Save Money, Save the World

MSNBC has a quick and simple list on things that you can do to help you save money and the planet. They have a list of 10 carbon-reducing actions that you can take if you own a house and a car. Those who have neither may not find this list that useful, but there is a bonus tip #11!

From the list:

10. Think about your refrigerator. Don’t locate this particular appliance in direct sunlight or next to the stove or dishwasher. Also, unplug that extra fridge, especially if it’s just keeping a six-pack cold.

Spin-Powered Office Towers

EcoGeek has the lowdown on a high-rise design that supposedly can power itself and up to ten other office buildings. The tower is designed to have spinning floors and will act like a giant windmill, don’t worry all the essentials like elevators are in a central non-rotating concrete core. A neat idea, but one that I do question.

The video shows the spinning in action:

Yahoo Greener than Google?

Internet users often use search engines, but have you ever wondered which of the two giant search engines is the greenest? Well, there is no clear answer but TechCrunch gives us a basic breakdown on greening the search engines:

Google:
They are also installing 1.6 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels at their headquarters in Mountain View. The panels will cover the roofs of the buildings, and Google says it is “the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the U.S.”

Yahoo:
Earlier this year, co-founder David Filo pledged that Yahoo would go carbon neutral, basically by purchasing carbon offsets for their massive electricity usage.

Canadians Have Less Gravitational Pull

yupApparently living in Canada ensures I weigh less because Canada has less gravity (and I thought I was naturally thin). Different parts of the world have endure different levels of gravitational pull, some even witness gravity waves. Neat stuff!

A German-American team has figured out why Canada has less gravity and it has something to do with the Ice Age. The results of the observations can be applied to more than the average weight of a Canadian.

Ultimately, scientists hope to use such data to learn how continents form and evolve over time. “With this information, people could infer better whether the North America plate is actually predominantly stable,” says C K Shum, an expert on the Earth’s gravity at Ohio State University in Columbus, US, who was not a part of this study.

Using this same set of data, researchers have also found that there were two ice domes in the ice sheet on either side of Hudson Bay, given the features in the gravity field that have been left behind. The way the thickness of any ice cover changes at different periods could be used by climate modellers to understand past climate change.

Art From Ambient Electricity

electric art

Power lines kind of ‘leak’ energy that isn’t being fully utilized, which maybe why you hear buzzing when standing under the lines. Some groovy artist has used this energy to power a thousand fluorescent lights.

Richard Box, artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics department, got the idea for Field (2004) – 1,301 fluorescent tubes powered only by the electric fields generated by low overhead powerlines – after a conversation with a friend. ‘He was telling me he used to play with a fluorescent tube under the pylons by his house,’ says the artist. ‘He said it lit up like a light sabre.’