Sunday, February 26, 2012

New Energy Saving Technique- Solar Energy to Hydrogen Concept

Last night I was reading about superconductors in my physics book. Its extraordinary qualities intrigued meand I checked Wikipedia for more details. Suprisingly, people are more interested in them because they can transfer electricity at no loss which otherwise suffers great transmission loss.
I thought, why not change one energy source at point of extraction into another source which can also yield energy. So, I decided to jot down a technique which came to my mind while I was watching Discovery Science few months back. But alas! all I remember now is that a solar cell company developed a high efficiency solar paint which was a result of mixture of several different solar paints, each responsible for absorbing light of a particular wavelength. Those people were pretty excited about their prototype but they feared that even though the paint will generate energy in desert like Sahara (unobstructed sunlight) but its transmission will suffer and loss of energy may happen because of poor amenities in developing countries.
As soon this show ended, I switched to a movie channel, perhaps Star Movies (believe me I am not a couch potato, those were my summer vacations). At that time, Quantum of Solace was just about to end and I found Daniel Craig driving a hydrogen-powered car in a desert where he left the villain to die.
Result- [innovation + desert] + [nice concept car + desert] = NEW IDEA!!
I thought why not just use the electricity obtained from these advanced solar cells to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen with the help of electrolysis and then transfer hydrogen gas to cities where it can be used in any way- as a fuel, in a fuel cell, in electricity generators, etc.
At first it seems a very comfortable and easy technology. But, every thing is not that practical. There are many flaws which although can be overcome. Few of them are-
  1. We are in the middle of a desert, how we will get water?  - Simple we can setup these projects near any water body, pump the water and purify it with the help of 'DEKA Slingshot' (I remember this one) and use it. There are many water bodies in Africa, especially near Great Desert ( Nile, Niger, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea and Atlantic Ocean), so there must be no water crisis. I must remind that this technique is not restricted to deserts.
  2. How much hydrogen we will get?   - Answer is simple but calculations are complex. For basic idea just understand that 1 liter of water weighs 1 kilogram. The Gram Molecular Mass of water (H2O) is 18 grams (it means that are fixed number of molecules in this amount) and hydrogen weighs 2 grams in it (2H). So, eighteen liters of pure water can provide two liters of hydrogen. Now, energy obtained by our good cells must be enough to break the bond between oxygen and hydrogen resulting in their generation. We can easily collect these gases afterwards. According to the Law of Conservation of Energy, the energy obtained from solar panels will be equal to the energy provided by hydrogen when it again combines with oxygen to form water.
This process will definitely have some energy losses but it will be far less than loss of energy by resistance offered by High Tension wires.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Fear

Q.- What is fear?
Ans.- (Present in a dictionary) It is the unpleasant feeling you have when you think that you are in danger or something might harm you.

Fear is a part of our mighty and intelligent defense system. We know that our brain is a great calculator (by calculator I mean that it can process and imagine the things whether we know or not). When we face a less known or unknown circumstance, to protect us our defense system switch-on its special tool- 'Fear'. At that stage of mind, our brain (note the difference between brain and mind) stops processing and noticing unnecessary things and starts to anticipate the less known events with the information we had previously. By this way, it makes our mind ready for any type of unwanted circumstance.


Fear displayed is always true, but the reason behind it is sadly most of the time false or unwanted.


Now, I am going to discuss about our 'false fear'. According to Patanjali, an ancient Indian philosopher, " avidya, asmita, raag, dvesh, abhinivesh, klesh
(False understanding (of life) causes ego, desire, hatred, fear and distress) 
Well yes, it is the simple truth, the reason for (most of) fear is just our misunderstandings and lack of knowledge.


Here is a classical example by Dr. David J. Schwartz in his book " The Magic of Thinking Big"-
"During World War II, the (U.S.) Navy made sure that all of its new recruits either knew how to swim or learned how. Non-swimming recruits were put into swimming classes. In a superficial sort of way, it was amusing to see young, healthy men terrified by few feet of water. The fear those men displayed was real. Yet all that stood between them and the defeat of that fear was one drop into the water below. On more than one occasion, I saw young man "accidentally" pushed off the board. The result : FEAR DEFEATED" (sequence shortened)


It tells us something important- the situation causes fear but the action taken cures it. He also told later in that chapter of the book about a interesting but shocking fact that most of the beds are occupied by patients suffering from 'emotionally induced sickness' (no illness, just emotional disturbance) of a common U.S. hospital (at the time book was written). The problem which I think with these patients is that they either lack affection and self-confidence or want sympathy. They must realize that few words of sympathy may provide solace but not the solution.


True fear is all-together different (True fear signifies fear caused by situations which are not under control of a person). People believing in luck may call it as 'ill-fate' or religious people may call it as 'God's will', etc. In this situation, the person is truly handicapped and the actual purpose of fear is fulfilled here. The person then just try to control the situation by whatever ways he can. For instance, say thanks to adrenaline and other hormones which alert the person and allow him/her to self-protect.


Hence, even fear has two faces, just like a coin.  

Thursday, December 29, 2011

My Latest Revolutionary Model- Multivision

Multivision, as its name suggests is a television in which many people can watch different contents, simultaneously, without compromising performance (Its not a television that divides screen into four parts, etc....).
Its principle is absolutely simple-'FRAME RATE'.
Things we are going to need- High Speed Shutter Glasses, a signal receiving machine which can shred the videos and rearrange them, ear-pieces and remotes for every individual and last but most important, a television having fast response time ( say around 5 ms).

Now, we have to manipulate few things-
  1. High Speed Shutter Glasses- We are not going to use them for what they are made, and instead of that we will use their property of blocking our vision for a limited decided time. Both eye-pieces must work simultaneously ( they work independently in 3D TVs- that's not required here). So, we need to program them according to our need.
  2. Machine- All we need here is a processing unit that-
  • First converts a video stream at a definite frame rate.
  • Then arranges the individual frame of different streams one after another in a sequence.
  • It also must send audio of each channel separately to the desiring viewer ( we have different ear-pieces and remotes for each viewer).
  • It must receive signals from different viewers and differentiate them from each other so that chances of malfunctioning decreases.
Manipulations are done and now lets do some maths ( Here we are going to assume that we have only 4 viewers)-
  • After amplifying normal frame rate (~30 fps) to 50 fps of each video, then shredding them down to single frame and arranging them one after another as a single unit, net frame rate of new mother stream is 50x4=200 fps.
  • Hence if in one second, 200 frames pass in front of our eyes, then each frames take exact 1÷200 seconds  = 0.005 seconds or 5 ms. This is the response time of our television.
After we have done all this, its time for our especially manipulated high speed shutter glasses to work.
Now, here's the real trick- the nature of our mother stream is like 123412341234.. i.e. it displays frame of stream one for 5 ms, then of stream two for same time, then of three, four and again one. For viewer number 1, streams 2,3 and 4 are useless and will cause difficulty in viewing experience, here comes our high speed shutter glasses which will block every frame ( i.e. they will remain closed for 5x3=15 ms) expect that of stream 1's frame ( by remain opening for 5 ms). Our viewer can hence experience his video and audio without any interruption.

Few people might question that most of the time our vision will be blocked, but I must remind that our eye can judge difference happening only in about one-tenth of a second. This time period is so small that we won't be able to even judge that what is happening.

This principle is quite simple and I tried to share it with companies like Samsung and LG, but they haven't replied so I decided to keep it open for everyone. If you have any query regarding MULTIVISION, you are always welcome.

Here I have few rough sketches regarding it ( I am not a professional and have been doing this for first time, so please bear with me).