Beethoven’s Fifth With a Guinness Chaser

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Intel recently earned a Guinness World Record for lofting 100 drones at one time.  To make it hard, they did it at night and to an orchestral accompaniment.  Musical purists (your editor) might become vexed with the liberal reinterpretation of Beethoven’s score (the original symphony didn’t have a piano or a harp), and the added “bits” to a piece that’s been considered OK as-is for over two centuries. The orchestra played what they were given with great style, however, and the electronics wizards who put the aerial show together pulled it off with precision, playing well to the home crowd – apparently composed of Intel employees.  One wishes Intel would release a complete performance video without the music-video-style editing and the reluctance …

Stanford scientists develop high-efficiency zinc-air battery

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Battery researchers, including those at Stanford University, have been focusing for years on improving lithium batteries of multiple chemistries.  While IBM tries to create the 500-mile battery based on lithium-air reactions, and ReVolt in Portland works on perfecting a long-lasting zinc-air cell, Stanford researcher Hongjie Dai and his team claim to have “developed an advanced zinc-air battery with higher catalytic activity and durability than similar batteries made with costly platinum and iridium catalysts.” The resulting battery, detailed in the May 7 online edition of the journal Nature Communications, could be the forerunner of something with greater endurance and lower cost than current efforts. Mark Schwartz, writing for Stanford, quotes Dai, a professor of chemistry at the University and lead author of …