Engineers, What is wrong with this picture?

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Engineers, What is wrong with this picture?
Heron in Barataria Bay, Louisiana. Photo credit
Gerald Hebert Source http//www.boston.com/bigpic
ture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html
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What happened here?
Photo credit Charlie Riedel Source
http//www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in
_the_oil.html
Photo credit Charlie Riedel Source
http//www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in
_the_oil.html
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Do you remember the 2010 oil spill in the gulf of
mexico?
Photo credit US Coast Guard Source
http//cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId8362
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What happened?

• An oil rig named Deepwater Horizon exploded in
  the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010.
• Eleven people working there died.
• The explosion caused oil to begin leaking out.
• It leaked for 87 days.

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What are oil rigs?

• An oil rig is a structure built in the ocean to
  support pipes and drills used to remove oil from
  underground wells. There are many gas and oil
  rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. How many?
• 3858 1 (the one that exploded)
• 3857

Image credit Caroline Higgins Source
http//technorati.com/lifestyle/article/oil-rig-ex
plosion-off-the-coast/
Image credit NOAA Source http//en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/FileGulf_Coast_Platforms.jpg
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How much oil leaked?
160 of these PER DAY
A total of 800,000 gallons of oil
PER DAY
In total, it leaked an estimated 94,000,000 to
184,000,000 gallons.
That is the equivalent of 35,000 swimming pools.
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Where was the leak exactly?

• The explosion and leak occurred 40 miles from the
  Louisiana coast and 1 mile underwater.

Located here
Image credit Source http//www.nytimes.com/inter
active/2010/05/01/us/20100501- oil-spill-tracker.h
tml
This image shows where in the Gulf the oil leaked.
Source http//www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05
/01/us/20100501-oil-spill-tracker.html
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Why do we need oil?

• To power all of this

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More specifically, we use it to power the
combustion engine. How does oil make an engine
run?
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So, we use oil for transportation

• Is this the only way for us to get the energy we
  need?

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What about getting energy from the sun? An
endless source of clean energy?
Solar energy can only power small vehicles,
though.
RIGHT?!
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WRONG!
This is a solar bus in Australia called Tindo.
It is currently being used for mass
transportation!
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But, it cant go very fast. Right?
Wrong!
This is a train engineers are proposing to use in
Arizona. It will be powered by solar cells and
will cut a trip through the desert that usually
takes 2.5 hours down to a 30 minute zip! It will
be called The Bullet.
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What about water travel?

• NO PROBLEM!
• In Australia, they are currently using this fully
  solar powered ferry!

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What do Australia and Arizona have in common?

• Very little cloud cover. That makes them great
  candidates for solar technology.

What about the rest of the world? Can you still
get energy from the sun with clouds in the sky?
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YES!
In Belgium, which has a climate very similar to
Canada, engineers have designed 2 miles of solar
panels. With this, they can power 4000 trains!
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Summary

• If we change the way we get the energy we need to
  move people and things to a clean energy source,
  such as solar energy, we can keep this

from ever happening again.
Photo credit Charlie Riedel Source
http//www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in
_the_oil.html
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So engineers, how are you going to