Reminds me of the meme using the Donnie Darko psychologist template.
Donnie: I made a new form of power generation.
Psychologist: New or steam?
Donnie: Steam…
But yes.
Submitted 5 weeks ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/f1ea9e76-d5cf-4af0-95ca-b2fef56d28a6.png
Comments
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
Draegur@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Steam implies water! What if we used some OTHER phase-change working fluid? :D
||(No idea what, though. my question is implied with a playful tone and is at least 50% facetious; any actual discussion that might result would be little more than a pleasant coincidence)||
MehBlah@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
You want to see weird water look up super critical boilers. That stuff was nasty. A regular steam leak will set things on fire. That stuff would explode a broom. We looked for the leaks with straw brooms. You can’t see steam in normal conditions. Only its effects.
chaogomu@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Molten salt?
We can then use compressed CO2 in the place of steam to drive the turbine.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
Tag yourself! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant
BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Like Dr. Pepper?
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The only truly new method of power generation we’ve made in the last 100 years has been photovoltaic cells. Everything else is just finding new ways to make turbines spin.
antrosapien@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
That’s just boiling water with extra steps
aprl02@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
That’s wrong statement
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
I’ve actually seen this same meme used in the opposite way where they did discover a new way but I don’t remember enough information to find it. And I don’t think it was talking about solar.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 5 weeks ago
It was realizing that a lot of our power is still, at its core, a steam engine
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
We discovered a banger like 200 years ago and have held on tight until eight about now with wind/solar/hydro.
Still going to be using their geothermal/fission/fusion for at least another 200 years though.
Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Hydro is just more dense steam, wind is less dense steam, it’s steam engines all the way!
Lussy@hexbear.net 5 weeks ago
Mechanical engineers fist pumping after finding out their entire profession is not yet obsolete
hobovision@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
More like a steam turbine (which is way cooler cause it’s like a jet engine). Steam engine makes me think of a piston engine like on a train.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Seems to be just photovoltaics and spinny things.
Phoonzang@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
There’s also fuel cells, where fuel is not burned to create steam to move something, but combined with oxygen in a different way (the end products still being the same) so the electrons shuttled around during this reaction can be utilised as electricity. Think of combustion as oxidation of your fuel, the oxidation meaning that you (among other things) move electrons from the fuel to oxygen. In combustion, unfortunately you can’t access the electrons directly, as they are always stuck in the chemical bonds of the molecules, that’s why we take the detour via heat/mechanical - the steam engine. The fuel cell now separates fuel and oxygen, and thus divides the combustion reaction into two parts that happen at opposite sides of the cell. Those sides are divided by a membrane that does not allow the electrons to transfer across, so they need to take a detour through an electric circuit, in which we can harvest them as electrical power.
I always found it really fascinating that fuel cells are the only other technology than solar where the electrons we use as electrical power are more or less directly generated as opposed to the detour via a generator. Unfortunately, fuel cells are still a very niche technique.
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 5 weeks ago
This is reminds me of a quote from one of the Encased loading screens.
To paraphrase it “Power generation before was about turning a turbine with steam. Under the Dome we have this fancy technology that we use to…turn a turbine with steam.”
MissGutsy@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
[Encased mentioned] I love that game
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 5 weeks ago
I have a play through of being a certified idiot. I have never laughed harder at things my character has done.
LegoBrickOnFire@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
They just found rocks that are naturally hot and boiled water with it… Engineering is a scam.
Zink@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
We have rocks that do math, transmit electricity, and fly us through the sky.
When you get reductive about the natural sciences it all just boils down to applied physics which is applied mathematics.
But engineering and technology? Applied geology.
(/s because I’m not going to acknowledge that geology is applied chemistry and so on)
BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 5 weeks ago
You have to engrave special runes on these rocks for them to work.
I heard that some wizards on the remote island of Tayouan far east are very good at it.
SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
In a sense, you’re right. And there’s a bit of magic involved. If you cut a certain special rock into slices, engrave runes on one side of it, and inject lightning, the rock starts to think. I don’t see how you can describe that as anything other than magic.
johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Sometimes we take the hot rocks and ship them to other planets too.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Nearly all power generation comes down to boiling water to steam which spins a turbine.
I can only think of two common exceptions off the top of my head. Solar is an exception and Hydro power is an exception ironically, that usually uses the vertical difference and gravity to spin the turbine.
davidgro@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Yeah, who would have guessed that modernity was invented by someone who stuck magnets to a fidget spinner and strapped it to a boiler.
subtext@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
One could even argue that hydro power is just boiling water, letting it condense, and then letting it spin a turbine
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’ve never heard of Hydro power boiling water. Usually hydro power is natural or pumped storage.
You’re just taking water from an upper reservoir and dropping it to a downstream river. Either a naturally-filled reservoir/lake, or a pumped storage reservoir where you use other cheap power during low usage periods to pump that water to a higher reservoir to utilize later. The pump doesn’t heat the water, it just moves it uphill to utilize later, like the Taum Sauk Hydroelectric Power Station in Missouri.
nBodyProblem@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
There are gas turbine generators that directly use shaft power to generate electricity
usrtrv@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Wind? And binary cycle geothermal plants but not sure how common they are.
alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
The energy for hydro and wind still comes from the sun.
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Nuclear power is just steampunk with magic rocks.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
God damnit Jinyang!
disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Errich, is the refrigerator running? This is Mike Hunt, and he’s a rich.
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Eric Bachman, this is your mother. You are not my son.
jballs@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
“This is you as an old man. I’m ugly and dead alone.”
ben_dover@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
“You’re a old, and a fat”
dalekcaan@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Nuclearpower is just boiling waterRagingRobot@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I bet there is a way more efficient way to harness it that we are just missing too lol
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
You mean nuclear? Maybe if we could use the tech with fast neutrons from fission experiments in the rods we use to slow down the chain reaction?
P00ptart@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’m kinda surprised that nobody has harnessed our magnetic field to build a power source. Or at least tried. I have no idea how it could work, and I may be dumb as shit for this. But I feel like it could be possible if we had another 500 years left of society.
unlawfulbooger@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
I heard that somewhere in the US there were parts of a nuclear power plant being delivered by steam train. So that’s basically one steam engine supplying another! (^^,)
I can’t seem to find an article about it anywhere, so it might be an urban legend :(
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Big Steam is playing us for suckers!
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
They’re just spinning us in circles!
frezik@midwest.social 5 weeks ago
Given that the first commercial nuclear power plants in the US were coming online in the late 1950s, that’s entirely possible. Steam trains were well on their way out by then, but there were still a few hauling freight around.
Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Sail ships continued to be used well into the 20th century. The absolute last purely sail powered warship served during WW1!
stupidcasey@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Nuclear power is the refining distilling and enriching of uranium into unstable isotopes and higher elements, boiling water is one small step in converting nuclear energy into electrical energy.
Rolder@reddthat.com 5 weeks ago
But it’s one of the most important steps because it’s where the actual electricity comes from.
uis@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
into unstable isotopes
No, they were there all along.
RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
There are some fusion designs that use direct energy conversion.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
The nuclear batteries small enough for handheld devices that we’ve been reading about recently don’t use any water.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Those have been researched and tested for decades and the tech still hasn’t caught on. They just don’t put out enough power to be useful for much more than a clock circuit (not even enough to power a full watch, just keep the time).
I have serious doubts they’re going to suddenly become viable anytime soon.
Any useful energy production from nuclear is basically just making steam to run turbines. Same with coal but you know.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
RTGs also do not use water.
uis@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
And then there is thermonuclear generators
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 5 weeks ago
plus a side of extra spicy land and groundwater
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
That’s from building nuclear weapons though, not power
plinky@hexbear.net 5 weeks ago
Draegur@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
“what if fire… But… MOAR”
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Or melting salt, or whatever. But yes it’s just making stuff hot.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The issue is that boiling water is inside human bodies
Des@hexbear.net 5 weeks ago
still waiting for those molten fuel MHD reactors
ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
So a nucler reactor is just a kettle with an extra spicy heating element?
neidu3@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Yes. Water + spicy rocks. Everything else is solar power, which is also nuclear power, but with the spiciness in the sky instead.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Fun fact. Coal plants release more radioactive materials than nuclear plants.]
Except the ones that blew up. Those ones were extra spicy.
Robust_Mirror@aussie.zone 5 weeks ago
jagungal@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I mean, radioactive isotopes are formed in supernovae, so it’s really just solar power from a different sun, right?
darthelmet@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Not spicy. Everyone knows nuclear power is lemon-lime flavored.
ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Taste: slightly metallic, not great, not terrible.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Cherenkov: The blue raspberry of nuclear radiation
Klear@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
No! I vanted orange!
Shiggles@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Most power generation is just steam spinning turbines. Solar’s just weird. Wind cuts out the steam loop.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Reflective solar is normal at least. But photovoltaics are weird. Even weirder is that they’re LEDs backwards, and the fact that transistors just are like that is why they’re encased in black plastic
BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
What about hydro electric? It uses cold steam
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
That’s not a spicy challenge id be willing to try.