What's Everyone's Profession?

Medical sales person

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Mechanical engineer here.

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Physics Teacher, this thread seems like work :woozy_face:

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We need more of you guys. Too many people in finance and law including myself.

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Any engineering stocks you’re looking at? I’ve found myself calling out some crowdfunding campaigns as they don’t seem to make any sense.

GE. It seems to me that the current price is too low, once the virus is gone I’m hoping it rebounds. I’m no expert though, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Another mechanical engineer here! :person_raising_hand:

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I agree about some of the crowdfunding ones, Gravitricity for example, the energy density is just too low. Anything with hydrogen for cars doesn’t make sense, for planes it makes much more sense.

There was one where they generated energy from footsteps. I did some calculations and it turned out that the product wouldn’t even pay for itself within 100 years or something.

What does this mean?

On the other hand, can their technology work? I mean, is it effective? Efficient? Profitable?

I have no affiliation with them

Edit: And my vast knowledge on energy is like push the button lights on push the button lights off

A lot of people would say your wrong about Gravitricity.

The energy stored is mass x height x gravity.
To be generous let’s say they can move 1,000,000 kg through 1000m and gravity is ~10 gm/s^2.
That’s 10 billion joules = 2777kWh, ignoring all loses.
Or 200 Tesla power walls.
That’s a lot of deep holes to dig to gain the difference between electricity at low prices and high prices.

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Coming from a different angle how about as a complimentary supply option, as in when you have new build house numerous energy measures grouped together to achieve the overall goal. It may not be the answer but part of it, todays culture makes people look for the magic pill. We already build skyscrapers with lift shafts, why not a suspension shaft for partial power supply.

Was that Pavegen? It came out of the design school of my uni, Loughborough, and for some reason we were meant to be impressed. Still has the gall to call itself clean-tech.

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The energy density problem is even worse in a household setting. Don’t get me wrong, I am pro green energy (I work on fusion reactors) but this not the magic pill imo. Batteries are pretty good, but as an alternative you might be interested to look up rotational energy storage systems, basically flywheels. A big energy loss from houses is the plug in your bath/shower. Energy from sewers could be interesting to explore.

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I take a bow, I’m out of my depth. I’m just throwing out my thoughts and they probably sound pretty shallow to you. But I like the idea behind the gravitricity patients, no batteries, no chemicals (that may be an oversimplified view). I will take your advice and look into the directions you suggest.

Yep, i had a fairly long back and forth with the founder guy on crowdcube. Ultimately, he is a saleman and people wanted to invest their money into the dream even though basic physics proves that it’s not a viable product. It opens your eyes though.

I read the gravitricity one as well, they said they are going to sell pre-revenue haha. I’d say it’s a glorified blue sky research project as opposed to a proven business model, at this point.

You could make a whole blog or youtube channel by just applying some science or engineering to some of these wonder-technology ideas.

With KERS the goal is to turn the kinetic energy of a vehicle and store it when breaking?!

Would it be possible to create a system that creates and stores energy when accelerating? Cuz there is kinetic energy being generated and going to waste when accelerating right?!

No you want all the energy going into the wheel, that’s the point of acceleration. With braking, normally all the kinetic is turned to heat in the brake pads, this way it is stored in the flywheel, then fed back into the engine for acceleration.

This technology isn’t quite the same, at low demand times in the middle of the night they take excess energy from the grid and start spinning, then at peak times they put it back in. Fossil fuel power stations don’t shut down easily so they produce high amounts of energy all night which normally goes to waste.

Architect here :house:

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