Why do human electricity generation so focused on efficently boiling water and turning a turbine with it. do we have other ways of generating electricity every power plant i know (coal gas nuclear) does the turbine method ? And why is boiling water and turning a turbine with it so great ?
In: Physics
I had a massive Disappointment when I found out that all Electricity is literally made by Spinning something. I thought for a long time growing up that we had “Fuel Cells” that had “power” you know from video games and such. Nope its all Spinning Something. Not everything is boiling water though.
Power plant (Coal, Nuclear) etc is boiling water to make steam to make a turbine to spin. Nuclear lasts much longer and burns hotter than mountains of coal.
Wind Turbines have spinning blades. Water falling (Dam) on spinning blades. Water mill (Spinning wheel in water).
Probably Solar is the only non spinning something that can create electricity.
Solar can be done in two ways, Heat water to boil to spin something…
OR Solar panels to make electrons jump in a specific material and we harness the potential jump between two atoms. (If i remember correctly)
Boiling water is great because it just turns into water vapour which condenses back and we can do it again. Especially if its a Green Energy source (Wind, Water, Solar) or Something that we can “burn” but doesn’t make as much waste and lasts a long time (Nuclear) compared to (Coal, wood, Oil) etc stuff we cant make more of and burns really fast.
Additionally Water is easy to get, from a lake, from the sky, from your sink etc etc. whereas Wind, you have to be a specific place at a specific time. Similarly solar has to be the same, are there clouds, is the sun high? is the sun low.
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