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1- Task Definition:
(1.1-Define the Problem)
The real-world problem today is that there is more demand of energy than there is production. Therefore, countries around the world are thinking of constructing power plants in order to raise the production of energy to satisfy people's demands. They believe that by building these power plants, they are saving money and doing it the easy way. Instead, they are choosing the wrong solution because coal for the plants is not only expensive, but it also increases pollution. What we should do is lower the demands because in the long run, it is cheaper and cleaner. In order to do this, we strongly suggest that people in the Dominican Republic replace the incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent lights.
As we stated above, we want to increase the usage of CFL's in the Dominican Republic. What they want us to figure out in the information problem is how much energy we would save annually if every Dominican switched only a single CFL light bulb. We also want to figure out how much carbon dioxide gases would this prevent from going into our atmosphere by measuring it using the CMS gym. If every dominican changes a light bulb, would it be necessary to build a power plant?
(1.2-Information needed to complete the task)
1.) How many Dominicans live in the Dominican Republic?
2.) What is the energy consumed by each light bulb?
3.) How much time is each light bulb turned on each year?
4.) How many days are in a year?
5.) What is the volume of the CMS gym?
6.) How much carbon dioxide is generated in the production of electricity?
7.) How much volume does carbon dioxide occupy?
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3-Location and Access
(3.1-Locate sources)
http://wekey.wiki.zoho.com/OBB-Dominicana.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic
http://wekey.wiki.zoho.com/OBB-Bulletin-Board.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigawatt
(3.2-Find information within sources)
1.) How many Dominicans live in the Dominican Republic?
2.) What is the energy consumed by each light bulb?
A CFL light bulb that consumes 25 watts/hour can replace an incandescent light bulb that consumes 100 watts/hour.
3.) How much time is each light bulb turned on each year?
Average of Class E Group 2 is 8.53 hrs. or 8 hours and 32 minutes.
4.) How many days are in a year?
There are 365.25 days in a year.
5.) What is the volume of the CMS gym?
We measured the gym and got the following dimensions: H = 8.75 m, W = 19.25 m, L = 41 m and h = 1.75 m
Therefore the volume of the CMS gym is = (19.25 x 41)(8.75 + 1/2 x 1.75) = 7,596.53125 cubic meters.
6.) How much carbon dioxide is generated in the production of electricity?
7.) How much volume does carbon dioxide occupy?
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4-Use of Information
(4.1 Engage in the source (read, listen, view, touch) Ask for help if you don't understand something.
(4.2 Find the important stuff. Take notes.)
Notes:
First we wanted to calculate the total energy savings per year in kWh:
With the total savings per year, we then wanted to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide saved each year:
This would then give us the volume of carbon dioxide saved each year:
Knowing the volume of the CMS Gym (see 3.2), we then calculated the number of CMS gyms that the volume of carbon dioxide saved would occupy:
We also wanted to know if the construction of the new power plant was necessary. From the graph below, we calculated that the current deficit in the production of electricity is around 2,000 GWh/year.
We used the table below to calculate how many kW are in 1 GW.
Then we calculated how much our savings represented in GWh/year:
Therefore, the savings represent roughly what is needed to meet the existing deficit of about 2,000 GWh/year. IF EVERY DOMINICAN REPLACED ONE INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULB FOR A CFL, WE WOULD NOT NEED A NEW POLLUTING POWER PLANT AND WE COULD USE THE MONEY SAVED TO PAY FOR OTHER NEEDS.
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5-Show what you found out. Show the answers to the investigations. Use hyperlinks, pictures, tables, etc. to make your findings clearer.
What did you find out?
We found out that CFL's are better light bulbs than incandescents because they save more energy than any other light bulb. All of the CFL's energy is used to make light while the incandescent light bulbs use 95% of their energy to make heat. So, when we use incandescent light bulbs, only 5% is being used to produce light. Due to the fact that CFL's last longer, we save more money because we need to buy less bulbs. So, if every Dominican living in the Dominican Republic switched just one incandescent light bulb for a CFL light bulb, we would save 2,188,498,399.423875 kwh/year of energy (work shown above). This would prevent 23,158,300 gyms of CO2 gas from going into the atmosphere if lights are on for an average of 8:32 hrs per day.
We also found out that the amount of carbon dioxide saved is HUGE!!
The surface area of Dominican Republic is 48,442 km2. Since 1 km2 is equal to 1,000,000 m2, and the floor of the CMS gym has an area of 19.25m x 41m = 789.25 m2 , we can calculate the number of CMS gyms needed to cover the whole surface of the Dominican Republic:
48,442,000,000 m2 divided by 789.25 m2 = 61,377,256 CMS gyms in surface area.
How many years does it take to cover all of the Dominican Republic with CMS gyms filled with excess CO2 produced by incandescent light bulbs?
61,377,256 divided by 23,158,300 = 2.65 years.
For every light bulb that is not changed by each Dominican, every 2.65 years we are covering the whole surface of the Dominican Republic with CMS gyms full of CO2 !!!!
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Furthermore, what we mainly learned was how to find good information. This means we are now capable of distinguishing the unnecessary information that we do not need from the ones we do. We learned good consumer habits like not focusing on the price of a product when buying the product. Instead, we learned to think about how much money we'd save in the long run. For this reason we now know that CFL bulbs are definitely more economic than incandescent bulbs.
What should be done?
We should change the most used lightbulbs in our house to CFL's. This way we save energy, money, and our environment and we would not need another costly and polluting power plant.
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6-How would you rate the quality of your solution? What areas, if any, need more attention?
We would give it a 10 out of 10 because all our information is very accurate. We say this because while we were in the gym, we were extremely careful of aligning our measuring instrument and its crosshairs. Every member of our group measured the height of the gym using our instrument in order to see and compare our results with each others'. Furthermore, to figure out the volume of the CMS gym we also used a meter stick to accurately measure the length and the width of the gym. When multiplying and dividing, we were careful not to round our results in order to avoid errors from become major. We did further investigation than was asked for by visualizing how much CMS gyms cover the surface area of the Dominican Republic. Ultimately, we used accurate graphs and tables from reliable sources to organize and present our information and results in a fashion that is easy to understand. |
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