GEOS 24705 / ENST 24705: Science, Technology, and Human Usage of Energy

Prof: Liz Moyer

TAs: Steph Aho, Esther Bowen

Field trip coordinator: Jarrod Wolf

Course description is here and syllabus (with schedule of field trips and labs) is here. See here for recommendations on which field trips might suit which interests.

INFO (see also syllabus document): The course meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:30-3:00 PM in Harper Library 103. Lab sections will be held in Hinds Geophysical Laboratory 5th floor conference room (561) at 11:30 AM-12:30 PM on Wednesdays (Steph) and 3:30-4:30 PM on Thursdays (Esther).

Steph's office hours are M. 11:30 AM-12:30 PM in Hinds 477. Esther's office hours are 3:30-4:30 PM on Tuesday in Hinds 437. Liz's office hours are tentatively Wed. at 5 PM in Hinds 405 (may change week to week, check for announcements on Tuesday). Note that Hinds is locked at 5:30 PM.

Field trips will generally leave on Friday mornings. All pickups by bus are from Chicago Booth 5807, South Woodlawn Avenue. Check the syllabus and website for times and dates. Since facilities have different requirements, field trip information may change; be sure to check the week of each trip.

There is no textbook to purchase for this class, as there is no single book that is appropriate for the range of material and we don't want to ask you to buy several books. Instead we will assign readings to be done before certain lectures and will post those on this site in pdf form. (When readings are assigned, it's important to do them before lecture, as you may otherwise have difficulty following. Anything optional or recreational will be marked as such). We will also put a range of books that contain useful background material on reserve at Crerar Library (behind the Hinds Geophysical Laboratory building). Some of the best background material for people coming in without college-level physics is a new book by Prof. David McKay of the University of Cambridge (U.K.) that is available for free download in pdf format. For a broad perspective I also recommend any of the many books by Vaclav Smil (e.g. Energy at the Crossroads, Energy in World History, or Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects) who writes prolifically about energy. He is cantankerous and brutally pragmatic but probably right.

Course notes, materials, and assignments

Lecture 1: Energy flows on Earth

Lecture 1 notes from Steph and from Esther.

Lecture 2: Capturing energy flows during the cascade to heat

Lecture 2 notes from Steph and from Esther.

Lecture 3: The human engine

Lecture 4: The steam engine

For some background on steam engines (just in case you want a head start; we'll cover in class), the best source is this page by a Michigan State professor.

• Required pre-reading for Lecture 4: You need to pre-read about the fundamental theory behind heat-to-work, first laid out by Carnot, before lecture. You can get your infor mation from any of these three sources - whatever works best for you:
  
  • Carnot's original 1825 paper. A section from Carnot's "Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire and on Machines Fitted to Develop that Power". Read with decreasing focus as the paper goes on. Mostly make sure you understand all the sentences in bold-face (Carnot's original emphasis). When you read, remember that at the time Carnot is writing, in 1825, steam engines have been in existence for 125 years, in broad use for 50, and have been undergoing steady improvement, but no one has yet deduced the fundamental physics of how they work. Also note that Carnot still does not know what heat is; he thinks it is a fluid called "caloric". Which surprisingly, doesn't stand in his way at all of basically inventing engineering thermodynamics. Pages 1-5 are very clear and worth reading by everyone.
  • A summary of Carnot's contributions, written by a physicist.
  • A summary in more colloquial language, from a great book called "The Refrigerator and the Universe". I highly recommend this for most people in class. I'm posting a 35 page chapter but the most important part is just up to p. 123.
  
  
• Pre-thinking: If it's been awhile since you had any physics, dust off your memory of the ideal gas law and of adiabatic expansion or compression. What happens if you compress air, as in a piston? What happens if you open the vent on a cylinder of compressed air and let the air expand into the room?

Lecture 5: Ideal engines and the Carnot efficiency limit

Lecture 6: The Industrial Revolution and the transition to the modern energy system

Lecture 7: Electricity generation

Lecture 8: Electricity generation II

Lecture 9 (makeup time): Power plants and steam and gas turbines

Lecture 10: Nuclear power

Lecture 11: Mechanical energy -> mechanical energy I: hydro

Lecture 12: Mechanical energy -> mechanical energy II: wind

Lecture 13: Mechanical energy -> mechanical energy III: wind and connection to the grid

Lecture 14: The grid

Lecture 15: Fossil fuels

Lecture 16: Internal combustion engines and the automobile

Lecture 17: Fossil fuels 2

Lecture 18: Fossil fuels 3, industrial energy, semiconductors

Lecture 19: Building efficiency, lighting, summary and wrap-up

.....  Final presentations: Tues. June 7th, 1:30-3:30, Harper 103   .......

Project groups

• RPS standards: Jake, Karen, Anna, Stacy, Sean, Cecilia
• Wind analysis: Matej, Irene, Martin, Jenny
• Waste-to-energy: Megan, Abby, Tyler, Kristen
• Wind turbine (build): Madelyn, Kelvin, Emily, Michael, Madeleine, Trevor, Boris
• Renewables policy review for Latin America: Diego, Reid, Marcelo, Clayton
• Human engine (build): Gray, Katie L., Andrew

Grades