Thinking about thermodynamics

Mrs B was musing about the thermodynamic implications of this cafe sign. We only talk about heat moving, not cold. And we stress that it is "heat energy" - and modern syllabuses change that to "thermal energy" because we need to stress the difference between heat energy and temperature. Thermal energy is essentially atom wobble. Things with a high temperature have furiously wobbling atoms. We say they are hot. The universe is quite egalitarian and tries to equalise out the amount of atom wobble so ones with more can give to ones with less, but not vice versa. The actual situation is even more complicated because we normally deal with whole objects - collections of millions of atoms. Even an object that feels cold can have a few atoms that wobble massively. So a cold object could pass energy to a hot object but the net flow would be from hot to cold. So physicists tend not to draw arrows labelled "cold"!

Pressure is falling

This was the pressure this morning. You can see from the marker where it was a week ago. What I find odd is that outside the weather is very much like that for high pressure - settled with clear skies. However the barometer reading is not much higher than when Storm Ashley came through last month and I posted about bombogenesis. With Storm Bert on the way, I will need to watch the barometer.

Not quite the Sea of Tranquility...

... but Tranquility on the sea in the marina. It reminded us of the Apollo 11 landings. The Mare Tranquilitatis was named in 1651 by two Jesuit priests who were early physicists. It escaped being a called the Mare Belgicum. It was an assumption by early astronomers that the dark flat areas on the surface of the Moon must be bodies of water like they would be on Earth but they are actually vast basaltic lava flows.

Looking for the Winter Hexagon

I am trying to get reacquainted with the late autumn sky after the weeks of cloud cover. It took me a while to tell the difference between Auriga and Gemini. So it is Auriga top left. Looking into it brought up another asterism to look for - the Winter Hexagon. I could see the bit from Capella down to Aldebaran but Orion had not yet risen so Rigel was behind the garage. I've now got something to look forward to this winter,

Nuffield Physics

This old tractor in the Penrith Christmas Lights parade was a Nuffield ie one from the works of Lord Nuffield, William Morris. It reminded me of the money he put into Physics education. The Nuffield A Level Physics course was so innovative and was more about developing thinking than learning facts. A lot of the ideas live on here

Kirkwall Power Station

 

I am always interested in how islands are powered. It turns out that this power station is now a back up. It is worth 16MW total. It is oil fired. 

Clouds form over islands

 

It was noticeable approaching Orkney, that in an otherwise cloudless sky, convection cumulus was forming over the islands. My guess is the differential heating of land and sea by the sun. Earth has a lower albedo and a lower specific heat capacity so should get warmer. The vapour later maritime air would get forced up by convection over the islands as a result and condense to form cumulus.

Up to 175kW

 

I've been interested in how quickly you can charge an electric car. This station was claiming up to 175kW. I looked up electric car battery capacities. This source suggests between 60 and 120kWh. Assuming all could be charged at the full rate, and that probably is a big assumption, then it would be between 20 and 40 minutes here.

Jupiter again

Jupiter is back in my evening skies. Two years ago it was prominent in September. Last year it was October. Each year it slips by a month. It has taken the Earth a year and a month to catch up with Jupiter again. Obviously in the mean time, Jupiter has also been moving along its orbit. One month forward every year. There are 12 months in an Earth-year so after 12 years, Jupiter would be back to the same place. The orbit of Jupiter round the Sun must be roughly 12 Earth-years.

Even higher pressure

The new high pressure is even higher than the last one. This needs recording as it may be set to drop quickly over the weekend. 

End of coal

Last time we drove past it was still burning coal to generate electricity but that stopped last month at Ratcliffe-on-Soar. That means no more coal burning to generate electricity in the UK.

Waves taller than a church

  During Storm Ashley we found a link to this site. It gives the live data from the buoys in the Atlantic used to feed weather information to the Irish Met Office. At the time, buoy M6 was recording waves 20m high. That's taller than our church tower!

Anti-cyclonic gloom...

... was a phrase used by Tomasz Schafernaker to describe the weather in the UK under a continent-wide high pressure. It's about as high as I've seen my barometer go and is a good time to calibrate them against a known reading. Mine is really close to the BBC reading for Carlisle so that will do.

The conditions won't be doing much for renewable energy. No sunshine, no wind and no waves!