Some day there will be a report of all the damage to the environment being caused by discarded CFLs and people will wonder what the hell we in this century were thinking, replacing low-pollution cheap lights with mercury-containing costly electronics gizmos
How many times does this myth have to be knocked down? It's like fighting a zombie.
1) Coal power plants, which make up half of our electricity production, are the prime emitters of mercury in the world, and emit more, straight into the air, powering an incandescent bulb than a modern CFL would emit if you took all of its contents and vaporized them straight into the jet stream.
2) Where were you complaining about mercury when fluorescent tubes became the standard for offices nationwide many decades ago? These use over an order of magnitude more mercury.
3) Mercury in fluorescents is so-called "inorganic" (elemental) mercury. Most mercury emitted by power plants is "organic" mercury (mainly methylmercury, but also some dimethylmercury). Organic mercury is far more toxic.
4) Even just throwing a CFL in the trash doesn't mean all that mercury is emitted to the environment. I could dig up the link *yet again* if I have to, but the amount of mercury released from CFL disposal is roughly along the lines of: 20% if your trash is incinerated, 3% if it's landfilled, 3% if you throw the bulb into normal glass recycling, and a small fraction of a percent if it's treated as hazardous waste.
Modern CFLs use a really, really tiny amount of elemental mercury -- about the mass of ten grains of salt. What's going to be the next scare over -- the radioactive americium in smoke detectors?
however if you spend more than $3 per lamp you will lose money.
Let's meet our friend Basic Arithmetic.
Let's say you only use that light 3 hours a day. And you're using 75W (I'm assuming that's what you mean... or did you mean 25W?). Times 365.24 days times 3 hours, that's 82,179 watts per year, or about 87 kilowatt hours. At average US household rates of $0.11/kWh, that's $9 of power savings per year. For a bulb only used for 3 hours a day. Not counting your savings on air conditioning (assuming a COP of 3, AC half the year, and no change in heating costs, that's an extra $1.50).
Re:LED is a viable option in 40 Watt replacement
on
CFLs Causing Utility Woes
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Here's the problem with LEDs. Yes, LEDs have extremely high quantum efficiencies.... in the *red and blue spectrum*. There are no efficient yellow and green LEDs; it's called the "green gap". But it just so happens that's where our eyes are the most sensitive; we're insensitive to red and blue, but sensitive to yellow and green. So-called "white" LEDs are usually just blue LEDs with a phosphor coating that wastes some energy to create a lower frequency spike, enough to make it look roughly "white" (but in general they're often still blue dominated, making it somewhat of an irritating color). There are "warm" LED bulbs that make a stronger low-frequency signal with phosphors, but that wastes even more energy.
The other main complaint about LEDs is flickering, but that's trivially remedied; good bulbs are full-wave rectified, unlike the cheapo ones that are half-wave rectified and flicker.
The net result, however, is that LED bulbs for lighting tend to be only marginally more efficient than CFLs in terms of lumens, if that, and tend to have more irritating colors. We need to close the green gap.
Most people are used to "soft" or "warm" light from incandescents -- low color temperature. Most early CFLs were "cool" or "daylight" -- high kelvin temperature. Now you can get both, but "warm" (low color temperature). are more common because that's what most people prefer. Check the color temperature on the box before you buy!
Also, if you have flicker or a buzz, or a slow startup, you got a low quality bulb. Return it and get a different brand. Or buy several and see which ones you like the best. Good CFLs don't flicker or buzz, and they start up essentially instantly. There is a lot of variety between brands and models. And quality averages way better than it used to, although there still are some bad apples out there.
And I haven't seen any reasonably priced dimmable CFLs to test out (do you need a special dimmer?)
I got several cases of dimmables on Ebay a couple years ago, and they work just great, on my normal dimmers. Don't remember the brand, but I could get it for you at home if you need it.
By the way -- how many Slashdot articles (like this one) are we going to have full of people trying desperately to come up with a way to justify their decision to spend *way* more money in electricity and increase emissions because they're too lazy or stuck in their ways to merely change their lightbulbs? I mean, come on... is power factor really the best they can come up with? Really, if that's your excuse, just buy a freaking high power factor bulb. Yes, they exist, and have power factors in the 0.9 to 0.95 range. But even with low power factor bulbs -- since when is 1/4 (CFL apparent power consumption relative to incandescent) * 2 (power factor=0.5 CFL) greater than 1.0 (incandescent)?
I can't help but wonder what kind of dork I am, that I really want to see the new Star Trek movie... but mainly just to see if the Aptera 2e that was present during filming made it into any shots;)
Well, that's a completely different proposal, now isn't it?:) On the car, you're limited by available flat surface area. And do you know how heavy and complicated of a proposition that is you're talking about -- a portable support frame that'll stand up to whatever winds or whatnot come along, with that much solar cell material? And if your answer to save weight (ignoring the frame) is "thin film", cut your efficiency in half.
FYI... the Aptera 2e three wheeler has the cornering radius of a Porsche Boxter.
Two wheels forward, a low CoM, and a wide stance do wonders for stability. What matters is where your CG is during a turn -- basically how long of a "lever" the force is being exerted on and at what angle. So, with two wheels forward and the CoM low just behind a wide track, when you brake into the turn, the CG is right near the middle of your track, and thus you're applying a force at a very shallow angle across a very long axis. And that means very hard to overcome the downforce from gravity (and thus flip).
But hey, act like high-CoM, one-wheel-forward narrow-track vehicles (RVs) represent all three wheelers all that you like.
Two wheels forward, one back ("tadpole") is a very stable design (assuming a reasonable CG -- low and near the front)... but rear steering is not. It's hard to get used to and is very prone to oversteer.
The US car companies don't make big, inefficient cars because that's what Americans want. Rather, Americans want big, inefficient cars because that's what they are sold
Thank you! Sometimes it's like talking to a brick wall, those people who insist that the Big Three were just selling what people wanted. As though they don't spend over 7 billion dollars a year on marketing. That's about 40% of NASA's annual budget, all on pushing the vehicles they want you to buy the most -- and this decade, those ads have been overwhelmingly for big, heavy, inefficient vehicles. They've been pushing them because they have the highest profit margin; it doesn't cost them that much more to make a vehicle bigger, but Americans have been historically willing to pay more, proportional to the size of the vehicle.
You know, you could have at least bothered to google "hair dryer" and "watts". The first link you'll find is reviews for hair dryers in the 1200 to 1800 range. My hair dryer at home in my downstairs bathroom is 1600W.
Batteries have to be carried uphill too, so you gain some and you lose some.
That doesn't change the fact that they average out demand differences. They're a *net loss*, but they can eliminate the changes in speed that would otherwise occur on slopes.
The more curves the panels go over, the less light they'll capture.
As for a canopy, yes, it makes more sense, but still not as much sense as just having the panels on your roof. Not to mention that most flexible cells aren't as efficient as rigid ones. Nor will that canopy be particularly lightweight or easy to handle -- just the opposite.
If you want an electric motorcycle, why would you pick this? If you're on a budget, I'd go for something like this. If you've got coin to spare, perhaps this (gotta love G-forces almost as high as those on the Space Shuttle;) ).
Apparently where you come from, the position of the wheels and the location of the center of gravity is irrelevant, and all that matters is wheel count.
Ideally, none. In a perfect world, the reduction on friction on the other two wheels equals the increase in friction from the third. Now, in practice, things don't work out quite that way (for example, the heating profiles change, which changes the coefficient of friction), and the third wheel also adds some weight (although they're losing the weight of the balancing hardware).
Oooh, is it anecdote time already? Well, then, this car has shown how unstable 4 wheels are, this car has shown how gasoline cars are inherently unsafe, and this person has shown how white people are cannibals. Gotta love how that works!;)
Yeah. Note what happens when you try to take these sort of concepts from "crazy hypercar" to "usable vehicle". Compare, for example, Pac Car II to the Aptera 2e. Same basic design philosophy, but the 2e has to be usable on city streets, hold two passengers and a good amount of cargo comfortably, be practical to mass produce, have proper acceleration and range, and in general have the amenities and safety people expect in a car. And the net result is that you go from a drag coefficient of 0.06-ish to one of 0.15-ish combined with a severalfold increase in cross-sectional area, while your weight increases from 66lbs to almost 1700lbs.
It's hard to say that Aptera wasn't going for as extreme as you can get while still meeting those basic consumer requirements; it's just that those basic consumer requirements really take a huge hit on your energy consumption. The 2e is still 2-3 times more efficient than a Prius, but it's nothing like the extreme demonstration vehicles out there such as Pac Car II.
Could you do better than the Aptera? Probably. You could go for tandem seating to reduce cross sectional area, at the expense of cargo space and some consumer acceptability. You could build out of honeycomb foam core carbon fiber rather than the equivalent using fiberglass (which is 50% denser), but that'd raise your sale price by a lot. You could skip the electric drivetrain and save a hundred pounds or two, but then you're worsening your environmental impact in other ways. So, I'm not really sure you'd want to take the concept any further than Aptera has. A lot of people already think they've gone too far...... I should add, myself definitely *not* included; I'm on their waiting list!
Personally, when it comes to practical implementations, I expect to see solar cells on the top of RVs and semis long before on cars. Lots more flat real-estate up there. Plus it'd be easier to extend eaves and have actuated positioning of the cells when parked.
Note that this doesn't mean "100% solar powered RVs and semis". It'd be purely supplemental at best, unless we can get up into the 80% efficiency range, wherein you might be able to get that for RVs or unloaded semis. And even then, it'd take some herculean efforts in terms of weight reduction and streamlining to have 100% solar power and still have a desirable vehicle.
A typical streamlined EV, like the Volt, the MiEV, or the Roadster, will use about 200Wh/mi. Let's go with 220Wh/mi wall to wheels, since some is lost in charging. Let's assume a very efficient panel (20% *after* accounting for the cells not all fitting perfectly together) and a large, flat area (2' x 4' ~= 0.74 square meters). Let's say that it's perfectly sunny (1000W/m^2), there's no shade, and let's be optimistic and say that the cosine-weighted average angle of the sun to your car is 50 degrees over the course of a 9 hour work day. Ready? 1000W/m^2 * 0.74m^2 * cos(50 degrees) * 20% efficiency * 9 hours / (220Wh/mi) = 3.9 miles.
Not exactly a long distance for this very favorable case, ne?
Put solar cells on the roof where they belong -- where they're not requiring space/aero compromises, weighing your vehicle down, more likely to be shaded, and more likely to be at the wrong angle.
This is very interesting technology. These solar races really produce odd looking vehicles. Three wheels makes sense in terms of rolling resistance, but I can help but think what might happen if it needed to take a turn fast.
Just because it's three wheeled, or because it's this specific car? Three wheelers can be extremely stable.
I've always wondered how much power could result from the sunlight hitting the roof of my car all day long when I'm at work. Seems like there is potential missed opportunity there.
The missed opportunity would be to put those precious solar cells on top of a car where you have to carry the weight around and the angles are poor rather than on a rooftop where you don't have to haul the weight around and where they can be positioned at an optimum angle.
Bah, that's the lousy version of the tactics cloning bug;) There's one version you can do that lets you clone any shield or weapon, 100% free. I don't remember the exact mechanism offhand (although I remember that you do *not* buy at any point and time; it's all done within the fitting screen). It's something along the lines of using Equip Shield in a job class that allows you to use the weapon you want to clone, then go into the fitting room, try to put a shield in the left hand, and then best fit, and then manually revert back to your original eq. Something like that. I'd have to mess around to figure it out again, and I recall it varies a bit depending on what you want to clone. In my best savegame, I had 99 of all of the best weapons and shields.
Want some more tactics glitches? That game was glitch city;) Two of my favorites:
1) Learn abilities for free. Doesn't work in every class, and like most tactics bugs, there's a bit of finesse to exploiting it. It only works for job classes where you can scroll down the page, and not all of them -- but it's great for some of the big-ticket ones, like summoner, priest, black mage, time mage, etc. You get enough JP to buy at least one skill, but not all skills. You save, because the results can be unpredictable, and you may need to reload. You click to buy the skill, and a yes/no confirmation dialog comes up. While the dialog is up, you scroll the page up and down -- I forget which button it is that turns the up and down buttons into pageup/pagedown, but they erroneously let it still work while the confirmation dialog is up. So, you scroll down to a job that you *can't* afford and buy it. Depending on which job you can't afford that you left off on, it'll have a predictable effect for that job. There's no way to know in advance, however, what that effect will be. It may bring you to extremely negative JP, wherein when you exit and re-enter, you'll have 9999 JP to spend. It may bring you to maxint JP, where you can buy everything and still be over the top. It may increase your JP by a fixed amount or decrease it by a fixed amount. There's a bit of practice needed to figure out how to do this right because it can be hard to get just the right amount of JP to spend and to land on just the right, too expensive, entries. But once you get it, you can learn all skills in that class:) It's funny having a level 1 master Priest or whatnot.;) Sadly, one of the jobs that this doesn't work for is the dreaded Calculator.
2) Level up/level down super-stats. This one is more widely known. Your base stats, like speed, magic power, attack, etc go up relative to your job class when you gain a level. When you lose a level from a degenerator trap, they go down relative to your job class. So, if you go up as one class and down as another, you can get different stats. *And*, some classes give very little for gaining/losing levels, while some give a lot. So, for most males, it's best to go up as a ninja and down as a bard, and for most females, up as a ninja and down as a chemist or dancer (it's best to alternate). However, Reis and Orlandu are best to level up in their base class rather than ninja. It's a slow process to go up and down 99 levels, so you have to work for it, but ultimately, you can have god-like stats. To speed up the process, there are a number of tricks. Normally to hit a degenerator, you have to move on and off it -- i.e., two turns per level. But if you equip the person with teleport, and then try to teleport to the opposite end of the screen, the teleport fails, and you land back on the trap, every turn. To level up, bave Steal as a secondary ability. The most exp any action can give you is 99 (i.e., a level every other turn), but if you use steal exp on a high level player or monster, you can get that 99 exp plus what you steal, and gain a level every turn, all the way up to about level 70 or so.
Slashdot Mirror
Some day there will be a report of all the damage to the environment being caused by discarded CFLs and people will wonder what the hell we in this century were thinking, replacing low-pollution cheap lights with mercury-containing costly electronics gizmos
How many times does this myth have to be knocked down? It's like fighting a zombie.
1) Coal power plants, which make up half of our electricity production, are the prime emitters of mercury in the world, and emit more, straight into the air, powering an incandescent bulb than a modern CFL would emit if you took all of its contents and vaporized them straight into the jet stream.
2) Where were you complaining about mercury when fluorescent tubes became the standard for offices nationwide many decades ago? These use over an order of magnitude more mercury.
3) Mercury in fluorescents is so-called "inorganic" (elemental) mercury. Most mercury emitted by power plants is "organic" mercury (mainly methylmercury, but also some dimethylmercury). Organic mercury is far more toxic.
4) Even just throwing a CFL in the trash doesn't mean all that mercury is emitted to the environment. I could dig up the link *yet again* if I have to, but the amount of mercury released from CFL disposal is roughly along the lines of: 20% if your trash is incinerated, 3% if it's landfilled, 3% if you throw the bulb into normal glass recycling, and a small fraction of a percent if it's treated as hazardous waste.
Modern CFLs use a really, really tiny amount of elemental mercury -- about the mass of ten grains of salt. What's going to be the next scare over -- the radioactive americium in smoke detectors?
Erm, $9 of power *cost* per year, not power savings :P Submitted too soon. But either way, the CFLs cost you 1/4th as much to run.
however if you spend more than $3 per lamp you will lose money.
Let's meet our friend Basic Arithmetic.
Let's say you only use that light 3 hours a day. And you're using 75W (I'm assuming that's what you mean... or did you mean 25W?). Times 365.24 days times 3 hours, that's 82,179 watts per year, or about 87 kilowatt hours. At average US household rates of $0.11/kWh, that's $9 of power savings per year. For a bulb only used for 3 hours a day. Not counting your savings on air conditioning (assuming a COP of 3, AC half the year, and no change in heating costs, that's an extra $1.50).
Here's the problem with LEDs. Yes, LEDs have extremely high quantum efficiencies.... in the *red and blue spectrum*. There are no efficient yellow and green LEDs; it's called the "green gap". But it just so happens that's where our eyes are the most sensitive; we're insensitive to red and blue, but sensitive to yellow and green. So-called "white" LEDs are usually just blue LEDs with a phosphor coating that wastes some energy to create a lower frequency spike, enough to make it look roughly "white" (but in general they're often still blue dominated, making it somewhat of an irritating color). There are "warm" LED bulbs that make a stronger low-frequency signal with phosphors, but that wastes even more energy.
The other main complaint about LEDs is flickering, but that's trivially remedied; good bulbs are full-wave rectified, unlike the cheapo ones that are half-wave rectified and flicker.
The net result, however, is that LED bulbs for lighting tend to be only marginally more efficient than CFLs in terms of lumens, if that, and tend to have more irritating colors. We need to close the green gap.
Most people are used to "soft" or "warm" light from incandescents -- low color temperature. Most early CFLs were "cool" or "daylight" -- high kelvin temperature. Now you can get both, but "warm" (low color temperature). are more common because that's what most people prefer. Check the color temperature on the box before you buy!
Also, if you have flicker or a buzz, or a slow startup, you got a low quality bulb. Return it and get a different brand. Or buy several and see which ones you like the best. Good CFLs don't flicker or buzz, and they start up essentially instantly. There is a lot of variety between brands and models. And quality averages way better than it used to, although there still are some bad apples out there.
And I haven't seen any reasonably priced dimmable CFLs to test out (do you need a special dimmer?)
I got several cases of dimmables on Ebay a couple years ago, and they work just great, on my normal dimmers. Don't remember the brand, but I could get it for you at home if you need it.
By the way -- how many Slashdot articles (like this one) are we going to have full of people trying desperately to come up with a way to justify their decision to spend *way* more money in electricity and increase emissions because they're too lazy or stuck in their ways to merely change their lightbulbs? I mean, come on... is power factor really the best they can come up with? Really, if that's your excuse, just buy a freaking high power factor bulb. Yes, they exist, and have power factors in the 0.9 to 0.95 range. But even with low power factor bulbs -- since when is 1/4 (CFL apparent power consumption relative to incandescent) * 2 (power factor=0.5 CFL) greater than 1.0 (incandescent)?
I can't help but wonder what kind of dork I am, that I really want to see the new Star Trek movie... but mainly just to see if the Aptera 2e that was present during filming made it into any shots ;)
Well, that's a completely different proposal, now isn't it? :) On the car, you're limited by available flat surface area. And do you know how heavy and complicated of a proposition that is you're talking about -- a portable support frame that'll stand up to whatever winds or whatnot come along, with that much solar cell material? And if your answer to save weight (ignoring the frame) is "thin film", cut your efficiency in half.
Erm... ATVs, not RVs. Blah. I should porff raed bettre. P:
FYI... the Aptera 2e three wheeler has the cornering radius of a Porsche Boxter.
Two wheels forward, a low CoM, and a wide stance do wonders for stability. What matters is where your CG is during a turn -- basically how long of a "lever" the force is being exerted on and at what angle. So, with two wheels forward and the CoM low just behind a wide track, when you brake into the turn, the CG is right near the middle of your track, and thus you're applying a force at a very shallow angle across a very long axis. And that means very hard to overcome the downforce from gravity (and thus flip).
But hey, act like high-CoM, one-wheel-forward narrow-track vehicles (RVs) represent all three wheelers all that you like.
Two wheels forward, one back ("tadpole") is a very stable design (assuming a reasonable CG -- low and near the front)... but rear steering is not. It's hard to get used to and is very prone to oversteer.
The US car companies don't make big, inefficient cars because that's what Americans want. Rather, Americans want big, inefficient cars because that's what they are sold
Thank you! Sometimes it's like talking to a brick wall, those people who insist that the Big Three were just selling what people wanted. As though they don't spend over 7 billion dollars a year on marketing. That's about 40% of NASA's annual budget, all on pushing the vehicles they want you to buy the most -- and this decade, those ads have been overwhelmingly for big, heavy, inefficient vehicles. They've been pushing them because they have the highest profit margin; it doesn't cost them that much more to make a vehicle bigger, but Americans have been historically willing to pay more, proportional to the size of the vehicle.
A hair dryer draws around 750 watts
You know, you could have at least bothered to google "hair dryer" and "watts". The first link you'll find is reviews for hair dryers in the 1200 to 1800 range. My hair dryer at home in my downstairs bathroom is 1600W.
Batteries have to be carried uphill too, so you gain some and you lose some.
That doesn't change the fact that they average out demand differences. They're a *net loss*, but they can eliminate the changes in speed that would otherwise occur on slopes.
The more curves the panels go over, the less light they'll capture.
As for a canopy, yes, it makes more sense, but still not as much sense as just having the panels on your roof. Not to mention that most flexible cells aren't as efficient as rigid ones. Nor will that canopy be particularly lightweight or easy to handle -- just the opposite.
If you want an electric motorcycle, why would you pick this? If you're on a budget, I'd go for something like this. If you've got coin to spare, perhaps this (gotta love G-forces almost as high as those on the Space Shuttle ;) ).
Apparently where you come from, the position of the wheels and the location of the center of gravity is irrelevant, and all that matters is wheel count.
Meanwhile, back in the real world....
Ideally, none. In a perfect world, the reduction on friction on the other two wheels equals the increase in friction from the third. Now, in practice, things don't work out quite that way (for example, the heating profiles change, which changes the coefficient of friction), and the third wheel also adds some weight (although they're losing the weight of the balancing hardware).
A hair dryer draws around 750 watts
That's one weak hairdryer.
it's going to slow down to 70.7%
If there were no batteries to average out the ups and downs.
That's very insightful of you, you know.
Oooh, is it anecdote time already? Well, then, this car has shown how unstable 4 wheels are, this car has shown how gasoline cars are inherently unsafe, and this person has shown how white people are cannibals. Gotta love how that works! ;)
FYI...
(Yes, I know you were kidding... but it's a popular misconception, so I thought it should be addressed)
Yeah. Note what happens when you try to take these sort of concepts from "crazy hypercar" to "usable vehicle". Compare, for example, Pac Car II to the Aptera 2e. Same basic design philosophy, but the 2e has to be usable on city streets, hold two passengers and a good amount of cargo comfortably, be practical to mass produce, have proper acceleration and range, and in general have the amenities and safety people expect in a car. And the net result is that you go from a drag coefficient of 0.06-ish to one of 0.15-ish combined with a severalfold increase in cross-sectional area, while your weight increases from 66lbs to almost 1700lbs.
It's hard to say that Aptera wasn't going for as extreme as you can get while still meeting those basic consumer requirements; it's just that those basic consumer requirements really take a huge hit on your energy consumption. The 2e is still 2-3 times more efficient than a Prius, but it's nothing like the extreme demonstration vehicles out there such as Pac Car II.
Could you do better than the Aptera? Probably. You could go for tandem seating to reduce cross sectional area, at the expense of cargo space and some consumer acceptability. You could build out of honeycomb foam core carbon fiber rather than the equivalent using fiberglass (which is 50% denser), but that'd raise your sale price by a lot. You could skip the electric drivetrain and save a hundred pounds or two, but then you're worsening your environmental impact in other ways. So, I'm not really sure you'd want to take the concept any further than Aptera has. A lot of people already think they've gone too far... ... I should add, myself definitely *not* included; I'm on their waiting list!
Personally, when it comes to practical implementations, I expect to see solar cells on the top of RVs and semis long before on cars. Lots more flat real-estate up there. Plus it'd be easier to extend eaves and have actuated positioning of the cells when parked.
Note that this doesn't mean "100% solar powered RVs and semis". It'd be purely supplemental at best, unless we can get up into the 80% efficiency range, wherein you might be able to get that for RVs or unloaded semis. And even then, it'd take some herculean efforts in terms of weight reduction and streamlining to have 100% solar power and still have a desirable vehicle.
Sorry, but not with current physics.
A typical streamlined EV, like the Volt, the MiEV, or the Roadster, will use about 200Wh/mi. Let's go with 220Wh/mi wall to wheels, since some is lost in charging. Let's assume a very efficient panel (20% *after* accounting for the cells not all fitting perfectly together) and a large, flat area (2' x 4' ~= 0.74 square meters). Let's say that it's perfectly sunny (1000W/m^2), there's no shade, and let's be optimistic and say that the cosine-weighted average angle of the sun to your car is 50 degrees over the course of a 9 hour work day. Ready? 1000W/m^2 * 0.74m^2 * cos(50 degrees) * 20% efficiency * 9 hours / (220Wh/mi) = 3.9 miles.
Not exactly a long distance for this very favorable case, ne?
Put solar cells on the roof where they belong -- where they're not requiring space/aero compromises, weighing your vehicle down, more likely to be shaded, and more likely to be at the wrong angle.
This is very interesting technology. These solar races really produce odd looking vehicles. Three wheels makes sense in terms of rolling resistance, but I can help but think what might happen if it needed to take a turn fast.
Just because it's three wheeled, or because it's this specific car? Three wheelers can be extremely stable.
I've always wondered how much power could result from the sunlight hitting the roof of my car all day long when I'm at work. Seems like there is potential missed opportunity there.
The missed opportunity would be to put those precious solar cells on top of a car where you have to carry the weight around and the angles are poor rather than on a rooftop where you don't have to haul the weight around and where they can be positioned at an optimum angle.
Bah, that's the lousy version of the tactics cloning bug ;) There's one version you can do that lets you clone any shield or weapon, 100% free. I don't remember the exact mechanism offhand (although I remember that you do *not* buy at any point and time; it's all done within the fitting screen). It's something along the lines of using Equip Shield in a job class that allows you to use the weapon you want to clone, then go into the fitting room, try to put a shield in the left hand, and then best fit, and then manually revert back to your original eq. Something like that. I'd have to mess around to figure it out again, and I recall it varies a bit depending on what you want to clone. In my best savegame, I had 99 of all of the best weapons and shields.
Want some more tactics glitches? That game was glitch city ;) Two of my favorites:
1) Learn abilities for free. Doesn't work in every class, and like most tactics bugs, there's a bit of finesse to exploiting it. It only works for job classes where you can scroll down the page, and not all of them -- but it's great for some of the big-ticket ones, like summoner, priest, black mage, time mage, etc. You get enough JP to buy at least one skill, but not all skills. You save, because the results can be unpredictable, and you may need to reload. You click to buy the skill, and a yes/no confirmation dialog comes up. While the dialog is up, you scroll the page up and down -- I forget which button it is that turns the up and down buttons into pageup/pagedown, but they erroneously let it still work while the confirmation dialog is up. So, you scroll down to a job that you *can't* afford and buy it. Depending on which job you can't afford that you left off on, it'll have a predictable effect for that job. There's no way to know in advance, however, what that effect will be. It may bring you to extremely negative JP, wherein when you exit and re-enter, you'll have 9999 JP to spend. It may bring you to maxint JP, where you can buy everything and still be over the top. It may increase your JP by a fixed amount or decrease it by a fixed amount. There's a bit of practice needed to figure out how to do this right because it can be hard to get just the right amount of JP to spend and to land on just the right, too expensive, entries. But once you get it, you can learn all skills in that class :) It's funny having a level 1 master Priest or whatnot. ;) Sadly, one of the jobs that this doesn't work for is the dreaded Calculator.
2) Level up/level down super-stats. This one is more widely known. Your base stats, like speed, magic power, attack, etc go up relative to your job class when you gain a level. When you lose a level from a degenerator trap, they go down relative to your job class. So, if you go up as one class and down as another, you can get different stats. *And*, some classes give very little for gaining/losing levels, while some give a lot. So, for most males, it's best to go up as a ninja and down as a bard, and for most females, up as a ninja and down as a chemist or dancer (it's best to alternate). However, Reis and Orlandu are best to level up in their base class rather than ninja. It's a slow process to go up and down 99 levels, so you have to work for it, but ultimately, you can have god-like stats. To speed up the process, there are a number of tricks. Normally to hit a degenerator, you have to move on and off it -- i.e., two turns per level. But if you equip the person with teleport, and then try to teleport to the opposite end of the screen, the teleport fails, and you land back on the trap, every turn. To level up, bave Steal as a secondary ability. The most exp any action can give you is 99 (i.e., a level every other turn), but if you use steal exp on a high level player or monster, you can get that 99 exp plus what you steal, and gain a level every turn, all the way up to about level 70 or so.
Tactics, of course, also had quite a few fun
She had a 2005 model, with no video. Also, apparently here staff had asked for the gift.