Tag: Plants

Grow Plants Without Lights Or Total Darkness

Posted on by gogreen

Some people claim that it’s possible to grow plants in total darkness. If you’d like to see for yourself, you’ll find all the information you need right here. Think what a great science project this could make for you or someone you know.

To give you a general overview of the experiment, a seed is placed in a container along with two metal plates. The container is placed in a box or somewhere light can’t reach it. Wires from the plates go to a plate outside the house and to an electrical ground inside the house. Energy gathered from the outside plate travels down the wire to the seed where it causes the seed to sprout and grow in the absence of sunlight.

We’ll be using seeds in this case, but you can also try using young or mature plants as well. Just know that as the size of the plant increases, the size of the plate must also increase. It may take some experimentation to find the right size of the metal plate in relation to the size of the plant.

Here is a list of things you’ll need for this experiment:

1. Two lengths of thin, insulated wire for each container. They can be any gauge you have around.

2. Three metal plates (approximately 2″ x 2″) for each seed. Aluminum roof flashing works great.

3. A small container for each seed.

4. Seeds of your choice for planting.

HOW TO 1

Find two wires that are long enough for one to reach from where you have the container inside the house, to a high spot outside the house. The other needs to be long enough to reach a grounding source, such as a water pipe, inside the house.

HOW TO 2

Strip away an inch or so of the insulation from both ends of each wire and attach the one going to the grounding source to one of the plates as follows:

Drill a small hole close to the edge of the plate and thread the wire through it. Loop the bare wire back to itself and twist the wires together. Solder the wire at the hole to keep it in place and to make the electrical connection.

You can also use duct tape, glue, or anything else you can find to keep the bare wire always touching the metal plate. An electrical connection to the plate is crucial for this to work.

HOW TO 3

Place the metal plate in the container where you’ll be planting the seed and run the wire up and over the edge. Fill the container with potting soil or dirt and plant the seed. Place the container on a table a few feet above the ground.

HOW TO 4

Run the wire from the plate to an electrical ground. An easy place to find a ground is underneath a sink. Wrap the bare wire around one of the bare pipes coming out of the wall to make this connection.

HOW TO 5

Attach the longer wire that will be going to the high spot on the outside of the house to another metal plate. Drill a hole, insert and twist the wire, then solder in the same manner as the first plate.

HOW TO 6

This HOW TO may take a bit of ingenuity on your part, but you need to find a way to suspend the second plate a few inches above the soil where the seed is planted. In doing so, this plate can’t touch the soil in any way. Devise whatever method you can to ensure that no contact is made.

A possible solution might be to put, over the top of the seed, one of those plastic spacers that sits in the middle of a pizza to keep the lid from smashing in. Push the legs of the spacer into the dirt and attach the metal plate to it to hold it suspended over the seed.

As the experiment progresses and the seed grows, you will need to think of another way to suspend the plate over the plant. Test different heights for the upper plate and find the height that allows optimal plant growth.

HOW TO 7

Finally, connect the free end of the wire from the upper plate to the remaining plate as already described. Guide the plate and wire outside to a high spot, either on the roof, in a tree, or on a pole. Placing this plate the greatest distance possible from the ground will allow more energy to flow down the wire to the plant.

That’s all there is to it! You’re now ready to sit back and watch something mysterious happen. Water the plant as needed and check for growth.

Try different variations of this experiment and have some fun finding out what works best for you. If you have success, share what you learn with others. Science is for us to learn and use, and when we give this information to others, we all benefit.

Sort Out Soil Removal With Simple Plants

Posted on by gogreen

terrible occasions of Hurricane Katrina, the folks in New Orleans needed to face the job of cleaning a whole city. This incorporated soil removal to wash up contaminated soil and take away any dangerous chemicals transported along with the ton waters. Just as with any soil removal procedure, the initial step ended up being to sample and evaluate the soil to produce a contaminant profile. The outcomes demonstrated some areas impacted by the ton-borne chemicals, however the soil also demonstrated older traces of lead contamination.

Facts of lead contamination of soil

Lead is really a heavy metal and rock that can’t be absorbed or divided by plants, creatures, or humans. Contact with high levels continues to be proven to harm more youthful children, including behavior problems, attention-deficit disorders, and reduced IQ levels.

Regrettably, New Orleans isn’t a rare situation. Lead contamination from the soil is typical across many US metropolitan areas, together with organic guy-made items for example oil and manure. However, while soil removal techniques exist to interrupt-lower organic pollutants within the soil, getting rid of toxic metals for example lead, arsenic, and mercury isn’t very easy.

In urban redevelopment projects, soil removal involves evacuating the contaminated soil in the ground and dealing with it with chemical processes. However, this really is too costly for many private qualities.

Phytoremediation for natural soil removal

Using plants and plant material to wash up soil is known as phytoremediation. This really is easily the most well-liked method for any eco aware landowner. It’s also quite surprising to understand the number of kinds of pollutants could be securely taken off your land without disturbing the soil or using harsh chemicals.

Returning to New Orleans today, it’s possible to see phytoremediation at the office in certain areas of the town. Brought by Mutual Understanding volunteers, these soil removal work is using sunflowers to wash up lead using their soil. These popular vegetation is adding a dash of color to communities, all while their roots take in the dangerous lead in the soil. Because the sunflowers grow, they accumulate lead so care is taken the seed products aren’t consumed by people. When the vegetation is cut lower and destroyed, fresh soil blood pressure measurements are come to measure lead levels. The outcomes to date are extremely promising each crop of sunflowers leeches away a bit more lead in the soil.

Over the US, similar phytoremediation projects are showing us the means by using natural, low-cost, and low-tech techniques to purify our gardens and lands. Because the word propagates, expect the way forward for soil removal to obtain eco-friendly!

Orbital solar plants plants could meet energy needs

Posted on by gogreen

gathered in space, could give a cost-efficient way to satisfy global energy needs within 3 decades with seed money from government authorities, based on research by an worldwide scientific group.

Revolving about energy plants able to collecting solar power and beaming it to Earth appear “technically achievable” inside a decade or two according to technologies now within the laboratory, research number of the Paris-based Worldwide Academy of Astronautics stated.

This type of project may have the ability to achieve economic stability in 3 decades or less, it stated, without installing a guide or suggesting a particular architecture.

Related story: How serious is space photo voltaic energy?

“It’s obvious that photo voltaic energy shipped from space could play a greatly natural part in meeting the worldwide requirement for energy throughout the twenty-first century,Inch based on the study brought by John Mankins, a 25-year NASA veteran and also the U.S. space agency’s former mind of concepts.

The academy is headed by Madhavan Nair, former chairman from the Indian Space Research Organization. The research was charged because the first broadly based worldwide assessment of potential pathways to collecting solar power in space and delivering it to marketplaces on the planet via wireless energy transmission.

The research stated government pump-priming likely could be needed to find the concept, referred to as space photo voltaic energy, to promote. Private-sector funding is not likely to proceed alone due to the “economic questions” from the development and demonstration phases and also the time lags, the research stated.

Both government authorities and also the private sector should fund research to pin lower the economical stability from the concept, the research stated, among concerns about humankind’s ongoing reliance upon finite non-renewable fuels that lead to global pollution.

The research didn’t estimate a possible overall cost for finishing the project.

Space photo voltaic energy is really a potential lengthy-term energy solution for Earth with “basically zero” terrestrial environment impact, based on the National Space Society, an advocacy group set to keep a news conference in Washington on Monday to publicize the academy’s 248-page final report.

A duplicate from the study was acquired by Reuters in front of its release.

Turn sunlight into electricity

The concept would be to put first one, a couple of, and then lots of photo voltaic-powered satellites in geosynchronous orbit within the equator. Each as wide as several kilometers across (one kilometer equals .6 miles), the spacecraft would collect sunlight as much as 24 hrs each day, in comparison with half that, for the most part, for surface sections now accustomed to turn sunlight into electricity.

The energy could be transformed into electricity on-board and delivered to wherever it’s needed on the planet with a large microwave-transmitting antenna or by lasers, then given right into a energy power grid.

Doubters deem the idea a nonstarter, a minimum of until the price of placing a commercial energy plant into orbit drops with a factor of 10 or even more. Other hurdles include space debris, deficiencies in focused market studies and development costs.

The research, carried out from 2008 to 2010 then exposed to see review, discovered that the commercial situation had substantially enhanced throughout yesteryear decade, partially consequently of government incentives for nonpolluting “eco-friendly” energy systems.

An airplane pilot project to show the technology even while large because the 400-tonne Worldwide Space Station could proceed using low-cost expendable launch automobiles being produced for other space marketplaces, Mankins stated inside a telephone interview.

An average-scale demonstration would cost hundreds of vast amounts of dollars under formerly forecasted consequently of not requiring pricey, multiple-use launch automobiles in early stages, stated Mankins, leader of Artemis Innovation Management Solutions LLC, a California working as a consultant.

“It was a very important finding,” Mankins stated, mentioning to some relatively decently listed pilot project.

‘It’s a start’

His company continues to be granted a NASA contract of the little under $100,000 to pursue space-based photo voltaic energy options – small “but a minimum of it is a start,” Mankins stated.

Ultimately, hundreds of vast amounts of dollars could be required to develop and deploy a sufficiently low-cost number of multiple-use, earth-to-orbit automobiles to produce full-scale commercial photo voltaic energy satellites, the research group believed.

The audience stated the required research and development work ought to be carried out by nations and organizations in concert, including space agencies, companies, colleges and nongovernmental organizations.

Worldwide curiosity about the idea is continuing to grow throughout yesteryear decade, spurred simply by fears that in coming decades global manufacture of oil and perhaps other non-renewable fuels will peak and begin to say no.

Contributing to a mission for brand new powers are forecasted jumps in worldwide per capita interest in energy to fuel economic development and concern within the accumulation in Earth’s atmosphere of fossil fuel-derived green house gases.

The thought of utilizing photo voltaic energy in space continues to be analyzed on / off for 4 decades, including through the U.S. Energy Department and NASA.

U.S. and Indian business, policy and national security experts in September known as for any joint U.S.-Indian feasibility study on the cooperative program to build up space-based photo voltaic energy having a goal of fielding a in a commercial sense viable capacity within 2 decades.

The research group, co-backed through the Council on Foreign Relations think tank and Aspen Institute India, incorporated former U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and Naresh Chandra, an old Indian ambassador towards the U . s . States.

Colonel Michael Cruz, the U.S. Air Force’s chief futurist as director from the Center for Strategy and Technology at Maxwell Air Pressure Base in Alabama, stated the concept has got the possibility to send safe, clean electrical power worldwide “as we makes it work.”

“Is not that what government and industry ought to be trying to do?” he stated inside a telephone interview.

Shaun Peacock, who heads satellite-builder Boeing Co’s ground-based photo voltaic cell products, stated theoretically it might double of photo voltaic energy collected, in comparison using the Earth-bound technology equivalent.

Gasification For Trash to Energy Plants

Posted on by gogreen

Lloyd Mahaffey, a business being in the boondocks of Boise, Idaho, would like to beforehand several junk-powered activity plants by accomplishing thermal-gasification system. Mahaffey expresss the different accepted is abundant added spotless and able instead of the archetypal clutter incineration alignment activated for bearing energy. In Mahaffey’s statements, “People accurate they don’t charge an boiler in their lawn. That would be exceptional, consistent from the actuality that this is not what we make,” Introducing his abstraction Mahaffey states “This accession is gasification, not incineration.” Lloyd Mahaffey, a accommodating arch official of Dynamis Energy, while putting beforehand the framework of his activity plants, declared that his ensemble account to assemble aboriginal bulb in Ada County, southwest Idaho and the afterward one in Clark County, Eastern Idaho.

Newfangled renewable activity to accommodation some homes While allegorical the fundamentals of the thermal-gasification, Mahaffey declared in this atypical address decay could be broiled aural a alcove with no oxygen, and this could abate the decay into gas. The gas can after be smoldered to actualize energy. He in accession affiliated that about 95 percent of the decay could be burst the aforementioned time as the absolute technique. According to the present thermal-gasification’s absolute to aftermath clutter energy, the several plants would be able to mutually adapt abundant activity to accommodation 10,000 homes from 250 bags of rubbish.

Burying disposable, not applied in constant Mahaffey airtight that burying our decay is not an astute affair that do. In this affiliation he declared that, “Every ton of decay beck we handle is one ton the arena doesn’t charge to cover.” To assemble adult renewable activity advances, assembly motivators are additionally nearby, brash Mahaffey. Pete Johnson, Vice President of Dynamis Activity declared on this break that backward thermal-gasification accession could abandon his group’s above-mentioned endeavors at spinning waste-to-control. Additionally, with the cast new thermal-gasification engineering, the situations abutting with clutter activity bearing in accession arise to be alive against accepting solved. For example, revamped waste-to-energy plants bankrupt bottom ability which could aggrandize net accession of the processing, advancement revamped players to aberrate in this field.

New Eco-Innovation – Lazy Susan Sun Tracker for Potted House Plants, Solar Energy Collection

Posted on by gogreen

If you have a few houseplants at home, like me, then you’ve probably heard the theory that you must open in time for plants of time and allow them to go home to the sun or light another angle. This theory has been bugging me, like the plant in its natural environment will not position ourselves in that direction. Yes, Sun is moving in our direction, the inclination of more or less due to the seasonal variation of the planet, but the sun still rises more or less, the east and sets in the west.

But this theory does not disappear, I totally agree, but others swear by. Now he is my good friend who often comes over and begins to realign all the houseplants, I wish he had to stop, but he believes that the herbs work life and keep them strong, forcing them to readjust. Personally, I think only a really dirty trick in the world, and I wonder how you want, if someone screwed so I’ve become completely acclimated to their environment?

Okay so I have a better idea to help the plants out of a new invention. Try to imagine a Solar Tracker Sun Lazy Susan potted indoor plants, which sit on the floor of the plant in turn. The style is in turn directly under the battery, and the location of the detection system Sun, the plan is always facing the Sun. Side pot would be solar panels, always facing the sun and energy gain.

The energy is collected, or they move slowly rotating every hour or as needed, only turn taught at the wheel. Of course, this does not take much energy, but could use more energy to recharge cell phones, personal iPads or other small tech devices are too small for the inverter. So everybody is happy now. Hardware, iPad or smartphone, and you, and, finally, when someone tries to turn your plants, you can tell them that the system automatically starts, do not touch anything.

I think it’s inventions and innovations can be built around $ 150 and they sell for those who love plants and want to live green. Taking all this into account and I think it is.