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This Car Runs For 100 Years Without Refuelling – The Thorium Car

If your car was powered by thorium, you would never need to refuel it. The vehicle would burn out long before the chemical did. The thorium would last so long, in fact, it would probably outlive you.

That’s why a company called Laser Power Systems has created a concept for a thorium-powered car engine. The element is radioactive, and the team uses bits of it to build a laserbeam that heats water, produces steam, and powers an energy-producing turbine.

Thorium is one of the most dense materials on the planet. A small sample of it packs 20 million times more energy than a similarly-sized sample of coal, making it an ideal energy source.

The thing is, Dr. Charles Stevens, the CEO of Laser Power Systems, told Mashable that thorium engines won’t be in cars anytime soon.

“Cars are not our primary interest,” Stevens said. ”The automakers don’t want to buy them.”

He said too much of the automobile industry is focused on making money off of gas engines, and it will take at least a couple decades for thorium technology to be used enough in other industries that vehicle manufacturers will begin to consider revamping the way they think about engines.

building this to power the rest of the world,” Stevens said. He believes a thorium turbine about the size of an air conditioning unit could more provide cheap power for whole restaurants, hotels, office buildings, even small towns in areas of the world without electricity. At some point, thorium could power individual homes. Stevens understands that people may be wary of Thorium because it is radioactive — but any such worry would be unfounded.

“The radiation that we develop off of one of these things can be shielded by a single sheet off of aluminum foil,” Stevens said. ”You will get more radiation from one of those dental X-rays than this.”

This Car Runs For 100 Years Without Refuelling – The Thorium Car | The Mind Unleashed

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A dye pack is a radio-controlled incendiary device used by some banks to preemptively foil a bank robbery by causing stolen cash to be permanently marked with dye shortly after a robbery.

In most cases, a dye pack is placed in a hollowed-out space within a stack of banknotes, usually $10 or $20 bills. This stack of bills looks and feels similar to a real one, with technology allowing for the manufacturing of flexible dye packs which are difficult to detect by handling the stack.[1]

When the marked stack of bills is not used, it is stored next to a magnetic plate near a bank cashier, in standby or safe mode, ready to be handed over to a potential robber by a bank employee. When it is removed from the magnetic plate, the pack is armed, and once it leaves the building and passes through the door frame, a radio transmitter located at the door will trigger a timer (typically 10 seconds), after which the dye pack will explode and release an aerosol (usually of Disperse Red 9) and sometimes tear gas, intended to permanently stain and destroy the stolen money and mark the robber's body with a bright red color. The chemical reaction causing the explosion of the pack and the release of the dye creates high temperatures of about 200 °C (392 °F) which further discourages a criminal from touching the pack or removing it from the bag or getaway vehicle.[1] Dye packs are used in over 75% of banks in America.[2]

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When you're trapped on a boat, you can easily make fresh water, right? Simply let the sun heat up and evaporate salt water. Then trap the steam, condense it on a plastic surface and collect the fresh water. The liquid even gets sterilized in the process.

So why can't people around the world who lack clean drinking water do something similar?

Turns out, desalinating or sterilizing water with solar energy is way harder than Hollywood makes it look. The process is super inefficient and way too slow to be practical.

"The average yield is only about 1 cup per day," says the U.S. Air Force survival guide, even when you've got eight hours of sun and plenty of water.

But engineer Hadi Ghasemi, at the University of Houston, is trying to change that. He and a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a cheap material that desalinates water efficiently and fast using solar energy. And the secret to the new technology was sitting right on their desks: the graphite in pencils.

solarsteam-3_wide-7763159bad99cf06c1d6fc24bb0d0cf9097d2a43.jpg?s=4

Solar sponge: The top layer of graphite soaks up the sun's energy in tiny holes. When drops of liquid fill the holes, the water quickly evaporates. (The beaker looks hot, but the water below the sponge is cool as a cucumber.)

mitnews_solar_npr_custom-11bfe7954d64f0cff4d658355a1aafc12cc3b0b3-s3-c85.jpeg

The solar still has two layers. The top one contains tiny holes that collect the sun's energy. The bottom layer serves as an insulator that keeps the heat from leaking into the water. The bottom layer also wicks water into the top layer, where it evaporates.

Cheap Drinking Water From The Sun, Aided By A Pop Of Pencil Shavings : Goats and Soda : NPR

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De-altfel orice de pe acest channel. In cateva zile o sa poti sa dai raspunsul la toate dilemele existentiale pe care le au prietenii tai cand iesiti la o bere si ajungeti la vodk?. Dar tot mai bine te delectezi cu un sezon de "Neveste disperate" decat sa pierzi timpul intelegand lumea in care traiesti, nu?
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Fastest Way to Tie a Tie EVER

 

 

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