Dear X,

Please learn to spell, or I will seriously have to fight you. Also if your spelling is good, it makes it much easier to take your arguments seriously. Here are some tips: there is no "e" in "isn't"; there is one at the end of "promise"; and even at the beginning of "efficient".

Love,

_Mary_



< /spelling_nazi >

I look forward to the day that the world runs out of oil.

I am shocked that ANYONE posted here to poo-poo a high school science project. Did YOU make an engine mod that attracted national attention? This makes the things the AP physics kids did in my HS look like nursury school fingerpainting in comparison.

The point is not that their alternative fuel source proved inefficient and ultimately of limited practical use. The point is that some group of high school kids found out for themselves that science can raise new questions about real-world problems: "Yes, our engine was inefficient, so how do we change the way we think about solving the problem?"

I mean, really.

score one for betiz

More than likely you won't see it.

Unless you live to be VERY old.

There's already evidence to suggest that we've passed peak oil production and are on the declining side of oil-based society. Time to start looking for real alternatives to the stuff.

Just be glad you do not have 98% humidity with that 118d heat.

This is really the crux of the argument. Ignore the fact that hydrogen as an energy storage medium for collected power sidesteps the crappy energy density currently available with batteries that would otherwise limit a system that generates its own electricity, and let you write this clever little project off there. Ignore for the moment that leveraging existing internal combustion engine technologies to run the thing was quite a nice feat. Ignore the fact that the water->hydroger&oxygen->water reaction is clean each and every time you run it. Let's address the issue of the solar cells, because sourcing the energy really is the issue.

Argument: You can't get enough energy out of a solar cel to pay back it's manufacture cost. In terms of energy and economics, it's a losing battle.
Simple refutation: Trees. They've been doing it since before humanity existed. Our solar cell technology may still be t3h suX0r, but to insist that the laws of physics prove that it can never be good when there's a counter example right in front of you is silly.

So a good solar cell system will look nothing like what we have at present and be based on different technology entirely. Maybe we'll call them algae racks. Maybe we'll call them chlorophyll nano-dynamos. Who knows. Point is, if nature can do it and humanity puts its collective will towards unlocking the secret, I expect we'll be able to do it, too.

And for those who continue to doubt that a complex machine could ever be run off a natural energy source, I present SlugBot. Plants eat sun. Slugs eat plants. SlugBot eats slugs and uses them as its sole power source. Yum. Since the linked article was written, SlugBot has been successfully completed and demonstrated, and EcoBot 2 (FlyBot) is in its late prototying stage.

Positives aside, I'd like to throw out a negative:
The thing holding back hydrogen fuel cell vehicles so far has been safe storage for the hydrogen. This article didn't address how the team had approached that issue.

solar cells function perfectly fine as they are, it costs a few thousand to equip a home with rooftop solar cells and they can supply a well located house with nearly 100% of their energy needs during summer and seriously cut down on energy bills during winter.

even in our dreary country we have a few neighbourhoods consisting of entirely solar powered houses.

You know that a gajillion people in China and India are going to start using a shit load of oil anyday now, right? An the Americans don't seem to be interested in any kind of fuel efficiency when it comes to cars either.

Whoa whoa whoa... What?

I'm thinking 20-30 years until we reach the break even point in fusion reactors. Tops.

i waste fuel

That would suggest to me that while making the energy conversion efficiency of solar cells may be difficult, altering the manufacturing process to reduce the amount of energy required to make them still seems like there's room for improvement.

It's pie-in-the-sky idealism to think that we'll be generating all of our eletricity from solar energy any time soon. But a more efficiently manufactured solar cell could be used literally everywhere. We're not talking a mass transition to solar based electricity generation, but if 1-2% of global electricity could be generated from solar energy rather than fossil fuels that would net a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The advantage to solar technology is that the electricity distribution infrastructure is already in place. Hydrogen is more problematic because getting it from point A to B requires the construction of a new infrastructure or an expensive adaptation of an existing one.

Back in 1990, when I was in high school, me and 12 other students built a solar car. We did it for under $25,000 and we won a local (in Hawaii) competition, and then we went to Australia to race in the World Solar Challenge. We raced against cars from top universities and major corporations. We held our own, and finished the race where cars with over 1 million dollars in R&D could not finish.

What is amazing about the news of some high school kids in Arizona building a car that runs on sun and water isn't the fact that the car runs on sun and water. What is amazing is that kids in this Arizonian high school have a teacher that cares enough to help them with a project like this. What is amazing is that the school didn't shut the project down and redirect funds to their football team. What is amazing is that their parents supported the project and let them work on something that most parents would consider a nonsensical waste of time that would be better spent filling out university apps to whatever university the parent went to. What is amazing is that these are high school kids, with no formal training, and so what if it isn't some revolutionary breakthrough - these are kids! Kids built this! If only more high schools supported projects like this, we might see students wanting to go to school for more than a brainwashing session and a place to hookup with friends.

I agree with these sentiments wholeheartedly. It's pretty fucking amazing in that context.