UK mega-lab generates weather to test homes of future
The thermometer sinks below zero as a blizzard of fine snow descends on two houses freshly built inside a massive laboratory in northern England.
18 hours ago
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20
Engineering
The thermometer sinks below zero as a blizzard of fine snow descends on two houses freshly built inside a massive laboratory in northern England.
18 hours ago
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Energy & Green Tech
The heating plant in Munich's southern Sendling neighborhood has been run for more than a century on gas, often imported from far away.
Feb 3, 2023
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Business
An increasing number of businesses in Aotearoa New Zealand are changing how they operate to reduce their overall climate impact. These measures, which include reducing carbon emissions, are largely voluntary outside of specific ...
Feb 2, 2023
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Energy & Green Tech
Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced several new clean energy initiatives in the government's annual federal budget speech on Wednesday, saying "green growth" is a top priority for the country.
Feb 1, 2023
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Engineering
When nature designed lignin—the fibrous, woody material that gives plants their rigid structure—it didn't cut any corners. Incredibly slow to break down, lignin is so sturdy and long lasting that it is resistant to bacteria ...
Jan 31, 2023
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Energy & Green Tech
Nanotechnology researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas have made novel carbon nanotube yarns that convert mechanical movement into electricity more effectively than other material-based energy harvesters.
Jan 26, 2023
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564
Energy & Green Tech
A solar distillation device can purify brine from reverse osmosis plants with over 10 percent salinity, as well as water taken directly from the Red Sea. The technology offers double the freshwater production rate of existing ...
Jan 26, 2023
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292
Engineering
Every year, the United States spends nearly a trillion dollars fighting metallic corrosion, an electrochemical reaction that occurs when metals oxidize and begin to rust. By taking on this surprisingly insidious issue, researchers ...
Jan 24, 2023
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Electronics & Semiconductors
To reduce carbon emissions and still meet the growing demands of the electronics industry, scientists will need to develop alternative battery technologies that are more durable, sustainable, and can store more energy. In ...
Jan 24, 2023 feature
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Engineering
Researchers from the University of Birmingham have designed a novel adaptation for existing iron and steel furnaces that could reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the steelmaking industry by nearly 90%.
Jan 24, 2023
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Carbon (pronounced /ˈkɑrbən/) is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. There are three naturally occurring isotopes, with 12C and 13C being stable, while 14C is radioactive, decaying with a half-life of about 5730 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity. The name "carbon" comes from Latin language carbo, coal, and, in some Romance and Slavic languages, the word carbon can refer both to the element and to coal.
There are several allotropes of carbon of which the best known are graphite, diamond, and amorphous carbon. The physical properties of carbon vary widely with the allotropic form. For example, diamond is highly transparent, while graphite is opaque and black. Diamond is among the hardest materials known, while graphite is soft enough to form a streak on paper (hence its name, from the Greek word "to write"). Diamond has a very low electrical conductivity, while graphite is a very good conductor. Under normal conditions, diamond has the highest thermal conductivity of all known materials. All the allotropic forms are solids under normal conditions but graphite is the most thermodynamically stable.
All forms of carbon are highly stable, requiring high temperature to react even with oxygen. The most common oxidation state of carbon in inorganic compounds is +4, while +2 is found in carbon monoxide and other transition metal carbonyl complexes. The largest sources of inorganic carbon are limestones, dolomites and carbon dioxide, but significant quantities occur in organic deposits of coal, peat, oil and methane clathrates. Carbon forms more compounds than any other element, with almost ten million pure organic compounds described to date, which in turn are a tiny fraction of such compounds that are theoretically possible under standard conditions.
Carbon is one of the least abundant elements in the Earth's crust, but the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It is present in all known lifeforms, and in the human body carbon is the second most abundant element by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen. This abundance, together with the unique diversity of organic compounds and their unusual polymer-forming ability at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, make this element the chemical basis of all known life.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA