Facts about Lithium-ion batterys

Lithium-ion batteries
Lithium-ion batteries

Lithium-ion batteries are a type of rechargeable batteries commonly used in consumer electronics. They have a high power to weight ratio, no memory effect, and only a slow loss of charge when not in use. The lithium battery was first developed in 1912 by G.N. Lewis but the rechargeable lithium battery was not commercially available until the early 1970s.

A typical lithium-ion battery can store around 150 watt-hours of electricity in a 1 battery of 1 kilo. A lead-acid battery can store only 25 watt-hours per kilo. Using lead-acid technology, it takes 6 kilograms to store the same amount of energy that a 1 kilogram lithium-ion battery can handle.

In certain circumstances Lithium-ion batteries can be dangerous and can pose a safety hazard because they contain, unlike other rechargeable batteries, a flammable electrolyte and are also kept pressurized. Although the risk is very low there has been concern about allowing Lithium-ion batteries to be transported by aircraft which could result in tragedy, a fire involving lots of them could destroy a plane. At present (2015) there is no adequate solution to this problem, about 4.8 billion lithium-ion cells were manufactured in 2013, and production is forecast to reach 8 billion a year by 2025.

It is likely that there will be important breakthroughs in battery technology involving lithium-ion battery’s which will enable a large reduction in the use of fossil fuels and nuclear generated power. A lot of the research and development has been encouraged by the electric car industry. Many improvements are starting to appear such as reducing the charge times and increasing the amount of charge cycles which affects the life of the battery.

A very interesting development in this field is the announcement by Tesla Motors in May 2015 of a new affordable battery capable of supplying power to homes or businesses. The price of solar panels has come down in the last few years so the price of actually generating electricity using solar power has come down to acceptable levels in comparison to electricity bought from the grid. The reason that solar power has not taken off in a big way is because of the price of electricity storage which until now had almost always using lead acid battery’s. The power generated during the day has to be stored for use during the night or at times of low sunlight.

The new Tesla includes the $3500 Powerwall, a home-based battery pack that can store 10 kilowatt-hours of power. That is like using a 1kw kettle for 10 hours. This would not be enough for heating but it could easily power a modern house fitted with led light bulbs and other efficient systems. The life of the battery is said to be 10 years. In a sunny country it would be possible to have free electricity for 10 years based on an initial investment of around $6000. For many people this would be cheaper than using an electric company.

The Powerwall batterys, – which are about 33 inches (0.8 meters) wide, 51 inches (1.4 m) tall and 7 inches (17.8 centimeters) deep — are designed to be easy to install, and will connect to the Internet so that users can monitor their power usage.

It seems that the change from centrally generated electricity to domestic and locally generated electricity is finally starting to become a reality. It will be interesting to see how this develops over the next few years.

Links:
Tesla website

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery

Solar Energy tutorial

 

Facts about Vegetarianism

Vegetarianism

Growing vegetables
Growing vegetables

Vegetarians are people who limit their consumption of animal products. There are many types of vegetarian and the principal ones are as follows.

Ovo-vegetarian: eggs but no dairy products

Lacto-vegetarian: dairy products but no eggs

Ovo-lacto vegetarian: can eat both eggs and dairy products

Pescetarian: fish but no other meat

Fruitarian: only eat fruit, nuts and seeds

Vegan :  excludes all animal products, including eggs, dairy, beeswax and honey. Some vegans also avoid animal products such as leather (and possibly silk).

Flexitarian: people who eat meat only occasionally

There are many reasons for being vegetarian.

Ethical reasons:

Some people are vegetarian because they object to modern factory farming which tends to keep animals in crowded living conditions with little regard to the dignity and happiness of the animals. Confinement at high stocking density requires the use of antibiotics and pesticides to stop the spread of disease. There is growing concern that the overuse of antibiotics will lead to resistant strains of bacteria. Some people believe that industrial poultry practices lead to the creation of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu and that factory farming may provide the conditions for the mutation of other diseases which may eventually affect the human population.

Health Benefits:

The most striking benefit is the decrease in ischaemic heart disease, non-vegetarians have a 24% lower mortality rate for this condition. According to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians are at lower risk for developing:

Heart disease

Colorectal, ovarian, and breast cancers

Diabetes

Obesity

Hypertension (high blood pressure)

Many studies show that a vegetarian diet increases the metabolism, causing the body to burn calories up to 16% faster than the body would on a meat-based diet for at least the first 3 hours after meals.

Environmental benefits of vegetarianism.

Growing crops to feed to animals is very inefficient. Raising animals for food (including land used for grazing and growing feed crops) now uses around 30% of the land mass on Earth. In the United States, 70% of the grain grown is fed to farmed animals. To produce one kilo of animal protein vs. one kilo of soy protein, it takes about 12 times as much land, 13 times as much fossil fuel, and 15 times as much water. The problem is that farm animals are inefficient converters of food to flesh. Broiler chickens are the best, needing around 3.4kg to produce 1kg of flesh, but pigs need 8.4kg for one kilo.

It has been calculated that if the grain fed to animals in western countries were consumed directly by people instead of animals, we could feed at least twice as many people.

Famous vegetarians:

There are hundreds of vegetarian celebrities for example: Albert Einstein, Bill Clinton, Billie Jean King, Boy George, Brad Pitt, Brigitte Bardot, Charlie Watts, Diane Keaton, Gwen Stefani, Chris Evert, Alanis Morissette, Sir Paul McCartney, Ozzy Osborne, Sinead O’Connor, Pamela Anderson, Russell Brand. It is very surprising to discover that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, he did not eat meat for the last 8 years of his life. It is even more surprising to discover that members of the Nazi party were supporters of animal rights and conservation. Heinrich Himmler made an effort to ban the hunting of animals. Göring was a professed animal lover and conservationist. In 1942, Hitler told Joseph Goebbels that he intended to convert Germany to vegetarianism when he won the war. It is incredible that such evil people had an affinity for animals but no regard for their fellow humans.

More info
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/vegetarianism-save-planet-environment

Vegetarian Recipes:
http://cortijoblog.com/category/recipes/vegetarian/

Facts about New York City

New York
New York

A permanent Dutch settlement was established at Fort Orange (now Albany) in 1624. The following year Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the Indians in exchange for some objects worth about 60 Dutch guilders and founded the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (now New York City). It is difficult to calculate how much this would be worth in modern times and estimates vary between $1000 and $19000 but in any case it was extremely cheap. The Indians had no concept of property ownership at that time and did not fully understand what it was to own land.


New York City is famous for its skyscrapers which are concentrated in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. There are 5,845 high-rises, 98 of which are higher than 600 feet or 183 m. The tallest building in New York is One World Trade Center, which is 1,776 feet or 541 m. One of the most famous skyscrapers is the Empire State Building 1,250 feet or 380 m. It was the tallest building in New York between 1931 and 1970.

In 2014 the population New York City was almost 20 million. There are more than 26,000 people living in each square mile. 51.6% of New Yorkers are women and 17.4% are black. On average there is a birth every 4.4. minutes and a death every 9.1 minutes. New York was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been largest city in the USA since 1790.

The terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001 shocked the world when American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Within two hours, both of the 110-story towers collapsed. The attacks killed 2,996 people (including 19 hijackers) and caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage. The cleanup of the World Trade Center site was completed in May 2002 and in 2006 construction of One World Trade Center began at the World Trade Center site. The building was officially opened in November 2014

Since the 1920s the nickname for New York City has been the “Big Apple”. The city of New York will pay for a one-way plane ticket for any homeless person if they have a guaranteed place to stay. The “New York Post” established in 1803 by Alexander Hamilton is the oldest running newspaper in the United States. Times Square is named after the New York Times.

Tourism in New York City is a major industry and there are over 54 million foreign and American tourists each year including day-trippers. One of the big tourist attraction of New York city is the Statue of Liberty which is a giant statue given to America in 1886 by the French. It is visited by 4m people each year. The Statue of Liberty was designed by Gustave Eiffel who also designed the Eiffel Tower. In high winds of 50mph Lady Liberty can sway by up to 3 inches, while her torch can move 5 inches. From the ground to the top of the torch the statue measures 93 metres, and weighs 204 metric tonnes.

Facts about Football

A free kick
Free Kick

Football (aka soccer) as we know it today came from a set of rules invented primarily in Britain. Various forms of football existed with very different rules that were created within the  British “public school” (private school) system. For example, Rugby School in Warwickshire created rules for their version of “football” that would become the foundation for the modern game of Rugby. However, it was Cambridge University who created the rules that were used by the Football Association when it was created in 1867. Cambridge rules were designed to be simple and focus on skill as opposed to force and heavily restricted the use of the hands for controlling ball.

Football is the most popular sport in the entire world. More than 715 million people tuned in to the FIFA World Cup final in 2006 in Germany and there were more than two billion viewers of all the matches in total. If the viewers of the final formed a country, they would be the third most populated country in the world with the total viewers being almost two times the population of China.

Unsurprisingly, football players make a lot of money and are some of the best paid sports-people in the world. Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid FC is the highest paid player in the world, earning £292,000 (after tax) a week. David Beckham is one of the most recognisable football players in the world and has created a brand around him, he currently has a net worth of $350 million. The world’s most expensive player is currently Gareth Bale who Real Madrid FC bought for £85 million in September 2013.

The largest crowd of any football match was between Brazil versus Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. 199,854 people watched the match in the Estádio do Maracanã  to see Uruguay win two goals to nil against the host nation. This match shocked Brazil as many of the country’s newspapers had already proclaimed Brazil to be champions before the final.

Sheffield FC is the world’s oldest football club that currently still plays. The club was founded in 1857 after two members of a local cricket club wanted to make their casual football matches more formal. Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest founded the club and they initially used their own rules (Sheffield Rules) until later adopting formal Association Football rules. Both men heavily influenced amendments to the rules of the game and made the game what it is today.

The football club with the most supporters in the world is Manchester United, with 354 million fans worldwide; the club has been very successful winning the English Premier League 13 times. The next two most supported teams are Barcelona and Real Madrid from Spain. Both teams are fierce rivals and matches played between these two sides are called “El Clásico” with Barcelona currently winning 108 matches to Real Madrid’s 96. The biggest win was by Real Madrid who beat Barcelona 11-1 in a “Copa del Rey” match in 1943.

Click here to see football vocabulary in English Spanish and French

Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_ruleshttp://en.wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_F.C.
http://www.sheffieldfc.com/
http://www.independent.ie/sport/wayne-rooney-and-the-top-10-highest-earning-players-in-world-football-30033217.html
http://www.therichest.com/sports/highest-paid-football-players/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population
http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/worldcup/index.html