A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Nearly all power generation comes down to boiling water to steam which spins a turbine.
I can only think of two common exceptions off the top of my head. Solar is an exception and Hydro power is an exception ironically, that usually uses the vertical difference and gravity to spin the turbine.
Wind turbines also.
But some solar does focus it on a tower to make steam to drive a turbine.
Yeah, who would have guessed that modernity was invented by someone who stuck magnets to a fidget spinner and strapped it to a boiler.
One could even argue that hydro power is just boiling water, letting it condense, and then letting it spin a turbine
I've never heard of Hydro power boiling water. Usually hydro power is natural or pumped storage.
You're just taking water from an upper reservoir and dropping it to a downstream river. Either a naturally-filled reservoir/lake, or a pumped storage reservoir where you use other cheap power during low usage periods to pump that water to a higher reservoir to utilize later. The pump doesn't heat the water, it just moves it uphill to utilize later, like the Taum Sauk Hydroelectric Power Station in Missouri.
They were speaking of the water cycle. It's the naturally-filled part. Not necessarily boiled, but evaporated.
I know that… I was taking liberties to take hydroelectric power to its furthest logical extension by saying that the sun is evaporating (boiling) the water, it goes through the water cycle, it is deposited atop mountains or further upriver, and it then flows back down through the hydroelectric stations.
Piezo electricity too. It's very seldom used for power generation but does exist
God damnit Jinyang!
Errich, is the refrigerator running? This is Mike Hunt, and he's a rich.
Eric Bachman, this is your mother. You are not my son.
"This is you as an old man. I'm ugly and dead alone."
And then there are thermonuclear generators
There are some fusion designs that use direct energy conversion.
Some work went into fission designs as well.
I heard that somewhere in the US there were parts of a nuclear power plant being delivered by steam train. So that’s basically one steam engine supplying another! (^^,)
I can’t seem to find an article about it anywhere, so it might be an urban legend :(
Given that the first commercial nuclear power plants in the US were coming online in the late 1950s, that's entirely possible. Steam trains were well on their way out by then, but there were still a few hauling freight around.
Fun adjacent fact: even when the British Empire had moved off of wind sails and into coal, those coal ships didn't have the range to possibly cover the entire Empire. Coal stations were setup around the world, and the coal had to be transported by sail. The previous technology helps get the next generation technology going.
Sail ships continued to be used well into the 20th century. The absolute last purely sail powered warship served during WW1!
Nuclear power is the refining distilling and enriching of uranium into unstable isotopes and higher elements, boiling water is one small step in converting nuclear energy into electrical energy.
But it’s one of the most important steps because it’s where the actual electricity comes from.
plus a side of extra spicy landfill
That's from building nuclear weapons though, not power
Sheng Wang is hilarious! Seriously, if you like comedy then watch his stuff
Both Jimmy O. Yang and Sheng Wang are hilarious, but you should recognize that they are two different people.
"what if fire... But... MOAR"
still waiting for those molten fuel MHD reactors