Teachout Road
Variacs
People are often surprised that variacs (variable auto transformers) are still quite widely used in the era of triac dimming and pulse width modulation drivers.
But actually variacs are quite energy efficient with loses of 2% or even less, work well with inductive loads like motors and don’t mess with the sine wave, so they produce clean power with a good power factor.
Blue Skies Appear
The Kraft Caves, Springfield MO
Deep under Springfield, Missouri, lies a cheese cave of industrial proportions, a 2-million-square-foot refrigerated warehouse called Springfield Underground. Since 2008, Kraft Foods has rented 400,000 square feet of the repurposed limestone mine as a massive distribution center, from which to ship 680-pound, Velveeta-bright barrels of Oscar Meyer meats, Philadelphia cream cheese, Velveeta pasteurized processed cheeses, Jell-O, and Lunchables. Unlike traditional cheese caves, which can impart the particular flavors of time and place—the unique combinations of bacteria, yeast, and mold that cheese makers call terroir—Wired magazine explains that in the case of Kraft's cave:
