Presto Electro

I drove all-the-way-home for the first time today! As many of you may know, I grew up mostly in Austin, and my family still lives down there. I haven't been able to pay them a visit in ages. This weekend one of my favorite bands was in town, and my family and I all bought tickets.

I took I-35W this time. I-35W is the Fort Worth side of I-35, and it is sensational. Dallas's side is a bit of a mess, especially south of Dallas. On the fort worth side there was a teensy bit of construction, but not enough to slow down traffic at all. The scenery was MUCH better on the FW side. Most of the 35W portion was green fields and trees as far as the eye could see. Really, the satellite photo speaks for itself. Check this out:

So much green on the west side, and so much concrete on the east!!!

I let myself take this breif vacation as a reward for completing the Semester Project in my Project 2 class. My group and I put together a temperature-sensing heater controller. The hardware portion sends the temperature to a computer. The computer compares the real temperature to the user-inputted desired temperature, and then sends a signal back to the hardware that triggers the "heater." In our case, the heater was an incandescent lightbulb.

Most of the tricky parts were actually done in a program I've only recently learned about: Labview. It's great for visually laying-out problems and solutions. I won't bore you with the details, but here's a screenshot of the finished project to whet your appetite:

I'm at my parents' house, so the graphic is terrible-looking. Update: The picture is legible now! Huzzah! Email me if you're interested in more information about the project!

A long time ago someone told me that UNT had a fleet of vehicles that ran on vegetable oil. Time passed, exams happened, and my memory of the conversation eroded away. The other day it popped into my head again, but I couldn't remember who told me. I looked around a little, and couldn't seem to find any evidence of it. I was starting to think I might have made the whole thing up. Or it was all part of some exceptionally sustainable dream…

Yesterday I finally got to the bottom of it! I spent the bulk of the afternoon chatting with a representative from the UNT Office of Sustainability, and she convinced me I wasn't totally crazy. UNT really does have cars that run on vegetable oil. The Recycling Center collects spent vegetable oil from dining services, and converts it into biodiesel. Biodiesel fuel can be used in place of diesel fuel (with some exceptions), and it only costs a dollar a gallon when you recycle!

Previously I always expected the weird little vans to be the veggie-powered vehicles. As it turns out, those lil guys are actually 100% electric. That explains why I can't recall ever hearing the sound of one idling.

Sustainability is fascinating as heck, and I spent the better part of an afternoon listening to all of the office's plans and ideas. My favorite out of the bunch involved wind power for the new stadium.

The Office of Sustainability recently wrote a grant application for three windmills to be built alongside the stadium. These mills could gather energy throughout the week, and then power the stadium on game days. They would also serve as a humongous and impressive demonstration of UNT's interest in sustainability. I think they should paint them Kelly Green for maximum affect.

Prize-driven technological advancement is not a new concept; the $25,000 "Orteig Prize" was first proposed in 1919. It is widely held as the first example of such "incentivized competition", but the prize itself is basically unheard of. The strange thing is, it was single-handedly responsible for Charles Lindbergh's legendary solo-flight across the Atlantic Ocean, AND commercial aviation as we know it (by extension).

I'm sorry for going off on an airplane tangent, but I just saw Amelia and the history of flight is fresh in my mind. In slightly more current news, the "X Prize" Foundation has offered similar incentives for space flight, with similar results. The original X Prize, known as "The Ansari X Prize for Suborbital Spaceflight", awarded $10 million dollars, but it resulted in over $100 million invested in spacebound research.

Last May the US Department of Energy announced the first government-sponsored technological competition: The L Prize. According to lightingprize.org, the competition "challenges industry to develop replacement technologies for two of today's most widely used and inefficient technologies: 60W incandescent lamps and PAR 38 halogen lamps." In plain English: The Department of Energy wants a better light bulb. Not only that, they're offering $10 million bucks to the first person to develop one.

As it happens, The University of North Texas has been working on just such a thing! Teams from the chemistry department and the materials science and engineering department have collaborated to investigate and perfect Organic Light Emitting Diodes, or OLEDs. OLEDs are 10 times more efficient than incandescent light bulbs, and also require much less energy to produce in the first place. This sort of solid-state lighting is exactly what the L Prize is all about.

If you'd like to know more about UNT's OLED research, check out this article from Research Magazine, Volume 18, Number 1.