A sciency-type thought

[lotusbiosm]

OK, so I actually agree with the President that the US is way too dependent on oil and we should spend the money and time to develop alternative fuels and energy sources. Wind, water, solar, biodiesel, all of it. And I was watching CNN earlier, and this guy from Car and Driver was talking about how it's all well and good to talk about ethanol, but it's expensive. Hydrogen, same deal. And that got me thinking about how the reason we're not all gung-ho over hydrogen (which, in theory is awesome because it's abundant and produces water vapor as a waste product) is because it likes to go boom. And that got me thinking about how gasoline is pretty flammable/explosive too, especially the vapors. And that got me thinking about internal combustion engines, and how that's basically just a bunch of little controlled explosions that provide the energy to make your car go (it's more complicated than that, I know, but I'm a humanities student), and that seems to me to necessitate an explosive/flammable fuel source. And that got me thinking: why all this talk about alternative fuels, but no talk about new engines? Why do we assume that we need to develop a new way to power our internal combustion engines instead of thinking that maybe we need a different kind of engine? (Incindentally, I vote biodiesel, because I think it's supercool) Isn't there some way to use magnets or something to make an engine that doesn't need fuels that go boom?
I can't possibly be the first person to think of this, can I? And if I am, I wish I was smart enough to know how to put that idea to use (well, I wish that anyway). So my charge to you, dear readers, is to go forth and spread this word to your friends and neighbors who might actually know a thing or two about engines and that kind of thing, and hopefully we'll only have to worry about how to fuel the rest of our energy needs with alternative energy, and not our transit too (because we still need alternative energy for our computers and our heaters and traffic lights and our hospital equipment and everything else that turns on).

Comments

[drdeadringer.livejournal.com]

It's how to transfer energy into vehicle motion. The energy's got to come from somewhere. In generators of Alternating-Current [AC] power, magnets or coils of wire spin around coils of wire or magnets. In that instance... how do you spin the magnets or coils of wire? That's where moving water like rivers can come in. There's also condensing steam, but how do you heat the water to make steam? That's where geo-thermal can come in, but lots of people like burning million-year old dead bodies [though some people like burning trash instead].

So... it's like the snake eating its own tail, trying to figure out from where you get the energy. You've got to do something to... blah blah... to then, eventually, turn that energy into vehicle motion.

Or go completely electric on your vehicle, and just worry about charging the batteries. That way you don't have to generate your power IN your vehicle [ignoring down-hill and breaking generation], but still have it "generated" energy at some main power-plant somewhere. But what's that power-plant? Nuclear, biomass, geotherm, hydro, wind, hot sex, solar, coal, fuel-cell...

[drdeadringer.livejournal.com]

... or slaves, either olde-thyme Ancient-Egypt style or the teck-ish Matrix style.

Hmmm... an odd solution to the 'abortion question'...

[snatches papers] Mine!

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

The whole battery-thing worries me since I've been driving when the alternator died and the car stopped going when it had drained the battery. It was not of the fun, and I can't imagine how you'd refuel a battery-powered car, and as someone who uses about 4 things with rechargable batteries everyday, I know how quickly they can deplete and how long they can take to recharge. Though, if we could find a way to use the motion of the car to recharge the battery, that would be cool.
I know we need to make the car go, it just seems that there's got to be more than one way. I vote magnets that get started moving by a battery, though I don't know if they'd generate enough power.
Of course, if someone makes that handy-dandy transporter I was talking about, the internal combustion engine kinda looses its relevance.