Engineering the Future: Energy and Sustainability (Mock Lecture - 10 a.m.)

So I think it's people join. There's a chat function if you can just say hi in the chat function so I can kind of know that people are arriving. I'd be super grateful for that. Will get started here in a few minutes. I'm showing four participants, but I can't see who they are. So if you can just kind of say hi, my name is this in the chat function I'd be super grateful for that.

Hi Jessica, thanks for joining.

So just 'cause the only one who's chatted I can't see. I've got that there are four participants. So technologies kind of fighting me a little bit so.

I'm going to assume the other folks who are here can't join or can't can't see the chat function.

Which can be a bit of a bummer, so maybe just look around and see if you can find that. If you can just kind of come in there and say hi and give me who you are.

So I guess I'll go ahead and get started.

My name is Jason Quinn Ann I'm in associate professor in mechanical engineering and so this was intended to be much more of kind of a two way conversation. This is my first time using this platform. I usually use zoom as the platform that I would lecture from or through canvas and I'll go over a little bit that as I kind of go through some slides I've generated here. So if folks can't see the chat and can't post things to the chat, it's going to be a bit of a challenge, and so I guess what I might do is.

In an interest to solve some of these technology issues is I'm going to give out my email and if there's questions or comments please just send me an email and I'll have my email up and I'll kind of continuously be checking it, so hopefully you can see me. And in fact what I'll do is I'll just share a screen and I'll write my email address down. So let me do that real quick. We're going to go to the abyss that is the repeated windows, so just give it one seck.

So if you can, if you have a question, please just email me so it's my name which is Jason JSON Dot Quinn Quinn at colostate.edu colostate.edu.

So if you have any questions, Please send questions there and like I said I I really do want this to go back and forth and I'll kind of introduce that as I go forward. So again, I'll leave that up here for another minute and then I'll switch back over to the slides. I don't associate professor in mechanical engineering and I'll go into a little bit more history here in a second, but I'm excited to be here and I'm excited to talk about Colorado State, but more importantly, just excited to talk about College in general University setting. So like I said.

Get that email down if you got questions, please do email me and we'll go through those questions as we kind of go through this. So let me jump back.

And we'll go to the abyss. Again. Not quite, but we'll do it again here in a little bit.

OK so I can see a couple of names here now. Have showed up so.

8 in it looks like you're on. It's great to see you. Thanks. Thanks for coming. I assume you can hear me. Do you see the chat function there?

Even if you do go ahead and say Hi in the chat function real quick.

So it looks like Aiden, you might not be able to use the chat function. So like I said, if you got questions, feel free to kind of send me an email, so I'll kind of start to go through some things and this is really kind of going to be directed towards you. Looks like you're the only one in attendance right now, and if more people join will kind of switch that over so.

Let me just.

So here's kind of the agenda that I had to kind of talk through this. So first of all, I want to answer any questions which is going to be a little bit difficult considering the back and forth is a bit of challenge. And then I've got three different things we can kind of talk about in terms of engineering. I've got kind of three mock lectures, if you will. Once about wind power the other one, it has to do with statistics or sorry statics, which is basically loads and forces and then the last one is really a thermodynamics example on using thermodynamic principles to understand whether something is real.

And so you know the first thing I'll do is just introduce myself so you know. Again, my name is Jason. I'm originally from Kremmling, Colorado. I've had a very different life from the one I leave now. I used to be a River guide out in Colorado and Utah, and so that's merona boat for holiday 6 seven years ago. So prior to being a professor, I lived in and loved the outdoors.

And so I was hoping to be able to hear from everybody who is here in terms of who they are and where they are from. So if you can find the chat function you want to do that, I'd be super grateful. Just you know your name and where you're from, and I can read that out as you do that. I'll kind of continue, continue to push forward the way I got. Colorado State is unique. I didn't ever know that I would fall in love with Colorado the way that I did. It went to high school in Florida. Actually, and.

After being born here and moving away when I was three, I found my way back and so it's really great to be back in Colorado. So the first thing that I wanted to do was ask if there's any questions and my pitch here is that I don't actually get paid like I'm not a Commission based employee here at Colorado State. I really interested in helping just support students make informed decisions so I don't know if anybody has any questions or anything that they want answered. I will be as transparent.

As open an honest as as you can imagine, right? 'cause I do think it's important that questions get answered and so I put a couple of pictures in the bottom in terms of things that people usually have questions on. Things like class sizes, things like grades, things like the dorm, stuff like that and so if there are questions like I said I I showed my email, feel free to send me those questions through the email or through the chat function if you can find it.

Otherwise, I'll kind of talk about a couple of these things just in general real quick, and then if there are questions that come in, I'll answer those. So the first thing is.

Class sizes so class sizes vary depending on major. They depend on where you're at in the program, and so they really depend on whether you're involved in Covid or not. I think that for anybody who's going to be.

Coming into the program next fall, we're hoping to be sub tab some sort of normalcy. That being said, you never know it's it's. It's a dynamic world and so there's been a lot of changes since last March in terms of how we operate in terms of embracing technology. That being said, I love being in the classroom. I have thrived in the online environment as well, but you know, large class sizes shouldn't be scary. I think it's one of those things that there's a human at the front of the room.

And it's your choice whether you want to connect with that human or not, and so you know, sitting in the back of the room is an option. Sit in the front of the room is an option as well, but won't importantly. Connecting with the professor who is teaching the class is something I really encourage students to do. It can be the difference between being successful and not being successful. We use a lot of technology in the classroom to enable everybody to hear. You know, there's microphones. There are huge screens, and so the large class sizes.

Shouldn't be as daunting as you might think. Everybody is coming from very different walks of life. And So what I mean by that is that some people are coming from schools where they're graduating. Class was eight. Other people are coming from graduating classes of 2000, and so it really kind of depends on your comfort level in terms of whether that represents something it's daunting or not.

The next thing is grades. You know, this is there's a lot of anxiety around grades. It gives a lot of anxiety in general and so.

I'm not gonna kid anybody. Grades are important. You know they're not the end of the world, but they are important. It's kind of a way to demonstrate proficiency when you graduate. It's a way to show what you've learned. That being said, as I said before, there's a human at the front of the room, and so talking with them and understanding potentially what went wrong on an exam or what went right for that matter, just kind of having that connection. And so any and every Professor TA. They have office hours.

And so my cell. For example, this last spring I was teaching thermodynamics that had 100 students in it, and they're the same 10 people that came to office hours. But I at least I got to know 10 people. Now I knew a couple more than that, but when there's 100 students, it's really hard to get to know everybody kind of cut off for me is about 50 students. If I have 50 students, I'll know everybody.

And so with grades, it's just important to connect with your professor, understand, ask them how can I be successful? What are the keys to success in this course?

Hum.

So those were the two big things that typically I get questions on and like I said, if there's other things that people want me to touch on, please either find the chat function or send me a note.

Through an email an again.

Email is jason.quinn@colostate.edu.

K.

So next I'm going to kind of keys keys for success, and I assume that you can see the power point that I'm sharing here.

So yeah, everybody has one of these, right? So like you know I've got three or four notifications right? I've got endless number of games and Inter web and social media that's sitting right here. This will ruin you. It's it's a phenominal distraction. If you know if Vegas had invented these, then nobody would have any money, right?

I will tell you that in in my classes when I teach, I have a rule that there you're not allowed to have cell phone out. If you have a cell phone out, I excuse you from the class for a month. You do it a second time. I excuse you from the class for the rest of the year.

That's my rule my I don't have a rule that you have to sit in class if you have something you need to do, then I invite.

People who need to use their cell phone to exit the class do what they need to do and come back in.

I have that rule 'cause I think it's my job to develop an effective teaching environment and as much as students push back on me, they come back at the end of their, like as much as I hated your cell phone rule. It really helped me it it made me pay attention. It it made me a better student.

And I struggle with the device as well, just in my work. And so I I really, really if there's one piece of if there's one thing you remember from this right is that.

You know?

Leave yourself, leave your cell phone in your backpack. Try not to touch it when you're in class. You're paying good money for these classes and so that kind of transitions to the middle one is that go to class bye, go to class in the virtual world. What I mean here is that you have to.

You have to punch in. You have to get on the zoom meeting. You have to get on slate. You have to get get to the canvas canvas and go watch the 360 lecture and so everything I just talked about there are basically online platforms that enable you to view lectures or live stream lectures or what we're doing now is a hybrid.

Hybrid mode and.

That hybrid mode enables students to be on campus or watch offline.

So in I gotta question for me here. So thanks for sending that in. So are most classes lectures based are most classes lecture based or more discussion and that's a great question.

And so I'm gonna go with yes on that. And so there are a lot of lecture based classes because there's a certain amount of content in engineering you need to get through in order to get through that they end up being lecture based. And so I'm going to talk. I've got a couple of slides I'm going to talk about here shortly that talk about how I teach thermodynamics, and so I do a combination of hybrid of lecture based as well as breakout session discussion. I do a flipped classroom, which I'll talk about here in a little bit.

But I'm just one professor, I'm just one person, right? And so everybody teaches a different style. Everybody uses different teaching. Philosophy's in order to deliver content at the beginning.

At the beginning, back 103, for example. So I'm in mechanical engineering. We do have discussion components as a part of that. As you get kind of your junior level classes, those are really going to be a little bit more lecture based. As you get to your senior level classes.

You know they can be much more discussion oriented 'cause you're talking to about 2020 to 50 kids in the class, so if you get to know those professors, you can start asking those questions.

So thanks so much for that question. For anybody who's joined late, I'm inviting questions either through the chat or through email. My email address is my name, which is Jason Quinn at carlostatecolostate.edu. The same ending from anybody else from Colostate who sent you an email.

Um, so go to class that that you know go to class. Just go to class you're paying $20 per class or somebody is paying $20 per class right? And so I just can't reinforce how important going to classes. If you know you don't get up in the morning, don't schedule at 8:00 AM class. Just don't do it. It just be real with yourself. If you know you don't function well at 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon, don't schedule classes at 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon.

So the next thing that I've mentioned this as well is that office hours go to office hours, go to office hours even if you're not like I invite students, I'm like, please come talk to me. I would love nothing more than to talk about the rivers of Colorado or the western United States, right? We don't even need to talk Thermo dynamics or renewable energy like, let's just you know, just come talk to me.

Maybe maybe we'll talk about some class content as well, but there's a real person behind that profession. That professor is a real person and you should get to know them. They're your connection. They're going to be an ally for you.

And then the last thing that I'll kind of say in terms of keys to success or get involved.

There are 430 different clubs on campus and so that was I've just listed some here and so everywhere from political groups to Democrat Republican. I assume there's an independent club, you know, there's a fly fishing club, the one in the middle is the ski team.

A variety of different ethnic groups who have different clubs on campus and so just because you know, and these are all all of these groups are very welcoming, typically, and so they're just people like you who are looking to do fun things. Getting involved. I mean, that's also the challenges that if you want to play basketball at 11:00 o'clock at night, there's somebody to play basketball. So getting involved but staying focused on why you require at University is also important as well, and so these are my keys, success and so.

At this point, what I would do if this was a real lectures, I would hit pause and I would say what's the one thing I want you to take away from this? What's the one thing right? And I would sit here I Italy until someone would unmute and come off and they would say to leave your cell phone in your bag, in your pocket to not have it out during class, right? That's the one message. I really want you to take away from kind of my keys and everything else is what I call gravy or frosting on the cake.

So again, if there's any questions, please throw him up in the chat. Please send me an email with whatever those questions are. I'm having answer any of those so Aidan, you ask a question about lecture, so let me talk about kind of how I do that. So I I typically teach thermodynamics every year. It's I. I love this class is my favorite class is a junior level class. It should be called Thermo Statics because dynamics means things are moving and in reality it's kind of Thermo Dynamics are. It's a static course. What I mean by that is that we're evaluating snapshots. We aren't talking about dynamic systems that are static systems.

But thermodynamics covers everything from power production. 2 engines are kind of the at the end, so the ranking cycle, which is how we generate electricity to the engine that are in our lawn. Mowers in cars, and so we're kind of building up to be able to evaluate and design those systems. And in order to do that we look at pumps and nozzles. Nozzle is basically a hose right? Like all these different things. So in the in the real world I teach face to face very energetic. I run all over the classroom. I go up and down the stairs.

I like to wake people when they fall asleep just because I think that's kind of fun.

Well, I'm just checking in. I'm really worried about their well being right, but I move all over the classroom and you can see that here in this virtual environment. I wish, yeah, I'm half tempted to kind of walk around the room, but then you lose me. And then.

Doesn't happen I would. I would hope. I'm hoping that we have face to face come next fall when I think the majority of folks would be joining.

In the virtual world, right now we've got a hybrid system that's happening, and so some students are at home watching and then in classrooms. And then we switch, and so doctor Windham, for example. He does a group of students on Monday at group of students on Wednesday. And then everybody is at home on Friday, so he's kind of, you know, doing some unique things. The primary platform for delivery of information for me is canvas. The majority of professors here at Colorado State use canvas, not everybody.

But most of them do. This is just a screenshot from my canvas site and so this is the way I deliver content. This is what homework is due through canvas and so it's all very pretty straightforward. It's a web user interface. This home picture with all these colors on it. That's eight to five. Those the office hours that I hold is apart of of of my course, the purple or my 3 office hours and then the other colors are learning assistants who I hired to support the course.

And so if you added this up, I think there's like.

32 hours or something like that of office hours that are available for students to come in and get help on homework and work through problems. And so I really kind of try to teach a very large class and so by having these extra office hours, I'm saying, hey, the resources are come hang out come talk, come get through thermodynamics on the right side. I'm talking bout the virtual world so again, I typically lecture through echo 360. I've also lectured through zoom as well as Microsoft Teams.

So this is an example of an old dog learning some new tricks and all these platforms have their advantages and disadvantages. What I've done in zoom is I do breakout group so I will ask a question and then I will put everything in a breakout group. They'll be like four or five students and a breakout group, and then those four or five students will work on that together. That problem understand it, and then we'll come back in and we'll kind of have a have a debrief in terms of what that looks like.

So.

Continuing on your question Aidan, I do a hybrid in terms of Sinama talk about. Let's say we're just there is no covid. Let's let's go back to the great days of no kovid I do a combination of traditional lecture based as well as discussion based. And So what that means is that about half the time I'm at the front of the room doing lectures and it's I try to make it an interactive lecture, right? So as I put something up I will ask for, you know, if I put up a thermodynamics equation.

And where we were evaluating a system, I'll say hey, what cancels out when nobody speaks up in a group of 100 if you just stand there for long enough. Eventually somebody feels more awkward than I do, and they say something right? And so that's how it starts at the beginning, and then by the end, you know students are really kind of starting to get engaged to kind of the classroom. Involves. That being said, I also do a flipped classroom, which is where I will record lectures and post those through the canvas website. And then it's the responsibility or the homework of the student to.

Watch those lectures and then they come to class and I've got problems and we break into groups and then there's myself and then also the three learning assistance. There were two learning assistance that were hired and there's three of us walking around helping students work through the problems.

And so I found that to be really kind of that hybrid method is effective if you go all traditional. It's not quite great if you do all flipped. It's not quite great and I'm continuing to evolve my teaching as I kind of move forward. I include these demonstrations so this one on the left is a Stirling engine, so I bring that engine in and we fire it up and it's, you know, like you said, it's about yay, yay big or so and then the one on the right is the drinking bird. And that's another example of a heat engine when you first see it. It doesn't look like a heat engine, but then when you do the thermodynamic analysis it very quickly turns into a heat engine. So that's really kind of fun.

And then like I said to do these in class problems to kind of, you know, get students to engage with their neighbor to take a risk. And then I'm pretty energetic. And so again, I'm really kind of trying to keep people on task and and all those things.

One of the ways I teach thermodynamics as I do mad Libs probably not really a thing for most of the students that I might be speaking to hear, but mad Libs was something I used to do in the car.

Because we didn't have screens when I was whatever age and you would just fill in the blank right? You asked for an out and so we give him now and then you read the story and it be this ridiculous story 'cause it doesn't make sense. So in thermodynamics I do the exact same thing. I hand out this blank sheet or I posted online. Most people write online, so here's the blank sheet and so this is for chapter one. So obviously this is the very beginning of thermodynamics. And so I'm talking things, you know, our objectives for the course or to be able to understand units and understand thermodynamic properties for example.

And then you know in Class I use basically my tablet to basically right on the tablet and fill these things in. And then you know students are kind of copying down on their notes. This is really effective for me because I've got a lot of content I need to deliver and so you know I don't need you to write out all of the top things. I just want you to know those things. So I give those to you. And then we kind of draw diagrams and work problems through this kind of fill in the blank method.

So that's how I teach a lot of professors in general teach similar. Or, you know, use some of the things I've talked about. Not necessarily all the things.

Miss Tafa, who is in McCann closures materials. He's got these great examples where he's got these materials that are self healing and he brings him in. And when you squish him they change colors and so you know every every professor, every course kind of has their unique aspect and the one thing that I will say is that and this is something else that comes up is that.

You know what? If I have a bad professor and so like like I've been to school for? I don't know how many years more than you know, I I still go to school every day, right? I've taken more classes than I care to remember and I've got. I've had some bad ones. Oh man, there's been some bad ones.

But I've had some phenomenal phenomenal professors as well, and so no matter where you go, you're going to have a bad one. But Gosh, I really hope they have the same experience that I did, and you're going to have like 6 or 7 great ones to the one bad one were all at the University 'cause we love to teach. It's part of our core mission in terms of what our career is. It's not our only job, but it is something that most of us all really really, really ever passionate about.

So I've been talking for about 20 minutes 25 minutes here. So again if there's questions, please post them in the chat if there's.

You can also send me an email and so my emails jason.quin@colostate.edu and so now the interactive part, which is a little bit challenging, so we need to kind of take a vote right? So if we have three different things we can talk about, we can talk about wind power, which I am very passionate about. My brother works in the wind industry, so when we drink beers we geek out about typically wind because he knows more than I do.

Do a problem that is statistics or statics. Keep saying this statics statics that this is a real world failure that happened and killed a bunch of people. But it's a very basic statics problem that we can workout together or we can look at a thermodynamic system and evaluate whether that is real or not. So what I would like is that if you have access to the chat, please let me know whether you want a B or C. If you don't have access to the chat. If you can send me an email with which one you would prefer.

I'd be grateful for that, so I'm going to hit pause for 30 seconds and wait for that emails to come in and wait for things to come in under the chat so we can kind of choose our own addventure while you're doing that, please feel free to ask a question about anything that's before or anything in general.

Alright, I'm going to hit. I'm going to pause for 30 seconds.

While I wait for the emails and wait for the chat to show up, so I see one came through the chat. Haven't seen it comes through the email.

10 more seconds get your votes in 10 more seconds.

OK, so it looks like wind power is winning or one followed by what I like to call statistics which is actually statics, so we'll go ahead and talk about wind power. So I'm going to go ahead and hide my control slides so you can't see him. So one of the things that I think is really important, especially in today's Day and age. And so you know, I don't want to talk politics 'cause we talk politics. I'm going to be only one talking and you're just going to get my viewpoints. And that's not necessarily the right thing.

But there's a lot of misinformation that gets floated out there and gets propagated these days, and so you know, we can argue whether that's a true statement or not. And I'll probably argue pretty hard that it is. So what I'd like to do is just ask a question, right so?

And you're going to be able to see. I'm hoping that you can't see this, but maybe you can. There's a variety of advantages and disadvantages associated with wind power, and so we all know these and so typically. If I was lecturing, you wouldn't be able to see these, and I'm covering the screen with my hands and I know you can see that, but I would cover these up right and I would ask the class be like, right? Let's talk about what the advantages and disadvantages are, and So what I've done here based on teaching Mac 303, which is energy engineering for, I don't know.

More than a couple of years is I've kind of put up what people typically respond with. So with wind power, the advantages include that it's free and by free it's not free, but there's no fuel involved. You know the it's the wind that is powering it, right?

CO2 as well as its very minimally CO2 compared to like coal. For example, we're not burning coal to generate CO2. Now there is a greenhouse gas footprint associated with wind energy production for a couple of reasons. One is you have to manufacture the system and the second thing is for those of you who have never been to you know South Dakota where it's Super Windy in December. It's just a little bit cold out there and so you actually have heaters that operate inside the nacelle which is on top of it. In order to maintain all the equipment up there.

Even with the winds not blowing right? So therefore you're drawing electricity from the grid. The grid is not totally clean, and so there are some CO2 emissions associated when, but really pretty minimal. OK, it has a small land footprint. You can use them remotely. You can put them anywhere. These are kind of the advantages right? And the list goes on. We can go on right? There's a lot more now there's disadvantages and this is one of the biggest challenges with renewable energy, right? Is that?

As I look outside, right? Oh, the sun is shining but it's it's a little bit cloudy, right? So if I had solar panels I really wouldn't be getting great performance here, whereas if I had a diesel engine in my backyard I would get it just runs. It just goes. It's what it does, right? And so big. Disadvantage is supposed to eat it with renewable energy, wind and solar is it's not predictable it's I mean solar is pretty predictable, but when it really isn't as predictable as we would like it to be and it's not continuous. So you get these.

You know, a wind farm is on, so you get peak load and the wind dies off and it goes down to nothing and you gotta you gotta come up with that gap. Some people will claim that their noisy. You know there's this NIMBY, which is called not in my backyard.

And then you know the other thing that people always talk about is that while they kill birds.

And I want to talk more about the bird killing thing.

Will hit pause on that and then the last thing is that there really expensive to install and so on. The appearance thing I've got a great story. Like I said my brother used to work in the wind industry and he he told me about this rancher. Then he went to visit with when he was just getting into industry and he sat down with this rancher and just picture picture a rancher picture a 75 year old rancher and that's what this this guy looked like right? All the way from the hat you know? I mean just this stereotypical rancher. My brother goes.

Yeah I I can help us see you've got those wind turbines there, but what do you think of him? And he just looks over he goes.

I love him.

My brother's got cash that's interesting. I've been talking with people in the region and everybody doesn't share your sentiments and the guy goes Yep.

There's a penny. There's a penny. There's a penny.

And I don't have to do anything and so this rancher really love these wind turbans because they were revenue source for him in this role in this rural community. And so while some people don't want to see him, and some people think they're eyesores as you get to know them, they are a Marvel of engineering in my opinion. The blades are made out of composites and their the length that you literally you've got a football field rotating in the air and that's building composites at that scale is incredible.

So birds, everybody says that wind power kills birds and you know what I would ask everybody in here and this isn't quite showing up right? As to let's brainstorm.

Let's brainstorm.

What kills birds, right? So let's So what I want you to do right now is just don't. You don't need shows me just think or write down. Write down what you think the top.

Three things are that killed birds in the world. OK in the world or just in the United States. Let's just United States. 'cause that's the data that I have here. Then i'ma presents in the United States. What do you think the top three things that kill birds and just think about those things? And I'll kind of take it out. Will take again 30 seconds for you to write those down. If we were in a real classroom, I would tell you to look to your neighbor and introduce yourself to your neighbor and say hello. I'm Jason, I'm a Scorpio. What are the top three things that you have on your list and we would have that?

No minute and a half kind of delay in the middle of class. Kind of have that interaction and and have that have that have the interaction. So again top three things that you think kill birds.

OK, so I hope you've got three things, so I'm going to go ahead and list off 2467 things. The seven top killers of birds, in no particular order. So what I'm going to do and this isn't showing up for whatever reason right here, so I'm going to go ahead and list it off. In fact, why do I switch over? And I'll write it down.

We're going to share a screen were going to come over here.

Let me go back to the abyss and then we're going to come back over here and then. Things get a little funky 'cause I'm going to push my tablet down so you might not be able to see me very well, so I'm going to list these off and I'm going to write them on the on the screen right here. So we're going to talk about towers.

Is 1.

Power lines.

Cars.

Cats.

Obviously I have to put down turbines.

Windows.

And pesticides.

OK.

So hopefully maybe you had one or two of those on your list, and if you if you if you had something else I would have really been interested in hearing what those are. So now what I want you to do is I want you to pick a pony. Which one do you think of the ones that are listed here kills the most birds annually so pick, you know. Just take take 10 seconds to kind of pick your pony.

So here's the answer.

Windows.

Followed by cats are the top killer of birds in the US and the cats. One will get to that one right and for Windows I'm sure everybody. Everybody in this room has seen a bird hit a window. I just I guarantee it guarantee I guarantee it that everybody has has, has, has has seen a bird hit a window.

And so then it's followed by cats and cats. There's a huge variability because this really isn't a huge research area. Surprised, surprisingly, is that I've seen numbers that have literally been up to 100 million birds per year in terms of the number of birds that cats are killing annually.

And then this is followed by all these other things like cars and then turbans don't even show up in the top 10 in terms of birds in terms of bird killing and I want to talk about why this misnomer exists and so one of the things I think is funny, right is that when you do talk to people in their anti when they're like, Well, you know wind turbines kill birds, right? But I've never had anybody roll up in a new car and somebody yell at them. Bird killer, you know, but in reality.

Buying cars and running cars are killing birds, right? So why are turbans known as bird killers? Well, you have to go back to the 1980s and in the 1980s there were a variety of wind turbines being installed in California and these California wind turbans were very different than any of the wind turbans anybody has seen today, so the ones you see today or the giant three blades that spin.

Well, the ones in California were small diameter, high speed turbans, much more like the ones that you see pumping water. OK, so like out of the range you see those lattice towers pumping water. Take those and Justice, make him bigger and then put them up in the Hills of California between San Francisco and Sacramento.

And so the problem with these wind turbine parks was Twofold. One is they were lattice towers.

Well guess who like to nest in lattice towers?

Birds.

And then they were high speed, and so they were basically bird whackers. The bird had no chance to fly through the through the turban as it was spinning 'cause it was spinning so fast. Now don't get me wrong, the tip speeds of these of these turbines that you see. There are three blade turbines.

We can do the calculation. It's part of the calculation that we do during the wind during the wind.

Section that I teach him back 303, you know?

5060 miles an hour up to 100 miles an hour. Those tips are spinning so doggy wrong, they're moving fast, but they're only three blades instead of eight blades, so there's this misnomer about turbines that they wind. Turbines kill birds and I want to be clear they kill birds OK, but just not at the rate that people think they do.

And so one of the things I think that's really important in terms of Energy Technologies is understanding the advantages, the disadvantages, and really what they're about right. Whether they are true or not, whether these misnomers are fact or factually based or not. So I think that the first takeaway that I had from this lecture that I needed you to know right was leave your cell phone in your pocket. I hope everybody's done that right. The next key takeaway that I want, you know this is what would be on the test if we're going to test at the end.

Is that do turbines kill birds? The answer is no. How did they get that reputation? Well, it was because of high speed lattice, high speed turbines built on lattice towers in California, 1970s and 80s.

K.

I would be remiss if we didn't do some math.

Yeah, engineering is built on math and so here here is here is me condensing an entire lecture into one slide, and So what we're doing here is that I typically teach this wind course at the senior level, so you've already had fluids. So I start from the Bernoulli Equation, which is a fundamental equation for fluids, which is in this top left hand corner and then from there I derive and go all the way down to a.

Theoretical maximum efficiency in terms of a wind turbine. The concept here is that if you look at this visual, this wind turban visual that's here in the middle.

Is that you've got a wind speed you want at the beginning, and you've got a wind speed you for at the end, and that energy that you're extracting. So you want is higher than you for. So let's just say that the wind is blowing at 20 mph. It's a nice windy day up here in Northern Colorado.

So in front of the turban, you've got this nice 20 mph on the back end. You're going to some speed that's less than that. Now you for at the back end. It cannot be 0 right? So if you think about it, why can't it be 0? Why can it be 0?

And so if we were in class again, we would hit pause. Here you would look to your neighbor and you would have a discussion. Why can't you for B0? Why can't the wind speed be 0 on the back end of the turban?

And you would have that discussion. You would come back and I would ask if I could. Can anybody tell this to me like let's just extract all of the kinetic energy that is in the wind and will turn it into power and will power our homes? It's going to be great.

And usually somebody has it figured out and they come out and they say, well, if you 4 equals 0, that means that there is no mass flow rate. The wind is no longer moving and so you've got the error is a fluid. It has to go somewhere. It can't just stop at the turbine, so it has to be moving at some speed as it comes out the back end and all of the math that you see on this slide is a way to figure out what that theoretical maximum is. So why do I like theoretical maximums? I like theoretical maximums because.

If you're doing better than that, you're violating the laws of physics, and you can't violate the laws of physics. It's you're not only you, you shouldn't violate laws in general, but when it comes to physics is that those are the ones that you know that stand up forever, right? And so the concept here is that I think this is an important thing to know because I'm an internal skeptic. For those of you that like to watch ESPN at 2:30 in the morning, there's always something that comes on that says I can. I can improve the horsepower of your engine with this additive, right?

Put this on your intake and I can make it 5 horsepower bigger.

I like to evaluate those claims and in the wind industry, one way to evaluate that claim is by looking at the theoretical maximum power that can be generated at different wind speeds.

Some other fun things that I do I like to when I, in terms of wind, look at these different.

Concepts and technologies and have discussions in terms of whether they are real or not. Now obviously the one on the right is not real.

You know, but quick to capitalize on high oil prices and the rise of wind power. Japanese carmakers introduced the 2004 wind cruiser.

The funny thing is that it's not that far out. So on the bottom left and in an animation that would come flying across the screen. That's an example of a patent that has been filed as a way to recover energy, and I like to have the discussion whether this is whether this works, whether it's good weather it's bad.

And so in the end we kind of have that conversation of, Gosh, the one of the bottom doesn't really work very well, because, you know, you're just burning fuel in your car to push it forward and you got this bigger frontal area and there's eficiency associated with the wind turban. That's in the box on top of the car. And ultimately you're going to lose.

And then the one at the you know the main picture we're looking at here. Is that real? Is that a good idea? So these are horizontal axis wind turbines, and we're just imagine a truck drives by it spins it, and so people are quick to point out that this is a Photoshop image, which I agree with. So obviously it's not real from that perspective. But we talked about some of the things that are challenges associated with with a design that looks like this.

And those challenges include dynamic loading like that. It's shocking the system every time it truck comes through. There's a massive wind and then nothing. And massive win and then nothing.

And then for anybody who ever watch, is YouTube ever? There's always the truck that leaves their dump up and then it crashes into this and now are millions of dollar. Wind turban is destroyed.

Pay

Texas actually has the best wind resource in terms of total amount, not necessarily 'cause their colors the darkest because they've got the most land.

We talk about gross capacity factor in wind classes in energy classes. In general, capacity factor is how much energy you get out of the system.

Compared to how much you could get out of the system, so let's take a photo. Will take a solar panel for example. How much energy can you get out of that system? Well, it's dark at night, so therefore 50% of the time we're out, right? There's like I don't know. Average 12 hours of light today, but you know the 1st three in the last three aren't great because the sun is low in the Sky and everything like that. And so we look at capacity factors on solar panels there like, you know, .3.

.4 'cause you can't. They're not on all the time and so with wind here. Gross capacity factor. You know. For Kansas, there's places where, again, you're better than solar and these two different colors correspond to different Heights. How high the turban is off the ground.

As a part of this course, I do a wind project. This is my favorite thing. We compare two turbines. We do this simulation through Matlab. We generate this code and we simulate you know all the all the wind. All the 15 minute data and all this other stuff and.

You figure out which term is going to win, and so my brother used to work for Vestris and so obviously I have to make the Bestest Urban win, you know. But in reality it just goes to show that you know different companies are building turbines differently to target very specific and different locations. And so this is a wind project that I do as a part of that I always end the course or end the class with kind of some fun pictures. Things to think about. My favorite question to ask on the left hand picture here is what's wrong with this picture.

And there's a variety of things that are wrong with this picture so as I say, These things you're going to kind of like Oh yeah, so the first thing I think is wrong with this picture is it's not windy so that's it. I that looks like great wakeboarding water out there right now, the next thing that's wrong with this picture is how close the turbans are state are together so a turban has awake on the backside so.

These are way too close together, so those are 2 big things.

Picture on the right. It's a reality lightning? How do you deal with lightning and so the answer here is that every blade has these little pucks metal pucks that are in the blade that are connected to a wire that runs all the way down to the ground so every turban is grounded because typically they're the highest thing around.

There's always problems with wind turbines like anything else so.

Turban cost about a million dollars a megawatt so these machines about 3 megawatts. You're looking about $3 Million. That's been destroyed on the ground so the one on the left is a foundation problem. That's a civil engineering problem. The one on the right is basically these towers or built in sections and so that section wasn't quite put together right bummer.

And then the last thing I usually show a video which is the video. I'm sure people have seen of a wind turbine blowing up. It's actually investors machine and I know all too well, what happened with that machine and we talked about why it failed what the safety devices that were in place that that didn't didn't work.

So at this point, I'd be out of time classes are 50 minutes long.

So I'm going to come back to my keys to success leave your cell phone at home get to know your professor get involved on campus.

For those of you that have attended you got my email address. It's Jason dot cliniccolostate.edu please. Feel free to reach out. I am available for any questions anytime. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have about engineering about mechanical engineering.

About.

River rafting what whatever you want to talk about. I'm here to talk with you about so.

I'm going to go ahead and end it now. I want to thank everybody for taking the time out of their busy days. I hope everybody is staying healthy and staying safe out there.

And I hope to meet you someday at Colorado State as a student so.

Please email with any questions, thanks so much for attending.