Blacktop Turbine

When people think of harnessing the suns energy, they think of solar panels. However, there are other ways.

Everyone knows that in the summer, blacktop pavement gets unbearably hot. So much that if you were to find yourself in a large parking lot sans the foot covers, you would surely be quickly moving across the blacktop to the nearest patch of grass. Why not try to recoup some of that energy?

One option would be for large complexes like malls and stadiums to (the next time they repave) lay down a network of tubing (aluminum? cheap cost for the thermal conductivity) and pave over it.Then, when the air inside the tubing heats up and expands, it rushes to the exit (most likely located centrally, in the stadium, mall, etc.) and power an engine or turbine. The energy created by this would most certainly not power an entire mall, but would be a nice subsidy that could pay for itself within a few years.

The primary problem I see with this is maintenance. In order to ensure good heat conductivity, the blacktop should be in contact with the tubing. This prevents any easy fixes as the blacktop would have to be chipped away to gain access. (Although like any other problem, this can be dealt with)

"Difficult we can do immediately, but impossible?... that might take a few days"

Increase your fuel efficiency, burn less calories through hypermiling

Hypermiling.

Hypermiling has been around forever, its just a new name. For those of you who don't want to read the article, hypermiling is just tweaking your driving habits to increase gas mileage. Most of us have already heard of this, and just don't do it. Personally, I never adopted it because slowing down and driving with more patience (especially on the southeast expressway) has not been worth it. But with gas going where it is, the thought of a 35% increase in gas mileage (thats right, 35%) just might be worth it. In reading this however it got me thinking about cycling.

In the fitness obsessed world that we live in, people are always counting calories (energy) so that they look good naked, feel better about themselves, or whatever other personal goals they may have. It is to the point where I'm sure that somewhere, someone has affixed a calorie counter (typically found on stationary bikes) onto an actual bicycle. They are probably doing it to see how many calories they burn while they are working out. But what if burning calories wasn't the goal? For those commuting to work by bike in the morning, they might just want a lackadaisacal ride to work, not a calorie destroying sweat-festival. I say, why not try personal hypermiling?

Also, this form of hypermiling cuts the waste out of the workout, allowing the user to perfect technique. Sounds like an awfully valuable tool to someone training for endurance. Gotta perfect that waste-less cycling motion

Solar Panel System Design

Solar panels keep getting cheaper, and will eventually get to a threshold where it will not only be environmentally responsible to install them, but financially irresponsible not to. For those of us who are not chemically (the film on the cheap solar panels above is cadmium telluride... sounds intimidating) inclined but would like to aid in the expedition of this eventuality, what do we do? We develop a system or package that optimizes the use of the solar panels.

Relative to our homes, the sun moves in the same path every day. Sometimes it is blocked by clouds, but regardless, the angle will be the same. Why then are all of the residential solar panels I see fixed? The only reason I can think of is that the energy required to move the panel itself is larger than the gain resulting from an optimized angle. For a poorly designed system, I believe this to be true.

For a home with a prismatic (triangular) roof, the peak can be used as a fulcrum on which the solar panels can be placed. Stabilizer pistons can attach each end of the solar panel to the roof (by placing the pistons at the end of each panel, the moment about the fulcrum will be maximized, giving us the most bang for our back regarding force). The energy required to move the panel would be minimal as is the nature of a fulcrum.

There are obviously several details to flesh out, such as the orientation of the house, the aesthetic, weather, etc. But giving the cost of energy, having a simple optimized system installed could be big business. It's my guess that the installation of solar panels will eventually be the wheelhouse of your local HVAC specialist or carpenter, and the first company to create a cost effective way to install a simple and efficient system would surely prosper

Intelligent Smoke Detector

The smoke alarm has been around for... a long time (look it up). Nearly every product comes with an expanded spectrum of functionality. Why then does a product as synonymous with safety as the smoke alarm not allow for the determination of the nature of the smoke(grease and chemical fires do require different techniques to be extinguished). This would be a relatively simple matter of incorporating some sort of filter or other analyzer. While they are at it, it would be nice if this next generation design would allow me to fry chicken or take a hot shower for more than 10 minutes without setting off the alarm in my apartment.