Month: February 2020
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The roots of Mercedes Benz
On December 31, 1878, a guy named Karl Benz applied for a patent for a two-stroke engine design. Numerous patents had been pursued for the four stroke engine and Benz sought to patent an idea in a less crowded technological arena. In addition to Benz’ designs, several fundamental patent ideas followed for the two-stroke engine…
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Gliese 710 and the Oort Cloud
Planet Earth and our Sun, as well as the other (now 7) planets are often depicted as larger and larger rings in space, but the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud are made up of billions of comets, meteors and asteroids in three dimensions. But to get an idea of the true makeup of our…
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Charge Controllers
VOLTAGE RATING Most solar panel arrays are designed for 12 VDC. Combinations in series could produce 24 or 36 VDC. But the better approach is to stay with a 12 volt system and charge a 12 volt battery system. a dozen 12 volt car battery array could run your refrigerator for up to a week,…
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Habitable Worlds
Other than Earth, Wikipedia lists 17 planets that could have sunshine and liquid water in our solar system, at distances ranging from 4.2 lightyears to 2500 lightyears away. If this were a complete list, we could break down our solar system into habitable areas of 2500 lightyears in diameter. We would further consider that life…