(Note for the Reader: Members who are about to graduate from high school or are attending college or university might not find this challenging. Don't scoff at this. It's not for you, OK?)
My late brother, Robert J. Shaffer, was a man of many talents. He was a skilled woodworker, among other things. He was also a very frugal man, a trait I sometimes shared with him. One day, he noticed a large truck tire by the side of the road near his home. Day after day, he passed it as he drove to his house. One day, he stopped and loaded the tire into the back of his pickup truck. He took it to a service station and put some air into it, and found that the tire failed to leak! Since it was intended for a large truck, it would hold quite a lot of air at high pressure, about 80-lbs/(inch^2). (I'll leave converting this figure to metric units as an exercise for the student. It's nearly bed-time for me.)
My brother Rob rigged a hose to the filler-nozzle on the tire, and put it under his workbench. He attached a valve to the other end of the hose, which allowed him to blow dust and debris from his bench, tools, and table-saw. Every few weeks, he rolled the tire out into his truck and went to the service station to re-inflate the tire to full pressure.
Based on the above, here are a few questions for the beginning student:
1. It's obvious that energy was being stored in the tire. But, specifically, in what form is the energy stored? Should the word "form" be plural?
2. How might the principles embodied in my brother's scheme be employed to store energy in a grand scale, say, to power a small city at night when solar energy is unavailable?
By Rick Shaffer (Admin at PDEP)
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