Science Memes

11437 readers

1414 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

1210

But yes. (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

126 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Nearly all power generation comes down to boiling water to steam which spins a turbine.

I can only think of two common exceptions off the top of my head. Solar is an exception and Hydro power is an exception ironically, that usually uses the vertical difference and gravity to spin the turbine.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wind turbines also.

But some solar does focus it on a tower to make steam to drive a turbine.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Yeah, who would have guessed that modernity was invented by someone who stuck magnets to a fidget spinner and strapped it to a boiler.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

One could even argue that hydro power is just boiling water, letting it condense, and then letting it spin a turbine

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I've never heard of Hydro power boiling water. Usually hydro power is natural or pumped storage.

You're just taking water from an upper reservoir and dropping it to a downstream river. Either a naturally-filled reservoir/lake, or a pumped storage reservoir where you use other cheap power during low usage periods to pump that water to a higher reservoir to utilize later. The pump doesn't heat the water, it just moves it uphill to utilize later, like the Taum Sauk Hydroelectric Power Station in Missouri.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

They were speaking of the water cycle. It's the naturally-filled part. Not necessarily boiled, but evaporated.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I know that… I was taking liberties to take hydroelectric power to its furthest logical extension by saying that the sun is evaporating (boiling) the water, it goes through the water cycle, it is deposited atop mountains or further upriver, and it then flows back down through the hydroelectric stations.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Piezo electricity too. It's very seldom used for power generation but does exist

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Oh yea! I forgot about that one! It's starting to be used a lot in implantable medical devices to generate a small current. There was also that thing a few years back that was trying to use it to generate power from waves/tides; not sure if that actually got past the proof-of-concept stage though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Wind? And binary cycle geothermal plants but not sure how common they are.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

There are gas turbine generators that directly use shaft power to generate electricity