Objectives:
“If you do not read newspapers, you are uninformed, if you do, you are misinformed.” To this we need to add “disinformed”, like misinformed, but, on purpose, it is a quote, falsely attributed to Mark Twain.
The skill that the course aims to teach is enabling students to arrive at their own understanding of how to separate the chaff from the wheat in the course topics. This includes verifying/ assessing critically and independently, statements and numbers, made in daily life, in the press and on social networks, on these topics. Tools to achieve this are (semi)-quantitative estimates, including uncertainty ranges, logic (e.g., reductio ad absurdum, and making the estimates by approaching questions as "Fermi problems".
All this is possible using the ability for critical, analytical thinking, one of the great assets that students, trained in natural sciences & engineering, acquire.
Central to the course are dissent that stems from knowledge and logical reasoning, acquired by education.
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Contents:
Lectures: The course consists of continuously updated lectures, originally based on / inspired by and / or adapted from those given at regular semester and int’l. short courses (@ Ettore Majorana, Caltech, Col. School of Mines, from 2010-today, U Catania Scuola Sup., Weizmann Inst., Bar-Ilan Univ., HiScore [German-Israel grad school]), SUPA (Scotland Univ.Physics Grad program) and others. The following list is the complete course, to be adapted to student and time constraints, if needed.
1 Overviews of Energy, Resources, Sustainability & Climate
2 Trying to restore the past/prevent the future: Clean up, Decarbonize, Geo-engineering
3 Science of natural photosynthesis, nature’s decarbonization
4 Biomass and Biofuels, including Food; more than meets the eye
5 Nexus of Water - Energy – Food - & other environmental costs
6-11 Energy transformations: a matter of scale and efficiency
6 Conversion Light --> Electrical: PV, LED, fundamentals, practice and limits.
7 Thermal (Solar, Nuclear, Geo, Hydro)->(Mechanical)->Electrical; physics ? reality
8 Nuclear -->thermal; why (not)?
Geothermal -->Mechanical; heat pumps
9 Storage: Geothermal; Hydro, chemical <--> electrical, & more
10 Fuels: Fossil Fuels, Fracking & some
11 Non-fossil Fuels: H2, H2 for CO2 - / N2 - reduction and hype
12 Transportation of things, electrons and information: facts, fiction, future
13 Critical Materials; Basics of life cycle analysis
14 Crystal ball: energy security; resource sustainability; how all-electric can we get?
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Assignments
As homework, each participant has to fact-check at least one issue / numerical datum/statement or better even, correct a mistake in the last lecture;
• results of these efforts are then discussed before the start of the next lecture;
• after mistakes or unclear/missing statements that were flagged are verified, the relevant presentation is corrected (and the student’s name is added to the corrected slide, to be shown at the start of the following lecture).
Only those who do the weekly homework can (continue to) participate (once: reminder; twice: out; force majeure excluded)
Components of the final grade:
value of cumulative homework assignments, in terms of validating and/or questioning data/estimates in the lectures, plus active participation during/in the lectures.