September 4, 2014
My deepest apologies to those who were expecting to have the a copy of the second edition at the start of the academic semester. Due to some unexpected issues I will need a few more weeks. It will be up for sale by the end of September.
Posted by Antonio Chaves.
August 23, 2014
I am never a fan of land-based biofuels because they are worse for the environment than fossil fuels, and I regard algae fuels as problematic due to the difficulty of separating phytoplankton from water. However,
this use of algae as a means to treat sewage as well as serve as biofuel is noteworthy because it also serves to remediate an environmental liability. I proposed this in an article I published five years ago where
I question the use a switchgrass as a sustainable biofuel. I suggested...
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Posted by Antonio Chaves. Posted In : environmental news
August 16, 2014
I got back last week from a trip to Florida. We started with "Bathtub Reef" near Stuart Florida. We chose this place because of its reputation as a good place for children to snorkel due to its shallow waters and gentle waves. We only got to do a couple of hours of snorkeling because we had wasted too much time trying to get a hotel by the beach, only to find them way out of our price range. We would have saved much more time if we had directly gotten a hotel in town, because we only needed t...
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Posted by Antonio Chaves. Posted In : environmental news
August 16, 2014
I have a new video available. It is a detailed procedure on measuring the efficiency of a cordless drill generator. This is a bit more complicated than doing this with a car fan, but it generates much more watts. This procedure is also included in the new edition of the lab manual
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Posted by Antonio Chaves. Posted In : new lab procedure
July 22, 2014
I am in the process of adding finishing touches to the second edition of the lab manual. To give you some idea of what it looks like, I have made some excerpts available. Some of them will be removed in a few weeks because I do not want students downloading answers from the instructor's guide.
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Posted by Antonio Chaves. Posted In : modified lab procedures
July 12, 2014
Some months ago I walked into a pet store and saw a glass tank with mealworms eating dry cat food. Since dry cat food comes in nuggets that allows you to easily recover the leftovers this gave me an idea for new activity. The rule of thumb for productivity/energy recovery up each link of the trophic pyramid is around 10%. The biomass recovery I got with with my mealworms was around 20% (based on dry weight). It is higher than the rule of thumb because I was raising them during their period of...
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Posted by Antonio Chaves. Posted In : new lab procedure
June 5, 2014
This
article based on well-to-wheel analysis exposes some inconvenient truths about hydrogen fuel cell cars. Even though I am fascinated by the fuel cell principle and even include a lab activity on fuel cells, I have never been a fan of fuel cell cars. In fact, two of my activities (
Lab 2-2: Transportation and
Lab 3-6: Fuel Cell Dynamics) expose the inefficiency of extracting hydrogen from water for purposes of using it in fuel cells. This is why most hydrogen is extracted from natural gas (...
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Posted by Antonio Chaves. Posted In : environmental news
June 4, 2014
I have not been much of a blogger because I am concentrating all my efforts on getting the new edition out before the end of the summer.
The most important change I am doing is making many of the activities easier and more uniform in the amount of effort needed. I had to do this to deal with my new teaching situation. I am also trying to incorporate new activities and fix some glitches in some old activities. One significant glitch involves the use of thiosulfate to neutralize the toxic effec... Continue reading...
Posted by Antonio Chaves. Posted In : modified lab procedures
May 22, 2014
Electric cars are not so new. I remember as a child in the 1960's when I saw a commercial for "Timex" electric watches where a little old lady enters a jewelry store and purchases an electric watch. Given the context that electric watches were a novelty at this time, the merchant says to her "Welcome to the electric age!" (I am paraphrasing). She then retorts, "Young man, I have been driving one for over 40 years". In the next scene, she leaves the shop and enters a battery-powered antique ca...
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Posted by Antonio Chaves. Posted In : environmental news
March 4, 2014
One of my less popular videos involves using a wattmeter to measure the
efficiency of an immersion heater. In response to someone's request, I recently wrote it out. Immediately below is the letter I sent to this instructor and further below is the written procedure. I am posting a copy on the vimeo website:
I did this lab for the first time last week with students by just talking them through it and writing things on the board. However, since I have to write it up sooner or later I just wrote...
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Posted by Antonio Chaves. Posted In : lab procedure explanations
