When you think about it, most things in life are actually defined as a reference against something else. Let’s think about electricity for a moment.🤔
Voltage is the difference in the number of electrons between a power source and a ground. It’s not that grounds have no electrons, they have many electrons, but grounds have more or less electrons compared to the hot side. ⚡ Relatively speaking, a ground has a voltage of zero volts compared to the hot. It has electrons, but they aren’t referenced against the hot side. If you look at the wiring at your house, and it’s wired properly, the neutral wire will go out to a ground rod driven into the ground. The neutral and ground wire in most houses is connected to a single stake. You can stick a wire in neutral side, touch it with your bare hands (as long as it’s wired correctly). In contrast, if you do this on the hot side, you will quickly die, as deadly number of electrons will flow either to or from your bodies, as you are most likely connected electrically to the ground, as you are standing on the ground or something connected to the ground. 🔌
You can actually hang off a high-voltage power line, and won’t get a shock if you don’t touch the ground, which the high-voltage wires are referenced against. Birds sit on high voltage line, and don’t even feel a tingle. 🐦 There is no reference to ground. Squirrels can run on high-voltage line but if they touch the power pole that is connected to ground, they will be instantly fried. If you have an isolation transformer that is referenced to a return wire rather then ground, it’s actually safe to touch a high voltage hot wire while standing on the ground, as no current will flow, as there is no reference to ground.
That is not limited though just to electricity. When you think about it most things really are just references to other things they are compared to.💡
"Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week's biggest news, including the United Nations' report on climate change. #SNL #SNL44 #SethMe..."
"The go-to images that illustrate our planet’s rising temperature are the rising ocean around the Florida Keys, coral reefs fading or glaciers melting into rushing rivers. But the Adirondacks have suffered from our rising thermostat, and the trend is continuing. Algae is growing in the region’s warming lakes. Invasive species are creeping north, threatening forests, animals and water bodies. Activities like skiing, snowmobiling and snowshoeing are threatened as winters get warmer and less snowy. These changes are infringing on an Adirondacks tourism economy in which visitors spent $1.4 billion last year."
'We should all see the risky situation, the oil markets are entering the red zone." That warning comes from Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday. He added that expensive energy “is back at a bad time, when the global economy is losing momentum. We really need more oil.” Birol’s words are important because the IEA advises industrialized nations on energy policy and coordinates emergency oil releases globally. On that point, Birol said the agency isn’t currently considering using its emergency reserves.
While I’ve been working at my Syracuse office, I decided to plug all my desk appliances into a Kill-a-Watt meter and see how much power they use. I was surprised in a week it turned out I used over 4 kilowatt hours of power in a week. I would have never thought I used that much power, although with my phone charging, the laptop and monitor plugged in, various USB desk accessories and other equipment it all adds up to about 45 watt draw.
Which doesn’t seem like much, but I’m in the office 12 plus hours many days, seven days a week, and those miserly 45 watts add up quickly. That’s 540 watt hours a day or 3.7 kWh a week — but then again sometimes I draw more power and sometimes I’m there more then 12 hours a day.
Hooked to the grid, 3.7 kWh of power works out to maybe 40 cents a week worth of power. Which granted I am sure my employer can afford with all the other expenses. Grid power is cheap, it’s virtually unlimited. But it’s still a lot of power, that has to be made by burning coal and natural gas, and it’s something I will think about when I’m back home — unplugging things as much as possible and not using the big screen monitor as much. And certainly when I have an off-grid cabin, I won’t be able to use the laptop 12 hours a day — but outside of a work environment, I doubt I would want to do that.
