According to scientific history, or perhaps legend, Archimedes had his Eureka moment when settling into his bathtub and seeing the water rise around him. He came up with his idea that a body’s mass displaced an equal amount of water, something that’s proved to be useful to know. Zachary Favors, a graduate student at the University of California at Riverside, had a similar moment of discovery when leaving the water after surfing near the beaches of San Clemente. According to the UCR press release, “he picked up some sand, took a close look at it and saw it was made up primarily of quartz, or silicon dioxide.” This led him to research locations in the United States where sand with high proportions of quartz existed. He found that the Cedar Creek Reservoir, east of Dallas, had sand with the qualities for which he was searching. Not only that, it was close to his boyhood home. What would lead him to …
Decorated Anodes Make Light Work of a Fast Charge
Most stories featuring this scientific couple’s (and a few associates’) work focused on the 10-minute charging time for their portable electronics batteries. More interesting to those who look forward to applying this technology in electric vehicles, the three-dimensional, silicon-decorated, cone-shaped carbon-nanotube cluster architecture for lithium ion battery anodes enables a “63 percent increase of total cell capacity and a battery that is 40 percent lighter and smaller.” “Than what?” your editor’s high school math teacher would have insisted. The decorated item would be 63 percent better at holding a charge and 40 percent lighter and smaller than a similar cell with a graphite anode common to many lithium-ion batteries. Even though the researchers concentrated on the anode and seemed not to take a more holistic approach to battery design, the overall results seem promising. Husband and wife team Cengiz S. Ozkan, a mechanical engineering professor at UC Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering; and Mihrimah Ozkan, an electrical engineering professor, worked with …