Next generation of the electricity - Thunder-collecting?

Recently, while searching the web, I discovered very interesting new idea how to satiate voracious world need for the electricity:

     According to the scientist Fernando Galembeck, who published this controversial idea in the August 25th,2010 on the conferrence of American Chemistry Company (ACS), it can be possible to construct plants(panels) able to gather electricity from the atmosphere.

     Likewise photovoltaic turns electricity from sunlight, these ''thunder collecting'' machines could be a source of  a strong, pure and for the most of all, free alternative energy. The panels should gather electricity on the roofs of the buildings and protect families from paying bills for electricity. Also, the panels should gather electricity before a thunder is actially formed and in this way they could safe many lives and possesion losses due to the thunder's damage.

     This is not for the first time, when someone has showed up with using thunders for electricity.
You might have already known that this vision was presented more than 100 years ago by an ingenious inventor and scientist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

This scientist's lifelong goal was to create a system, in which is the electricity conducted through the air without need of wires. He also tried to gather the direct current from thunders, but he had not suffiecient funds and the required technology in his era.

    What is so new about this idea now?
Galmebeck's team stated that it solved a scientist's enigma, which was a riddle for centuries - how exactly is electricity produced and discharged in the atmosphere.
    The main part of the discovery is that when water vapor is collected on microscopic particles of dust and other material in the air, the water has big potentiall for picking up an electric charge. Older studies thought that this microscopical dust with water is electrically neutral.

    Galembeck's team from Brizilian University used laboratory experiment in which tiny particles of silica and aluminum phosphate (common air substances) were simulated to contact with the water. Silica particles became more negatively charged and aluminum phosphate more positively charged in the presence of high humidity. High humidity can be imagine as a ''fog'' or the water vapor in the air.
    
    This proved that ,in the very high humidity, the electrically charged dust particles can accumulate electricity and transfer the charge to materials they come to contact with.

   Galembeck's team called this physical phenomena ''hydroelectricity'' or ''humidity electricity''
The scientists also begun constructing first protoypes of  such devices draining out electricity from the air in areas with frequent thunderstorms.

    The Galembeck's team also already begun with testing metals, reasearching which has the greatest potentiall for capturing atmospheric electricity and preventing lightning strikes

In the opposition to this idea is a group of scientists arguing that according to its calculations, the yield from this ''humidity electrocity'' is about an amount of charge 100 million times smaller over a given area than a solar cell produces. Therefore, it would be totally useless. Galembeck responds to this that the amount can be easily and vastly expanded to useful amount.

   Altough this idea has certainly still a long way to run, once problems solved, the benefits could be more than pleasing.
 

Sources:
http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1059190314
http://www.novinky.cz/veda-skoly/209697-odsavani-elektriny-z-atmosfery-se-ma-stat-zdrojem-energie-budoucnosti.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
http://www.jshumidifiers.com/static-elimination-159-application/

From what is made the chalk?

Have you ever as a child eaten a piece of chalk?
Have you ever think from what is the chalk made?

The chalk

    The chalk is a type of sedimentary rock. Chemically, it is similar to the limestone, but the chalk consists more than 90% of CaC03 (or calcium carbohydrate) Therefore, it's very pure.
    The chalk was laid down in the Upper Cretaceous period. It was created from little calcite shelves or skeletons of tiny sea microorganisms (plankton) called cocoliths

Physical characteristics: The chalk is very friable, porous and weekly reinforced.
It has white or gray color.
In comparison with the clay, the chalk is more likely resistant to sliding, and therefore often creates steep cliffs near the sea.

I think that most widely recognized are chalk cliffs In Ireland or Southern England (this pic is from Studland, Dorset)


But actually to make the chalk like we all know it:

there is a need for a little chemical alternation:


The blackboard chalk, or commonly known as chalkboard, is actually gypsum ( CaSO4 or calcium sulfate)
Its unique physical trait of softness allows us to write with it on hard surfaces - it will leave a mark.

I think there's often a misused term for the chalkboard, because it actually differs from the substance of chalk cliffs.

Hope this helps:)


Sources: 
http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%99%C3%ADda_%28hornina%29
http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/minerals/chalk.htm
http://www.gsi.ie/Education/European+Landscapes/United+Kingdom.htm
Czech Book: Horniny z doby křídy (written by Slátal 1998) 

Brewery excursion and making beer

      On Sunday, August 15th, I and my friends made an sightseeing tour in Pilsen, Czech Republic.
The most exciting was definitely visit of Pilsner Urquell brewery, one of the world most recognized brand among of  beers.

This brewery is almost fully automatized

thousands of new bottles per one minute are filled and storaged.

There is regular manufacture switch between creating four czech brands of beer each 3 hours:

Kozel

Pilsner Urquell

Gambrinus

Master

The process of creating czech top-quality beer is quite difficult,

how really does it work? Well, let's go step by step, I'll try to roughly explain.

First, three resources are essential to create a beer: barley, hops and water.

1) Creating Malt
Barley is mixed with water and this mixture, called malt, stands still for five days, until barley beginns to sprout.
Then the malt is left to dry out.

2) Malt grind and mixing
       The malt is crushed and this so-called crushed malt is completely mixed with water, creating a white mash, called ''Rmut'' (untranslateable) The purpose of this part is to activate relevant enzyms.

3) ''Rmuting tub''

 One third of the white mash is led to the ''Rmuting tub'' and heated to appropriate temperature,

where the substances of the malt change to maltose (or malt sugar-organic chemistry-carbohydrates)

     The process of making Pilsner Urquell beer, and I say it wih national pride, is worldwidely unique because this process is repeated three times in order to reach top-quality beer.

3) Lautering

      The next step is lautering, or getting rid of insoluble substances of the malt (dregs) which results in dregs staying on the bottom of the tub, creating a natural filter. Through this filter is led whole content of the tub into ''youthful kettle'' (this expression is NOT accurate - see footnotes)
Pilsner brewery has, as I saw, three very modern kettles.

4) Hops addition

After creation of the basic substance it's time to add unique czech hops to make the beer distinctively tasty bitter

     In ''youthful kettle'' the ''sugary substance'' is cooked together with hops. Hops is prepared in form of mildly crushed pellets, which enables the brewery to add fresh hops during the whole year.
This cooking is very intensive ( in the room it was very hot,actually ) in order to create the right bitterness.

5) Brewers yeast
Yeast and beer were always tied firmly together.

     After the substance with hops from ''youthful kettle'' is cooled down and augmented with oxygen, brewers yeasts are added. They need the oxygen to proliferate themselves.
    Yeast are unicellular organisms, which can run chemical reaction of change from simple carbohydrates to ethanol and carbon dioxide.  Their resources can be monosaccharides (glukose,fruktose,galaktose) , disaccharides (sacharose,maltose) or trisaccharides ( rafinose, maltriose)
    Here, yeasts change maltose to ethanol (alcohol) and CO2 which are crucial to the final taste of the beer.

This process of fermentation lasts for 12 days.

6) Maturing
After the fermentation the ''young'' beer is pumped into lager beer tanks or barrels where the beer matures for the next 30 days by low temperatures.

The Pilsner Brewery has it's unique underground storages, more than 9 kilometres long.

the map of the underground system

7)Racking
Finally, the prepared and ready beer is pumped into bottles in the bottling line (first and second photos of this post) and distributed along the Czech Republic, Europe and the world.

Footnote: The names of processes are products of my own amateur translation, originally these words are unique in czech and are difficult to translate accurately, for original names of processes, please visit original page of the brewery listed below.

My sources: my own photos,memories from the excursion and materials and some photos from http://www.pilsner-urquell.cz/cz/Jak-se-vari-pivo
www.vscht.cz
www.cs.wikipedia.org

Oil-eating bacteries

Recently scientists discovered, that alkane-degrading marine bacterium, first described in 1998, which nourishes from petroleum, can significantly decrease amounts of the oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico during recent BP-drill disaster.

The bacteria is named Alcanivorax and actually its microbial feasting is known as biodegradation.

        Alcanivorax is among a class of the microbes known as hydrocarbonoclastic, the name denoting the disassembly of hydrocarbons, the building blocks of oil.
(source: NY times)

        Among of all alkane-degrading bacteries, this is probably most important bacterium in microbial biodegradation. When nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients are supplemented in the water, Alcanivorax is very active in cleaning crude-oil seawater's pollution. It also completely removes oil from the seasurface and just below the seasurface.

        Current studies are trying to find out, how much and how quickly can hordes of these microorganisms help recuperate the healthy sea enviroment. Some scientists depend on Alcanivorax believing that it removes crude oil completely. Others are not so optimistic saying that microbial biodegradation in polluted marshes should be considerably slower than expected.

        Furthermore, Alcanivorax as other bacterias consumes oxygen. And the fact that billions of voracious bacterias are suddenly consuming oxygen in the Gulf can has its drawbacks. The oxygen levels in the sea can fall too low that it would threaten other sealife, especially other marine species living on oil: communities of clams, mussels and tube worms that flourish in the sunless depths of the gulf.

 Altough the great leak of Deepwater Horizon is considered as irreversible catastrophe for the sealive in the Mexico Gulf, it seems that millions years of little seabed leaking of the oil at fairly constant rate helped species get used to some oil dispersion in the water. The warm water, sufficient levels of oxygen and enough of nutrients actually helped species to regulate amounts of the crude oil entering the Gulf through natural seeps.

Finally, it can be inferred that the nature still has its ways to recover from oil pollutions caused by unwary human behavior.

Did you know about 112th element?

In 1996, on February the 9th,at 22:37 was discovered a new element - it was named Copernicium (labeled Cp) in honour to the famous scientist and astronomer - Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) at the GSI in Darmstadt, Germany.

Isolation

only a few atoms of element 112 have ever been made (through a nuclear reaction involving fusing a zinc atom with a lead atom)

Unfortunately, because of the unstability of this element won't be maybe ever created a visible amout of this material

reaction:

²⁰⁸Pb + ⁷⁰Zn → ²⁷⁷Cp + ¹n

Cn atoms decompose through the emission of a-particles with half-life of only 240 microseconds.

In Center of Heavy Ion Research in Germany were two decay chains of the isotope 277-112 observed in irradiations of 208-Pb targets with 70-Zn projectiles of 343.8 MeV kinetic energy. The isotope decays by emission of alpha particles with a half-life of (240 +430 -90) micro seconds. Two different alpha-energies of (11,649+-20)keV and (11,454+-20) keV) were measured for the decaying nuclei. The cross section measured in three weeks of irradiation is (1.0 +1.3 -0.6) pb.



 Well, some recent research showed stabilizing 113th and 115th elements in accelerators, but the discovery hasn't been confirmed and named yet. Scientist's yearning and searching for 'superheavy' and 'superstable' element go on...

Greetings!

I never thought I'll create my own blog and also have watched bloggers suspiciously before... BUT :-) how else can you express yourself without being overcrowded by Facebook members?? :D