My Google science fair 2012 project

Though it was not selected, I wish to share it with you people..........
Project Summary

Everyday we see many people walking on footpaths in many cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities all around the world. Our daily lives today became so hectic and now there are no restrains on timings of pedestrians across the footpaths and zebra crossings. 

Lets try to get an advantage out of this aspect. People start from their homes having good breakfast everyday. So, inside their tummies the chemical energy from the food what they have taken converts into ATP(Adenosine triphosphate) and gets stored in the body. This is converted to mechanical energy in the muscles of their legs when they start to walk.

So, why don't we convert this mechanical energy into electricity that can benefit all and help us in our daily needs like recharging cars, mobiles, traffic lights and street lights? 

For this purpose I've designed a device that can be substituted in the place of a footpath tile. This looks like a concrete tile from the top but has a mechanism beneath it that can generate small amounts of electricity when someone steps on it.

About Me

I am Goutham Sharma, 15*. You can define me as a maverick, college goer, science enthusiast and an astronomy lover. I do things, ranging from home repairs where I use my brain to solve several 'home' problems like water leakage, clock repair, etc. to gazing at the night sky. From a tender age I have a avid interest in astronomy and space sciences along with robotics. I have followed a plethora of space missions ranging from the Apollo's to Mars Science Laboratory rover. I do read books and watch planets, track them with my camera, note down their positions, point my telescope to those planets, the moon and star clusters and question myself. 

Questioning myself had helped me a lot in knowing about how things work, why do they exist and things like that. I am largely practical, I don't just read and know things but also test them, browse the web to know further about them and then confirm it. I strongly believe that life is all about knowledge and applying it practically for a better future.........

I also get involved in science fairs and projects at the school level and outside and have won few. Participating in this science fair, I think is not just about winning. Here I get an opportunity to showcase my innovations and imaginations I have been working out all the time and present it to the society which will take an advantage out of it to make this planet a better place to live and to work.

*as on March 22, 2012.    

The Question

The main objective behind this project is to devise a new way of generating electricity and if possible to solve the present energy crisis we are having. So how do we convert mechanical energy into electrical just when a person steps on  the footpath and goes for a walk?

Here we need to see that this does not pose any inconvenience or risk to the pedestrian and also the productivity should be in appreciable amounts at all times. We need to design a system which is integrated with all other systems such as the traffic, lights and primary safety.

Can this method solve our energy needs? Can we get any advantage from this?

Hypothesis

We are in the 21st century and all the way back from ages we have been employing new techniques ranging from wind mills to the present genetically modified viruses that can produce tiny pulses of current to try to answer our energy needs. The fossils are being quickly burnt and soon in the future they may get exhausted. I think that this method certainly will answer our need(though initially I have assumed it to be in short scale). Then lets try to think about even more functionality we can add to get the maximum output from this device.   

Research

Extracting energy from the footsteps of a person sounds very interesting and I've recently found out that this type of devices are already being developed and being tested at various locations but I do not exactly know what mechanism was involved in them. So, I've decided to give what I've thought about the it. It may be different and in any other cases might exceed the capabilities of the recently developed ones. After all its just a suggestion from my side about a way of harnessing energy (might be in a different way). 

Energy is generated in many ways and there seem to be even more possible ways as we pursue to do it. From mills that allow water from a stream to pass and come down thus turning the shaft that is connected to the grindstones via some gears that help in turning grains into flour to a recently developed technique where genetically modified recombinant viruses are used to generate short pulses of electric current that can light up a small bulb. Several ways have been all around us till now and we are even exploring more out of them. 

Till now most of the techniques either use a moving fluid like water, steam or even air to move past a turbine that rotates the shaft of the generator or they make use of creating some potential difference across the circuit so that the electrons flow from higher densely point to deficient point like in the solar cells. Generating current may be in either ways, it may be in the form of alternating current or the direct current and this depends upon what sort of utility we have. For example for the purpose of recharging and for long range transfer into the city grid purpose we have to use AC current whereas for the purpose of other small scale purposes such as traffic lights or head and rear lamps of a bicycle, DC current needs to be produced.

So there needs to be two types of electric generators. In the case of this project we shall decide which one we shall use. It depends upon our utilities as well as partly on the relative cost of investing for this project by the respective agencies. It is also a matter of safety and this project is defined to be safe. 

What I've seen in my research about several attempts to make this device come true is a company which has successfully designed and implemented it at some of the famous locations around the globe. This device glows when it is stepped upon and I've learnt that 75% of the potential energy with with it was stepped converts into electricity. Several of these devices can be connected into a grid circuit which can produce a great deal in a day of busy pedestrian traffic. 

I guess that the difference in mechanism of the device which I am going to discuss later is going to increase to productivity further and this can be taken as a challenge to the former prototype and also It is not possible for be to do experiment on the pedestrian rate so I've took some data from some of the public domains about this for the estimation of electricity production but I can explain and construct the prototype of my idea in the next section.

Experiment

Here, I am going to discuss about the design and functioning of my brainchild. I haven't named it yet. 

People step on it and the floor tile should send some real current to be recharged, that's it! It should be some sort of a springboard and beneath it there needs to be a mechanism. The condition is that when a person steps on it, reciprocating motion of the springboard should be converted into rotational motion of the shaft of the generator. So, the best example of this king of transformation is found in crank mechanism esp. slider crank mechanism. Here again we have to think about the overall mechanical advantage by which the angular velocity of the shaft is concerned otherwise it becomes a matter of less productivity and also its good to notice that the pedestrian should not feel bumpy.

For this, I will make use of a concrete tile(footpath tile) 30cm and 30cm in size. Beneath it to cover the generator and to crank gears lies a thin aluminium box measuring at least 30 cm down the pavement just along the tile. In the the gap between the tile and the box positions a spring which has a force constant so that at normal conditions(when its not stepped upon) it just keeps the the tile at least by 30mm (hope that is not too bumpy). Then inside the box lies not one small generator but a set of six of them whose shafts are fixed to a steel flywheel each measuring  6cm in diameter, this helps to conserve the angular momentum. The lower portion of the tile has six notches fixed with a connecting rod(20cm) each which is attached(rotated freely) to a point which is at a radius of 150mm on the flywheel away from the shaft (as shown in the diagram).

Its simply the same case of a steam engine's application in early locomotives whose enormous force was used to turn the wheels of the front engine which pulls the train forward.

For the purpose of the type of current we have to produce, a dynamo can be used because small dynamos today are capable of producing stable voltage and occupy less space. A dynamo produces direct current(current flows only in one direction). As earlier said we are using six dynamos together under a single tile. These dynamos have to be connected in series while each tile is connected in parallel. Here we have to understand that these group of tiles are not stepped upon simultaneously and the the timings may not be synchronized. All the tiles, in parallel are connected to a single DC inverter that can store the energy obtained by the means of rechargeable batteries and can be used later as per the user's wish. 

The inverter also can be connected to a transformer can send the electricity to the power lines can can light up homes around the local.          

Now lets turn to the topic concerning the productivity. It all depends upon the rate of pedestrian traffic and also the arrangement of the electric tiles on the footpath. 

Now this is the diagram describing the entire design of the device:

           

Here, on the flywheels of the diagram, you can see the point O at their centers. Through these points shafts come out that are connected to a dynamo to produce current. As you see, the diagram is just schematic and under a tile in this manner we can fix six dynamos as a set together(two flywheels, as shown in the figure, but side by side i.e. 2into3). These dynamos are connected in series connection.

When someone steps on the tile, the spring gets pressed down, allowing the connecting rod, on the flywheel to to do half a cycle down and instantaneously, as the person lifts up his foot from the tile, the other half cycle gets completed i.e. one oscillation. This happens very quickly and turns the flywheel which is attached to the shaft(from O) of a dynamo. Since all the six wheels are attached to six dynamos, the efficiency thus increases six times compared to that of fixing just one dynamo.  . 

Two terminals protrude out of the device at the connection point beneath it. The other tiles in the grid are connected in parallel to the inverter since all of these do not have a chance of generating charge at once since they are normally stepped upon at random timings. 

Conclusion

This is just the beginning and there should be even more support as far as the design and commercial support concerns. 

My hypothesis was that this can truly benefit the people in terms of their needs and for the other uses. I think it is capable of what had been thought and regarding the design, I feel its unique in its own way. However, there needs to be support from the general public for the encouragement and maintenance of clean and green energy. Its our right to get it as cheaper as possible without harming our mother planet.....

                                                                                              Thank you 

IMAX Hubble 3D

Apollo disaster

My youtube spacelab entry

My Youtube Spacelab entry

My Youtube Spacelab entry

Lets be 'Curious' 'bout Mars..........

How they land on Mars?

The evolution of 'Star Trek'

UARS: an infographic

I have, for the first time measured my latitude....

Hello!

On this equinox, i.e.on 23rd September, I have for the first time calculated the latitude of my location, Hyderabad, India. The trick is simple, at the time of the local noon mark the tip of the gnomon's shadow. For this you have to set your watch accurately to the GMT based time and add your local time difference to that.

Then measure the length of the shadow as well as that of the gnomon. All that you need to find is the angle made by the Sun. On the equinox day the angle made by the Sun is nothing but the latitude of the location.
To know the angle, just divide the length of the shadow by the length of the gnomon and inverse it with the angle of tangents. You get your latitude.

And how you find your longitude?

You can conduct the experiment in India to find out longitude using Gnomon on any of the following 4 dates in a year: Apr 16, Jun 14, Sept 02, Dec 25. You will need a watch set to correct and the Shortest shadow experiment setup. Just conduct the shortest shadow experiment at noon and note the time of the shortest shadow, this is the time of your local noon as well.

  -  On the above 4 dates, the local noon happens exactly at 12:00 noon at
      the 82.5° E longitude.

  -  If your local noon happens after 12:00 noon, you are further east of
     82.5, else you are west.

 -   Now simply divide the difference (in minutes) between your local noon
     and 82.5 (which is 12:00 noon) by 4. You will get the difference in
     longitudes.

  -  Subtract the difference in longitude from 82.5 if you are west. Add if
     you are east.

Why does it matter exploring matter?

Hello all!

Matter as we know is something which we can feel touch and sense. Matter is everything around us and of course, we are made of matter. Our home, food, water, books, clothes, trees, seas, oceans, planet, Moon, Sun, stars, galaxies, the whole Universe are all made of something fundamental which is worth thinking deep into the roots of science, on which we are born, evolve and will die.

The thinking of matter can be traced back to the centuries before Christ. It was an age of understanding the basics of nature, and how it works. Theologians like Leucippus and Democritus were the first persons to ask the question 'what are we made of '? This question may sometimes seem to be intriguing to you and me, but think about because thinking is a way in which you can attempt to answer the most burning questions in your life, it is the prerequisite of knowledge.

In his first attempt, Democritus answered that as- when you cut an apple pie into a half, and that two into halves and that four into halves and so on till you go for nearly ninety cuts, you get a finer pulpy stuff. Pick up a grain from it. Look closely and even try to squash it, squeeze it. If you have a magnifying glass, have a look through it.

This tiny speck of bread is still remained with millions and millions of atoms in it which are 'bonded' to each other to form substances that eventually make a sense of taste on your  tongue.

The combination of these atoms to form substances called compounds which are unique in composition and even absence or addition of one atom can make a lot of difference in physical and chemical properties such as colour, taste, state, etc.

For example, take two different gases. Hydrogen, which lights up the stars and Oxygen, on which we respire. Now mix these two gases in a vessel and light em' up with a match and pop! you can see water droplets hanging on the walls. This is just one examples out of thousands in our daily lives. Similarly soft metals like sodium and poisonous gases like chlorine form salt with which you cook food. Like these, there are totally 118 elements which we have been accounted from the age of early man till the age of nuclear wars. Humans made and had a great deal with all these individual and unique atoms in various, say 'n' number of ways, we have found some naturally and some we extracted from earths crust and some we have artificially synthesized in laboratories. All these elements have been classified according to their composition, physical and chemical properties such as atomic number to form a periodic table.

Now lets go much deeper. As you know when you look inside an atom, you can see swarms of electrons humming around the central nucleus which has tightly bunched up the protons having positive charge and neutrons having no charge. When you try to split them up, it is called nuclear fission which releases vast amount of energy and when you try to join them, its nuclear fusion which even gives much more energy and fission process.
Fission is the one going in our nuclear plants on earth and fusion is the one going on inside the Sun and other stars where trillions of tons of hydrogen gets converted into billions of tons of helium each and every second. The Sun is really a giant furnace............

Now lets talk about the elements. How do they differ from each other? It all depends on whats inside an atom of an element and how its configured. Primarily it depends upon the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus. For example in Carbon, the building block of life has 6 protons and 6 neutrons whereas hydrogen has got just 1 proton and 1 electron. From Carbon, if we take out 1 proton, it turns into boron and if we add 1 proton and 1 neutron, it turns into nitrogen. So in this way we have discovered and configured and discovered a total of 118 elements till now and are trying our best to know more.

So far we have discussed about something on a very tiny scale, to a limited space. Not just on Earth but on the scale of the cosmos, we come across much more disturbing sort of things which do not at all seem to look like reality in our 'coomon' sense amount which we will discuss later in this article.

Now, how do we know how something works. Answer, is to peep inside. But how can we peep inside an atom which is very very tiny ans bounded by energies of grand orders. The only way, is to smash them with each other, 'So, why don't we break them in a pressure cooker?' you may ask. Since the kinetic energy of the atoms increase to such  levels that their speeds increase and collide with each other. But that is not at all enough. The energy applied on the gas molecules by a pressure cooker is only a fraction it is supposed to get.

For this, we use use tunnels. Long circular tunnels kilometers in diameter with powerful electromagnets which trap, guide and accelerate bunches of extracted individual subatomic particles like protons at very very high speeds, nearly to the speed of light by applying huge amount of electricity that is worth rising their electric bills to cross millions of dollars, and just smashing them into each other at the right place and at the right moment, to observe the movements of much tinier particles after collision with the help of sensitive detectors. The recent craze in these particles accelerators such as LHC of CERN and Tevetron of Fermilab are the subjects of anti-matter and Higgs Boson. These are the disciplines which are gripping scientists day and night to unravel the mystery of the small.

The concept of anti-matter is some what intriguing. When you look yourself in a mirror, what do you see? simple, yourself. But wait, did you anytime wonder if that person ever existed. This is worth thinking because there may be a universe, there may be a Sun, an Earth, a you and a me on the other side of the mirror i.e. a parallel universe which entirely consists of anti matter.....

Then the Higgs Boson is a particle formerly believed to be just a fairy tale, but now being searched extensively only because it is said to hold the secret of matter. Without  it we all would be waves hanging around the empty universe.

So why do we do this stuff? Why particle physicists along with a whole new scientific community is spending millions of bucks just to find out and know about the tiny by smashing atoms and wasting resources? Why does it matter exploring matter????

In the start, you have read that we are born, evolve and will die on matter. The same implies with the stars, the same implies with the galaxies.............. and the same seems to imply with the cosmos. God must be partial to us, but I think he is not at all with the universe we are living in. The universe, for us seems to be benign as well as hostile at the same time. The benevolent creator chose a good location for us, a nice star, a habitable orbit, perfectly suited........ at the same time, being such smooth in evolution without any gene mutation is a great thing, otherwise it would have altered our fate. We had our own race involved in wars, crimes, conflicts. Along with these, we have harmed our own environment. But little did we think of how we are created, we would be really glad and humble to ourselves.

info-graphic showing the Big Bang, the moment till the present

Nearly 15 billion years ago, after the explosive outpouring of matter and energy of the big bang, the cosmos was without form. There were no galaxies, no planets, no life. Deep impenetrable darkness was everywhere,hydrogen atoms in the void. Here and there denser accumulations of gas were imperceptibly growing, globes of matter were condensing - hydrogen raindrops more massive than suns. Within these globes of gas was first kindled the nuclear fire latent in matter. A first generation of stars was born, flooding the Cosmos with light. There were in those times not yet any planets to receive the light, no living creatures to admire the radiance of the heavens. Deep in the stellar furnaces the alchemy of nuclear fusion created heavy elements, the ashes of hydrogen burning, the atomic building materials of future planets and lifeforms. Massive stars soon exhausted their stores of nuclear fuel. Rocked by colossal explosions, they returned most of their substance back into the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the stars, new raindrops made of many elements were forming, later generations of stars being born. Nearby, smaller raindrops grew, bodies far too little to ignite the nuclear fire, droplets in the interstellar mist on their way to form the planets. Among them was a small world of stone and iron, the early
Earth.


Congealing and warming, the Earth released the methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen gases that had been trapped within, forming the primitive atmosphere and the first oceans. Starlight from the Sun bathed and warmed the primeval Earth, drove storms, generated lightning and thunder. Volcanoes
overflowed with lava. These processes disrupted molecules of the primitive atmosphere; the fragments fell back together again into more and more complex forms, which dissolved in the early oceans. After a time the seas achieved the consistency of a warm, dilute soup. Molecules were organized, and complex chemical reactions driven, on the surface of clays. And one day a molecule arose that quite by accident was able to make crude copies of itself out of the other molecules in the broth. As time passed, more elaborate and

more accurate self-replicating molecules arose. Those combinations best suited to further replication were favored by the sieve of natural selection. Those that copied better produced more copies. And the primitive oceanic broth gradually grew thin as it was consumed by and transformed into complex condensations of self-replicating organic molecules. Gradually, imperceptibly, life had begun.

Single-celled plants evolved, and life began to generate its own food. Photosynthesis transformed the atmosphere. Sex was invented. Once free-living forms banded together to make a complex cell with specialized functions. Chemical receptors evolved, and the Cosmos could taste and smell. One-celled
organisms evolved into multicellular colonies, elaborating their various parts into specialized organ systems.
Eyes and ears evolved, and now the Cosmos could see and hear. Plants and animals discovered that the land could support life. Organisms buzzed, crawled, scuttled, lumbered, glided, flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming jungles. Small creatures emerged, born live instead of in hard-shelled containers, with a fluid like the early oceans coursing through their veins. They survived by swiftness and cunning. And then, only a moment ago, some small arboreal animals scampered down from the trees. They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.

It was a long journey from the first hydrogen atoms to the international space station. We have really came a long way and have a long way to go. The lifetime of humans is not even a speck. In this elegant motion picture, we are just a frame lasting for a very short span of time.We, being gifted the presence of mind need to make a re account of our own history and it is truly mandatory for us to know ourselves and  what we are made of much deeper and deeper. Now that matters a lot..........

Thanks