcher in these has a non-zero quiescent current, and an efficiency below 100%).
useful for incandescent bulb flashlights.
It's a battery for your battery.. Where's all the yo dawg shit?
Hey, a hybrid battery' with a tiny gas tank and motor and generator....
Gotta love context-free quotes!!
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/k...
[That interpretation of my comment] is, of course, ridiculous because the business we were in was making PCs, and almost from the start I had them at home and my wife played Scrabble with time-sharing machines, and my sixth-grade son was networking the MIT computers and the DEC computers together, hopefully without doing mischief, using the computers I had at home. Home computers were a natural continuum of the "personal computers" that people had at work, in the laboratory, in the military.
Following this sidepath... it's similar to the original concepts of home electric motors, which was not considered worth doing until electric illumination brought electricity home. If you look at the first sketches, ads, etc. for the concept they had a huge motor in the basement running everything via a series of belts and gears and shafts, analogous to Olsen's big computer running the whole house. In practice, of course, that wasn't as useful as little dedicated motors everywhere embedded in the gadgets so you don't think of them as motors explicitly, analogous to the small dedicated computers he saw coming.
I for one welcome our new overlord, the Joule Thief. http://www.bigclive.com/joule....
Save more on 401k, Roth-IRA; leads to tax reduction. ... And set your goal to be financial independence.
Do you (or anyone else) have suggestions on how to get started on this? I'm still pretty early in my career and have taken some of the easy obvious steps to saving, but feel like finance planning is full of dark and twisty passageways (likely filled with grue).
Is it worth trying to find a local personal finance adviser you can sit down with face-to-face? Where would you look for someone like this? Suggestions for types of investment and retirement accounts, and how much you should put away?
I realize it's a deep subject but appreciate any comments. Thanks.
Stay out of the stock market, invest in mutual funds. I don't know anything about ETFs and all the various other fund types, and since you don't either, you'd probably do best to do as I do, and stick to retirement plans, either a 401k through work or an IRA you buy yourself.
If your company offers a 401K get in on it. They usually have lower fees than you can get yourself, because of their immense size. On a related note, obviously if your company offers matching contributions to your 401K, contribute enough at very least to get all the match, even if it hurts now.
At the beginning of your career you'll probably be making less money than you would later on, and probably paying less in taxes, so this is a good time to put your money in a Roth 401K if your company provides it. A Roth is where you invest the money AFTER paying taxes, but cash it in tax free (rather than the usual 401K which is before taxes but you pay taxes when you cash in). The power of compound interest, long time periods, and tax free capital gains come to play with a Roth, so you want to leave it as long as possible before cashing it in. Divide your future income streams into what you want to cash in first, and which later. (Not necessary immediately, but as you build your plan over the years) Remember that Social Security provides more per year if you wait longer before starting to draw it, so that's another you might want to put in the middle category, since you have to start drawing when you're 70 but if you can avoid drawing earlier, you're rewarded. If your company doesn't offer a Roth 401K only a regular IRA, you'll have to think about starting a Roth IRA (same idea but your own doings, not through your employer). Again, remember that the Roth's great advantages are long time, and tax free withdrawals, so the earlier in your career they start the better. They're less awesome when you start them in your peak taxpaying years, like 5 years before you retire. Remember that it's not like a mortgage, you can plow some money into a Roth IRA for a year or two or five or ten, then stop and let it coast. You don't need to keep up payments. You can convert back and forth from a nonRoth to a Roth, but there are taxes involved.
there are two basic routes; invest in managed funds that try to maximize the return but charge high fees for it, or invest in index funds that just track the overall market but charge low fees. Not a real clear advantage either way as long as you invest in good funds, but for simplicity you might lean towards doing the index fund thing. The big name in index funds is Vanguard, the big name in managed funds is Fidelity, but either place sells both kinds (I think) and there are another dozen or so places selling funds, some are good, some suck. But generally for the middle of the road starter without experience, if your employer offers Vanguard plans, just get into their index plans is simple and as good as any other plan. But pay attention to fees. 6% return per year with a 2.5% fee isn't better than a 5% return with a 0.5% fee.
The other variable is allocation; i.e. what the plan invests in. The basics are stocks vs bonds, but there are others, like real estate, etc. Within each there are subcategories; large capital stock vs small capital, domestic vs int
They will try to have your jobs They will steal from you desk/wallet/anything They will spread false claim about you They will try to ...
Guy applies for a job, boss says "You're hired! You can start tomorrow!" The guy says, "I have some things I need to get done, can I start Monday instead?" Boss says sure. As they exit the office the boss calls out "This is our new employee, he's starting Monday". Everybody looks up, then goes back to work. Monday AM the guy comes in, the boss asks "Where were you all last week?" The guy says "You said I could start today. You even announced to the whole office I'd start Monday" The boss says "Let's just see about that." and opens the office the door and hollers "Did anybody here hear me say this guy could start today?" Nobody says anything. They go back into the office and shut the door. The guy starts to stammer out an explanation but the boss says "Relax, it's OK, I know I told you to start today" They guy asks, confused, "Well, what was all that about, then?" The boss says "I just want you to know the kind of people you'll be working with"
one's a spec sheet, the other's an advertising pamphlet
My advice... don't have sex with the office cleaning lady in your desk area. That sort of thing is generally frowned upon, even if it's not explicitly stated in the office rules.
Besides, she's the boss' girl.
1. Start saving early. 2. Live below your means. 3. Keep debt to a minimum. Never put on a credit card more than you have in your savings account. 4. Debt isn't evil, but you should treat it as if it was. Keep it to a minimum. 5. If you're buying a house, don't take out a mortgage for more than three years gross salary. And when you do get a mortgage, get a fixed mortgage. 6. Invest as much as possible in low expense ratio index funds. 7. Open up a Roth IRA early and maximize my investment in it every year. 8. NEVER use an investment advisor. Read a book instead. (Common Sense on Mutual Funds by Bogle is an excellent start. If you want something simpler, The Boglehead Guide To Investing) 9. NEVER buy investments through your insurance company. 10. When you start having kids, start a 529 plan for each ASAP.
11 NEVER use an investment advisor.
12 Invest as much as possible in low expense ratio index funds.
13 NEVER use an investment advisor.
Caveat: investment advisor does not mean Certified Financial Planner, who are not tied to any particular financial company and have no interest in selling you anything.
$200,000 sounds insane for an old computer. OK it's a fairly rare computer that has some historical value, but even a fraction of that amount would be quite high.
Stop thinking about it as a computer, start thinking about it as an antique. It is the beginning of the company with the highest market cap in the world and whose products are a household item. If you have an "Apple I" billions of people will recognize the product or the company, perhaps even more than a Picasso or Da Vinci. It is a very tangible, practical showpiece that doesn't easily decay or require tons of maintenance that is very rare - 63 are known to still exist - but not so uniquely rare as to all be locked up in an art museum, nor so huge and impractical as the first computers.
Compared to other showoff pieces it doesn't have any nasty history like old artifacts stolen from somewhere, it doesn't involve rare or endangered animals, it's somewhat nerdy but I'd consider it similar to owning a genuinely antique car. You might only drive it for a parade or not at all, but it's the classic "I got something you don't got" which is the essence for rich people who want to impress other rich people. The manly verison of women who pay 10x as much to wear a designer dress - which sometimes is neither prettier nor more practical - but more exclusive.
I have one of the original bits used in the prototype. This one's a 0.
And they say we need more women in STEM!!!!
We do. We need more people in STEM generally, even if it results in too many people in STEM, because it's a lot better to have people trained to think rationally than not.
Totally true, but it's also a lot better to have people trained to think compassionately and kindly than not. The two are compatible. Not to suggest that you were suggesting they're not. But for all those guys who scoff at any attempt to get schoolkids to think beyond xenophobia and callousness as a step towards superstition and magical thinking and irrationality, for some reason.
Let me know when the check is ready, please.
Can't the electric company supply both AC (for home appliances) and DC (for electric cars)? They could also add a state tax to the DC meter charging 1.5 cents road tax for certain amount of kWh charged by the vehicle. Gasoline cars pay 30 cents per gallon for road tax, so it's time for EVs to start paying too.
Some buildings used to be hooked up to DC instead of AC. Not sure if it was the same power company or not. The last one I knew of was a Boston University women's dorm in the 70s; supposedly it was being supplied from the same source as the subway lines, but that I can't confirm.
Yeh, for anything that produces heat, and hence requires a lot of power, this really isn't going to work. 250A cabling to a little electric fire place is a non-starter.
I've found the power brick to my laptop is just what I need under the blanket on a cold night, a replacement for the obsolete hot water bottle. No I'm not kidding. And yes, I am sad and pathetic.
I'm buying a massive house that is 1/3 the price it should be (ie, very good shape structurally, but is still half the price of per/square of "poor" quality; very high quality home, just hasn't been remodeled in many decades. Brand new roof though...heh). I'll be removing most of the sheetrock and replacing half of the wiring already, and am installing solar. I can't find a solar company that seems comfortable with DC circuits, low-voltage or otherwise. Coming off the solar it will be already DC; converting from DC to AC just to convert back to DC is likely why they claim the 20-40% loss - you're not losing in conversion just once, right? So then I just need some sort of power stabilizing factor - such as running through a battery or whatnot - thus why I clicked on this article at all. Any already know of a good book or resource with which I could inform myself before spending a good deal of money?
OK, just thinking outside the box here; produce AC directly from the solar cells by having them on two sides of a rotating plane thing, hooked up in opposite polarity, then spinning it at 60 rps!
I recommend you go to Youtube and look for videos showing 110 volts AC vs DC with a knife switch to see the important difference. Hint: "zero crossing". You can't just splice your whole house into the same voltage of DC expect anything to work the same. Sure, your incandescent lights would work, but the wall switch wouldn't be able to turn it off, and might even start a fire from the arc. There's a reason that data centers use 48VDC and no higher.
Also to go from triac/scr type dimmers to giant rheostats again is not a good step.
With homes having high load devices with large motors(washing machines, compressors in heat pumps, etc) and the large resistive loads like electric heaters, stoves, etc DC just is not the answer. Even with DC there would be a need for DC-DC converters which work by converting to AC... So given how easy it is to move AC voltages around and up/down I would think the question would be how do we optimize the losses in conversions. Maybe we need 5KHz instead of 50/60Hz.
Suppose we just have one giant 110 or 220 volt motor in the basement, and route the mechanical power around with a clever set of belts, gears, shafts, etc.? Still thinking outside the box!!!
Forgive me if I have this wrong, but if we start wiring houses for low voltage DC, won't this mean huge fat copper cables to deal with the current implications of a washing machine or oven pulling tens, even hundreds of amps because of Ohms law?
We can use copper girders instead of studs in the walls, and let them carry the current. Just thinking outside the box.