This is Fracking Ridiculous!

"What is fracking? Why is it bad for the environment?" - James

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of extracting trapped natural gas from the geosphere by cracking through the layers of rock that trap the gas in. This process has been one of the most controversial methods of resource gathering in modern times. Reports of flammable water, earthquakes and dangerous chemical spills have brought fracking to the top of the hippie list.

It might not be the most accurate representation, but I just couldn't help myself.

Natural gas is a nonrenewable resource made of mostly methane gas, which is very combustible and used to boil water and turn turbine generators. Over the course of billions of years, dead organisms get pushed down into the crust of the earth, where they decompose further under the intense pressure and heat. The volatile materials (elements that prefer to be a gas instead of a solid or liquid) will escape the decomposing animals, while the non-volatile materials will turn into coal or oil.

Some natural gas finds an easy path to the surface, such as in underwater methane plumers, in which gas bubbles up through the ocean floor to the surface. Other times, gas almost makes it to the top, but is frozen underneath lakes, which have been recently releasing due to recent climate change.

These methane have begun to be released upon the
melting of the permafrost in the arctic.

Another instance of this is the Door to Hell in Turkmenistan, which burns a seamlessly endless supply of natural gas, which has been burning since 1971, when scientists thought that burning the gas would help spread out the gas and clean it up. Their mistake.

70 meters wide and hot as hell. It just won't stop burning.

However, most natural gas is trapped underneath the rock, where the only way to release it from it's eternal prision is to break the rock that holds it captive. The way they do that is by drilling a great big hole 2-3 km down and filling it with extremely high pressure water. In that water is a bunch of tiny ceramic balls and over 50 chemicals (that we know of). The chemicals range from anti-bacterials to chemicals that prevent sinkholes to lubricants to anti-corrosive agents. None are particularly harmful, but I don't think I would drink water from a well that was filled with them. The ceramic beads are a special group. These completely unreactive balls (which contain the same material as hip replacements) get in between the rocks and hold them open to give the gas time to escape. All in all, the process is not overly complicated. Drill a hole (easier said than done), fill the hole with high pressure water (and chemicals and balls), pump water (and chemicals) out of the hole, collect natural gas.

The fracking companies make it look so pleasant for the environment.

Now that we have a basic understanding of fracking, let's tear it apart and look at the dangers behind the curtain. Fracking is great because it's a closed system. Chemicals and water go in, chemicals and water come out. This is great. Except it's a lie. Fracking is not a closed system. Responsible fracking companies will be thorough in removing all fluids. Others not so much. Responsible fracking companies will be careful to limit their pressure to prevent cracks from the hydrofrack zone (see left) from getting into the groundwater aquifer (which is connected to hundreds of personal drinking wells). But many mistakes are made. Cracks can often link to the aquifer, contaminating the groundwater. Even worse, despite making conscious efforts to prevent groundwater contamination, the freed up natural gas can diffuse through the now open rock formations and enter the groundwater and, through rigorous testing, it has been found that wells in fracking zones contain six times more methane that natural levels found outside of fracking zones. All of this methane in the water has been found to cause increase flammability of water (yeah, I'll say that again... flammability of water... Jesus...), but it is not harmful. Drinking methane doped water is not harmful, and is even found in many regions of the world without fracking due to methane migration.

However, this revelation of increases in methane concentration in groundwater shows that fracking is not a closed system. Fracking opens up the shale layer of the crust to release natural gas for collection and energy production, but also releases an unknown amount of methane and CO2 into the atmosphere. While the methane leaks won't be enough to blow up your house in a fracking region, it's additional burden on the atmosphere is completely overlooked.

What is this sorcery?!

Methane (CH4) is a very common greenhouse gas that is often overlooked in the battle of climate change. Released by livestock and by natural gas leaks, methane is significantly more dangerous than CO2, trapping 20-25 time more heat. However, it doesn't last as long as CO2 and is not released in as high a quantity, so it often goes unmentioned on Capital Hill. However, leaks from fracking release about 50% more methane than naturally occurring reservoirs and more and more operations mean more and more sites where methane leaks. According to a 2012 article, methane contributes 44% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US, with 17% of that being from fracking operations.

Additionally, fracking has been thought to be the culprit of many small earthquakes, though the cause of larger earthquakes away from fault lines is unsure. This would be due to the act of forcing open underground rock, which would eventually crack under the pressure of the rock above it, crashing back down and allowing further shifting. However, the extent of the damage that could be caused by this is unknown.

While the act of fracking does have potential into reaching untapped regions of fossil fuels and, in optimal circumstances, would not overly disrupt the goings on of normal lives, I for one still remain skeptical. Fracking is clearly a band-aid solution, meant to stave off the need to invest in renewable energy sources and giving the oil and gas companies one more trick to pull in the profits until their doors are shut for good. While the issues presented in this article are considered minimal in the grand scheme of things remember that the natural gas extracted in this process is eventually burned, releasing even more greenhouse gases into the air. Many people might defend hydraulic fracking, saying that the evidence put forth that it is bad for the environment is thin, but remember that they are talking about the few extra drops of blood being added to a massacre called greenhouse emissions and climate change. Don't lose sight of the big picture, fracking is just adding to the problem.

The Quest for Self-Sustaining Power

"What is Nuclear Fusion? How does it work?" - Self

Extreme science has always been an interest to me, especially the grand implications that can be achieved by studying it. Nuclear fusion - or harnessing the power of the sun - has some of the grandest implications, being able to power the entirety of New York City with just 20 grams of hydrogen. (which is about as much as one 50L tank of hydrogen that research facilities use). It's such a remarkable technology, that it has been placed on the Grand Challenges for Engineering and has made much headway thanks to breakthrough research from MIT, as well as continuous research from nationwide research facilities in Japan, France and America.

So what is fusion anyways? Going off the more well known idea of Chinese-American culinary fusion, it is the idea of taking two things and pushing them together. You see, there is a lot of energy packed into the nucleus of an atom and, when two atoms are shoved together to make something new, a lot of that energy is released to make room for all of it. In nuclear fusion, we take two hydrogen atoms (specifically, a special isotope of hydrogen called deuterium and another called tritium) and mash them together to make a helium atom and a spare neutron.

Looks simple, doesn't it?

Now, this might look like an easy process, but mashing together two hydrogen isotopes isn't like baking a cake. Atoms naturally push each other away. While atoms are electrically neutral, they do still have a positive side and a negative side. Unfortunately, the positive side is the core (nucleus) and the negative side is the shell (electron cloud). If you've ever tried to push two similar poles of a magnet together, you'd see the problem here. In order to accomplish fusion, you need to push atoms together so hard that their electron clouds overlap and their nuclei crash into each other. That's a lot of energy.

On the left side of the graph, all of that energy is just overlapping the electron cloud, the nuclei aren't even close yet...

However, once we get the nuclei to crash together, fusion is a pretty quick next step. But how do we overcome all that repulsive energy? Well, the atoms just need a little motivation. If you give them the energy they need to push through the electron cloud, they will do it all by themselves. Atoms move naturally when they're heated up. The hotter they are, the faster they move. When they bump into another atom, they change directions. However, if you make them hot enough, they will hit the other atoms with such force that the nuclei will collide and they will fuse. So if you want to get some fusion, you have to put in a lot of energy. How much energy, you ask?

A lot...

In order to start a fusion reaction, several lasers are fired at a piece of deuterium (remember: hydrogen isotope), which will require about 800 Megawatts of energy (equal to about 80,000 LED lightbulbs). This is a very difficult feat, and a huge cost to start the reaction. However, the great news is that once the fusion reaction begins, it's self-sustaining. The energy released from the reaction is recycled to activate it again. Additionally, the extra neutron released is added to a deuterium to make the tritium required to start it. So you only need a pool of deuterium and the energy required to activate it, and you have an excellent source of power.

But what is deuterium? If you pull out your handy Pocket Periodic Table of Elements, you won't find it on there because it is an isotope of hydrogen, meaning that it is a hydrogen atom with an extra neutron. A normal hydrogen atom is one proton and one electron (no neutrons). But sometimes, a hydrogen atom can pick up an extra neutron, like picking up a hitchhiker on the side of the road. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Most deuterium in the world comes from the oceans, but it's still only 0.0156% of all the hydrogen atoms found in the ocean. That might not seem like a lot, but it's still hundreds of lifetime supplies. Additionally, through some pretty awesome science, it can be made from ordinary water.

So if we have the materials and have the technology and can produce the energy, why aren't we all running of fusion power now? The main challenge is to make a machine that can withstand the absolute onslaught of abuse. For nuclear fusion to occur, we must heat the hydrogen up to about 100 million Celsius... Materials usually can't handle that kind of heat. Additionally, the neutrons flying about from the reaction can also do some damage and leave some pretty heavy radioactivity to clean up.

Radioactivity, you say?

So is it safe? Many people hear nuclear energy and automatically jump to the worst case scenario (i.e. Chernobyl or Fukushima). To start, nuclear energy itself is not a dangerous thing and can be well contained, albeit requiring a serious amount of time to cool down. Fusion energy is even safer, as a leak would immediately cool down to temperatures that inhibit the fusion reaction, stopping it in its tracks. There is still radioactive material to deal with, but nowhere near the level that normal nuclear fallout would produce.

Every year, countries are making new advancements in sustainable nuclear power, testing new technologies and alternative theories to make it safer, cheaper and easier to maintain. It might still be on the Engineering Grand Challenges, but it won't be for long and nuclear fusion will be the be all, end all of energy production. Just make sure to send your thank you letters to the sun for giving us the idea.

A Sugary Solution

"If plants use photosynthesis to make sugar for energy and growth, why don't plants taste like sugar?" - Anon.

How amazing would it be to make sugars anytime you wanted just by standing out into the sun and taking a deep breath... This is all plants do. They don't need three solid meals a day. They get all their energy just by converting the sugars they make during photosynthesis into ATP. But that's not all plants use their produced sugar for. Some sugar goes to fruits to aid reproduction. Others are used to help build the plant bigger and taller.

So that takes us to the question at hand. If plants use sugar to grow, why don't leaves taste like sugar? To answer that, we should start by looking at sugar itself. Sugar comes in a variety of styles, determined mostly by how big the molecule is. The simplest, smallest form of sugar is glucose (C6H12O6). This is the sugar that is used to make energy in our cells. But there are other types of sugars too! Fructose and galactose are also simple sugars. These sugars are called monosaccharides because there are only one of them. If more than one of these is joined together, you can get disaccharides or polysaccharides (same thing as carbohydrates).

Who knew sugar was so complicated?!

When we eat fruit, we are often are eating fructose. Some fruits (like mangoes) also have pectin (which is what makes it sour), which is a polysaccharide. The great thing about plants is that they treat sugars like legos. Photosynthesis will provide them the building blocks they need to make whatever they want. If they are in the reproduction phase of their life, they will turn it into fructose for fruit. If they are hungry, they will use glucose for energy. If they are ready to build new cells for growth, they will make cellulose. It's all just a combination of 6 carbons, 12 hydrogens and 6 oxygens in repeating units.

It's kind of like candy crush, just a puzzle made of sugars.

If you think about eating plants, you can really see this in action. Some parts of plants are sweet and tasty (grape = fructose), others are sour (lime = pectin), and others still are bitter and not sweet at all (broccoli = cellulose). But they all come from the same thing, putting together sugars. Another example is bread, which is a polysaccharide (carbohydrates). It doesn't taste sweet, but it just a bundle of glucose molecules that our body turns into energy.

Interestingly enough, some polysaccharides can be digested (starches), while others cannot (fibers). They are both very important for our body, but the key difference is that fibers pass straight through us, providing no energy. This is because our bodies don't have the necessary tools to break down fibers like cellulose, inulins and pectins. However, other animals like cows, do have these tools. This is why you will find cows eating grass. Their stomachs can break down any polysaccharides, meaning 100% of the plant will give them energy. If you sit outside all day eating nothing but grass, you will still starve to death.

Grass, grass everywhere and not a blade to eat...

A Breath of Fresh Air

"If CO2 came from volcanoes from our past and oxygen came from photosynthesis, where did nitrogen come from?" - Anon

A question that almost every parent gets sometime in their life: "Mommy? Where did we come from?" While the answer is relatively clear and scientifically identifiable, we always run with the old fallback answer, "a stork delivered you in the night." In reality, all of the mass in all of the universe was created during the big bang and then changed and transformed in the following 13.7 billion years. Stars took the primitive hydrogen atoms and fused them together to make helium, which fused to create nitogen, which fused to make carbon, which fused to make neon, and so on and so forth. All atoms in the universe were made in this fashion. But when the star could no longer handle the unreasonable workload, it gave up and made an explosive exit.

A star exploding in a supernova

When a star explodes (actually, it implodes), all of the matter that it produced shoots out through the solar system, where it can turn into planets, asteroids, moons and even new stars. Screw the water cycle, we're talking about the planetary cycle.

At this time, the solar system is a pretty toasty place to be (think thousands of degrees Celsius). However, bonding can still occur. Metals bond with nonmetals (CaO), Nonmetals bond with metals (O2) and they all pull at eachother with the force of gravity. Even by the time the Earth was formed, we had some crude minerals. Over time, more and more bonding occurred between the elementary dust in the universe.

When our Earth formed, it was so hot (thousands of degrees Celsius) that everything was lava.

Kind of like this, but with a few less lava-dragons

But what is lava actually made of? It just looks like this syrupy orange hot mess. Turns out, you can't tell what it is just from looking at it. Everything kind of looks the same when it's thousands of degrees Celsius.

Ancient Earth was just a mixture of all these minerals joined together. Ferrite, mixed with Andesite, mixed with Feldspsar, mixed with Barrasite, mixed with Silicates, mixed with Borax, mixed with Soda Niter etc and etc and etc. This giant mixture of minerals began cooling down over time and the minerals began hitting their crystallization temperature.

A brief explanation of fractional crystallization of magma

And this is how the Earth formed in all of its solid mass. You can look here and there and find different minerals in different places. Evidence has proven this by showing that the minerals that crystallize out first are lower in the mantle, while high melting point minerals (sand) is higher up. So what does this all have to do with the atmosphere?

Well carbonate minerals like Calcite (CaCO3), Dolomite (CaMgC2O6) and Siderite (FeCO3) sometimes broke down at those high temperatures, releasing the CO2 part of their chemical makeup into the air. This eventually built up enough to say that our atmosphere had lots of CO2.

Scientists are unsure of where water came from in our atmosphere, but believe that an icy comet smashed into the planet about 1 billion years after it formed. The temperature was still so hot that it melted, but it stayed in the atmosphere and gave us oceans.

Now, onto the nitrogen. There are plenty of nitrate minerals on Earth, but they are sticky little guys and refuse to let go of the metals that they hang onto. However, there are other minerals out there based on Ammonium (NH4), such as Bararite (NH4NH4SiF6) which breaks down, giving off it's ammonia to the atmosphere.

It was actually believed that there were many many more ammonium based minerals on Earth before, but they got broken down so fast that by the time we came around, there were none less. This idea comes from 1) the fact that nitrogen is the 5th most abundant atmosphere in the universe (with hydrogen being the first), 2) that our atmosphere is made out of so much more nitrogen than CO2 and O2 combined, and 3) that we still have a few ammonium based minerals to prove that it's possible.

Well there you have it. To understand where exactly nitrogen in our atmosphere came from, you need to start at the beginning of the Earth and then obtain a small understanding of how minerals change from liquid to solid while still keeping their chemical composition. Then, with a sprinkle of knowledge about volatilization of certain compounds, you can finally understand that nitrogen came from our geosphere just like CO2 did.

"But wait teacher, if nitrogen came from the rocks and CO2 came from the rocks, why didn't oxygen come from the rocks?"

God, did you learn nothing?! Just kidding. I mentioned before that some rocks contain nitrogen in them, but refuse to let go of the metal they hold onto. Oxygen does the same thing. Oxygen bonds to its metal much stronger than CO2 and Ammonium does so even at very high temperature, you can't remove oxygen from it's metal without a really good push. That push never happened, so oxygen couldn't come from the rocks. Instead it had to come from cyanobacteria, which took CO2 from the air, water from the oceans, and light from the sun to make sugar for energy and O2 gas.

Adenosine Tri-What?

"Why do we have use the term ATP in cells? Why can't we just call it energy?" - Pun

Energy... It's always there, but it can't be seen. It comes in many flavors; some easy to understand (temperature), some not so easy to understand (nuclear). It simply has the power to make change. Energy can change the position of a car, or change the brightness in a room or change how tired we are feeling on a Monday morning. Energy is a special thing that is completely different from matter. It simply exists. Sometimes it exists inside matter, like the energy that makes atoms vibrate super fast.

There are lots of different types of energy and ways they can interact with each other.

One thing we definitely know is that we need energy. Our bodies need it to live. Our heart needs energy to push blood through our brain. Our lungs need energy to get oxygen to that blood. Our brain needs energy to help us remember the answer to that question on the test. All of that energy comes from food. Delicious, delicious food. Cakes, and sandwiches, and cookies, and potato chips and steaks and hamburgers and pizza... okay I'm getting carried away.

Food contains very important nutrients that we need to survive. When it comes to energy, we will focus on two of those nutrients: sugars and carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are just lots of sugar molecules all stuck together, so we can actually treat sugars and carbohydrates as the same things. When these sugars go into our cell, they get broken down and put back together many many times in three steps: glycolysis, the Kreb's cycle, and the electron transport chain. Let's have a quick look at what happens.

Sugar starts as C6H12O6 and through these three steps, carbons, hydrogens and waters go in and out like a black Friday market sale. The process is long and complicated and I'm sure you have or will memorize it sometime in the future because schools think that kind of thing is important.

I told you it was insane...

The purpose of this cycle is to create molecules that are smaller, easier to move and contain a buttload of energy. What you can see in the diagram above is the production of those yellow star molecules, ATP and GTP. GTP is a little different in that it is energy specially designed for protein creation. But ATP is there and lots of it can be made. A single glucose molecule (tiny, simple sugar) can create 38 ATP molecules through glycolysis, the kreb's cycle and the electron transport chain.

ATP, Adenosine TriPhosphate, is a great molecule for energy. The Adenosine part is simply the hand that holds the energy. It's the phosphate groups (PO4 groups) that are the most important. Phosphates are great because they really like to leave molecules and move around. When they leave, the chemical energy packed in the bonds gets released, allowing the cells to move, twist, pull and shift in any way our body needs.

The ATP molecule, in all its glory.

So why must we use ATP and not just "energy"? Well, it's because ATP is not energy. ATP is closer to a battery, with energy ready when you need it. Those 38 little ATP molecules will be on standby until you need to dodge a ball flying right at your face. The interesting thing is that your body makes ATP so fast, that it is actually always being used. The quote below should help you realize how much ATP our body truly uses.

Your 70kg body produces 180kg of ATP and then uses 180kg of ATP every day. That's a lot of energy.

You Can't Polish a Turd

"Trump's plan to bring back the coal industry isn't that bad. The development of clean coal will make a big improvement." - My Dad

Jumping on the "Let's-Slam-Donald-Trump" bandwagon, I decided that it's time to show the world exactly what Mr. President's new energy plan really means. For my uninformed readers, America under Obama's presidency has seen wonderful funding to alternative energy sources like wind and solar. While there are still great hoops to jump through to install large powered solar and wind farms, states are still seeing progress. Texas has the largest on-land wind farm in the world and Iowa is leading the U.S. in wind energy. Meanwhile, California is running two solar farms and over 500,000 completed solar installation projects. Over 200,000 homes in California have solar panels installed.

2015 saw approximately 13.5% of total energy generation produced by renewables.

With about 13.5% percent of energy generation produced using renewable resources, where does the rest of the energy come from? Petroleum, Natural Gas and Coal all ring in with approximately 30%, give or take. Coal has fallen in recent years due to government regulations. Enter our main man, Donald J. Trump.

According to Trump's New Energy Plan, we are going to abandon climate-conscious decisions of focusing on renewables and give coal and natural gas a second shot (not to mention continue funding the war in the middle east as a not-so-subtle bid to keep funding our mining of petroleum). Trump and his administration are also committed to the clean coal technology as a bid to be more conscious about damaging our environment.

"What? Clean coal you say? So, like a coal that doesn't hurt the environment?" Well... not really. Let's start by introducing coal. Coal, or plants that died millions of years ago, is a carbon based substance that is burned to boil water and spin generators for energy production. Energy manufacturers love this stuff because there is a buttload of energy packed in all those bonds (the double bonds have a lot more energy) and the government doesn't mind if you dump the waste out into the environment (mostly because it's almost entirely CO2). Now, I said almost entirely CO2, but not 100%. You see, America uses Bituminous coal, which is approximately 45-86% carbon. There's a lot of other stuff trapped in there, such as mercury, nitrates, sulfates, and even some elements that will produce radioactive waste when burned. Ouch...

Clean coal technology does exactly what it says on the tin. It cleans coal. By using fancy chemical reactions with other gases and treating the coal at a range of temperatures, scientists have found that they can capture most of the sulfates and nitrates before the coal is burned, preventing them from getting into the atmosphere where they can turn into Sulfuric and Nitric Acids (acid rain). This technology doesn't mention removing mercury or the radioactive components of the coal because it can't get rid of them at all. So, let's put this simply: Clean coal cannot remove the CO2, the mercury or radioactive waste products, but it's supposed to be the environmentally conscious choice of the new presidential administration.

Let's look at these wastes a little more, with some special r/theydidthemath focus on CO2 emissions. When you light up your BBQ and cook up a juicy steak, you're using charcoal (which is slightly different from coal in that it's artificially made and pure carbon). That little piece of coal will produce approximately 85 liters of CO2.

That is the CO2 emissions from a 0.25kg, fist size piece of coal.

To put some nationwide numbers to it, let's use numbers from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, who states that 1 pound of bituminous coal (the most common coal used in America) will produce 2.86 pounds of CO2, which equates to roughly 655.25 liters of CO2 (at normal pressure and 0C). In 2015, the U.S. produced 4,500,000,000,000 pounds of coal which, when burnt, will produce 3,000,000,000,000,000 liters of coal. That's a lot of zeroes... Too many to really comprehend. Let's look at some other numbers to really help us.

• America drank approximately 53,000,000,000 liters of soda in 2015. Not even close.
• America needs approximately 63,000,000,000,000 liters of oxygen to live for a year. Closer...
• The Great Lakes contain 21% of the world's freshwater supply, coming in at 23,000,000,000,000,000 liters of water. There it is.

In one year, the production of coal alone would produce enough CO2 to fill one of the great lakes entirely! It doesn't seem like a very big amount when compared to the vastness of our atmosphere, but that's one country with one resource in one year. And it doesn't go away so easily. Let's look at some more math to figure that out! There are approximately 3,000,000,000,000 trees on Earth, which sucks in approximately 7,500,000,000,000,000 liters of CO2 per year. That means that America produces 25% of all the CO2 that the trees can handle per year. That's just coal (not oil, not petroleum, not biomass) and just American Energy (not forest fires, not volcanoes, not EU energy, not human respiration). This does not include ocean sequestration, however the ocean about matches plant based sequestration.

So, while big man Donald Trump insists that clean coal is the way forward to for environmentally conscious energy production, remember that coal is coal. Combustion of coal with oxygen will lead to CO2. You can't fix that. What you can fix is your method of producing said energy. We have environmentally friendly ways, which are becoming more efficient every year.

Additionally, Trump insists that reducing regulations on coal mining will bring more jobs to America. While he is not wrong, more people will have jobs, his statement implies that a focus on renewable energy does not bring jobs. That, much like many other statements of his, is untrue. Below is a graph showing the number of jobs per energy source and shows that increases in solar technology has created an enormous number of jobs, ranging from installation technicians to maintenance engineers. 

Don't abandon renewables research, as it is healthy for the environment, healthy for society and healthy for the economy.

Generating some understanding

"How do wind turbines generate electricity?" - Hong

Almost all (with the exception of solar) resources for energy use rely on the process of spinning a wheel to create electricity. We call this a generator. Resources like nuclear, oil, coal, natural gas, and biomass are simply burned as a means to boil water and push the steam through a tube to spin a wheel. Others like hydroelectric, wind and geothermal use the natural movement of energy on earth to spin wheels for us.

Regardless, how do spinning wheels turn into electricity? Well, it's not magic (but it's not far off, either). To understand it, let's take a journey into the atomic world to look at electricity. Electricity is just a common person's word for moving electrons. Your cell phone works by taking electrons from one side of a battery (the negative side), moving them through an electrical circuit to the other side of the battery (the positive side). When there are no more electrons on the negative side, your battery is dead. Rechargeable batteries work by moving those electrons on the positive side back to the negative side. The electricity sockets in your house work by taking electrons from a power plant and moving them through a line to power your TV.

Now, back at the power plant, how are we turning moving wheels into electrons? Focusing on wind power, we know that moving wind spins a turbine wheel. At the end of that wheel is a little magnet inside of a copper ring.

The magnet will spin inside the copper ring.

Remember that magnets have two poles: a north pole and a south pole, or a positive pole and a negative pole. Also remember that electrons have a negative charge. When you take two magnets, the opposite sides attract. That is because positives and negatives attract. Meanwhile, similar sides push away, so a negative will push away from a negative. Thus, when the magnet is spinning, the electrons are constantly moving with the positive side (because opposites attract) and moving away from the negative side (because they repel). All of these electrons are moving around inside the copper because of the spinning magnet. And what is it called when electrons are moving? Well, let's rewind back to the beginning:

"Electricity is just a common person's word for moving electrons." - Griffin

So you see, a spinning magnet moves electrons in a copper wire. I would say you can try this at home, but drilling a hole in a magnet would not be a fun time and you would end up destroying the battery on your cell phone trying anyways. The same idea is applied to the other forms of energy too! Spinning wheels are connected to spinning magnets which move electrons in a copper wire. Don't think that oil, gas, nuclear and natural gas are any different than the amazing wind, water or geothermal resources. They work off the same idea and are much better for the environment!

BONUS: We choose copper because it is quite cheap and a very good conductor. For example, to get a 5V charge out of this, you need 500 meters of copper wire wrapped around the tube. So those wind turbines have a lot of copper in there!

Because I'm Hot-Blooded, Got a Fever of 103

"Why does our body stay at 37° C?" - Pun 

In our body's quest to always keep that magic state of equilibrium, possibly the most important feature is the temperature that we all know: 37°C[1]. We are all familiar with the disastrous effects of deviating from this immortal number. Too low and you'll develop hypothermia where your important organs begin to break down[2]. Too hot and you'll develop hyperthermia, where you're too hot. Fevers are another form of elevated temperature, which is usually purposefully caused by your body to kill off bacteria (or other bad micro-organisms) due to the fact that these baddies cannot handle the heat like our body can. All of these wonders of science revolve around the magic number of 37°C or, more specifically, homeostasis.

Homeostasis is the process where your body tries to maintain stability while changing to meet conditions that will best help you survive. Body temperature is one of the best examples of this. If you're in a cold room, homeostasis is why your brain tells you its cold and to put on a jacket. If you're in a hot room, homeostasis is why you sweat, which helps cool you down. However, other examples include energy and damage control. If your cells don't have enough sugar to function, your brain gets this message and tells you to eat. If you touch a hot stove, your nerves send messages to your brain to tell you to get away from the painful area. If you didn't have homeostasis, either of these examples would kill you.

But back to the question: Why 37°C? Let's take this in a different direction. Our bodies run a lot of different things all at one time. They think, they eat, they poop, they run, they protect. They really are complex machines, just like computers. When you turn on your computer, it takes a little bit of time to get it started. Even when everything is loaded up and you're looking at the home screen, it's still really slow. That's because it needs time to warm up. Computers operate best at temperatures of 50-65°C. If you run too many programs at one time, the system slows down and maybe even crashes! That's because it's getting too hot. Our bodies are just like that. They work best at 37°C. Too cold and they can't get the blood they need to operate. Too hot and the cells begin to break down.

Not all organisms are like us though. We are of a special group called warm-blooded animals. This means that we control our own temperature through the use of energy (calories from our food) to heat us up, much like a pot of water uses energy from the walls to heat up. But there are other organisms out there that we call cold-blooded animals. Examples of these are frogs, snakes, and fish. These animals don't maintain their own body temperature. Their temperature is always equal to the temperature outside.

Thermal image of cold-blooded scorpion who doesn't hold his own body temperature

Thermal image of warm-blooded boy who always has an internal temperature of 37°C (image is in F)

Cold blooded animals therefore must be much more careful about the temperature of their habitat. If it's too cold, they will freeze to death.[3] These animals often like to lie in the sun to increase their body temperature, which can help with their metabolism. While being cold-blooded sounds like it would totally suck, it does have evolutionary advantages. Constantly keeping your body at 37°C requires a lot of energy. You need to eat and eat and eat and eat just to keep at that temperature. If you're cold blooded, you don't need to waste energy on that silly thing. This means you can live on just a diet of flies and not waste all those calories just to keep you warm. If you're not wasting food energy on keeping warm, you'll probably live longer.

Bonus information: Evolution has put us at exactly 37°C because if our equilibrium temperature was any lower, we would be more likely to have infections. But any hotter would require us to eat significantly more just to get the calories needed to keep that temperature stable.