Sunday, January 31, 2010

PLN 5

The article “The Mechanical Battery” talks about a flywheel which is basically a cylinder on a spit. When a flywheel is spun, the gathered kinetic energy from the spinning will create energy that can be stored or used. The flywheel has been used in the past but hasn’t been used to its full potential. In Switzerland there was a bus with a flywheel engine which weighed around three tons. The bus could stop and the battery would take 30 seconds to 3 minutes to charge and could go about 3 to 6 miles at 30 to 40 miles per hour. But since the motor weighed so much and the friction of the motor was so great that the bus would have to stop regularly to keep moving. Today NASA is using the flywheel in space because there wouldn’t be any friction. While using two flywheels in an orbiting shuttle, we are able to steer the shuttle. If both are moving at the same speed then the shuttle will go straight but if one slows down and the other stays the same, then you can turn. The great thing about the flywheel is that it is 85%-95% more efficient then any other motor on the planet right now. If we figure out a way to use a flywheel in a car, then we could be very green very fast because the flywheel doesn’t have any emissions. The flywheel sounds like a great motor but I think that we should take the motor part off keep the arm and cook something on it.

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