CaptainPanic

I agree with bbbrrr22 (nice nickname )... the investment of the mirror alone is low. But the additional costs might be quite a lot. I believe that the main reason why mirrors aren't used to increase solar panel output is: Solar panels are put on roofs. If you want to add a mirror, it will not be flat on the roof (since it needs to be at an angle to the solar panel), and it will require a 100% safe, storm-proof construction which is actually quite expensive. It will stick out, and easily catch wind. You must guarantee (probably with certificates and paperwork) that: 1) the roof is strong enough to support the forces, 2) that the added construction is strong enough too, and 3) that all this investments will pay back.

I have a number of things to say about storage: 1. I think batteries are a horrible way of storing energy. They're bulky, they're toxic, they have a relatively short life cycle and they're expensive. Maybe I'm being a bit too negative here, but I don't think it's the large scale solution we need. The current focus seems to use car batteries of (future) electric cars for storing the fluctuations. These will not require an additional investment, and the idea is that you plug it in while you don't need the car (almost nobody uses the car 24/7). It will require a smart grid, but I have been told that the price of a number of microprocessors (a number for every house?) are negligible compared to all necessary investments. 2. The main focus of groups researching this issue is to actually reduce peak demand and increase demand in the night. The simple technique used is to remotely turn on high demand applications such as a washing machine or a dryer. Already devices are being made that are informed about the price (which is directly coupled to the supply/demand)... and these devices then switch on the application when the price is lower than a certain set value. Again, the price of such devices is low. 3. Wind energy fluctuations will occur for larger areas, so storage should be for larger areas. Allow me to link to a previous post by myself about hydro power and storage in hydro dams. The summary of the post is that hydro power has both the right scale (power) and right capacity for large scale application of energy storage. The main argument that I learned in that thread is the large fluctuations that you can get downstream in the river, which might be unacceptable for people living there. I think that even this can be solved... 4. Hydro power is cheaper than wind power. Since your storage will be at most as much as the total power of the wind power, it's just impossible that the price of the storage alone is more than double the calculated investment. 5. Read the part under "experience" in the other thread to see that this whole idea is actually already being used on a gigawatt scale. 6. I agree that the Netherlands does not have a lot of mountains, and I know that there are some problems with hydro power... but it is possible. We're already connected to the Alps and Scandinavia (which aren't all that far away). It will require some adaptations. People will notice that the world changes. But it's possible.

Indeed, the user sets the voltage. But there is a minimum needed, which depends on the type of reaction (so on the two half reactions). The concentration of the reactants too. The pH might be an issue, but this can be considered part of the previous point (concentrations).

What you should be looking at is the Van de Graaff generator. The list you'll be wanting to check out is on the right hand side of this wikipedia website (click). The main problem you'll face in this case is that the ball is in constant contact with the surface. So, even if you choose the correct materials, the ball will only get a minor negative charge... electrons often travel quite well on surfaces, so once the ball is slightly charged, the ball will charge as fast as it will discharge (meaning that the net-effect is that nothing happens). Take a look at the Van de Graaff generator. They use the brushes, also called upper and lower electrode, to add and remove the electrons to the belt. The belt in the Van de Graaff generator is what would be the ball in your case...

This makes the comparison even more interesting. In almost all engineering fields, the supply will go down or has already gone down and demand has gone up. Europe is now importing technical people from all over the world. Does this mean that bankers must be homegrown while engineers can be import? How do they keep the demand so high, or the supply so low? Please note that I have nothing to complain about... I'm not asking for more myself, I'm demanding that people who underachieve (like in banks) get less. After all, we're paying banks now to keep our money, while initially banks would even pay interest on the salary-accounts. Those days are over. And I would prefer to pay less since they also give less interest, and seem to screw up on a global scale.

Personally I would put peptides in all categories. A dimer of two monomers will contain one peptide bond. Oligomers will contain a couple, and polymers will contain more than you want to count on your fingers The polymers are often called poly-peptides (as CharonY already said).

My guess is that indeed, the enzyme will work best at the body temperature of the animal (37-40 deg C). Please note that often the pH is very important as well. For the rest: check this out: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cow+body+temperature And no, this is not too technical for us. You're on a science forum for crying out loud. If you can go technical anywhere, it's here.

Go to see a doctor. You cannot swallow pills because pills are medicine. Smarties are candy. There is a big difference. You should only take medicine if a doctor tells you that you must take them. If you take the wrong pills, you only get more sick. It's a complete mystery to me why you cannot drink water... again: go to a doctor!

Sodium hydrogencarbonate, also known as sodium bicarbonate, dissolves in water (I'm assuming you're talking about solutions in water?). But it has a maximum solubility, meaning that at some point enough is enough, and no more will dissolve. This point for "enough is enough" is dependent on the temperature... meaning that the maximum solubility changes when the temperature changes... and it depends on the material if the solubility goes up or down with an increase in temperature. I'll leave you to figure out the rest... But this is something you can try at home! (Kids, please try this at home). When can you dissolve the most salt (normal kitchen salt) in water? When it's boiling hot, or when it's cold? And what happens if you then change the temperature (cool it down)? And finally: precipitation is the opposite from dissolution (to precipitate is the opposite from to dissolve).

First of all, your choice of words is wrong: the bonds between atoms might break, but atoms themselves really don't break in glass... or for that matter in any material. (Breaking atoms is known as nuclear fission - it doesn't happen when you just heat a material). Second: why would they break? Glass is a very strong material, with lots of covalent bonds. Check these links: About Covalent bonds and the physics of glass. Did that help?

I read in the newspaper the other day that at ING (a big Dutch bank), thousands of employees will get a bonus regardless of the facts that (1) the bank has received massive government support, and (2) they have suffered losses which were pretty significant imho. These bonuses are in total 950 million euro according to some sources. ING denies that it's this much, but admits that bonuses are given. This made me a bit upset actually. Are these bankers really so arrogant? They just work at the bank, like any employee. The majority of the bankers didn't invest a penny in the company where they work. I know what happens if you leave a kid and a cookie jar in one room and look the other way... but now the parents are in fact looking. I wonder what would happen if engineers would really make an effort to show their importance. Engineers aren't paid these huge bonuses. Engineers are paid a lot less in fact. What would happen if engineers would demand a similar reward for keeping the economy running? Would they deserve it? I think so... Think of what would happen if engineers stop working: All kinds of processes would come to a halt, either because of a lack of operating (they break down) or out of safety (they are shut down). There would be less, or no electricity. Food would rapidly become scarce. Fuels would become limited very fast, and on the long term, pretty much everything would stop spinning except the earth itself... Or, take doctors. They're not paid as much as these arrogant bankers either. I never heard of a doctor that became a multimillionaire, although there might be an exception. Think of what would happen if doctors stop working. How many lives would be lost? Now think of what would happen if bankers stop working. That's right, this already happened since September 2008. They haven't done a lot of work since that moment. Banks stopped giving loans, and were nationalized. Note that this is a completely subjective text, which might contain mistakes, and it is based on my opinion and not much else. If mods think it's a nice discussion, then please leave it. I note that it is hardly scientific.

I always find it weird that there are no peer-reviewed articles about experiments such as these... weird, unless it's just fake. If it were really possible for a few people to heat up some wet towel up to almost the boiling point of water, then surely this would be very interesting... and it would be worth a paper in a respected journal. I actually did a brief search, using scifinder for [chi heating water] and [qi heating water] but no articles showed up.

High speed trains in Europe are actually faster than flying for distances of 300-600 km (stops at a number of stations included), simply because you have no check-in and stations are in the city center, while airports are bloody far away from everything.

Ok. Consider it done. Any particular questions, or did you just feel like posting an advertisement for the color green?

Right now you express the soil moisture as a percentage of the dry weight (meaning it can theoretically be more than 100% - which is why it's so high). I would suggest you express it as a percentage of the wet weight (meaning you must divide it by the "Wet wt. of subsample"). I'm not sure how you determined that second formula. Dry weight of whole soil = wet weight * (1 - soil moisture) (That is: assuming that you determined the soil moisture as a percentage of the whole soil, as I suggested before). If you don't dry the sample completely, how do you know how much water is in it? Next time, take two samples (one for bulk density, one for other tests)... I'm not sure of your particular location, but where I live there is no shortage of soil. I think you're making your life unnecessarily complicated. Next time: take a sample. Determine its volume. Measure its weight. Dry it. Measure the weight again. Done.

Coal, oil and gas are found up to depths of 9 kilometers (see link 1, 2) or 4000 m under the bottom of the sea (see link 3). Since these fuels are "fossil" fuels, I guess it's not surprising that fossils are also found at such depths? 1. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/05/business/oil.php 2. http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/magazine/15-09/mf_jackrig 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noxal_oil_field

To answer your questions, allow me to link to a website which gives the complete oversight of all the projects that the Dutch have at this moment. - Link 1 is the Dutch website, which contains the most info, including pictures, but all text is in Dutch. - Link 2 is an English brochure (of the same projects), which explains in 8 pages what it's all about (.pdf!) [edit] And I also found an English wikipedia site. Not as good as previous links though. Also this website contains some info. Clicking around in this last website will soon navigate away from current projects - but it does contain lots of interesting facts about the Netherlands and its water management.

I cannot find your claim in the article you refer to. (The article itself has again lots of references - could you link to the correct one?)

Just to get this clear for me: these are actual expenses, and have nothing to do with all the bail-outs which are effectively a loan or a purchase of a share of a company (although it's not so sure that this money ever comes back)?

I agree with all your points, except the one I underlined. It was not my goal to make a complete realistic model for replacing all fossil based energy sources with the cheapest possible sustainable source, taking into account the geographic location and climate, and all additional investments necessary to make this successful. I have read reports that were made by large research groups that spent years on this... and the first conclusion I had was: "Hey, they forgot to include this-and-this, and they oversimplified the world". The underlined statement is impossible. A detailed cost evaluation can be made for 1 location, for 1 application and for 1 moment in time. Since there are 6 continents, hundreds of applications and a continuous progress in technology, such a report of a cost analysis will never exist. That's why I made this oversimplification... Although it's a bad idea to switch to 100% wind power (note that I never said we should do that), I want to show that a lot of sustainable power is actually affordable. The question I had is: is it worth the investment (taking into account that we'd need more than just wind, but that other sources might be roughly equally expensive)? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI find it interesting that a country such as the Netherlands spends about 20 billion euro per year on oil alone (depends heavily on the price)... and that nobody questions that, but an investment in sustainable power is usually considered expensive. Calculation: consumption of crude oil is 1204 PJ/yr ([1] in Opening Post), or about 215E6 barrels/yr. The value of that oil (now) is 7.5 billion/yr (35 euro/barrel?)... but at 100 euro/barrel, this is 21 billion euro. Note that this does not include import of other sources of fossil origin (coal, gas). Also note that investments in oil-industry (except the oil-well itself, which are ultimately paid by consumers, are not even included in the money spent on oil. A refinery isn't cheap. Yet, suggesting to invest 57 billion on a sustainable source of power causes all kinds of protests. - Note that this is a one-time investment, not a yearly payment! (Please, note that the protests here are very mild, and I am referring to protests I heard outside this forum).

That's also a good point. I believe that an investment in a container scanner is a fraction of the investments we do in other fields of terrorism prevention. Since the threat of a dirty nuke is perhaps not very big, but still a real threat (chance is never zero), it's pretty retarded that we scan people so thoroughly while letting the majority of the containers pass unchecked. This is actually a point where I'd advise to increase investments. A relatively small sum of money will have great benefit. (Yes, I keep using the cost-benefit analysis for my risk assessment). Here's a (Dutch) article of a new container scan in Rotterdam: 150 containers per hour with one scanner! It really seems like a small investment. Assuming that you have peak hours and some time offline, you'd need about 10 of such scanners for the whole country. I'm not sure of the price of each, but surely it's less than the billions we spend on our army and police. Every year, about 1.5 million containers enter the harbor of Rotterdam (source, in Dutch again - sorry). That's not the case. Terror prevention moved from "catching the bad guys" to "prevention". We're now arresting people, even killing them, in other countries who might in the future have the intention. The people in guantanamo bay were sometimes just in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was not exactly a "solid lead on someone that killed thousands of people and has sworn to do it again". I'm not saying we should have anarchy. I'm not saying that murder should go unpunished. I'm just saying that we should prioritize, and that terror prevention is receiving too much attention.

for those who are clueless: Dofasco is a steel company. How do you plan to make the electricity? Using a gas generator? I believe (but I'm not sure) that electric arc furnaces are used to melt metal scrap. It uses electricity (lots of it). This can have any origin... also a gas generator. A blast furnace can turn ore into steel. It uses coal, which is turned into coke as a fuel. I never heard of a gas smelting furnace for steel manufacturing. Also, the word "gas" is not mentioned on the wikipedia page of Dofasco... Could you explain a bit what you're talking about?

That's the point I try to make... There are undertakings of countries and governments that carry a similar price tag. Perhaps 100% sustainable energy is just worth this price?

Such studies exist. They always include the "status of technology". The technology which is not yet ready for large scale application is always the better one (whether that's because it's really better or because the researchers aren't objective about the potential, I don't know). I do not think that anyone is willing to spend this much, because there is always somebody who says: why start now when alternatives are cheaper? Ok, they're not yet completely developed... so let's just wait. And that's an important issue to realize... because technology progresses anything will always become cheaper (except oil). But waiting also means you postpone the pay-back time. Additionally, the carbon balance is included. This is always something to debate... because how this is calculated is quite complex and dependent on a large number of assumptions. In short: it's actually surprisingly hard to compare alternatives...

We have non-centralized communications, but centralized providers which have centralized managements who have centralized meetings. What I really wonder is how it is possible that a company can even consider to ask for more money for giving a worse service? (Because, imho, that's what it comes down to?) You can only do that if you're really losing profit. Normally, that means that the free market takes over, and the company goes bankrupt. Now, the providers are considering this altogether (which means that they're making illegal trade agreements and are behaving like a monopolist???).