Lane Splitting On Motorcycles Has Many Benefits
In California, USA, motorcycles a legally permitted to drive between traffic lanes, during traffic congestion events when all the cars are jammed up. Lane splitting improve rider safety, reduces traffic congestion, reduces energy waste & vehicle emissions, improves road utilization, reduces air pollution, improves the motorcycles fuel economy, reduces risk of rear end collision from a driver behind the motorcycle not coming to a full stop due to smartphone distraction or similar.
SpaceX Cryogenic Rocket Propellent Storage
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| Everyday Astronaut YouTube Video < Hyperlink |
Absolute Zero temperature (-273 C or -459 F) a "Holy Grail" in Physics #physics as achieving this temperature means producing no molecular movement by extracting all the heat from a specific system or mass of substance or material being cooled to absolute zero.
Apple Silicon M2 SOC CHIP
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| Apple M2 Silicon (ARM) (SOC) |
5nm TSMC chipset energy efficiency & compute performance per watt leadership in unified memory stacked SOC package chip enabling better battery life & much better computational performance, the M2 made using ASML deep UV computer controlled mirror bounce optics since lenses cannot give the required precision at such short wavelengths or with such high energy photons, the deep UV needed to achieve the optical precision for TSML latest advanced 5nm processing node chipset IC SOC fab manufacturing technology.
Signal to Noise
Sound pollution from roadways, outdoor gun ranges or shooting pits, industrial or commercial construction equipment, mining, manufacturing, you can wear hearing aids or wireless earbuds that can be configured with your smartphone app interface to these devices to have them provide active noise canceling. The technology leverages advances in computer science & information technology that affect nearly every domain of economic development worldwide, especially in emerging sectors or in emergent technologically advanced products & services.
Guns Do Not Kill People, People Kill People
People Kill People, with more than guns. You can assassinate someone from behind by slamming a pencil or pen the palm of your hand, as hard as you are able, into their ear canal. No one is talking about pen & pencil control laws. Guns do not buy themselves, load themselves, point themselves or fire themselves, all of those moves, including purchasing ammo, done with human voluntary volitional willful deliberate choices.
Petroleum Crude Oil & Gasoline Pump Price Gouging
Do you feel like you are getting screwed at the gas pumps with inflated fuel prices? Price fixing reflective of market manipulation, & racketeering collusion between oil industry executives who pander to their billionaire shareholders, making record breaking profits as the average citizen being cheated by extortionate fuel pricing?
Gunpowder
A simple pyrotechnic composition of gunpowder can be made with potassium nitrate (saltpeter) 75 grams, flaky carbon (charcoal from softwood best) 15 grams, and sulfur (brimstone) 10 grams, respectively, mixed in a low-speed non-sparking copper ball or lead ball static free rotary tumbler mixer until a uniform mix achieved.
This dirty deflagrating gunpowder standard since about 1780, its combustion byproducts potassium & sulfur oxides from corrosive hydroxides that rust iron & steel barrel metals easily, meaning the users of black powder rifles have to clean & oil the bore & movement after firing the weapon repeatedly. Furthermore, smoke & soot emitted from the end of a barrel was a visual impairment, gave away the soldier's position & smell bad.
Today, gunpowder still used in slate rock mining since it has lower brisance (shattering power) than other explosives commonly used in mining where fine rock fracturing desired, the lower deflagration explosion of gunpowder helps to cleave off the slate rock into sheets useful for expensive roofing & other masonry applications. In fireworks, slower burning carbon replaces charcoal in the mix, to make gunpowder based solid rocket motors for skyrockets & bottle rockets & to launch festival balls, mortars & other aerial fireworks. Gunpowder also used in cannon fuse & fireworks fuses, quick matches & in other cakes & firework assemblies and devices.
Gunpowder also known as black powder, makes sense given the dark color of the final mix, mostly colored by the charcoal dust in the mixture. Gunpowder a granular mix of an oxidizer, typically potassium or sodium nitrate (KNO3 better, less hygroscopic), charcoal which provides fuel in the form of pyrolyzed cellulose, and sulfur, which also serves as a fuel while also a catalyst that lower the activation energy or temperature required to ignite the mixture, thereby also increasing the rate of combustion, especially in firearms where the chamber pressure can get to 50,000 PSI. The granules of modern gunpowder coated with graphite powder to reduce risk of electrostatic spark ignition accidents. Gunpowder for black powder rifles and cannons comes in F, FF, FFF, and FFFF grades, where F the coarsest or largest granules and FFFF a very fine powder.
Many compositions of gunpowder have varied throughout history, black powder used in mining for example does not work well in firearms, known as blasting powder, which is also typically made with the cheaper sodium nitrate, at mass percentages as low as 40%, 30% carbon & 30% sulfur respectively. Blasting powder was prone to absorbing moisture until 1857 when Lammot Du Pont found that tumbling gunpowder cakes & grains in graphite powder made them more hydrophobic or reducing the blasting mixture's ability to absorb moisture (known as DuPont "B" blasting powder). Coating gunpowder with graphite became an accepted manufacturing technique as early as 1839.
In rocketry, slower burning gunpowder accelerates the rocket for a longer time, where faster burning gunpowder more ideal in flintlock, cap-lock, matchlock guns that need a higher burn rate to accelerate the projectile down the barrel. Slower burning gunpowder also used in black powder cannons. Gunpowder continues to be used in black rounds, burst charges, signal flares, in solid rocket motors, in fireworks for lifting shells & for other special effects.
Combustion of gunpowder turns less than half the mass into gases, producing an abundance of PM or particulate matter, which is typically ejected from the muzzle of barrels, wasting chemical energy power, fouling the air nearby & making a visual signal with smoke fog, all while depositing corrosion promoting soot in the barrel, which jams weapons, especially high fire rate automatic weapons.
With 3 megajoules per kilogram, gunpowder less energy dense than TNT with 4.7 MJ/kg and gasoline 10.4 MJ/ kg respectively. Modern smokeless powders have much better energy density, cleaner burn characteristics, and enable higher energy case loading, important with higher mass bullets in these popular large caliber handguns, and super powerful rifle calibers. Gunpowder was largest replaced by smokeless powders, starting in the 1950's.
Electric Kettles Faster & Most Efficient at Boiling Water
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| COSORI Electric Kettle | Amazon.com |
Our 1000W microwave vs our 1000W electric kettle, heating water speed tested. The kettle faster & more efficient.
Bitcoin BTC Blockchain Public Ledger or Decentralized Banking
What is a bitcoin, proof of work compute payments, the blockchain or public shared ledger? Are you confused about bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies that have recently experienced meteoric declines in relative value to popular inflated fiat currencies like the Euro, USD or RMB?
Slow Deep Space Missions with Fuel Mass Limited Chemical Rockets
No fast or cheap deep space missions are possible with fuel mass limited chemical rockets. Even Mars takes 8 months with the largest most cost effect SpaceX rockets. Liquid fluoride plus liquid ammonia gas makes the most powerful rocket motor fuel combination, while producing toxic corrosive nasty exhaust emission products so terrible that even the Soviet Union (USSR) abandoned development of this fuel combo, which otherwise enables a runtime or specific impulse of 500+ seconds, unmatched even by cryogenic LH2 plus LO2 or liquid hydrogen and oxygen respectively.
Copper Metal the Global Economic Barometer
When copper demand & thus prices climbing that represent a bull market or economic growth. Conversely, when copper demand and thus copper prices declining that representative of a bear market forming, towards a global recession it seems according to many economic forecasting analysts. Let us take a look at why Copper such a string indicator of economic progress or declines.
Swords Made in Japan Have Mystical Alure
Steel heated to its critical temperatures in a bed of coals red hot burning with carbon combustion from air forced in by a blower or bellows, then rapidly cooled to trap carbon atoms in the steel, making a harder alloy than iron alone, which is a relatively soft metal. Today, 980 MPa steel alloys utilized by automakers for higher strength metal parts in cars, trucks & SUV's or automobiles, while similar steel superalloys are utilized to make the best knife blades.
People Kill Other People, With Words, Sharp Edges & Guns & More
New gun laws to stop people from hurting, harming or killing one another, might help a little, but people will keep hurting each other. Even in countries where guns are illegal, people regularly hurt each other. The problem is human mental illness, largely caused by social decay, from a loss of Faith in God & declines in the basic family structure.
There is No "Man", System, & No One is Holding You Down :
If you have a sharp mind, drive, and apply it, you can have a more dynamic and interesting life. Do not believe anyone that tells you that you are being held under the thumb of the elite or powerful people in the world, thats a lie that will hold you back if you believe it. Let's talk about agency & free will, starting with some science about human life.
Firework Pollution, Fires, Accidents & Loud Explosion PTSD Trauma; Stresses out Pets & Animals in Nature Too
Gone with a puff of smoke, flash of colored light & usually a loud bang noise, pyrotechnic devices rely on a mix of oxidizing chemicals like potassium nitrate or potassium perchlorate to provide oxygen to give electrons to metal powders that readily accept the electrons while becoming metal oxides. Sadly, these metal oxide powders form super fine soot dust that blows around great distances causing air pollution as particulate matter & then eventually rains down onto the Earth, which is 7/10th covered in water, where they become water pollutants.
Fires caused by aerial fireworks cause many homes & buildings to be destroyed, in fiery blazes that release even more air pollutants. Fireworks sometime cause wildfires, which destroy ecosystems while releasing air pollution.
Fireworks sometimes cause vehicle & personal accidents, including people having their fingers blown off as they try to hold an M80 or salute in their hand while the fuse burning down close to the ignition point, with the idea of throwing the small binary powder explosive mid-air to realize an air burst & report & bright flash, like a flashbang grenade. Misjudging the ignition timing, the device explodes in their hands, the power of aluminum powder becoming aluminum oxide releasing a ton of gas pressure, heat, & light, as the flesh of their hands rips apart. These people usually end up in hospital emergency rooms, often teens, & this among other reasons, why Cherry Bombs & M80s were made illegal in most areas of the United States.
The common perchlorate oxidizers used in many fireworks are toxic to people's thyroid gland & aquatic wildlife important to commercial fishing. Combustion, deflagration, & low grade less energetic explosions typical of loud fireworks, also chemically imperfect, so some of the fine dangerous metal powders & toxic oxidizer does not react, releasing both into the biosphere where it gets into the lungs of everything breathing, raining down toxic dust onto plants, including in agriculture onto foods being produced, eventually becoming water pollution in creeks, streams, rivers, tributaries, estuaries, lakes, oceans & other bodies of water on Earth's surface. All of the pollution problems from fireworks are similar to those from combustion of fossil fuels like coal, diesel, gasoline, natural gas & other petrochemical fuels that emit air polluting exhaust fumes & soot full of substances toxic to the human lung, brain, kidney, and liver cells.
The higher temperature reactions produced by engines, turbines, motors, anything the burns fuel, coke fueled furnaces, wood burners, fireworks, they all rely on combustion happening in a nitrogen rich atmosphere. Earth's biosphere air comprised mostly of Nitrogen N2 gas, ~78% of air made of nitrogen. When the nitrogen in air reacts with high temperature combustion reactions, it forms toxic NOX or oxides of nitrogen, like orange/ brown colored smelly toxic nitrogen dioxide or NO2 emitted from volcanos, forest fires, vehicle tailpipes, & coal power plant emissions. Oxidation of sulfur present in fireworks & some fuels, produces toxic SOX emissions. Fine & super fine PM or particulate matter emissions are also released by combustion.
Like fire, fireworks & engines & motors & turbines & other combustion driven events & devices & phenomenon are some of the few examples of a "Chemical Reaction" that people can see with their color eye retina-based brain relayed perceptual memory reference visual system. Much of the light emitted by combustion released as invisible to human eyes IR or infrared. A SEEK thermal camera dongle plugged into the charging port of your Smartphone can image the IR emissions. FLIR of forward-looking infrared enables color visualization of IR so that humans can see IR in colors that our eyes recognize. This is called false colorization & NASA has to do lots of this with multi-spectral imagining of celestial objects, so that people can look at color image representations of those non-visible frequencies.
Fireworks a low explosive pyrotechnic device utilized to entertain viewers with fireworks shows or displays. Like watching metal forging or glass working, the heat & light & sounds are engaging. Noise, light, smoke & floating confetti are the main four common display features of most fireworks. Typically, fireworks are used as part of celebrations like The Fourth of July in America (4th of July). Many celebrations throughout the world make use of fireworks displays. This makes the pollution emissions from fireworks a global environmental & public health problem.
Typical fireworks either ground effect, like a fountain, firecrackers, or roman candles. Launched solid rocket motor bottle rockets, or aerial shell launched by a mortar (or smaller festival ball)(we use the powerful Excalibur sky mortar kit) or SRM skyrockets that form sky displays typically of fireworks shows or 4th of July block party display which large 500-gram "cakes" are setoff. Invented in China to celebrate the Chinese New Year and Moon Festival, today China the largest maker of fireworks & largest exporter of fireworks.
Heavy metals, sulfur-coal compounds, and other toxic chemicals like antimony sulfide and arsenic are released by fireworks. The debate about firework pollution obscured because of the larger emissions of pollution from burning fossil fuels, making it difficult to study or collect useful data other than anecdotal reports from fishermen whose occupation disrupted by the temporary increase in toxic heavy metal & metal oxides & perchlorate salts raining down into the waters where they are fishing, killing the fish with water pollution. Water soluble perchlorate salts rapidly move into ground & surface waters, in the human body they block the thyroid gland from absorbing iodine. People with asthma, COPD, and other breathing disorders typically find that the smoke from fireworks aggravates their health problems.
The solid debris of color paper & plastics left behind by fireworks creates a considerable amount of dusty, dirty, foul-smelling solid waste. When you compare the toxic emissions from fireworks to those created by burning fossil fuels, the fireworks pollution issue might seem insignificant, but just like every item on your grocery lists, it adds up. With climate change, every source of emission must be considered & addressed to reduce air & water pollution & also so that we decarbonize energy, including making non-toxic fireworks that are perchlorate free & silent or low noise fireworks. Everything, including fireworks can be improved to reduce pollution emitted. More applied intelligence can reduce pollution emissions.
The solid debris of color paper & plastics left behind by fireworks creates a considerable amount of dusty, dirty, foul-smelling solid waste. When you compare the toxic emissions from fireworks to those created by burning fossil fuels, the fireworks pollution issue might seem insignificant, but just like every item on your grocery lists, it adds up. With climate change, every source of emission must be considered & addressed to reduce air & water pollution & also so that we decarbonize energy, including making non-toxic fireworks that are perchlorate free & silent or low noise fireworks. Everything, including fireworks can be improved to reduce pollution emitted. More applied intelligence can reduce pollution emissions.
Coal emissions release greatly more heavy metal emissions than fireworks for example. At least with stationary 24/7 coal electrical power reactors, the exhaust stack emissions can be filtered & processed with emissions controls, like a Swedish dust bagging system, urea injection, & electrostatic filtering. The fly ash emissions in coal soot contain most of the toxic heavy metals. Coal contains radioactive metals like uranium, thorium, and neurotoxic metals like mercury, and lead. When coal burned, these metals are boiled off or oxidized into ash, a super fine ash propelled by the enormous amounts of CO & CO2 rushing out of the coal stack as carbon emissions that drive climate change. These toxic heavy & radioactive metal ashes are blown around everywhere near the coal power reactors, sometimes moving 10s, hundreds, or thousands of miles away, by way of stratospheric air currents.
There exists an urgent need to decarbonize energy, to reduce air pollution, & to slow down climate change. Just the public health damage from breathing fossil fuel combustion emissions makes gasoline & diesel enormously more costly. Government & healthcare companies end up paying for the negative externalities of combustion energy emissions in other ways. Looking at the nation's budget, wholistically, like personal financial accountability, those carbon emissions are causing future debt, mostly in the form of "out of control rising healthcare costs in the United States", but also because its damaging nature where our air, water & food comes from. Toxic emissions are bad for the Earth's environments, and bad for public health.
There exists an urgent need to decarbonize energy, to reduce air pollution, & to slow down climate change. Just the public health damage from breathing fossil fuel combustion emissions makes gasoline & diesel enormously more costly. Government & healthcare companies end up paying for the negative externalities of combustion energy emissions in other ways. Looking at the nation's budget, wholistically, like personal financial accountability, those carbon emissions are causing future debt, mostly in the form of "out of control rising healthcare costs in the United States", but also because its damaging nature where our air, water & food comes from. Toxic emissions are bad for the Earth's environments, and bad for public health.
Everything in the environments of Earth connected. There is only us, one human people on Earth, and only 1 Earth. We are cheating our children, & future generations burning carbon at the Terawatt or greater scale. What kind of environment do you want to leave for your grandchildren? Does making the air & waters of the world toxic with pollution sound kind, nice, ethical, or moral to you? Does causing runway climate change that destroys lives and environments, and makes Earth less hospitable to people, making life harder and less pleasant for everyone, does that sound good to you?
I loved fire, and fireworks as a child, teen, and early adult. I even handmade a small number of loud bright salutes using fine dark German aluminum powder & potassium perchlorate (precise mass mix instructions from online), purchased online; carefully diaper folding mixed outdoors with PPE during humid weather to reduce static ignition hazard. I would load this flash powder inside of handmade cardboard tubes made by wrapping grocery bag paper coated in a thin layer of wood glue around a metal pipe, specifically an acid etched titanium mandrel that I had previously coated in a microscope layer of platinum for electrochemical electrolysis using DC current at lower voltages & higher amperage, and mostly to plate iron & steel parts with nickel metal to make them corrosion resistant. I would slide remove these glued brown paper tubes, and air dry them for weeks to enable them to harden. The glued paper fiber tubes became strong like a composite pipe. I would then stuff newspaper into a small cup to make a plug, then hot glue this plug into one end of the cardboard tubes. I then drilled a small hole into the side of the tube to enable the installation of a 4-inch segment of green triple liquored cannon fuse, purchased online. The flash powder was then weighed up using a precision scale, and carefully folded paper funnel loaded into the carboard tubes. Another pre-pressed newspaper plug was then installed in the other end slowly & carefully so as to not cause a friction ignition of the sensitive flash powder. Finally hot glue was used to seal both ends of the tube. The salute was then allowed to cure, a sharpie pen was used to label the powder weight of each craft made custom solute, somewhere between 1-8 grams of flash powder in each salute. I would bring these salutes to a 4th of July party & set them off to entertain the guests. These ground burst salutes produced a powerful sound & bright flash emission that greatly amused most people while upsetting others.
I stopped making salutes and stopped buying fireworks a few years after Meg and I got married. Meg likes camping fires, the warm orange yellow & red light & warm IR emissions & soft crackling sounds & smell of wood smoke, but she dislikes loud toxic fireworks made in China. Not buying fireworks also keeps us from burning our money, part of ongoing financial accountability, saving & investment philosophies & goals to be obtained. As an environmental scientist, I could no longer be dishonest with myself about the toxic emissions from fireworks. This is part of why I wrote this posting, to undo the damage I caused by buying, making & setting off fireworks. My right-hand pointer finger has a very unusual burn scar that distorted my fingerprint, caused by a fuse burn. Fuses can send a jet of hot expanding gas outward when first ignited, and in one incident among many, my pointer finger passed in front of the just then ignited fuse where the burning hot stream of combustion emissions burned my finger badly, with a charred 3rd degree burn right in the middle of the pointer fingers fingerprint area. Breathing all of that soot & smoke probably not healthy either, so I gave it up for lots of reasons.
I stopped making salutes and stopped buying fireworks a few years after Meg and I got married. Meg likes camping fires, the warm orange yellow & red light & warm IR emissions & soft crackling sounds & smell of wood smoke, but she dislikes loud toxic fireworks made in China. Not buying fireworks also keeps us from burning our money, part of ongoing financial accountability, saving & investment philosophies & goals to be obtained. As an environmental scientist, I could no longer be dishonest with myself about the toxic emissions from fireworks. This is part of why I wrote this posting, to undo the damage I caused by buying, making & setting off fireworks. My right-hand pointer finger has a very unusual burn scar that distorted my fingerprint, caused by a fuse burn. Fuses can send a jet of hot expanding gas outward when first ignited, and in one incident among many, my pointer finger passed in front of the just then ignited fuse where the burning hot stream of combustion emissions burned my finger badly, with a charred 3rd degree burn right in the middle of the pointer fingers fingerprint area. Breathing all of that soot & smoke probably not healthy either, so I gave it up for lots of reasons.
Yes, climate change from burning fossil fuels a much bigger & more important topic, especially because of the vastly larger scale of global energy & transportation air pollution emissions that are making climate change worse faster & having a costly negative effect on public health. Like I said before, we need to address e-waste, fireworks, trash & recycling, mining & manufacturing, energy & all other emission generating sectors & industries, to reduce pollution & clean up Earth's environments to make life cleaner & better for all People & all Animals in nature & for the future wellness of Planet Earth!