Hello scholars, this is Dr. Hebert. I wanted to do a quick little video tutorial on how to do the week 4 lab energy. This week focuses on, of course, sustainable energy and whether or not we can have enough energy for our future.
We've got non-renewable energy, fossil fuels, nuclear, and we also have alternative forms of energy, biofuels, solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc. Of course, as usual, watch the videos, do the discussion and the FFA homework. But this video is about the Week 4 lab. Of all the labs, this one seemed to cause students in the past the most difficulty. So I decided to do a little video tutorial to help you along.
So this won't make sense right now, but you're going to be doing a predictive. energy demand study and failure to reach the decade 2060 will result in a point deduction on your lab. You should at least get to 2060. You may not do it the first try, but you need to kind of learn from the simulation and try to get at least a couple more decades of energy for the world. And if you don't and just cop out and say, yeah I couldn't do it, there will be a point deduction on that.
Just wanted to make that clear. So you simply just click on the lab, download the Word document. here and then you will see the link embedded in the Word document. This was a really wonderful lab that I've been using for about 10 years and it's becoming a little out of date because it starts in the future in 2010. So they have pulled it and moved it to their archive site, but I still think it's a valuable lab and you can still predict into the 22nd century. So you'll click the link and it'll take you to this site here.
The way you're going to do this is really if you didn't have this video tutorial, you just read the instructions and follow the instructions. However, it could be a little confusing. I had to read the instructions a couple of times my very first time I tried it with no one to explain it to me. And then I realized the help is really helpful and I had to read some of that. So we're going to skip all that and I'm just going to give you the nitty gritty here.
So there are basically two lessons we're going to do managing our energy resources. then looking at how we use energy efficiently. And we are going to skip step one of this lesson and jump straight to step two. And then on this one we're going to skip step two and just do step one. So that simplifies things a little bit more.
So you read the introduction and see that yeah well there's an energy crisis we're using not you know we rely heavily on non renewable resources. We're having to drill for oil deeper and deeper, threaten natural wild areas. We're having, you know, most of our electricity generated from coal, and of course the pollution and CO2 that comes with that.
And our population's not getting any smaller. So the demand for energy is increasing by at least two percent every year. So here is the simulator, and it helps you kind of process all of that.
So I'm going to open the simulator. and you can see that we are on the first lesson, Managing Resources. Now before we get into the simulator, we really need to read on what to do.
So I'm going to come over, get the introduction, read a little bit about how there are varying political, economic, and ecological issues around fossil fuel combustion, specifically the production of carbon dioxide gas, which is a greenhouse gas. So, um... We have motivation not only because coal, oil, gas are non-renewable, but they also have some side effects that are unintended.
So in step one, which I told you we're skipping, you basically read this data table and predict each of the different resources. What's going on? Is oil going up? Coal over the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years?
And really, it's just a prediction. And so you can predict that they're all going down. I predict that the usage is going to go up for a while for the non-renewables, and then eventually it'll start to have to go down as it becomes depleted. And we're going to have to see alternative fuels go up a little bit more in the years to follow. So, you know, rather than having you predict, you know, is it going to go up or down, I just skip that step.
And we jump straight into step two. But what you're going to notice when you get into the simulator is there's this adjust energy sources slider. And what you're going to have to do is predict, well, is to create a sustainable energy. future. So you're going to have to select the resources needed to get to the year 2110 for our energy.
And if you can't, then that's going to be a big problem for our world if we can't supply it energy that it needs. So there are a couple of tips and hints on here. This is again for step one says record your prediction, the data table, I pulled that. So we're going to skip that and go straight to step two.
With step two you're going to try to get enough energy to 2110 and if you're able to do that you have done a remarkable thing. It's pretty tough in the simulator you got to manage a lot of the energy. We really have to micromanage which energy sources are used to meet the demand by our increasing population.
It says here, there's a hint, you need to maximize the use of fossil fuels first. So on your first run, concentrate on supplying the fossil fuels. If you do not increase coal use early in the decades of the simulation, you might not meet the demands later. You won't even get to 2060. And remember, you have to get to 2060 to meet the minimum requirements of the lab.
So we're going to come over to the simulator, and we're on managing resources less than the first one. And... It says in the year 2010 the demand is this many joules.
Next supply 514. So we're going to need an additional 113.1. So we're going to add energy. And basically you adjust these different sources of energy and slide them up.
It said maximize coal. So the first thing I'm going to do is maximize it as much as I can. It goes yellow.
And it says you can't do more than 40% per decade. So I'm just going to max that out. It says I still need 56.3 more joules.
So I'm going to go ahead and add a little oil and I'm going to add some gas and focus primarily on fossil fuel usage. So I still need 26.2 joules. So we're going to go ahead, add a little bit of wind, add a little bit of solar and nuclear is also non-renewable. We'll add some nuclear.
And biofuels are on the rise. Now we've met down here says we met the demand on the back off. See, it says we need 15, 10, 5. We've met it.
So I hit apply and run decade. And so you can see the graph here. The supply is down compared to the demand because each decade it goes up.
So we need to now add more energy. We're at 2020. One thing you should know. When you go to add this, these numbers right here, the energy and joules that you need, are going to be recorded in your data table here.
So for 2010, record your numbers right here. For 2020, you have to do this as far as you can. And remember, the one you have to really get to is 2060. That's to meet the minimum requirements for the lab.
So you'll want to try and get past that if you can and you might not do it on your first try. So these are the numbers that you record in your data table. So when you run the decade, again I'm going to max out coal, I'm going to max out oil, and I'm going to max out gas. And then I'm going to fill the need with a little bit of others. I know nuclear is a hot topic right now.
So I'm going to add nuclear. Solar is going up. A little bit of wind, a little bit of biofuels.
Now it says I've met the demand. Now, I'm not giving a lot of thought into how I'm picking my alternatives. However, you need to give a little bit more thought into it.
It's not just as simple as sliding. I'm making it look a lot easier because I've done it a bunch. It took me a while to figure all this out.
And there is a sweet spot for how you adjust these in order to get to 2110. Apply your changes and then run the decade and record your numbers on your data table. So each year you're going to try to. add energy to get to 2110. And it is hard. You'll see that the demand for energy is, it's going to be hard to have, you know, enough supply. So going back to the lab, you fill in your data table, then you try it a second time, try it again, and this time change different things and see how you change it and record your numbers.
I want to see, don't do it the exact same way the second time and see if you're able to get further a second attempt. So you need two attempts on this. You do it once then do it again.
Answer the questions that follow and then we're going to move on to the second lesson on energy efficiency. So you come down here, change it to energy efficiency. Now if you come and read about energy efficiency you'll see that, and I noticed a lot of you commented this on this in the week 3 discussion about the energy crisis and how efficient we use our energy.
And that's changing as we advance as a technological society. We've gone from energy wasting incandescent bulbs to you know, compact fluorescent all the way to LED. So we went from using 60 watts of energy in one light bulb to 4 watts of energy in one light bulb that produces as greater or equal to lumens as the incandescent without all the heat. So we're becoming more efficient in how we use the energy and this lab, which we're going to do step one, tells us how to become more efficient.
Now I really like this lab because what it does is it empowers you to decide what our efficiency is going to be. So let me explain. You come to Advanced Options, and you set the energy demand change, the energy efficiency change, and the net capture of carbon. I left these all checked as default. So when you come to your data table, you'll say, did you meet your needs?
You can predict whether or not you've met your needs. needs and then you do this run three different times three separate experiments you record your percent efficiency your carbon recapture and then any notes about how far you got on your years so let me explain that coming back to the lab I'm going to leave my energy efficiency we did the first one at zero percent we assumed no efficiency when we did the first lesson So now I'm going to do a half percent more efficient in the way we use our energy and no carbon capture. So I'm going to come to my table and I'm going to do 0.5 efficiency with 0.0 carbon capture. And then I'm going to go back to the simulation and add energy.
And this one you've already seen. And so now you slide things. You can keep them yellow if you want.
and you slide these around and adjust to see if you're gonna meet your energy demand. So it's a lot like the first lesson at that point, only this time it assumes efficiency. So run it and see if you are able to meet your demands.
Then try something else for the second attempt. Why don't you try doubling it to say, I don't know, 1 or 1.25% and give yourself a half gigaton of carbon recapture. Now, We're more efficient, but we have a greater carbon recapture demand. So will we be able to meet our needs by eliminating that? So we're going to have to back off on our fossil fuel combustion and move forward on our renewable sources of energy.
Will we get to 2060 just off renewable and backing off our carbon producing fossil fuels? So you'll record that and run your simulation. And then you'll do it again, but only this time.
Change it one more time. Change your efficiency, say 2.5%, and change your carbon. And then this is good because our net energy demand has dropped because we've become more efficient. However, if you increase that, because we've got a population boom and everyone's putting TVs everywhere, consuming electricity, then... our demand has gone way up.
Typically we assume about a two percent increase in energy demand, but population's growing exponentially. So I think that energy demand will not stay constant at two percent as our population grows, so will our energy demand. And don't forget those electric cars still got to be plugged in to recharge. So I love what Tesla's doing, but energy's got to come from somewhere.
So instead of burning oil, refined into gasoline to power your car, you're using the chemicals of battery banks, which are charged by electricity that's obtained from burning coal. So you're trading oil for coal. And so, you know, let's don't think that just because you're switching to an all-electric vehicle that you're not consuming fossil fuels. You've just traded off the type of fossil fuel from oil to coal. So something to think about.
Run through the lab. have some fun exploring and hopefully it'll create a little bit awareness on how much energy we actually need to sustain our population. Thanks, good luck.