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  • chris
  • Member Since Jun 17th, 2007

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The Top 20 Classic Choose Your Own Adventures {Asylum}

Nov 12th 2008 3:19PM I didn't read many of these as a kid, but by the description of Supercomputer, it seems like the author of this piece didn't really read the books or find a summary (at least not for this one). The supercomputer in the book was not created by the main character; it was received in the mail (purchased as I recall) and arrived very much in the shape of a somewhat fanciful desktop computer. It acquired its robot body later in the book. There were a couple "defects" in that regard too -- you could get to parts of the story where it had the body without passing through the segment describing how it happened.

Buy a solar powered car ... in China {Autoblog Green}

Oct 16th 2008 4:12PM Redoing my math, it's not as bad as I thought -- I need to eat some crow here.

The typically agreed-upon value for the amount of total solar energy reaching a given area of ground on a clear day is 1336 watts per square meter. Guessing wildly that the panel in the picture is probably about 2 x 2.5 meters in size (someone correct me if this is way off), this gives us 5 m^2, or about 6680 watts of theoretical power available in full sun. At 17% cell efficiency, this equals about 1.14kW, not inconceivable. Being really generous and ignoring the variation of light during the course of a day, we'll simply multiply by their 30-hour figure and get 34.068kWh going into the batteries. At 90% charge efficiency in the batteries, this would mean only 31kWh comes out. To go 90 miles to 80% depth of battery discharge (for acceptable battery life), you'd need a car that can achieve 272Wh/mile.

I am used to rating cars at 65mph, and it would take a very small and aerodynamic car to achieve this usage at that speed. But, this is an NEV so the figure was probably measured at around 30mph and actually may be reasonable.

Of course YMMV, since I've been generous (perhaps too much) in my assumptions above. However, I think their claim is not totally unbelievable, as I claimed earlier.

Buy a solar powered car ... in China {Autoblog Green}

Oct 16th 2008 1:22PM There's no way that the quoted recharge time is correct, perhaps unless those 90 miles are driven at 5mph. There just isn't enough solar energy available in the surface area of that panel, and certainly not enough harvested at 17% efficiency. Something stinks here.

All-electric GEM vehicle gets off-road makeover {Engadget}

Jun 17th 2007 12:21PM Notice that it still retains the Alternative Fuel license plate ... that would make this conversion technically illegal, since it now runs on a gasoline engine.