I should have probably mentioned glass bottles instead.
Recycling of metals is a money-saving effort; thus why they actually pay my grandfather enough for his aluminum cans for like a meal out for a couple garbage bags worth.
Smelting generally works for avoiding contaminents and it certainly sterilizes.
On the other hand, sterilizing a glass bottle for reuse(say a milk jar) takes more natural gas to heat the water than it'd take to simply make a new plastic jug. And simply sterilizing/power washing a glass bottle is a lot cheaper than melting it down and reforming it.
I can see some obvious hits-a magnet for steel stuff. Maybe even some size and density sorts. There's a lot you can do, you just need humans to quality check and fix anything.
I'm sure some of those 21 employees do just that at their new facility. I wonder how many they had before?
All that's happening there is that you end up paying workers later on to resort the materials. It's better than trying to have the consumers do it all, and it's better than trying to sort recyclables out of trash, but it's still expensive and often dirty.
melt it all down you can at least turn it into the black plastic containers a lot of food comes in.
You're back to 'contamination' when it comes to anything dealing with food. What if somebody spills some rat poison in the container? If it comes into contact with human or non-human biological waste? You can sterilize glass and metals with sufficient heat, but you can't with plastic.
Now, black plastic garbage bags, building construction materials, etc... That I'll give you.
You've missed the point entirely. The quoted myth is arguing that most or all trash gets sorted anyway. This is not remotely true. The Cleveland authorities look through some people's trash to see whether it contains recyclable materials, not to actually perform the separation for them.
Look at it another way. The 'study' cites that sorting trash for recyclables is prohibitive, so it's almost never done. Yet the city is putting the burden on all it's residents to do just that, threatening them with fines if they don't comply.
Would it still be economical if they had to, say, pay the residents minimum wage + 50%(for benefits expense), for the time they spend sorting and preparing? Probably not.
Realistically, I think that when somebody manages to come up with a dependable trash sorting system(possibly involving advanced robots capable of spotting, grabbing, and sorting, glass bottles from plastic from metal), stands to make a LOT of money.
Another non sequitur. If 40% of the population is doing something, I'd say it's pretty popular, wouldn't you? But that's not even a majority.
I won't deny that it isn't popular, but the GP was looking on it in the context that 'recycling is a burden on families', which, depending on a number of variables, it might be. Extra space for more garbage cans, more bags(often expensive ones marked for recycling), having to rinse various containers that would otherwise be tossed directly, etc...
Basically, just because it's popular doesn't mean that it isn't a burden on others.
But I'd also like an example of a cost that a recycling company externalizes.
Good point; Recycling companies tend to benefit more from price support and fixing. My first idea would be a sort of fraud - recycling something like electronics by shipping them over to those incredibly environmentally unsound recycling facilities over in China.
Perhaps some materials cost more to recycle than they are worth as an end product, but again you can't charge more than the market rate for that service.
Most recycling companies, as opposed to scrap metal companies, don't generally operate in a competitive market; they pretty much all enjoy a degree of monopoly.
Are barriers to entry for recyclers too high? Is there a cartel or price fixing going on?
Barriers to entry - generally yes, in that the technology simply isn't there to justify much of the recycling. While recycling is normally considered a good thing, there are also generally high levels of bureaucracy and regulation to work through. Consider something like yard waste 'recycling' into power - you have to satisfy the EPA before you can operate. It's bad enough that when a company designed and built a power generating incinerator, they ran into regulations that wouldn't let them use the waste in that fashion because there are rules saying you can't use that type of waste for power generation despite the system being deliberately designed to run hotter than standard to meet the safe incineration requirements for safe disposal.
Cartels & Price fixing: All over the place. It's pretty standard for a company to 'hire' some lobbying, get a municipality to pass a recycling requirement, then be the only bidder to provide the service - which is charged to the residents in garbage fees, not the municipality's budget.
If it doesn't at least break even it is consuming more resources than it saves and is "the right thing to do" only with respect to political correctness.
Bingo. Our base ended a lot of recycling programs when it was discovered that it often took more resources to SHIP the waste to the recycling facility than would be gained. Examples would be paper and plastic. Theoretically at some point it'd pay for us to build a incinerating power plant, but until then the dump it is.
Even for cans, consider the energy costs involved in generating the clean water to rinse them out in. The man-hours taken to sort them out, etc...
Yeah, while I'm sure you're well intentioned, please realize that these are extremely complex problems with no easy, simple, or single solution.
Please also be aware that this is a post on slashdot(IE not exhaustive), and that I said FEWER drugged kids for a reason. I fully acknowledge that there are REAL cases of ADD out there that drug treatment is the best for.
HOWEVER, if this was the case you'd expect most schools to have about the same amount of kids taking ADD drugs in each school, once you control for variable healthcare levels due differences in medical coverage for poor/middle/rich areas/schools. Instead you have a situation where some schools have single digit percentages of students on these drugs, and schools where well over half have them, and the parents of kids who aren't are pressured by teachers to get their kids on them at the slightest excuse.
My post about gym/exercise time is that, in actual studies, schools that had existent and effective exercise programs had, on average, substantially fewer children on ADD type drugs, fewer disclipline problems, and even higher academic achievement on fewer hours.
So what was the exercise level at your schools? What's your activity level now?
As for running? There's a reason 90% of coaches use running laps as punishment.
I've worked with a bunch of nuts who LIKE running.
Oh, and I think there's a difference between a 'PT Teacher' and 'Coach' in this context, though I'll fully admit that they're often the same person.
A 'Coach' is somebody running a team for me. A 'PT Teacher' is there to encourage physical fitness, in ALL students. Doesn't always happen, which is why I wouldn't be 100% in support of 'traditional' gym class. You don't necessarily have the student population to be 'ideal', but you should be able to do better.
There's a reason I stated a preference for getting the 'jocks' out of the regular person's gym classes. A non-jock is less likely to make fun of somebody who's marginally worse, sports wise. Get the jocks out, switch to non-competitive exercises, or exercises that emphasis different skills/abilities.
or when they incorporated step aerobics as a section.
In highschool my PE course was weightlifting. My cardio was crosscountry; my joy was that I never finished last.
I dunno, it just seemed that actually getting children in shape and teaching them how to improve their physical fitness as well as maintain that level of fitness was not the foremost thought in the P.E. teacher's heads.
There is a high variability, of course. You also have to deal with a 30:1 ratio of students to teacher, on average, lack of equipment, etc... Team sports tend towards being equipment and supervision efficient, thus their popularity.
but I'm not sure if traditional gym class is the best way to go about it.
One of the last picked here. Couldn't catch due to an eye condition(got physical therapy for it).
Traditional gym, perhaps. What I'd have schools do is channel the 'athletic' into organized sports, or at least their own gym classes; you'd have seperate gym classes for those NOT participating, that would do more miscellaneous/non-competitive things. Then again, really traditional gym included more track type sports - having people just RUN on the track. Not get picked last for a team.
Of course, I had an idea on how to adjust a traditional children's game to be more 'fair' to those less athletic. Specifically 'Tag'.
I called it 'Zombie Apocolypse'. Basic rules. 1. Playing field is declared beforehand. Area size should be large enough for good runs, but small enough that players are still a tad confined. 2. Play time is declared before hand. 3. You start with 1 zombie; the zombie's goal is to 'bite', IE tag other players 4. Bitten players become zombies(give them something to wear to mark their new zombie status) 5. Zombies win if they can convert everybody before the time runs out; those still 'human' win if they avoid conversion before time wins out.
This way the athletic types don't get a free pass; enough slower kids can still corner the more athletic ones.
Indeed, I wonder how many supposedly ADHD kids just really need a good thumping to keep them focused.
'Thumping' may be counterproductive.
Personally, I vote for 'More gym time'. Schools that eliminated gym in favor of more classroom hours saw no academic improvement and increases in disruption. Schools that instituted gym time* saw reductions in disruption/discipline issues.
You don't even necessarily need organized gym, you just need to get the kids *MOVING*.
As a result you both need fewer drugged kids, you also have healthier kids.
High school science - friction resistance has little to nothing to do with contact size; it has everything to do with materials, pressure/weight between the two, and whether it's static(rolling is a type of) or sliding(IE a skid).
Take a car and measure it's stopping distance empty and loaded to double it's weight - IF(and this is a big one) the brakes are up to it, the stopping distance will stay the same. Thinking about it - you're better off using a truck for this; it's more likely to have the bigger brakes needed.
On that note, brakes are an ideal example for friction based on pressure - they typically use a hydrolic system to press the brake pad onto the rotor. Big trucks/trains use pneumatic.
Eh, I think kids need to know how to operate calculators, they're likely going to be using them in life.
It becomes a time issue - it takes *TIME* to teach somebody how to do basic maths in their head or on paper. I had time tests in school. Thing is, there's a whole host of other things they need to teach today, and limited time to do it. Thus the calculators.
Remember I said I didn't agree with it myself - they still need the basics, at least enough to be able to tell when they've committed an error of scale. Like recognizing that a 4 Billion dollar result isn't likely for a home business.
I think the idea is that calculators are used in the real world for real calculations (counting a computer as a really overgrown calculator), thus teaching kids without using them doesn't prepare them for the real world*, they don't actually NEED all that skill with doing basic math in their head, because most won't be doing it regularly enough for it to matter.
I don't entirely agree with this, I think that they need enough skill to be able to tell when there has been an error in their figuring.
And, no, you are quite wrong. The hard part is getting gigabit links to every home. The back end is easy.
If you're running fiber; giving them a 'gigabit' fiber connection by using a gigabit switch rather than a 100mb switch is easy.
The problem on the back end becomes provisioning. If your switch has internal gigabit switching and you have a hundred some odd houses plugged in there, but you only have a gigabit connection going back to a central switch, can you really say that the users have a 'gigabit connection to the internet'? They only get that gig if none of the other hundred or so people are using it at the same time.
A 10 gig connection would work better, but now what about the town's connection back to the nearest city? It adds up, fast. Going mesh helps, but you're still looking at needing a lot of bandwidth to serve all those homes.
You're right though, I wouldn't call it a LAN, or even a MAN. But you're still looking at saturating the cables leaving the country if a lot of people want to access content located in the USA/Europe.
this is the problem with nuke waste... how about the remaining 9 940 years? what you will do with that water? what to do to the broken containers?
I figure that we'd be digging the stuff up in less than a century if we buried it for reprocessing or use in breeders as it'd be the densest 'mine' easily available. Once you commit to reprocessing or breeding, you don't need to store the remaining waste for but like 300 years.
The water? The water is generally fine. Reuse it.
Broken containers? Use containers that don't break in the first place, or if somebody DOES manage to break one, use a robot to place the waste in a new one.
In each house, we are talking about solar. instead of brick walls, put solar panels. solar efficient is still low, but every day its efficiency is increasing. Does it work for everyone? no... does it work for most world population? yes
Isn't it more like solar panels instead of roofing tiles? You actually WANT the brick walls - provides thermal mass so you can run climate control when nature provides the power. If you have proper roof overhang you're also looking at losing a lot of power from that, and probably increased damage risks due to angle and lower height. Back on thermal mass - Let's take solar heating; with sufficient mass you can heat the home such that it maintains a comfortable temperature overnight between the insulation, thermal mass, and possibly a hot water tank/boiler.
and finally, if talking about energy price, coal win all over the board, yet its a technology that you don't want to use less and less each year... why? because of all its problems.
Think you meant more 'you WANT to use less and less each year...' - And I did mention not wanting to live around one due to the pollution, didn't I?
money invested in nuke is better applied in green energies, not only it allows a faster evolution of those energies, but will save you money in the future. Nuke on the other hand, saves you money in the present, but you will spend it all later on.
My argument is that we need a mixed approach and that nukes are actually a very clean technology. We NEED baseload power somehow.
Like I said earlier: Something like 40% Nuke, 20% Solar, 20% Wind, 20% other.
But we need to know WHAT they are doing in order to elect intelligently.
You don't elect generals. Generals are chosen. At the top by the President, the appropriate service secretary and chief. Approved by congress.
What you attempt to do is pick a president who will be competent at choosing secretaries and directing the DoD. He doesn't need to be, shouldn't be, involved in the specifics about how patrols are run.
Wars today are easily more about politics and viewpoints than they are about bombs and guns.
Now you can spend an extra 10k per car on battery's and drag them around all the time, or you can use a hybrid trolley system for those times when you need the extra range.
I think you're underestimating the cost of electrifying 46,876 miles of road. Plus you can't necessarily just put elevated 'trolly wires' in because the highways also have to be able to take oversized traffic.
Build it into the roadway and you're looking at even more expensive and difficult to maintain.
That's why for highway travel I'd either say rent a vehicle with an IC engine(hybrid or not), or rent a trailor with a generator and make the EVs compatible with them.
Because sufficient electricity can significantly replace oil use in vehicles, especially in countries where it's unusual to drive long distances.
True, but right now while electricity is something like 1/4 the price of gasoline per mile, the battery cost* is something like parity, making EVs actually MORE expensive per mile.:( I'll note that there's still LOTS of variables and that new technology can change that rather rapidly. Just one example would be the Lithium-Iron cells that are supposed to be cheaper and longer lasting.
You run into another problem when trying to mate green electricity and EV's - Green energy, being normally significantly more expensive than traditional sources, raises the power cost back to that of gasoline in some cases. We're on the razor's edge as is.
So things like electrified rail is relatively easy, but EVs are still 'tough'. - I've even read some interesting proposals to add a third rail and interface systems in at least around cities. Diesel Electric locomotives would be able to shut off their diesel engines and use grid power with the proper interface, which shouldn't add much weight or expense to the locomotives. The expense comes from miles and miles of 3rd rail. Then again, you could see significant savings if you just electrified the rail yards, while keeping it safe for workers.
*Going by manufacturer estimated durability claims and replacement cost.
We do use oil for peaking power plants and backup generators. Also Trains are another area where oil and electricity compete head to head.
In both cases I mentioned 'significant' for a reason.
All the EVs and Electric trains, at this point, don't amount to a 'significant' amount of electricity used for transporting things. The backup generators for my building are indeed diesel, but they're not on a 'significant' amount of time.
To me, 'significant' generally takes being above 1-5%, depending on context.
PS: It seems obvious to me that electrifying highways is much simpler and cheaper than trying to build electric cars with 300 mile ranges.
Having studied the issue a bit, I have to disagree; for one most gas/diesel isn't used on highways. We'd be better off building electric cars with lower ranges, making them cheaper, but setting them up so they can take a trailor with a generator to turn them into a hybrid for long trips. As a bonus, oversize the trailer a bit and you have more luggage space when you most need it.
Nuke is not a smart man's mantra, for sure you dont want to live near one, even less near a nuclear waste storage location.
Why wouldn't I want to live near one? I'd much rather live next to a nuke plant than: 1. Chemical factory/storage. See Bhopal 2. Coal Power plant (lung cancer risks slightly lower than active smoker) 3. Garbage dump (stinks, possibly/probably toxic)
As for storage location, well, nuclear waste is at least incredibly dense. You can store like 60 years worth of 'waste' in what amounts to a extra deep Olympic swimming pool.
the smart man's mantra is renewable energy... big installations are good, but the future is small, local area installations. If all the houses had wind and solar generation, the outside energy needs would be small and a lot easier to manage. Of course, freezing winter can still be a problem, but those could use other energy sources like biomass and biofuel.
It's been calculated that for Britain it'd be more efficient to put the solar panels in northern Africa and run power lines up north. As for wind generation, wind requires towers, and if you put one up next to every house I predict fairly substantial amounts of injuries from tower failures. Besides, wind gets more economical the bigger/taller the turbine, so they're best OUTSIDE of town where you can make them huge.
On biomass and biofuel - we'd be shipping a lot of it up from down south where it'd be best generated. Integrated grid would help; use solar energy not used to power AC in the winter to power heat pumps farther north. Still need nighttime power that's what wind would be for.
Or we could just build a bunch of nuke plants for 1/4 the price per kwh and get power on our schedule, not nature's.
In reality I think that a proportion that's like 40% nuke, 20% solar, 20% wind, 20% misc 'other' would work well.
Why do we see this meme so often? Solar and wind energy is used to produce electricity. Electricity isn't significantly produced by oil, it's mostly coal, followed by nuclear, hydro, and natural gas...
We do use oil as chemical feedstock and for fuel for mobile applications like vehicles. Thus far, our usage of electricity in that function is 'insignificant'.
Don't get me wrong, I'm always happy about staying away from coal and using something significantly cleaner. After all, coal is even nastier than oil. Well, modern coal plants are cleaner than autos, but that's because they have industrial sized pollution controls.
Slashdot Mirror
I should have probably mentioned glass bottles instead.
Recycling of metals is a money-saving effort; thus why they actually pay my grandfather enough for his aluminum cans for like a meal out for a couple garbage bags worth.
Smelting generally works for avoiding contaminents and it certainly sterilizes.
On the other hand, sterilizing a glass bottle for reuse(say a milk jar) takes more natural gas to heat the water than it'd take to simply make a new plastic jug. And simply sterilizing/power washing a glass bottle is a lot cheaper than melting it down and reforming it.
'Mega-Sorter'? Interesting.
I can see some obvious hits-a magnet for steel stuff. Maybe even some size and density sorts. There's a lot you can do, you just need humans to quality check and fix anything.
I'm sure some of those 21 employees do just that at their new facility. I wonder how many they had before?
All that's happening there is that you end up paying workers later on to resort the materials. It's better than trying to have the consumers do it all, and it's better than trying to sort recyclables out of trash, but it's still expensive and often dirty.
melt it all down you can at least turn it into the black plastic containers a lot of food comes in.
You're back to 'contamination' when it comes to anything dealing with food. What if somebody spills some rat poison in the container? If it comes into contact with human or non-human biological waste? You can sterilize glass and metals with sufficient heat, but you can't with plastic.
Now, black plastic garbage bags, building construction materials, etc... That I'll give you.
Seriously, I recycle for three reasons. I like my city selling the stuff and almost breaking even on picking it up.
Are they actually 'almost breaking even', or are they subsidizing it from elsewhere? That happens a lot.
You've missed the point entirely. The quoted myth is arguing that most or all trash gets sorted anyway. This is not remotely true. The Cleveland authorities look through some people's trash to see whether it contains recyclable materials, not to actually perform the separation for them.
Look at it another way. The 'study' cites that sorting trash for recyclables is prohibitive, so it's almost never done. Yet the city is putting the burden on all it's residents to do just that, threatening them with fines if they don't comply.
Would it still be economical if they had to, say, pay the residents minimum wage + 50%(for benefits expense), for the time they spend sorting and preparing? Probably not.
Realistically, I think that when somebody manages to come up with a dependable trash sorting system(possibly involving advanced robots capable of spotting, grabbing, and sorting, glass bottles from plastic from metal), stands to make a LOT of money.
Another non sequitur. If 40% of the population is doing something, I'd say it's pretty popular, wouldn't you? But that's not even a majority.
I won't deny that it isn't popular, but the GP was looking on it in the context that 'recycling is a burden on families', which, depending on a number of variables, it might be. Extra space for more garbage cans, more bags(often expensive ones marked for recycling), having to rinse various containers that would otherwise be tossed directly, etc...
Basically, just because it's popular doesn't mean that it isn't a burden on others.
But I'd also like an example of a cost that a recycling company externalizes.
Good point; Recycling companies tend to benefit more from price support and fixing. My first idea would be a sort of fraud - recycling something like electronics by shipping them over to those incredibly environmentally unsound recycling facilities over in China.
Perhaps some materials cost more to recycle than they are worth as an end product, but again you can't charge more than the market rate for that service.
Most recycling companies, as opposed to scrap metal companies, don't generally operate in a competitive market; they pretty much all enjoy a degree of monopoly.
Are barriers to entry for recyclers too high? Is there a cartel or price fixing going on?
Barriers to entry - generally yes, in that the technology simply isn't there to justify much of the recycling. While recycling is normally considered a good thing, there are also generally high levels of bureaucracy and regulation to work through. Consider something like yard waste 'recycling' into power - you have to satisfy the EPA before you can operate. It's bad enough that when a company designed and built a power generating incinerator, they ran into regulations that wouldn't let them use the waste in that fashion because there are rules saying you can't use that type of waste for power generation despite the system being deliberately designed to run hotter than standard to meet the safe incineration requirements for safe disposal.
Cartels & Price fixing: All over the place. It's pretty standard for a company to 'hire' some lobbying, get a municipality to pass a recycling requirement, then be the only bidder to provide the service - which is charged to the residents in garbage fees, not the municipality's budget.
If it doesn't at least break even it is consuming more resources than it saves and is "the right thing to do" only with respect to political correctness.
Bingo. Our base ended a lot of recycling programs when it was discovered that it often took more resources to SHIP the waste to the recycling facility than would be gained. Examples would be paper and plastic. Theoretically at some point it'd pay for us to build a incinerating power plant, but until then the dump it is.
Even for cans, consider the energy costs involved in generating the clean water to rinse them out in. The man-hours taken to sort them out, etc...
Yeah, while I'm sure you're well intentioned, please realize that these are extremely complex problems with no easy, simple, or single solution.
Please also be aware that this is a post on slashdot(IE not exhaustive), and that I said FEWER drugged kids for a reason. I fully acknowledge that there are REAL cases of ADD out there that drug treatment is the best for.
HOWEVER, if this was the case you'd expect most schools to have about the same amount of kids taking ADD drugs in each school, once you control for variable healthcare levels due differences in medical coverage for poor/middle/rich areas/schools. Instead you have a situation where some schools have single digit percentages of students on these drugs, and schools where well over half have them, and the parents of kids who aren't are pressured by teachers to get their kids on them at the slightest excuse.
My post about gym/exercise time is that, in actual studies, schools that had existent and effective exercise programs had, on average, substantially fewer children on ADD type drugs, fewer disclipline problems, and even higher academic achievement on fewer hours.
So what was the exercise level at your schools? What's your activity level now?
As for running? There's a reason 90% of coaches use running laps as punishment.
I've worked with a bunch of nuts who LIKE running.
Oh, and I think there's a difference between a 'PT Teacher' and 'Coach' in this context, though I'll fully admit that they're often the same person.
A 'Coach' is somebody running a team for me. A 'PT Teacher' is there to encourage physical fitness, in ALL students. Doesn't always happen, which is why I wouldn't be 100% in support of 'traditional' gym class. You don't necessarily have the student population to be 'ideal', but you should be able to do better.
There's a reason I stated a preference for getting the 'jocks' out of the regular person's gym classes. A non-jock is less likely to make fun of somebody who's marginally worse, sports wise. Get the jocks out, switch to non-competitive exercises, or exercises that emphasis different skills/abilities.
or when they incorporated step aerobics as a section.
In highschool my PE course was weightlifting. My cardio was crosscountry; my joy was that I never finished last.
I dunno, it just seemed that actually getting children in shape and teaching them how to improve their physical fitness as well as maintain that level of fitness was not the foremost thought in the P.E. teacher's heads.
There is a high variability, of course. You also have to deal with a 30:1 ratio of students to teacher, on average, lack of equipment, etc... Team sports tend towards being equipment and supervision efficient, thus their popularity.
but I'm not sure if traditional gym class is the best way to go about it.
One of the last picked here. Couldn't catch due to an eye condition(got physical therapy for it).
Traditional gym, perhaps. What I'd have schools do is channel the 'athletic' into organized sports, or at least their own gym classes; you'd have seperate gym classes for those NOT participating, that would do more miscellaneous/non-competitive things. Then again, really traditional gym included more track type sports - having people just RUN on the track. Not get picked last for a team.
Of course, I had an idea on how to adjust a traditional children's game to be more 'fair' to those less athletic. Specifically 'Tag'.
I called it 'Zombie Apocolypse'. Basic rules.
1. Playing field is declared beforehand. Area size should be large enough for good runs, but small enough that players are still a tad confined.
2. Play time is declared before hand.
3. You start with 1 zombie; the zombie's goal is to 'bite', IE tag other players
4. Bitten players become zombies(give them something to wear to mark their new zombie status)
5. Zombies win if they can convert everybody before the time runs out; those still 'human' win if they avoid conversion before time wins out.
This way the athletic types don't get a free pass; enough slower kids can still corner the more athletic ones.
Variation: Include Hide&Seek!
gym should be refocused as a general health education class. Teach the kids how and when to properly exercise.
Could be done on a rotating basis, I suppose. MWF are 'workout' days, TH are classroom.
Indeed, I wonder how many supposedly ADHD kids just really need a good thumping to keep them focused.
'Thumping' may be counterproductive.
Personally, I vote for 'More gym time'. Schools that eliminated gym in favor of more classroom hours saw no academic improvement and increases in disruption. Schools that instituted gym time* saw reductions in disruption/discipline issues.
You don't even necessarily need organized gym, you just need to get the kids *MOVING*.
As a result you both need fewer drugged kids, you also have healthier kids.
*Basically exercise. ANY exercise.
High school science - friction resistance has little to nothing to do with contact size; it has everything to do with materials, pressure/weight between the two, and whether it's static(rolling is a type of) or sliding(IE a skid).
Take a car and measure it's stopping distance empty and loaded to double it's weight - IF(and this is a big one) the brakes are up to it, the stopping distance will stay the same. Thinking about it - you're better off using a truck for this; it's more likely to have the bigger brakes needed.
On that note, brakes are an ideal example for friction based on pressure - they typically use a hydrolic system to press the brake pad onto the rotor. Big trucks/trains use pneumatic.
Eh, I think kids need to know how to operate calculators, they're likely going to be using them in life.
It becomes a time issue - it takes *TIME* to teach somebody how to do basic maths in their head or on paper. I had time tests in school. Thing is, there's a whole host of other things they need to teach today, and limited time to do it. Thus the calculators.
Remember I said I didn't agree with it myself - they still need the basics, at least enough to be able to tell when they've committed an error of scale. Like recognizing that a 4 Billion dollar result isn't likely for a home business.
I think the idea is that calculators are used in the real world for real calculations (counting a computer as a really overgrown calculator), thus teaching kids without using them doesn't prepare them for the real world*, they don't actually NEED all that skill with doing basic math in their head, because most won't be doing it regularly enough for it to matter.
I don't entirely agree with this, I think that they need enough skill to be able to tell when there has been an error in their figuring.
And, no, you are quite wrong. The hard part is getting gigabit links to every home. The back end is easy.
If you're running fiber; giving them a 'gigabit' fiber connection by using a gigabit switch rather than a 100mb switch is easy.
The problem on the back end becomes provisioning. If your switch has internal gigabit switching and you have a hundred some odd houses plugged in there, but you only have a gigabit connection going back to a central switch, can you really say that the users have a 'gigabit connection to the internet'? They only get that gig if none of the other hundred or so people are using it at the same time.
A 10 gig connection would work better, but now what about the town's connection back to the nearest city? It adds up, fast. Going mesh helps, but you're still looking at needing a lot of bandwidth to serve all those homes.
You're right though, I wouldn't call it a LAN, or even a MAN. But you're still looking at saturating the cables leaving the country if a lot of people want to access content located in the USA/Europe.
this is the problem with nuke waste... how about the remaining 9 940 years? what you will do with that water? what to do to the broken containers?
I figure that we'd be digging the stuff up in less than a century if we buried it for reprocessing or use in breeders as it'd be the densest 'mine' easily available. Once you commit to reprocessing or breeding, you don't need to store the remaining waste for but like 300 years.
The water? The water is generally fine. Reuse it.
Broken containers? Use containers that don't break in the first place, or if somebody DOES manage to break one, use a robot to place the waste in a new one.
In each house, we are talking about solar. instead of brick walls, put solar panels. solar efficient is still low, but every day its efficiency is increasing. Does it work for everyone? no... does it work for most world population? yes
Isn't it more like solar panels instead of roofing tiles? You actually WANT the brick walls - provides thermal mass so you can run climate control when nature provides the power. If you have proper roof overhang you're also looking at losing a lot of power from that, and probably increased damage risks due to angle and lower height. Back on thermal mass - Let's take solar heating; with sufficient mass you can heat the home such that it maintains a comfortable temperature overnight between the insulation, thermal mass, and possibly a hot water tank/boiler.
and finally, if talking about energy price, coal win all over the board, yet its a technology that you don't want to use less and less each year... why? because of all its problems.
Think you meant more 'you WANT to use less and less each year...' - And I did mention not wanting to live around one due to the pollution, didn't I?
money invested in nuke is better applied in green energies, not only it allows a faster evolution of those energies, but will save you money in the future. Nuke on the other hand, saves you money in the present, but you will spend it all later on.
My argument is that we need a mixed approach and that nukes are actually a very clean technology. We NEED baseload power somehow.
Like I said earlier: Something like 40% Nuke, 20% Solar, 20% Wind, 20% other.
But we need to know WHAT they are doing in order to elect intelligently.
You don't elect generals. Generals are chosen. At the top by the President, the appropriate service secretary and chief. Approved by congress.
What you attempt to do is pick a president who will be competent at choosing secretaries and directing the DoD. He doesn't need to be, shouldn't be, involved in the specifics about how patrols are run.
Wars today are easily more about politics and viewpoints than they are about bombs and guns.
I'd be fine living next to TMI. Chernobyl, well, I'll admit that I wouldn't want to live next to a nuclear plant with no containment dome...
Now you can spend an extra 10k per car on battery's and drag them around all the time, or you can use a hybrid trolley system for those times when you need the extra range.
I think you're underestimating the cost of electrifying 46,876 miles of road. Plus you can't necessarily just put elevated 'trolly wires' in because the highways also have to be able to take oversized traffic.
Build it into the roadway and you're looking at even more expensive and difficult to maintain.
That's why for highway travel I'd either say rent a vehicle with an IC engine(hybrid or not), or rent a trailor with a generator and make the EVs compatible with them.
Because sufficient electricity can significantly replace oil use in vehicles, especially in countries where it's unusual to drive long distances.
True, but right now while electricity is something like 1/4 the price of gasoline per mile, the battery cost* is something like parity, making EVs actually MORE expensive per mile. :( I'll note that there's still LOTS of variables and that new technology can change that rather rapidly. Just one example would be the Lithium-Iron cells that are supposed to be cheaper and longer lasting.
You run into another problem when trying to mate green electricity and EV's - Green energy, being normally significantly more expensive than traditional sources, raises the power cost back to that of gasoline in some cases. We're on the razor's edge as is.
So things like electrified rail is relatively easy, but EVs are still 'tough'. - I've even read some interesting proposals to add a third rail and interface systems in at least around cities. Diesel Electric locomotives would be able to shut off their diesel engines and use grid power with the proper interface, which shouldn't add much weight or expense to the locomotives. The expense comes from miles and miles of 3rd rail. Then again, you could see significant savings if you just electrified the rail yards, while keeping it safe for workers.
*Going by manufacturer estimated durability claims and replacement cost.
We do use oil for peaking power plants and backup generators. Also Trains are another area where oil and electricity compete head to head.
In both cases I mentioned 'significant' for a reason.
All the EVs and Electric trains, at this point, don't amount to a 'significant' amount of electricity used for transporting things. The backup generators for my building are indeed diesel, but they're not on a 'significant' amount of time.
To me, 'significant' generally takes being above 1-5%, depending on context.
PS: It seems obvious to me that electrifying highways is much simpler and cheaper than trying to build electric cars with 300 mile ranges.
Having studied the issue a bit, I have to disagree; for one most gas/diesel isn't used on highways. We'd be better off building electric cars with lower ranges, making them cheaper, but setting them up so they can take a trailor with a generator to turn them into a hybrid for long trips. As a bonus, oversize the trailer a bit and you have more luggage space when you most need it.
Nuke is not a smart man's mantra, for sure you dont want to live near one, even less near a nuclear waste storage location.
Why wouldn't I want to live near one? I'd much rather live next to a nuke plant than:
1. Chemical factory/storage. See Bhopal
2. Coal Power plant (lung cancer risks slightly lower than active smoker)
3. Garbage dump (stinks, possibly/probably toxic)
As for storage location, well, nuclear waste is at least incredibly dense. You can store like 60 years worth of 'waste' in what amounts to a extra deep Olympic swimming pool.
the smart man's mantra is renewable energy... big installations are good, but the future is small, local area installations. If all the houses had wind and solar generation, the outside energy needs would be small and a lot easier to manage. Of course, freezing winter can still be a problem, but those could use other energy sources like biomass and biofuel.
It's been calculated that for Britain it'd be more efficient to put the solar panels in northern Africa and run power lines up north. As for wind generation, wind requires towers, and if you put one up next to every house I predict fairly substantial amounts of injuries from tower failures. Besides, wind gets more economical the bigger/taller the turbine, so they're best OUTSIDE of town where you can make them huge.
On biomass and biofuel - we'd be shipping a lot of it up from down south where it'd be best generated. Integrated grid would help; use solar energy not used to power AC in the winter to power heat pumps farther north. Still need nighttime power that's what wind would be for.
Or we could just build a bunch of nuke plants for 1/4 the price per kwh and get power on our schedule, not nature's.
In reality I think that a proportion that's like 40% nuke, 20% solar, 20% wind, 20% misc 'other' would work well.
Why do we see this meme so often? Solar and wind energy is used to produce electricity. Electricity isn't significantly produced by oil, it's mostly coal, followed by nuclear, hydro, and natural gas...
We do use oil as chemical feedstock and for fuel for mobile applications like vehicles. Thus far, our usage of electricity in that function is 'insignificant'.
Don't get me wrong, I'm always happy about staying away from coal and using something significantly cleaner. After all, coal is even nastier than oil. Well, modern coal plants are cleaner than autos, but that's because they have industrial sized pollution controls.