Energy City

There is a flash game called energy city. In the game you have to produce energy for a city for ten years, but it's harder than it seems because you have to keep up with air pollution, budget, and and your environmental standing. The are also shareholders that give you task and if you fail them then there's a punishment. All together the game is fairly realistic, but all I have to say is the voice when you win is kinda creepy.

http://content3.jason.org/resource_content/content/digitallab/8250/misc_content/public/popup.html

The Energy Crisis

The Energy Crisis

The energy crisis is a very serious issue that sometimes gets shoved under the stacks of all the other problems the world faces. An energy crisis is when the population of a specific area uses more energy than the can produce there for making an energy crisis. A energy crisis can also be made by an area trying to find self sustainable ways of generating power so they don’t have to rely on foreign imports of oil, gas, coal, etc. A country might start to try to find independent solutions to foreign imports because of lack of control. The foreign country has control over the quantity and the prices of the things they import. Another possible reason for an energy crisis might actually be green energy. Have you have seen a solar panel field, ever wondered why they needed so many panels well they need so many panels because solar panels don’t actually make that much energy, and to make them worthwhile you need a lot of them. Some solar panels actually track the sun to produce maximum energy, but the tracking also takes energy to move the panels, and solar panels aren’t a constant source of energy because if their is a cloudy day/ rainy day the solar panels are pretty much worthless. How solar panels work-

“Simply put, a solar panel works by allowing photons, or particles of light, to knock electrons free from atoms, generating a flow of electricity. Solar panels actually comprise many, smaller units called photovoltaic cells. (Photovoltaic simply means they convert sunlight into electricity.) Many cells linked together make up a solar panel. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/41995-how-do-solar-panels-work.html#sthash.DUjXs7Ts.dpuf”

Windmills aren’t much different you have to have huge fields of windmills to produce energy, but in my opinion windmills are worse the solar panels because with solar panels you can pretty much place them anywhere but with windmills the have to be tall and in a place that is pretty windy to produce power. The thing that windmills have going for them is that they can produce power night or day, rain or shine. Windmills generate power by having slanted blades that when the wind rushes by forces the blades to rotate spinning a generator to produce electricity.

Citations

http://www.global-economic-symposium.org/knowledgebase/the-global-environment/the-energy-crisis-and-climate-change/proposals/the-energy-crisis-and-climate-change

http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/causes-and-solutions-to-the-global-energy-crisis.php

http://www.livescience.com/41995-how-do-solar-panels-work.html

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/solar-panels-now-make-more-electricity-they-use

Agriculture Inovations

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vhuN8BpNnl_cK_hq5Ax136zbCSmT-ANIsD-2f8BkhU4/edit?usp=sharing 

Pandimic

 There's a game called Pandemic 2 I recently played it and thought it was actually really realistic. The only thing was that If an island shut down its ports then their was no physical way to infect that island which I thought wasn’t that realistic because most Islands would have to depend on foreign imports for something, but the overall realistically was cool because your disease had a visibility bar which means certain mutations caused your disease to become easier to spot. The cure for your disease can also backfire making your disease immune to all cures.

http://pandemic3.com/pandemic3.swf

Dust Bowls

I don't believe that we are headed for another dust bowl, and even if we are headed to another dust bowl then It won’t have anywhere near the effect as the first dust bowl had. During the first dust bowl most people lived in rural areas so the destruction of farms and the dust hit those areas really hard, but today in the modern times most people live in cities away from farm. The dust bowl started because of a year of intense drought and bad farming techniques that made the soil easier to be moved by the wind.

Sources

http://www.seeker.com/are-we-at-risk-for-another-dust-bowl-1765871492.html#news.discovery.com

Sinkholes

     If you are scared of a sinkhole under your house then use this blog to test and see if your house has a sinkhole. The list after this paragraph shows things that you can check for to see if you might have a sink hole.

• Fresh exposures on fence posts, foundations or trees that result when the ground sinks around them;
• Slumping, sagging or slanting fence posts, trees or other objects.
• Doors and windows that fail to close properly or exhibit changed behavior such as doors remaining open where they had previously closed of their own accord.
• Small ponds of rainfall forming where water has not collected before.
• Wilting of small, circular areas of vegetation. This happens because the moisture that normally supports vegetation in the area is draining into the sinkhole that is developing below the surface.
• Cloudy water is pumped from nearby wells where the water was previously clear.
• Cracks in walls, floors, pavement and the ground surface. This is most noticeable in a concrete block structure and is different from a few hairline cracks normally seen between blocks.

     I'm going to test the list above against my house. I don't have any fences and there isn't any trees that have visible roots that should be underground. All my doors and windows shut normally and I haven't seen any puddles around. I only have grass and its bermuda grass so it naturally dies in the winter and then comes back so there's not much I can go off there, and there aren't any wells near me. I don't have any cracks in the walls that weren't caused by me, so my house should be completely safe from sink holes.

Landslides

     Some ways of predicting a landslide are as follows

• The slope: the steeper the slope the more likely a landslide is.
• Water table: If the water table is really high then the risk for a landslide / mudslide is higher as well
• Surface water: If there if there is surface water on the slopes of a mountain it could mean the a landslide is imminent.
• Electrical wires: If the electrical wires are very tight then It means that the ground is shifting which means a landslide is imminent.

   I wanted to test the four things above on a mountain in North Carolina. I decided to test these out on Grandfather mountain. Grandfather mountain doesn't have many steep slopes. There isn't much surface water, and there aren't any pictures of the electrical lines to see how tight the line is. Grandfather mountain also has a preservation group protecting it, so as a whole I would declare Grandfather mountain safe.

Where in the world

     If you are ever stuck somewhere and have no idea where you are maybe just maybe this blog post will help you. One way to find roughly where you are is to look at the biome. Here is a map showing biomes all over the world.

     If you don't have a map then you should know that areas around the equator are hotter and the father you go from the equator the colder it gets. Rainforest have lots of plants and is very humid. The savanna is like a grassland but it has a few trees and is prone to fire. The desert is very hot and can be sand or rock. The temperate forest is what everyone thinks of as a forest. The grasslands is a lot like the savanna but has less tress. The tundra wouldn't have a lot of plants because of a thick layer of ice under the ground, and the taiga forest is a very snowy version of the temperate forest.

     You can also tell where you are based on the species of plants in the area. Certain plants are only indigenous to certain areas, but others are seemingly everywhere. The plants can also help you find which biome you are in. If the area you are in has lots of low laying plants and large trees, then you are probably in a rain forest. If there are cacti then you are most likely in a desert.

    Now a short quiz
1. If you are in an area that is very hot and humid area what biome do you think you are in?
a. Desert
b. Tundra
c. RainForest
2. If where you are is very hot where are you roughly on a map.
a. At the poles
b. At the equator
c. In Russia.

NC Fishing

   One of the natural resources in North Carolina is fish. There are three different types of fishing. Commercial, Personal, and Fish hatcheries. Commercial fishing is fishing by big companies, and is normally on a large scale. Personal fishing involves fishing for fun or fishing for food (Not normally large scale). Hatcheries are where fish are grown for food.

Extinction

   Extinction is very important to human life. Extinction is part of natural selection which is the main part of evolution. If an animal can't survive in the environment that it is in then it is forced to evolve or die trying, but we humans have a habit of saving animals that are necessary and some that aren't necessary.

   As a human race we pour billions of dollars into saving the panda which doesn't do that much for the human race, but the panda is very cute so it has lots of people giving money to save them. Animals that are less cute then the but are more important than the panda are becoming extinct.

   A list that I created of five things that an animal would have to have to be reasonable to save the animal from extinction.

   1. The food web/ chain it is involved in.

If the animal goes extinct it might have a huge effect on the whole food web.

   2. What the animal eats.

If we were to save an animal we would need to feed it, so if the food that they eat would have to relatively cheap.

   3. Can the animal be kept in captivity

If the animal can't be kept in captivity, then it makes it that much difficult to bring the animal back from the brink of extinction

   4. How big is the animal.

If the animal is huge (say an elephant) then it would be much more difficult as well as expensive.

   5. If the animal is aquatic.

If the animal is aquatic, then we would have to have a tank for the animal to be kept in captivity.

   Here is a list of five endangered animals that would be perfect or horrible to be saved.

• Amur Leopard: The Amur leopard is very import to other animals in their food web, above and below itself. The animals above would have less food to eat, and the animals below would expand in numbers because the Amur Leopard wouldn't be there to eat them. The Amur Leopard is also adoptable, but having a leopard in my house I don't know if I would like that.
  https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/amur-leopard
• Blue Whale: Almost everyone knows what a Blue Whale is. This animal would be extremely difficult to be kept in captivity, so if we would try to save this animal then we would do so in the wild. The Blue Whale is also an aquatic animal meaning that it would be even more likely to be kept in the wild in a protected area making it much more difficult to keep track of.
  https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/blue-whale
• Elephant: The Elephant is import to tree species because trees may require elephants to help with dispersal and germination They also help many other animals by crush small bushes making them easier to eat for small animals.
  https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/elephant
• Polar Bear: the polar bear is at the top of the food chain and controls a lot of the marine life in the Artic. The polar bear is also very important to the cultures of people who live in the Artic.
  https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/polar-bear
• Panda: A Panda is only important to the bamboo forest in china, eating and spreading the bamboo.
  https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/giant-panda

   Animals like the elephant and the blue whale would be difficult or impossible to be kept in captivity but would be the most useful to their environment, and animals like the panda aren’t really necessary to anything

Promised Land (movie)

   I watched the movie Promised Land. Which is all about a natural gas company called Global Crosspower Solutions which is trying to get the people of a small town in Pennsylvania. Global wanted to start drilling there because the town is very poor so they would accept almost any offer Global hands them.

*Spoiler* 
   Later on in the story the town decides that they should put the question if they should let Global actually come and start fracking (a way of gathering natural gas from shale.) to a vote. Which makes Global send a fake enviromental person who told a sob story about his farm that had pretty much died, but the whole thing was a lie and he left in "shame".
                                                                                                                          *End of Spoiler*
   At the end of the movie the town has all the information they need and go to vote, but we don't actually see what they voted, but if I was in that town I would say that Global should come and start fracking.

   I would say yes to the fracking because it has more pros. then cons. especially in that scenario.

Website Pro Fracking - http://info.drillinginfo.com/10-reasons-fracking-improves-american-lives/
Website Con Fracking - http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/26367-9-good-reasons-to-ban-fracking-immediately

Floods

   I wanted to see if my house was susceptible to flooding so I went to This website. I typed in my address and the website pulled up my street. Then what I did was clicked the button labeled interactive map. This opened a new tab with a map showing where my house was and the risk of flooding. My house had a minimal risk of flooding.

   Three techniques to prevent flooding are a dam, artificial levees, and seawalls. A dam is structure designed to block the flow of water in a river. A dam also can control the amount of water it releases, and most dams are built to capture the energy of the flowing water changing it into electricity. Artificial levees are built on the edge of rivers or other bodies of water and increase the height of the banks of the river making the river have to raise much higher in order to flood. The levees are normally made out of concrete or another impermeable (impermeable - not allowing fluids to pass through) material that is resistant to erosion. A seawall is a very simplistic approach to coastal flooding. All a seawall consists of is a relatively small wall built be the shore. A seawall is much like a levee but is built by the shore and would most likely extend higher then a levee.

   I live in the Newton - Conover area we don't have that many floods but we had one a couple years ago. I think that if we had used even just really small levees then we could have prevented most of the over flowing water.

Kerbal Sea plane

The water in Kerbal Space Program is not friendly so I wanted to build a sea plane that could land in the water and on land, but the way a landed I don't think counts as "landing".

Kerbal microscopic?

   I wanted to make the smallest flying drone I could possibly make, so I did. The drone has no landing gear at all, It has short amounts of fuel, It was insanely difficult to control, and the parts overheated. So in my book a great success.

Kerbal gliding

   I wanted to build a glider that had no engines on it after it had left the ground. I had a good kinda long flight with a not so good "throw" (the thruster that I used to get off the ground made a hard right and blew up pretty early on the runway).

Storms

   Super Storms they occur every once and a while and are becoming more and more often (you can see why on one of my other posts (here)) So I made a Thing Ink showing a really short forecast of one thing a super storm could do.

    https://www.thinglink.com/scene/769759841840267265 

De-extinction

   De-extinction or bringing an animal/ plant that has already been extinct back to life a they do in Jurassic park is becoming more of a reality than science fiction. I created a slide on this power point of one animal that was either lost or lived through then died shortly after.

HERE

Biodiversity

  Biodiversity is "the variety of life in the world or in a particular habitat or ecosystem." (what) By definition, but all the different species of animals and plants on earth are examples of biodiversity.

  One part of biodiversity is the evolution of one species into multiple different species. The Finch island (named after Darwin Finch who found the island) It was a finch paradise. The finches had no predators, and plenty of food. Well they had plenty of food the finches ate the food to fast but instead of fighting each other the finches with small differences (mainly in their beak) split into groups. The finches with longer skinnier beaks that were good at getting worms and other grub went into one group, and the finches with shorter wider beaks that were good at cracking nuts and seeds into another group. The groups got so far part that they wouldn’t mate with each other. Then the differences only got larger the finches with long beaks got even longer beaks, and the finches with short beaks go shorter stronger beaks.

  

http://science.jrank.org/kids/article_images/chains_p37.jpg

Biodiversity is like a giant web. The giant web I’m talking about is a food web. Now if the food web is large enough you can completely take a species out of the web and not much would happen. Animals higher up on the web would simply eat another animal or producer.

http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/bam/live/content/zy2fcdm/smal

If the web is two small or there is an animal that solely eats only one thing, and you take that one thing out of the web it can cause a gigantic chain reaction that will eventually make the whole web fall.

Work Cited

"What Is Biodiversity." What Is Biodiversity - Google Search. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2016.

Super Sonic Tiny Drone

   I have already made a super sonic plane, but I had to worry about safety (Not Really) so I wanted to make a drone that I could crash when I wanted to and not kill anyone, but also make it go extremly fast and be extremely small as well.

Kerbin Orbit Scanner

One of the science blocks in Kerbal Space program says that it could do an orbital scan. I wanted to build a satellite that would orbit Kerbin and give me information on the landscape mainly.

Climate Change

   Climate change, it is a word that people through all over the place today, but do you actually know what climate change could actually do to change the face of the world. A three degree shift could cause a chain of events. The Arctic glaciers would melt way faster than they could possibly refreeze. The missing glaciers wouldn't be able to cool the Earth, so it would get harder melting more glaciers making it hotter melting glaciers... you get the point. A six degree raise in global would forever change the world as we know it. There would be huge natural disasters would be common place. There would be massive flooding up to 25 feet of water, While in other places there would be record breaking droughts that would dry the amazon river, turn the amazon rain forest into a Savanna, and increase the intensity of wild bush fires in Australia.

   That's just a six degree increase in global temperature.


Six Degree Could Change The World

Kerbal Ultra Sonic!!!

I wanted to build a super sonic plane, but what I received was a plane that went so fast it caused reentry effects leaving the atmosphere.




But when I was reentering the atmosphere I was going too fast and literally ripped the ship apart in under one second.




With my extreme amount of skill (luck) I managed to land the cockpit and save the Kerbal from certain death.

Kerbal Submarine?

I had heard that in the new update that they changed the buoyancy of multiple parts and I wanted so you could go under water so I wanted to try

Kerbal Plane

I wanted to test how well I was at making planes. As well as the science behind making airplanes.(Spoiler alert I'm not that good.)

Space The Final Frontier

If we were to expand our reach into Earth meaning that we would live in space the best thing to do would be build a self sustaining space station in semi deep space. (meaning far enough from a planet to not get pulled down to much by gravity, but close enough to transmit resources if need be.) A colony would be another option, but I believe that it would be more difficult to make a colony on the Moon or Mars because on the Moon you don't have any control on gravity or the day cycle, and on Mars there are gigantic dust storms the can block the sun for weeks at a time. A space station wouldn’t have any of these problems, but it is not perfect in any way shape or form. It is relatively defenseless if asteroids or comets hit it, It would have to be man made making it very very expensive to build and potentially uphold. The main things you would have to focus on for human survival is water, food, breathable air, exercise, normal day-night cycle, normal”ish” gravity, and Heat. The space station would be in control of all of the factors, Water - The station would have huge water filters to purify water to be able to drink it, Food / Breathable air - You would grow you own food in the station, and be doing so creates water via photosynthesis, Exercise - The space station would be huge enough to do your daily run, Normal day/night cycle - This could go one of two ways either the space station would have lights that would turn on and off, or the spin of the station would create the day via the light from the actual sun but this would be very dangerous because we would have no atmosphere to protect us from the uv rays the sun is giving off, Gravity - The spinning of the space station would act as a centrifuge forcing people onto the sides of the station creating artificial gravity, Heat - This could go with the day / night cycle one being that the station could be heated using the heat from the some but like I said before that would be dangerous, so it would be more likely for the station to be heated using a traditional heater just A LOT bigger like fifty times as big then you might need like fifty of those to heat the whole station. The space station world probably still be the best option because on a planet/moon you would have much less control over these things if any.

https://tinkercad.com/things/aR0ryl4YIvY A 3D model of what the station migh look like

End of the World

   This website Here  goes over ten different ways that the world could end, even though most of the ways are unbelievable so I picked  one to focus on which is the super volcano. The thought of a volcano ending all life on Earth seems like it shouldn't be able to happen but these videos beg to differ. Here and Here. If you don't know exactly what a super volcano is then here is a Wikipedia page the defines it Definition. Super volcanoes aren't only in the US here is a website that shows the top ten super volcanoes that can destroy our world Website and if you want more information on super volcanoes then here is a link to my post on the Yellow Stone super volcano Blog Post. Now that you see that a super volcano is actually a huge deal I'm here to tell you that there's not much we can do to stop a super volcano eruption. We would know with our current science about a week or two before the eruption, and in that time we would be able to evacuate most if not all of the people surrounding the volcano. Evacuation is the most that we could do, because there is multiple factors that make a super volcano so destructive. First there is the lava the main thing that everyone think about when they here volcano. The lava would cover a huge area of land burning it all to the ground. Then the ash would block out the sun and might cause some rain showers, but when the ash settled everyone would be breathing in volcanic ash, so everyone would have to have some sort of breath mask to simply keep them from breathing the volcanic ash. Then on top of all of that just the explosion from the volcano would probably kill at least a few people close to the volcano, So to conclude a super volcano is a really bad thing and there is nothing we can do to stop it, so how has you day been?

Kerbal Drilling Expedition

   Even though I am probably the worst at building planes somehow I built a plane that controls really well and has drills with cargo tanks to hold the ore it gathers.


I got a total of .12 ore in my tanks but the plane is still there collecting ore.