TeachIngenuity.com » » infrastructure « TeachIngenuity.com http://www.teachingenuity.com Developing the power of creative imagination in young people Sun, 15 Mar 2020 22:56:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.38 The Electrical Grid http://www.teachingenuity.com/2011/08/29/the-electrical-grid/ http://www.teachingenuity.com/2011/08/29/the-electrical-grid/#comments Mon, 29 Aug 2011 17:34:23 +0000 http://www.teachingenuity.com/?p=126 I thought my family had escaped the misfortune of losing power during Hurricane Irene until our power went out late in the afternoon on Sunday for about six hours. Even that moment I had started to ponder the technologies within our power grid system that were keeping it active for most and getting it back [...]]]> I thought my family had escaped the misfortune of losing power during Hurricane Irene until our power went out late in the afternoon on Sunday for about six hours.  Even that moment I had started to ponder the technologies within our power grid system that were keeping it active for most and getting it back online for others.  Below are some thoughts keeping in mind what every young person should understand about the ingenuity in the design of these systems.

As I began to read again about the power grid on HowStuffWorks.com and Wikipedia, perhaps the most startling factor is the age of the infrastructure.  Many of the devices that bring us power from generation to distribution to the home or business are fifty years old or even older.  This factor, while it entered the minds of many during the Northeast Blackout of 2003, continues to hold the system and its reliability back.  Yet, just because something can still perform its task in a system does not mean that it would not improve the system if replaced.

Another important concept in this discussion is that of redundancy in system design.  Redundancy is a most important factor in the reliability of any system.  Voting systems include software and hardware redundancy to increase reliability.  In the case of the power grid, I imagine that more heavily populated areas such as my suburban neighborhood fare better that rural areas.  Think of it this way: if a tree falls and knocks out a power line or if a transformer explodes due to an electrical surge (check out this YouTube video), if there is redundancy in the system circuitry that allows another path for the electricity to get to your home, your lights might flicker for a moment, but your power will remain on.  As you consider the cabling around your neighborhood, you might be able to see how a suburban city layout might fare better as I suggest.  But, one should also consider that redundancy designed into a system always comes with a higher cost.

I also wonder how people with solar panels and other “off-the-grid” technologies made it through this storm.  I thought of technologies such as solid oxide fuel cells such as the “Bloom Box” as it was featured on this episode of 60 Minutes, which could eventually take us off of a grid system entirely.

A final concept for this topic is logistics.  Think about the planning and logistics that go into getting the power back on where it was lost.  Just a few hundred or few thousand people, machines, tools, and vehicles restoring systems for a few hundred thousand or a few million people takes planning and preparation.  I imagine many systems engineers and others are working behind the scenes during this time. If not for their planning, hours might turn into days and days might turn into weeks before normalcy can be restored.

So, these are some topics from this “teachable moment” as we call it in education.  Part of the ingenuity of our people and society comes from understanding of and appreciation for products, systems and topics such as the power grid, infrastructure, redundancy, alternate energy, and logistics.

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]]> http://www.teachingenuity.com/2011/08/29/the-electrical-grid/feed/ 0 President Obama’s State of the Union 2011 http://www.teachingenuity.com/2011/01/25/president-obamas-state-of-the-union-2011/ http://www.teachingenuity.com/2011/01/25/president-obamas-state-of-the-union-2011/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:25:52 +0000 http://www.teachingenuity.com/?p=30 About the first thirty minutes of President Obama’s State of the Union Speech tonight was dedicated to innovation, education, and infrastructure.

I don’t take lightly how the president interwove these themes with education and our schools. I especially noted this reference to the teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM): “And over the next [...]]]> About the first thirty minutes of President Obama’s State of the Union Speech tonight was dedicated to innovation, education, and infrastructure.

I don’t take lightly how the president interwove these themes with education and our schools.  I especially noted this reference to the teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM):  “And over the next ten years, with so many Baby Boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.”

I admire the goal; it’s a very laudable one. However, so many people do not yet realize the power of the two middle parts of the STEM acronym and the value added to a student’s experience when they study them along with mathematics and science.  Though they are hard to find and it may not be true in every school, most schools math and science departments are staffed with people that are very capable of teaching those subjects. What we do not have is enough people to teach our students about technology, engineering, and ingenuity.

Also prominent in this first segment of the speech were themes of entrepreneurship, manufacturing, how technology has revolutionized our lives, global competition, creativity and imagination, clean energy, infrastructure, and invention.  Our students need to know about these things too, but there is really no time left in their math and science classes to learn something meaningful about these other important topics.

The president also made reference to Sputnik and how it led us to transform our education system and research and development.

If we’re going to reinvent ourselves and reinvent our nation, we cannot do it with the same education system that came out of the post-Sputnik era.  While giving our kids more experiences in learning math and science were great things to come out of that era, we need to build on that for the future. Our education system needs more in the way of instruction in Technology and Engineering, which is core to developing ingenuity of our young people.

Here where I live in New Jersey, we have set a strong foundation for these studies.  We’ve also engaged engineers, architects, industrial designers, and other professionals and showed them a path to sharing their knowledge and experience with children. Let’s build on that and truly reinvent education with study of Technology and Engineering at the core.

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