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30 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Three major types of fossil fuel are...
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coal, oil, natural gas
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The chemical name for natural gas is ....
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methane
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The most abundant fossil fuel is....
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coal
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The cleanest fossil fuel is....
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natural gas
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The most convenient fossil fuel, due to its perfect compactness (for transportation) is...
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oil
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Two major advantages of coal are....
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It's super-abundant.
It is high quality with regard to the amount of energy it has. That is, it gets very hot and is great for making electricity. |
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Two major disadvantages of coal are....
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It's very dirty and polluting in all ways.
It releases incredible amounts of carbon dioxide gas. |
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Two mining disadvantages of coal are...
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it is very dangerous to do underground mining due to cave-ins.
It is very environmentally degrading to remove mountains to get to coal in open pit mines. |
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The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that with each step of processing or using energy.....
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we will lose a portion of that energy we are harvesting and will less available for the end use.
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When you have a lot of processing steps to get energy from its source to its use point, the energy gets a ____ net energy return on energy investment.
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low
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Compared to nuclear power, coal has a _____ net energy return on energy investment, because nuclear has so many steps it must undergo.
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higher
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Oil spills are big-media events, but are they nearly as significant as the global warming issue and the wars associated with oil?
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No
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The total energy available in a source divided by the energy it takes to process and deliver it is called the ...
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Net energy return on energy investment
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The reason many energy sources can't replace gasoline is that they just don't have the high ___ and compactness that gasoline has.
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energy density
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Presently, coal is the number one energy source for ....
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making electricity
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Coal is good for making electricity because it _____ and because of it's bulk & mass make it undesirable for ___. The boilers it fires are very ____ and more suitable for large infrastructure.
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gets so hot,
transportation, large & heavy |
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Electricity, no matter how it's made, is a _____ energy source. There is no "plug" on earth where you can plug-in and get it.
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secondary
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Except for photovoltaic cells and fuel cells, electricity is conventionally made by spinning a ___ inside a magnetic field. This device that makes electricity is called a ___.
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coil of wire,
generator |
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To make a generator turn, we attach a big fan blade (turbine)to it. That fan blade is made to turn by either ...
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steam, falling water, or wind
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Why does a steam-based power plant (whether it's coal, nuclear, oil, or natural gas) have to be cooled?
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You must have a "downhill" place for heat to flow. Heat flows from areas of high temp. to low temp. If one end of the heat loop is hot and another end is cool, then the heat flows faster to the cool, "downhill" location.
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A problem with cooling a power plant with lake or river water is that it can create ____ pollution.
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thermal
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The easiest way to make our fossil fuels last longer and not degrade our environment so badly is for us to.....
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conserve energy.
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Some ways we can conserve energy are...
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Adequately insulate homes.
Driving an up-to-date car. Use LED bulbs Recycle wastes. Use higher efficiency appliances Make car trip be productive. Make towns foot & bike friendly. |
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Oil shales and Tar Sands, which are "unconcentrated" forms of oil in rocks & sand, are not really viable sources of oil because....
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they consume so much energy to extract and process them that they have a low net energy yield.... and they devastate MANY square miles of land (in Canada).
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The subsidy we get for the cheap ($2.75/gal) gasoline we have in this country comes from....
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military engagement in the Middle East. Wars are expensive but are not included in the price of our gasoline.
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If natural gas is so much cleaner and emits so much less CO2 than coal, then why don't we just use that in our cars instead of gasoline?
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It takes to much energy to compress it. Our fuel tanks would have to be humongous.
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What should our lawmakers do to our CAFE standard if we are to start using less oil?
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Increase it.
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CAFE standard means...
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Corporate Average Fuel Economy (the number of miles per gallons our country's cars get on average)
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Combined Heat and Power is another way of conserving energy. The basic idea is...
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Make electricity in your industrial building and use the waste heat to heat the building.
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Another name for Combined Heat and Power concept is....
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Cogeneration
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