Green Energy (Part 1): Four Score and Twenty Years Ago Fuel Cells Were Born ...(ish)

We’ve talked about green energy here at TI&IT before (Fossilizing Fossil Fuels ForFundamental Molecules) but coming up we’re going to get a bit more literal with it. In the 1990’s, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) in Tennessee, United States put a patent on electricity producing Spinach. Well Spinach proteins to be exact, but I mean, if a salad can provide the energy for our bodies to function, why can’t it power our cars too?

And that is exactly the strange line of thinking that brought us gel-like artificial chlorophyll in North Carolina and the hydrogen fuel producing solar powered trees at MIT. But how does this craziness actually work?

Well unlike electrolysis, which uses metal connectors and electrical currents to separate Hydrogen from Oxygen molecules in water, this method uses solar power through a form photosynthesis. So from start to finish, it’s a clean, green, energy producing machine. And do you want to know the best part about this? It’s cheap.

That’s right. For so long Hydrogen fuel cells seemed to elude us due to the fact that the production methods byproducts were harmful to us, not energy efficient, and above all, were not cost effective for the small quantities of power it yielded. In fact, depending on which process scientists used for past extraction methods, the energy loss percentage could sometimes be as high as ¾. That’s a lot of waste when you think about it.

Not everyone can keep paying seven dollars a gallon here in the U.S. for gasoline. In truth, even the ones who can afford it don’t want to. We burn through billions of gallons of the stuff worldwide every year, polluting the environment and avoiding clean energy. For our next multi-part series at TI&IT, let’s take an in depth look at just how the brilliant minds at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are looking to change this. But first, let me tell you a little bit about a War, the telegraph, and four men named Grove, Bacon, Olds and Ford.

Telegraph For Mr. Grove

Believe it or not, fuel cell technology goes back a lot further than you think. In fact, it technically predates the Civil War. I know what you’re thinking, “You’re full of crap guy. The combustion engine came way before the fuel cell.” The truth is, you’re wrong. But at the same time, you’re also right.

In 1839 a man named Sir William Grove went to work on what would later earn him the sobriquet “The father of the fuel cell.” It was a power cell of sorts that consisted of a zinc anode in dilute sulfuric acid and a platinum cathode in concentrated nitric acid, the two separated by a porous ceramic pot.

Grove discovered that by arranging two platinum electrodes with one end of each immersed in a container of sulfuric acid and the other ends separately sealed in containers of oxygen and hydrogen, a constant current would flow between the electrodes. The sealed containers held water as well as the gases, and he noted that the water level rose in both tubes as the current flowed.

This invention changed the technological landscape. The Grove Cell was quickly implemented into American telegraph systems. The cells were grouped together and soldered on a wooden table to increase their output. This configuration was known as a battery. (And as we all know a “cell” is the smallest component of a “battery.”) This became a staple in the Telegraph system until the time of the Civil War.

But a problem soon set in. The high volume of traffic across the lines would sometimes cause the Grove Cells to overheat and convert the chemicals to gas causing them to discharge Nitrogen Dioxide. This is bad. Nitrogen Dioxide is toxic if inhaled. The good news? NO2 has a distinct and acrid odor to it, so detection is relatively easy. However it can anesthetize the nose, meaning after you smell enough of it, you don’t notice it anymore. In a large quantity it will lead to Pulmonary Edema (fluid in the lungs). If overexposed you basically drown from the inside out.

Luckily it was replaced by the Daniell Cell, but that’s another story for another day…now what was I babbling about? Oh yes, fuel cells.

While the concept of hydrogen power was nothing new, (British scientists William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle had already described the process of using electricity to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen in 1800), Grove took it a step further by describing a new kind of battery. In 1843, he developed what he called, a gas voltaic battery. The funniest part of it all however was that, while it operated by producing electrical current through the melding of hydrogen and oxygen, the technology and understanding of chemical properties was limited by the times.

In short, while it was neat to look at in awe, nobody really knew how it worked.

German scientist Ludwig Mond and his assistant Charles Langer were the next to capture the public’s attention with what was truly the first fuel cell. In fact, they’re the ones who coined it the name. Even though Grove is considered the founder of the technology, these two took everything to a whole new level.

They introduced porous electrodes which increased the productivity, and in 1889, they built the first working fuel cell that operated using air and coal gas to cause the reaction. It was truly phenomenal, but they still weren’t entirely sure about what was happening. It seemed some materials were more conductive than others and they just couldn’t figure out why.

It wouldn’t be until almost the turn of the century that Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald, a founder of the field of physical chemistry, provided much of the theoretical understanding of how fuel cells operate. In 1893, he experimentally determined the interconnected roles of the various components of the fuel cell: electrodes, electrolyte, oxidizing and reducing agents, anions (a negative ion), and cations (a positive ion).

But there was still work to be done in order to perfect fuel cells. And a man named Francis Bacon was determined to make that happen.

Submarines and Spaceships

Pictured above is Francis Bacon standing proudly in front of the first somewhat efficient Fuel Cell ever developed. (And Lordy Almighty it’s a biggun!) See, Bacon’s design differed from Grove’s and Ludwig Mond’s significantly, as well it should. While the other two were researchers and scientists not used to working with high temperatures and huge pressures in heavy machinery, Bacon was an engineer. (Remember to respect your Engineers in the scientific community ladies and gentlemen! You may dream it up, but these guys are the ones who build it!)

He proposed that with the right changes made to the original design that the Fuel Cell could be a viable source of power for Submarines. Building off the work of Emil Bauer just a few years before him and his research into Fuel Cells and high temperatures, Francis Bacon hit the lab and began wrenching away on his invention. His discoveries opened the door for all modern research into Fuel Cell technology.

He first concluded that the diluted acidic solutions used to power the Fuel Cells currently available just wouldn’t cut it. The chemicals were far too corrosive to be truly efficient. He replaced the acid mixture with potassium hydroxide which wouldn’t damage the electrodes as much. The next change he made was even more significant. The platinum cathodes that Grove had used as his primary method of conducting electrolysis were switched out for much cheaper activated nickel electrodes.

In 1940 he moved to London to continue his research with a little more funding and equipment. It was here he discovered his “Eureka!” moment. Bacon developed the first double-cell with one unit for generating the hydrogen and oxygen gases and the other for the fuel cell. This could be reversed so that it acted as both an electrolyzer and a fuel cell. But problems were encountered due to the high operating temperatures and pressures and the corrosive nature of the chemicals.

The world was impressed to say the least and fuel cells moved from the realm of obscurity and scientific curiosity into the realm of, “hey, these may actually be useful!” The government gave him access to porous nickel, an invention so strange that it was actually protected under the Official Secrets Act. He used it to develop electrodes with large pores on the gas side and finer ones on the electrolyte side. This resulted in a much more stable product. The government began throwing funding at Bacon by the fistfuls.

Instead of embezzling this money (like we would in modern times *eye roll*) Francis actually used it for the betterment of mankind and in 1959 he built the Hydroxide Fuel Cell pictured above. But instead of going into the ocean the world had another idea for this wondrous new technology. And no, it wasn’t bombs.

Pictured above is a cutaway of the Gemini V fuel cell. As the Soviet Union was sending Sputnik up into Space, the United States knew it couldn’t just rest on its laurels, we had to compete. Bacon’s fuel cell model became the standard after outperforming standard battery power of the time by over 200 times the longevity of safe operation.

While the design may have changed over the years, variations of Bacon’s original fuel cell are used today to put spacecraft into orbit. During the Apollo missions, fuel cells were also used to produce clean drinking water. While they were capable of splitting hydrogen molecules from oxygen molecules they could also put them back together. (Hydrogen plus oxygen equals yummy nutritious water!)

It’s too bad that American’s favor cheap over innovation, a trend met with recent unrest over jobs leaving North America to head to China. But as Henry Ford discovered, an assembly line trumps manual progress every time.

Moving Forward

With the advent of the internal combustion engine, fuel cells seemed to fall to the wayside. While they were developed alongside fuel cells technically, the mass beginnings of petroleum excavation in the mid-1850s began to degrade public interest. After all, fuel cells weren’t widely understood, capable of producing toxic gases, and didn’t provide the same amount of power and efficiency that ICEs did.

China had already proven to the world the efficient nature of division of labor. To explain it, let’s modernize it a little bit. Pretend you work at McDonald’s as a cashier. Your duties involve interacting with the customer, taking the order, exchanging currency, and handing the customer a receipt. The order then goes to the back where a fry cook makes the burgers and French Fries. Another worker then comes up, bags the food, and hands it to the customer. At the end of the day another worker cleans the dishes while a manager counts all the income that was made that day in the back office before dropping the deposit off to the bank.

The splitting and designation of these tasks is called division of labor.

And of course the brilliant Chinese had developed this process.

Industrialization also brought about the decline of the fuel cell technology. It gave us machines that could cut and smooth parts using jigs and fixtures to guide them. The only human interactions were pressing a button, moving a platform, and placing the material to be cut. These were called interchangeable parts. Fast, accurate, and efficient, this lead to the assembly line.

While a man named Ransom Olds (you may remember him from his namesake, the “Oldsmobile”) developed the assembly line process, Henry Ford is often incorrectly credited. Ford did NOT invent the assembly line; he just perfected the process by adding conveyor belts into the mix. This resulted in the ability to build an entire Model T automobile in approximately an hour and a half. Now that’s production.

Luckily though fuel cells didn’t die out entirely and were just pushed aside temporarily.

Until now.

The “Anodes” of History

We too often think of fuel cells as being “new technology”, but as you can see, their rich history takes us back now almost two centuries! While we may have improved on the materials and costs of building fuel cells, and we understand now how they do what they do, the core of them has never changed. They still require electrodes, they still require chemical production, and they still aren’t as energy efficient as the internal combustion. However…

Recent advances in Green Technology (and I literally mean “Green”) have put fuel cells back into the mainstream again. Now that scientists and OPEC executives are beginning to grow squirrely over potentially dwindling petroleum wells, this could be the technology that saves the human race from ourselves.

Tomorrow we’re going to talk about how modern fuel cells operate and what they’re being used for currently. We’ll also discuss the various methods that go into creating them and who is pioneering the field now. Plus, a new way of gathering the fuel for the cells that should “leaf” you totally breathless. Hope you enjoyed the first part of this guys and gals! And thank you so much for reading To Infinity And…In Theory, it truly means the world to me.

-       Ryan Sanders

(Dilbert, from the gut-bustingly hilarious Scott Adams)

Thank you for reading this article on the history of the fuel cell. If you would like to know more about any of the above material you can by following any of the links below. Feel free to share this on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or any other Social Media site you may use. Happy learning everyone!

*Some time frames may be subject to discrepancy. Dates used in the article above are the assumed time frames within 1-3 years as information on specificities vary depending on the source. While I try to remain as accurate as possible, I am only as accurate as my sources. Thank you for your understanding.*

-       History of the Internal Combustion Engine

-       Applications of Fuel Cells

-       A timeline of events in Fuel Cell history

-       History of Fuel Cells and their correlation to modern trends

-       Full explanation and history of the Olds/Ford Assembly Lines

-       Early Fuel Cells in NASA applications

-       Wiki entry on Sir William Robert Grove

-       Brief history of the telegraph and use of the Grove Cells

How To Politely Ask A Mummies Age

And you thought the term “Dead-Stop” when in a traffic jam was just an expression. I’m sure this 2,000 year old commuter at one time or another would probably have agreed with you. However, as highway workers and Archaeologists are discovering in South Florida this past week, she may feel a bit differently now.

Okay, so it’s highly unlikely she was a commuter, but highway surveyors still received quite a shock when they unearthed what they estimate to be the 2,000 year old remains of a Native American. It isn’t the first time this has happened either; in fact, in Florida they actually have a state law that requires highway workers to survey a dig site thoroughly before excavation just for this reason.

The two millennia is just a rough estimate going on what they know about previous discoveries in the area. The body was recovered with no artifacts, so without Carbon dating it will be impossible to determine an exact time of death. Why can’t they carbon date you ask? (My word, I doth declare she is a lady good sir!) No I don’t mean Match.com style, I mean take a sample of DNA and run it through a series of tests to pinpoint how old she is. There’s a slight problem…

In order to use Carbon-14 dating (a process we’ll discuss in this article today) it requires the destruction of the material being analyzed. To the Native American culture, which the body will respectfully be returned to, this is unacceptable because it goes against their belief structure. Given our past history with the Native Americans upon coming to this country, I’d say we should definitely give them this one.

Today at To Infinity And…In Theory we’re going to discuss a little bit about culture by breaking down some of the other discoveries in that area. We’ll also talk about Carbon dating as I mentioned above and some other very important mummies where the process was used. But first let’s talk about the processes that take place and the very distinct difference between this Native American discovered under a highway in Florida and a Pharaoh sealed away in a sarcophagus in ancient Egypt. And no, it’s not their tax bracket.

Not All Mummies Are Created Equal

While there is much debate on the origins of man there is one thing I can be darn certain of. Ever since the first human being died and someone close to that human being experienced grief, some sort of ceremony in honor of the deceased has been performed. The Vikings would send their warriors off to sea. Cremation is another known form that has been around since ancient times. The Balinese will bury their dead for a period of time before cremating them so as to do it on a particular day sacred to their beliefs.

In other words, death, grief, and ceremony are universal. But results may vary.

Take the spectacular procedures that went into Egyptian burials for example. The mummification process, while deeply rooted in the hierarchy of their religion and Gods, was quite an advanced procedure. It showed an incredible degree of medical expertise as the procedure can be easily spoiled by a variety of factors. It also showed a profound understanding of how certain chemicals interacted with the body so as to preserve it for long periods of time. And I do mean long periods of time.

The oldest Egyptian mummies discovered to date were excavated from shallow graves near the modern city of Naga el-Gherira and go as far back as 3000 B.C. Some of the oldest mummies ever discovered in the world were excavated from South America, dating as far back as 5,050 B.C.! While the mummy named Ginger (pictured above) that was found in Egypt was naturally preserved, the Chinchorro Culture were actually using an artificial process very similar to the one the Egyptians used, and unlike the Egyptians who immortalized only the elite, mummification was open to all Chinchorro.

(Chinchorro mummy with a clay mask.)

(King Tutankhamum buried in lavish sarcophagus and golden mask)

As you can tell from the two pictures above, while the means to make the mummy were very similar, such as in the preparation of the organs, the ends were very different. Since the Chinchorro would use this procedure on the poor as well as the rich, their dead had a more humble appearance, whereas the lavish casket’s made from solid gold and the deluxe monumental tombs built in their honor took the Egyptians to the opposite end of the spectrum. (Yes I said tombs, not “pyramids.” A common misconception for another time.)

Either way in both cultures there was a process in which the internal organs were removed and the body was dried over a period of time. (Accounts range from 30-40 days for the Chinchorro and 40-70 for the Egyptians.) The Egyptians would place the organs in canisters called Canopic jars. The heart would be placed back in the body after it received a wine and spice wash, then after being salted and dried, it would be wrapped in bandages and ceremoniously placed in their final resting place.

If you’d like to read the entire process of mummification you can check out this link to mylearning.org and their article on how it’s done. 

So by now you’re probably saying, “well that’s all fine and dandy…but how do they know for sure how old these guys really are?” It’s quite a unique method indeed and the discovery of it was quite ingenious. But before we talk about modern mummy dating methods, let’s go back a few hundred years and see how they used to do it before the dawn of fancy computers.

The Father of Mummy

While Jean-Francois Champollion may not be the man who discovered the very first mummy, his research on hieroglyphics certainly paved the way for the study of them. Because of this he is considered by many to be the father of Egyptology. While Napoleon was digging around Egypt, in 1799 his men inadvertently discovered one of the most interesting things (ever discovered in my honest opinion) to date. They called it, the Rosetta Stone.

Yea. That’s a rock. And yes, those are words. This tablet is rather peculiar, not because it’s a marvel to think that in ancient times something this elaborate was possible to make, but because the tablet is written in three different languages. The top part is ancient Egyptian, the second is Demotic, and the third is…you guessed it!

Greek!

So why was it written in three languages? Well it turns out it doesn’t matter what language you read it in, the story on the tablet is the same. Since they already had a strong understanding of the Greek language this became the focal point for learning how to decipher the ancient Egyptian language.

This is where Jean Francois Champollion comes in. A linguistic prodigy who was fluent in languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, French, English, and even the more obscure ones like Latin, Greek, and Coptic (the current language of the Egyptians at the time), by 19 the man was considered by many a genius. In 1821, with the help of English physicist Thomas Young, Champollion broke the code, and finally scientists were able to shed some light on this exciting and brilliant culture, that had so long eluded them.

I know most of you are probably thinking, “Um, shouldn’t the Egyptians have been able to decipher them? They’re their ancestors aren’t they?” You’d think so, but the style the original hieroglyphs were written in had disappeared from Egyptian culture sometime around 400 A.D. and been replaced with a new form of language, one that had been bastardized by their Grecian conquerors, Demotic.

This 1,700 pound diary recounting the many good deeds of an ancient Pharaoh became the focal point of study for Egyptology and, even though Champollion had essentially broken the shroud of mystery surrounding this antediluvian epic rock of history, it would still be quite some time before Egyptologists the world around would be speaking hieroglyphic with the confidence they do today.

Want to read a full translation directly from the British Museum of the Rosetta Stone? You can by following the link here.

Excuse Me Waiter…This Tastes Like Mummy

Would you believe me if I told you at one time crushed up mummies were thought to have medicinal properties? It doesn’t take a brilliant scientist to know (using todays reasoning anyway) that a crushed up corpse baked into a pie is anything but recommended as a daily nutritional intake. Nonetheless, people all over Europe carried little pouches of Mummia with them wherever they went.

Because of this a lot of mummies were destroyed as the powder they were turned into was a high price fetching luxury item. Furthermore the bandages the bodies were wrapped it could be turned into paint. There were even cases where the bandages were taken and used as parchment paper.

Luckily this kind of desecration didn’t go on for an exceptionally long time. Unfortunately enough of it went on that perhaps the oldest mummy that could have ever existed has already been destroyed. Mummies have, since their discovery, given us inordinate amounts of insight into the lost cultures of the world. It’s a shame to think that so much may forever remain unknown because of this.

19^th Century Rules for Dating My Teenage Mummy

So obviously radiocarbon dating hasn’t been around forever. So how did the scientists of yore figure out just how old their new discovery really was? Are you ready for this?

They’d guess.

Sure it was an educated guess going off of texts from the period and history of the area, but it was still a guess. And what about the mummies that were discovered in the desert in shallow graves? Where’s justice for Ginger! It wouldn’t be until the 1950s when a scientist by the name of Willard Libby out of the University of Chicago would find the answer to figuring out just how many birthdays King Tut and the Chinchorro mummies had missed.

The answer was lying right before their eyes all along. It was in Carbon. But it wasn’t just any old Carbon, it was Carbon-14. See regular Carbon is made up of six neutrons and six protons, thereby earning it the name Carbon-12. When cosmic rays strike Nitrogen atoms in our atmosphere, a strange process begins to take place. It converts the Nitrogen atoms into Carbon-14. These molecules, instead of having even pairs of six and six, have six protons and eight neutrons. This does more than just make it heavier.

The nucleus of Carbon-14 is very unstable, but aside from that it looks just like every other Carbon molecule out there. This instability however, means the Carbon-14 atom is radioactive, and if there is one thing scientists learned about radioactive molecules during that period it’s that they decay. (And go BOOM!) As a molecule decays it loses its radioactivity slowly and the speed at which it unravels is called its “half-life”.

The half-life of Carbon-14 is close to 6,000 years. In order for the atom to decay completely it will take about 50,000 years to accomplish. To you and I that seems like a really long time, but to the planet, that’s relatively less than infancy.

The decay of an atom can be tracked and that’s where the half-life comes in. See Carbon-14 has a set radioactive level that can be measured by scientists when all other contamination factors have been eliminated. After 5,730 years and a series of complicated mathematical equations half of that radioactivity will disappear. In another 5,730 years that radioactivity will decay another 50% and so on and so forth until it has been reduced to a Nitrogen-14 atom and then dies out entirely.

This may surprise you but there isn’t a part of your body that isn’t made with Carbon. Carbon-12 to be exact. But since Carbon-14 is abundant in our atmosphere (and heavier than regular Carbon) it will be ingested by us and work its way into our chemical makeup. Is it harmful? Nah, but if you ever find yourself frozen in the side of a mountain for 10,000 years, when scientists dig you out they’ll be able to tell how long you were there, how old you were when it happened, and what flavor granola bar you had for lunch.

If you want to know more about Carbon-14 dating and even some of the other isotopes they use for this process (like Uranium-235 which can be dated back to 704 million years) head on over to one of my favorite sites HowStuffWorks.com and read their article on Carbon dating. Now that we know how scientists do it, let’s see this process in action. First to Europe, then we’ll find out how they figured out this Florida’s mummy age the old fashioned way.

Here Lies Peat, A Mossly Good Fellow...

While digging up a bog in 1950 Denmark, the man made a peculiar discovery. There was a body! And not just any body, this one looked fresh. After he ran and got the local inspector it was confirmed, there was a murderer running amok in the streets of Denmark. It was a National crisis! A calamity! Oh what to do!

But they were baffled by this body and were having a difficult time identifying it. So they called in Archaeology professor Peter V. Glob. He determined three things. The first, and most importantly, this was not a recent murder victim so there was no reason to panic. Two, this individual had been the victim of a sacrifice of some kind. And number three, all this had happened around 2,000 years ago.

What the police had on their hands was known as a bog body. It’s not meant to be offensive to the deceased. It’s just what they are, (a rose by any other name). This really shouldn’t have surprised them as in 1938 another victim very similar to the Tollund man (pictured above) was found in the very same bog named the Elling Woman, however she was not nearly as preserved.

So what is it that makes these bodies stay together over the vast periods of time from their burial to their exhumation? It’s quite simple really. The answer lies in where they’re recovered from. Bog bodies are found in bogs (duh) and bogs are high in concentration of Peat. Peat is high in concentration of Sphagnum moss, so much indeed that it’s almost entirely comprised of it. This decayed material is what causes the magic to happen.

If the conditions are just right the Peat acts like a preservative, a pickling agent of sorts. While the high pH levels will disintegrate the potassium of the bones it will preserve the flesh and the rest of the body in near mint condition. The acidity usually causes the hair to turn red, but that’s not a big deal. Modern techniques can actually determine what the original hair color of the bog body was (if you’re into that sort of thing).

While these archaeological information gold mines were being discovered all across Europe it seemed as though North America was lacking in this natural phenomena. Then in the 1980’s in Florida it happened. While a farmer was digging out a Peat bog he found a cluster of skulls in his bucket. Soon enough the Windover Archaeological National Historic Site was born. Over a hundred skeletal remains were recovered buried some 5 to 8,000 years ago.

While the conditions may not have been met here to preserve the skin because the composition of the Peat in Florida causes it to be much wetter, it did allow for the preservation of brains in over 100 skulls. It also was the source of the oldest textiles ever recovered in Florida. Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it.

These bodies were dated using radiocarbon methods and also did not belong to the Tequesta tribe that the woman recently discovered under the highway belonged to. However the surrounding area where the Tequesta woman was exhumed from is rich in Tequesta artifacts even though none were recovered with her body. So how’d they figure it out?

They guessed, sure it’s an educated guess…

But they’re pretty sure she was Tequesta given her relative positioning to the Miami Circle, which is another ancient historic site in Florida. No pictures taken will be released of the body recovered out of respect for the culture of the deceased. I think this is entirely acceptable as there is already a wealth of information available. I hope you enjoyed this article everyone!

-       Ryan Sanders

Thanks for reading and as always feel free to share this around on Facebook and Twitter! If you want to know more about Egyptology, Bog Bodies, or any of the information in the article above you can by following the links in the paragraph above and below. Happy learning everyone!

      

-          Wikipedia entry on theRosetta Stone

-          Sun-Sentinelarticle on 2,000 year old Tequesta woman found in Florida

-          AncientEgyptian beliefs on Life after Death.

-          Wikipedia entry on theChinchorro people

-          Wikipedia entryon the Windover Archaeological site

-          Biography onJean Francois Champollion

-          History.comarticle on 5 of the greatest mummy discoveries in Egyptology

-          NOVAarticle on Bog People in the Americas

The Color of Sand...Not as Bland as You Think

Ever been to the beach and got sand in your eye and said, “Darn that smarts!”? Well take a look at the picture above. That’s why. Lots of sharp, jagged, geometric characteristics comprise the miniscule grains of sand we find lying around us every day. Seems kind of incredible since every time we look at it all we see is an amalgamation of khaki color. How could each grain of sand be so unique in shape, size, and be so colorful? On our first day back from my little winter break here at To Infinity…And In Theory we’re going to explore sand. From its formation to its composition, and even a little bit about why it’s so much more important than just that annoying beach dirt that gets stuck in your swim trunks.

Just Sand? Ha! Don’t Be Silica…

So what exactly is sand made of? Well that mostly depends on where your sand came from. Sand is actually tiny fragments of broken down igneous rock that is carried by wind, water, or even glaciers that usually ends up as sediment in bodies of water or as dunes and deserts on land. But typically speaking sand is mostly comprised of silica. You may more commonly know this as it’s mineralized form, quartz.

Coral, Gypsum, Hematite, lava rock, all of these are different particles that can form a grain of sand. When analyzed, this can give geologists insight as to where the sand came from, for instance, if the sample is high in coral content and many of its neighbor particles are rounded marble shapes, it’s safe to assume it was formed in an ocean where the rolling waters wore down the rough edges and smoothed it to a spherical shape.

“Every grain of sand is a jewel waiting to be discovered.” This was so eloquently phrased by doctor (and photographer) Gary Greenberg after he had turned his microscopes to sand. The microscopic seashells and fragments he found within the ocean sediment were absolutely stunning. You can see more of his wonderful photography here.

Get a Room You Dirty Dune

Ever seen a sand dune make love?

Want to?

If that’s the case, not only are you a rather strange individual but you’re also probably pretty patient too, because in order to watch a sand dune mate with another dune you’ll be standing in your respective desert for possibly a year, dependent on the size of your dune. As wind blows against some kind of a backstop and picks up small grains of sand it will blow them into a dune formation. If the conditions are just right the wind can also push that dune across the desert.

But what happens if a smaller dune runs into a bigger dune? Does it just get swallowed up and disappear? Nope. That sandy hill turns into Kitty Pryde from the X-Men and phases right through it! Sometimes the edges of the crescent shape break off the bigger dune forming two smaller dunes. This is the process scientists refer to as breeding and takes a rather long time to accomplish.

And here you thought sloths were slow…

The Sandy (And Itchy) Lap of Luxury

The picture above is the innards of a watch. If you look at number seven on the list it says “Quartz Crystal.” Quartz is made of silica, in fact, its silica in its mineral form. It may not be a precious jewel but scientists have discovered that it is indeed quite useful. Why? In short, much like metal, quartz can conduct electricity, but not just like metal; it prefers to do things a little differently.

The process by which Quartz operates a current is called Piezoelectricity. This is the ability to convert voltage when placed under mechanical stress. It’s not just Quartz; certain ceramics have this property as well. How it works is Quartz maintains a specific frequency standard. Because of this scientists know exactly how it will react under certain situations and be able to use it in a variety of electronics, from computers to TV’s and even your Xbox Ones and PS4s. Furthermore, most quartz nowadays found in our technology is synthetic, allowing scientists to further tweak and groom it to whatever frequency they need it to be.

Another use for Silica is something you may or not be aware of. Take a look out your window. I mean a good, hard, long look. What do you see? A yard? Your kids playing with the dog? Maybe the neighbor digging his truck out from under six tons of snow? There are a million things any given one of you could see at this moment outside your window. But chances are you all have one thing in common. The glass you’re looking through.

Windows are thought to be a modern invention but if this were Jeopardy you’d have just answered that question wrong. Glass windows were discovered in the ruins of Pompeii leading archaeologists to the conclusion that glass was a luxury item, afforded by the rich and divine. If you had glass windows, you were part of the Elite. (Granted back in those days if you had anything above a dirt floor and a thatched roof you could be considered Mr. Fancy Pants.) But where did it come from?

There was a Roman Naturalist named Pliny the Elder who had an answer. The ancient Phoenicians. Ever heard of them? Probably not, they aren’t exactly widely talked about in high school curriculum. They should be however, as they are credited with many important discoveries that we use today, including pottery, trade, and jewelry.

Mostly contributing to the fields of seafaring and navigation, the Phoenicians were quite a clever bunch. They had to be, they spent the entirety of their lives going from unknown to unknown. On one of these trips, allegedly with Pliny along for the ride, they made camp on a beach along the coastlines of modern day Palestine. They quickly encountered a problem. There were no rocks nearby to support their pots as they cooked their dinner.

As I said though, they were a clever bunch and they returned to the ship and gathered up blocks of Saltpeter to use to prop their cookware up. As they ate, drank, and burned their fires through the night something strange was happening beneath the flames. The saltpeter and the quartz were melting into an unknown fluid. As the fires died and morning came the fluid had hardened into a solid. This colorful substance became known as glass.

In closing, sand is much more than just a beach-goers crotch nuisance. It provides us with plates to eat from, windows to keep the cold out, watches to make sure we get to work on time, and radios to blast Pantera at ungodly hours. It can be used to filter our water, provide traction on icy roads, and give us the extra grit to finish the body of that walnut and maple guitar we’ve been building. Sand is much more useful than you probably came into this article knowing.

Sand is much more than just a pretty grain.

-       Ryan Sanders

For further reading on any of the topics above feel free to visit any of the below listed websites, and as always thank you so much for reading! Happy learning everyone!

-       LiveSciencearticle on how quartz operates in electronics

-       More info onPhoenicians and their discoveries

-       Discoveryarticle on sand composition

-       Wiki entry onPiezoelectricity

Fossilizing Fossil Fuels For Fundamental Molecules

What’s The Alternative?

What are the similarities between your current automobile and a plant? Some of you might be saying, “Well, my car’s green. Is that what you’re talking about?” or, “Well my interior smells like a Rose, so I get it.” Truth is, there are no similarities. It’s a gas chugging, environment killing, and squirrel squashing road hog. But the University of Wollongong (UOW) in Australia is looking to change that once and for all.

We’ve been talking about alternative fuel sources for a long, long time now. It’s no secret to consumer’s that gas prices are through the roof and almost unbearable. Sustainable and alternative fuel sources wouldn’t just be nice to have as an option, it’s going to be the necessity of the future.

There are several theories on fossil fuels. Some believe that oil reserves are drying up. Others believe that the petroleum is created in the core of the Earth and the pressure is pushing the new stuff back up and refilling the wells. Biogenic theorists argue that fossil fuels are the decomposing remains of carbon based life-forms. Abiogenic theorist’s counter that the organisms found in the crude oil is surface contamination and oil is a mineral created within the core of Earth.

Whatever side you fall on, there is one thing that is certain.

Something’s gotta give.

Hungry, Hungry Humans

The United States is responsible for 1,000 barrels of oil being consumed a day. That’s one country in a very big, very developed world. You expand on that to include everyone and suddenly we’re burning through 89 million barrels worldwide, on a daily basis. That’s nuts, because once you expand on that to factor in a year of consumption, you now have 32 and a half billion barrels being munched down. Each barrel has 42 gallons in it. You do the math, but I shouldn’t need to tell you, that’s a ton (not literally…) of oil.

So you can see why scientists thought we were running out. See, in the 1970’s throngs of experts told the governments of the world that we reached the peak of our oil supply. Now it’s suddenly running out. I don’t know why everyone decided to hit the panic button and spike the prices (other than corporate greed…) before doing their research, but they said we’d be out of fuel in fifteen years. It’s well past 1985 and we’re burning the midnight oil faster than ever.

Not to mention our other fuels. We’re fracking away to get at Natural Gas under the surface. This has detrimental effects to the environment whether these major companies would like to admit it to the public or not. But we need the natural gas. Crude oil creates environmental pollution problems as well, and nuclear energy…I don’t even feel the need to explain that. So what do we do? How do we get the trillions of gallons of fuel per year we need to run as a nation?

Hydrogen.

I know what you’re saying. “Oh duh, of course, but didn’t they try that before?” Well of course silly. But the Wright brothers didn’t build a Boeing 747 for their first flight. Hell, their first craft would have been a blessing to have been held together by duct tape! Everything starts somewhere, and when we started hearing about fuel cells being all the rage a decade ago, they were just putting the thought into the general public’s ear.

The reality of making hydrogen cheaply, efficiently, and safely remains a huge concern, but as I mentioned above Australia is changing all of that. In order to understand what UOW is accomplishing you have to understand where it came from. Let’s quickly explore how they convert water into a usable fuel source.

*I cannot stress this enough, unless under the supervision of a professional NEVER and I do mean NEVER attempt to make hydrogen gas at home. Hydrogen in small quantities is fairly harmless; however, in larger quantities it can be EXTREMELY DANGEROUS! Hydrogen is explosive. Chlorine gas can also be inadvertently produced using this method. This, unlike Hydrogen is dangerous in ANY quantity. Do NOT try this at home*

The old method for hydrogen gas extraction wasn’t very practical. Only around 50-70% of the hydrogen was extracted in the process. The rest escaped in the form of heat from the electricity. Here’s how it works.

Salt water is placed into the containers with separate chambers. An anode (negative connector) is placed in one chamber and a cathode (positive connector) is in the other. As the charge surges through the H2O molecules it separates them into two different gases. The oxygen and hydrogen are collected separately. On a small scale this doesn’t produce enough hydrogen gas to be effective, plus there is a nasty byproduct.

Chlorine gas. Ever heard of World War I? Chlorine gas was introduced as chemical warfare. When breathed in, it basically liquefies your lungs and you die painfully, convulsing, bleeding from every orifice and vomiting up your internal organs. (Humans…what a lovely bunch of folk we are…)

This happens because of the salt. Water, electricity, and table salt (NaCL) have the potential to make it. (Study your chemistry ladies and gentlemen!) Now on an industrial scale this method, while costly, could produce enough fuel to run a few countries, but we need to run the world. So how did the UOW make this possible?

Here Comes The Sun

Yep, you guessed it, photosynthesis, and no, I haven’t lost my mind.

See there are all these little critters living on the surface under the ocean and just beneath it. Kelp, plankton, algae, all these organisms rely on the sun to produce energy. But what if that energy could be harnessed? That’s exactly what researchers at UOW intended to find out.

Using artificially developed chlorophyll and a conductive plastic polymer film, the researchers have begun splitting water molecules from its valuable energy. So far, the team hasn’t witnessed the production of the deadly chlorine gas. The plastic film acts as a catalyst to enact the energy producing process. The technical name for this process is a light-assisted, polymeric water oxidation catalyst that selectively oxidizes seawater with a low onset potential. In other words, turns water into hydrogen gas without electricity and harmful byproducts.

What are the benefits to this? Well first off, hydrogen fuel for our vehicles is a wonderful idea. Currently our vehicles pump carbon dioxide, amongst other terrible carcinogens, into our environment. Some scientists say this is leading to global warming. I think it just makes the air stink. But what’s the byproduct of hydrogen fuel?

Water.

That’s right, you drive 100 miles and all you spit out the back of your tailpipe is harmless water. That water is sucked back up by evaporation and deposited back into the oceans to undergo the process all over again. Talk about renewable sources!

Want to know the best part? Using this process, it only takes five gallons of sea water to run a converted house and an electric car per day. Think about it, that’s 35 gallons a week. Around 140 gallons per month, and around 51,000 per person a year. Considering over 75% of our planet is water, AND the byproduct gets recycled back into the environment, theoretically we would never have to touch gasoline ever again!

Magnetic Personalities

But that’s not the only new method currently being looked into. Researchers in Berkley, California, United States have accidentally developed a welcome new way of extracting hydrogen as well. Originally the program was intended to develop molecules that behaved like magnets, but what they got was something more interesting.

They were trying to combine metal atoms with organic molecular groups (called PY5) to produce new molecules with the properties of bulk magnets. What happened was one of the Molybdenum-oxo complex was exhibiting some peculiar behavior. Turns out it was able to transfer electrons. This process is the main ingredient to splitting hydrogen atoms from oxygen molecules.

“The molybdenum compound was so successful it could work on seawater or pure water without additives. The compound is stable due to five bonds holding the molybdenum in place. Long said the molecule is stable for long periods in aqueous solutions, and they saw no degradation in catalytic activity over their three-day experiment. The molecule remains stable even when impurities, such as those found in seawater, are present. This would further reduce the cost since no organic acids or solvents are needed.

The compound’s stability makes it more durable than the nickel and iron compounds used previously, but it is slower than the natural hydrogenases and needs a higher electric voltage to operate. The group is now experimenting with different metals and "tweaking" the PY5 groups to see if they can improve the speed and efficiency and reduce the energy requirements. They are also looking at the possibility of coupling the system to solar-generated electricity to make it even more viable.” – From Phys.org

This means that even if one technology isn’t available in one part of the world (say the safe and easy production of plastic polymer’s created by UOW, or Mo isn’t readily accessible in their region) we have other options for producing hydrogen gas. Moving forward in a green world this is going to become our future if we want to continue to have a planet.

We only have one Earth…for now. So let’s not muck it up in the meantime.

-Ryan Sanders

For further information on alternative fuel sources and the production of them you can follow any of the links below. As always thanks for reading and feel free to share this article around if you enjoyed it! Happy learning!

-     “Science Alert”  article

-       In depth article on light-assisted catalysts

-   Global Energy And NR Consumption Chart

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