Science

1407 Articles

Grid Batteries On Wheels: The Complicated Logistics Of Vehicle-Grid Integration

March 8, 2022 by 93 Comments

At its core, the concept of vehicle-grid integration (VGI) – also called Vehicle To Grid (V2G) – seems a simple one. Instead of a unidirectional charger for battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), a bidirectional charger would be used. This way, whenever the BEV is connected to such a charger, power could be withdrawn from the car’s battery for use on the local electrical grid whenever there’s demand.

Many of the complications with VGI have already been discussed, including the increased wear that this puts on a BEV’s battery, the need for an inherently mobile machine to be plugged into a charger, and the risk of needing one’s BEV and finding its battery to be nearly depleted. Here the cheerful marketing from Nissan and that from commercial initiatives such as Vehicle to Grid Britain makes it sound like it’s a no-brainer once those pesky details can be worked out.

In parallel with the world of glossy marketing leaflets, researchers have been investigating VGI as a potential option for grid-level energy storage. These studies produce a far less optimistic picture that puts the entire concept of VGI into question.

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Remoticon 2021 // Jay Bowles Dips Into The Plasmaverse

March 3, 2022 by No comments

Every hacker out there is familiar with the zaps and sizzles of the Tesla coil, or the crash and thunder of lighting strikes on our hallowed Earth. These phenomena all involve the physics of plasma, a subject near and dear to Jay Bowles’s heart. Thus, he graced Remoticon 2021 with a enlightening talk taking us on a Dip Into the Plasmaverse.

Jay’s passion for the topic is obvious, having fallen in love with high voltage physics as a teenager. He appreciated how tangible the science was, whether it’s the glow of neon lighting or the heating magic of the common microwave. His talk covers the experiments and science that he’s studied over the past 17 years and in the course of running his Plasma Channel YouTube channel. Continue reading “Remoticon 2021 // Jay Bowles Dips Into The Plasmaverse” →

Researchers Build Neural Networks With Actual Neurons

March 1, 2022 by 21 Comments

Neural networks have become a hot topic over the last decade, put to work on jobs from recognizing image content to generating text and even playing video games. However, these artificial neural networks are essentially just piles of maths inside a computer, and while they are capable of great things, the technology hasn’t yet shown the capability to produce genuine intelligence.

Cortical Labs, based down in Melbourne, Australia, has a different approach. Rather than rely solely on silicon, their work involves growing real biological neurons on electrode arrays, allowing them to be interfaced with digital systems. Their latest work has shown promise that these real biological neural networks can be made to learn, according to a pre-print paper that is yet to go through peer review.
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Cascade Failures, Computer Problems, And Ohms Law: Understanding The Northeast Blackout Of 2003

February 25, 2022 by 16 Comments

We’ve all experienced power outages of some kind, be it a breaker tripping at an inconvenient time to a storm causing a lack of separation between a tree and a power line. The impact is generally localized and rarely is there a loss of life, though it can happen. But in the video below the break, [Grady] of Practical Engineering breaks down the Northeast Blackout of 2003, the largest power failure ever experienced in North America. Power was out for days in some cases, and almost 100 deaths were attributed to the loss of electricity.

[Grady] goes into a good amount of detail regarding the monitoring systems, software simulation, and contingency planning that goes into operating a large scale power grid. The video explains how inductive loads cause reactance and how the effect exacerbated an already complex problem. Don’t know what inductive loads and reactance are? That’s okay, the video explains it quite well, and it gives an excellent basis for understanding AC electronics and even RF electronic theories surrounding inductance, capacitance, and reactance.

So, what caused the actual outage? The complex cascade failure is explained step by step, and the video is certainly worth the watch, even if you’re already familiar with the event.

It would be irresponsible to bring up the 2003 outage without talking about the Texas ERCOT outages just one year ago– an article whose comments section nearly caused a blackout at the Hackaday Data Center!

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Grocery Store Rocket Fuel: Don’t Try This At Home!

February 25, 2022 by 30 Comments

It seems like whenever the topic of rocket science comes up, the conversation quickly shifts to that of rocket fuels. As discussed in the excellent [Scott Manley] video below the break, there are many rocket fuels that can be found in some way, state, or form at your local grocery or liquor store. The video itself is a reaction to some college students in Utah who caused an evacuation when the rocket fuel they were cooking up exploded.

[Scott] himself theorizes that the fuel they were cooking was Rocket Candy, a volatile mix of sugar and potassium nitrate that is known to go Kaboom on occasion. And as it turns out, the combination might not even be legal in your area because as much as it can be used as rocket fuel, it can also be used for other things that go boom.

So, what else at your local megamart can be used to get to orbit? [Scott] talks about different kinds of alcohols, gasses, cleaners- all things that can be used as rocket fuel. He also talks about all of the solid reasons you don’t want to do this at home.

If this type of things gets your molecules excited, you might enjoy a bit we posted recently about using another grocery store staple to save Martian colonists from being held back by gravity.

Levitating With Light

February 23, 2022 by 31 Comments

The University of Pennsylvania has a team that did a little light research. Well, not light in the usual sense of that phrase. They used very strong light to levitate Mylar disks in a vacuum chamber.

Of course, it is no secret that light can exert pressure. That’s how solar sails work and some scientists have used it to work with aerosols and the like. But this appears to be the first time light lifted a large item against gravity. The team claims that their tests showed that a sunlight-powered flying vehicle might carry up to ten milligrams of payload. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s impressive and the paper mentions that since the lift is not from aerodynamic forces, there might be applications in flying at very high altitudes.

The Mylar disks were 500 nanometers thick and had a 300 nanometer layer of carbon nanotubes beneath. The nanotubes absorb light, make the disks more rigid, and improve the Mylar’s surface-gas characteristics. The light source had a strong center beam and an even stronger ring around the center beam that causes the disk to remain over the center beam. The LED system used eight arrays, each consuming 100 watts of input power.

Preparing the disk might be difficult, but the LED power isn’t that hard. Even if you do like the researchers did and use water cooling.

How Big Is The Moon? Figure It Out Yourself

February 22, 2022 by 4 Comments

We have to confess that we occasionally send friends a link to “let me Google that for you” when they ask us something that they could have easily found online. Naturally, if someone asked us how big the moon is, we’d ask Google or another search engine. But not [Prof Matt Strassler]. He’d tell you to figure it out yourself and he would then show you how to do it.

This isn’t a new question. People have been wondering about the moon since the dawn of human civilization. The ancient Greeks not only asked the question, but they worked out a pretty good answer. They knew approximately how big the Earth was and they knew the moon was far away because it is seen over a very wide area. They also knew the sun was even further away because the moon sometimes blocks the sun’s light in an eclipse. Using complex geometry and proto-trigonometry they were able to work out an approximate size of the moon. [Matt’s] method is similar but easier and relies on the moon occluding distant stars and planets.

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