ENERGY

ENERGY

Energy is seen everywhere, it can be visualized in form of substances, felt in the case of kicking a soccer ball, but can’t be felt, seen, smell or heard in a direct way, all we perceive are its effects.

Energy takes different forms, kicking a ball, which is kinetic energy (energy in motion), a boy standing which is potential energy (energy at rest), a ball falling (gravitational energy), energy stored in petrol (chemical energy), energy in an elastic rubber (elastic energy), movement of piston in automobile engine (mechanical energy), energy from the sun (solar energy), energy produced by reacting radioactive elements (nuclear energy), energy in wires carry current (electrical energy).

These multiple forms of energy can be converted into each other. A match stick converts chemical energy into heat energy. Which brings about the law which states, energy can be transferred from one form to another, but cannot be created nor destroyed. Which is the first law of thermodynamics, the law of conservation of energy.   

FORMS OF ENERGY

There are many forms of energy but basically they fall under these two categories, the potential and kinetic energy.

POTENTIAL ENERGY

Potential energy is energy at rest or of position, some of it’s forms are:

CHEMICAL ENERGY

 it is energy stored in bonds of atoms of molecules, plants releases its chemical  energy through the process of photosynthesis.

NUCLEAR ENERGY

Energy stored in the nucleus of an atom, the energy that holds the nucleus together. The energy can be released when the nuclei are combined or split apart.

GRAVITATIONAL ENERGY

Energy of position or place. A rock resting at the top of a hill contains gravitational potential energy. Hydropower, such as water in a reservoir behind a dam, is an example of gravitational potential energy.

KINETIC ENERGY

Kinetic energy is the energy in motion, the motion of wind, waves, molecules e.t.c

ELECTRICAL ENERGY

The movement of electrons. Everything is made of tiny particles called atoms. Atoms are made of even smaller particles called electrons, protons, and neutrons. Applying a force can make some of the electrons move. Electrons moving through a wire are called electricity.

THERMAL OR HEAT ENERGY

The internal energy in substances, the vibration and movement of atoms and molecules within substances. The faster molecules and atoms vibrate and move within substances, the more energy they possess and the hotter they become. Geothermal energy is an example of thermal energy.

SOUND ENERGY

The movement of energy through substances in longitudinal (compression/rarefaction) waves. Sound is produced when a force causes an object or substance to vibrate. The energy is transferred through the substance in a wave.

SOURCES OF ENERGY

The sources of energy can be classified into two namely: Renewable and non-renewable energy.

NONRENEWABLE ENERGY

These energy sources are called nonrenewable because they cannot be replenished in a short period of time. Sources include coal, petroleum, natural gas, propane, and uranium. They are used to generate electricity, to heat our homes, to move our cars, and to manufacture products.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Sources include biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, and wind. They are called renewable energy sources because their supplies are replenished in a short time.

3D Printing

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. It is additive because it is created by adding successive layers of materials until the whole object is created.
Firstly, a virtual design of the object you want to create. This virtual design is made in a CAD (Computer Aided Design) file using a 3D moelling program (for the creation of a totally new object) or with the use of a 3D scanner (to copy an existing object). A 3D scanner makes a 3D digital copy of an object.

Processes and mechanisms 

All 3D printers don't use the same technology. There are several ways to print and all those available are additive, differing mainly in the way layers are build to create the final object.
Some methods use melting or softening material to produce the layers. The most common technologies using this method for printing are the Selective laser sintering (SLS) and fused deposition modeling (FDM). Another method of printing is when we talk about curing a photo-reactive resin with a UV laser or another similar power source one layer at a time, stereolithography (SLA) is the most common printer using this technology.

Examples & applications of 3D printing

Applications include rapid prototyping, architectural scale models & maquettes, healthcare (3d printed prosthetics and printing with human tissue) and entertainment (e.g. film props).
Other examples of 3D printing would include reconstructing fossils in paleontology, replicating ancient artifacts in archaeology, reconstructing bones and body parts in forensic pathology and reconstructing heavily damaged evidence acquired from crime scene investigations.

OCULUS......How it Works

The device is a lightweight virtual reality headset that blocks your view of your surroundings and fully immerses you in a virtual world. The Rift lets you step into a game, look around in any direction and see the game environment all around you. And you see it in 3D.

Technical Specifications

The Oculus Rift Development Kit version 1.1 includes the Oculus Rift head set, which resembles a pair of black ski goggles with a rectangular box covering the front end. The kit also comes with a control box that's permanently attached to the headset via a 6-foot (1.8-meter) cable, a removable over-the-head strap for added comfort and stability, three pairs of vision lenses of different focal lengths, an HDMI cable, a USB cable, a DVI cable, an HDMI to DVI adapter and a 5-Volt switching US-standard power supply along with international power adapters. All of this comes housed in a hard case. The Oculus Rift dev kit goggles weigh 369 grams and the future consumer model may be even lighter.
The control box is used to hook the headset up to your computer and perform basic control functions. It includes HDMI, DVI, mini-USB and DC power connection ports, as well as five buttons for controlling contrast, brightness and power. A blue LED on top shows you whether the device is on or off.
The developer headset allows for head-tracking with 3 degrees of freedom (DOF), ultra-low latency and a field of view (FOV) of 110 degrees diagonally and 90 degrees horizontally for convincing immersion.
The Rift incorporates a flat 7-inch (17.8-centimeter) 60Hz LCD display screen with a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels (around 720p high-def resolution). The screen is divided into 640 by 800 pixels per eye, with a 2.5-inch (64-millimeter) fixed distance between lens centers. The user views the screen through two lens cups. There are plans to make the consumer model's resolution at least 1080p, and the company has already demonstrated two 1080p prototypes (the HD and Crystal Cove models). The display inputs include DVI-D Single Link, HDMI 1.3+ and USB 2.0 Full Speed+, all fed to it through the single control box cord.
The device has a custom-built motion and orientation sensor unit with a sampling rate of up to 1000 Hz. The sensor unit includes a gyroscope, an accelerometer and a magnetometer, along with an ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller. The data from all three sensors is combined through a process called sensor fusion to enable fast and accurate tracking of your head orientation and synchronization with what you are viewing. This allows you to turn your head in any direction and look around the virtual environment in real-time, but it doesn't allow for positional tracking.
A new prototype, dubbed Crystal Cove, debuted at CES 2014. It has a higher resolution 1080p AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) screen, lower latency, a higher refresh rate and much lower image persistence, meaning that the images you see on the screen change as quickly as you move rather than persisting on the screen long enough to cause a lot of motion blurring. Crystal Cove can also track position, rather than just orientation, with the help of IR LEDs (which look like little square white dots) all over the headset that are monitored by an external camera, giving you 6 degrees of freedom rather than just 3. You can lean toward things to get a closer look, or lean to look around corners, whereas with the developer kit you can turn your head in various directions to change the camera view, but you have to use a separate controller to handle all motion toward, away from or around things. This prototype is reportedly closer to Oculus VR's vision for the consumer version.

System Requirements

Although there are no specific minimum requirements, but the following could be guidelines 

• Windows (Vista, 7 or 8)
• Mac OS 10.6 or higher
• Linux (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS)
• 2.0+ GHz processor
• 2 GB RAM
• Direct3D 10 or OpenGL 3 compatible video card

 

Sources

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/oculus-rift9.htm