The Rambler

This post is a continuation of my previous post. Lots of alternative energy content here. Enjoy!

Solar collector with tin cans

For a middle-school science project I built a solar hot air collector similar to the one in this picture. I used tin cans, not pop cans as shown in the image, but otherwise the design was much the same. I was one of a bunch of students who built various sorts of collectors - mine was the only one using tin cans. I had the advantage of my dad being a solar energy expert, and so had his help along with a lot of books and magazines about solar energy to learn from.

The solar collectors were tested in the parking lot of the school. The day we did this was also the day that there was a partial solar eclipse - February 26, 1979. Because of this, I and many of my classmates had also built pinhole cameras to view the sun. There we all were, solar collectors lined up and being tested, while also peering at the ongoing eclipse. I can still visualize it!

Biogas Digester

In some of Dad's alternative energy books (or maybe Mother Earth News?) were plans for biogas digesters, using manure and other organic matter to generate methane gas. I found this fascinating.

At some point, I talked with my 7th (or 8th?) grade science teacher about making a biogas digester. He found it interesting, and somehow, eventually, he agreed to let me try an experiment to do it, using a 1-gallon glass jug as a digester. He'd agreed that we could put the jug in a covered fume hood with a light bulb as a heat source to keep it warm. I honestly don't remember if it worked or not, or what we used to gather the gas, but it was interesting nonetheless, though my classmates thought me weird for playing with cow manure.

I decided I wanted to try using a 55-gallon drum and a tractor inner-tube for gas storage. Having some chickens and cows, and consequently plenty of manure, made it feasible to consider building one of these. We also had a few 55-gallon drums around, probably because Dad had plans to build a vertical axis wind turbine.

I gathered a barrel, some plumbing, tubing, and an inner tube. After painting the barrel a dark flat green to make it a natural solar collector, and assembling all the plumbing, the barrel was placed in a sunny spot in the garden. Then it was filled halfway with manure, grass clippings and water, and sealed shut. After some time - days? weeks? I don't remember - the inner tube began puffing out. This initial gas was purged a couple times to remove the oxygen, which might have made for an explosive mixture. Finally, it was time to test for methane. A hose terminated with a 1-foot copper pipe to make a torch was fitted to the valve on the tank/tube, the valve was opened, and a match was touched to the end of the pipe. A large bright yellow flame emerged - it worked!

I never did anything useful with the gas, and instead, I just periodically burned it off in the garden. And that was the last of my experiments with making biogas.

Solar Ethanol Still

Yet another solar energy project I attempted was a solar still to produce ethanol fuel. This is one I didn't complete. I had begun building a 4x8 foot flat-panel still, which would look like the picture below, but as I recall, I didn't get even this part completed. I don't remember why I abandoned this project - but it was probably due to wanting to hang out and party with my high school friends.

Kites

I've always loved flying kites - and who doesn't! Living in the country and having a large pasture gave me plenty of space to fly kites. Sometimes I'd take a lawn chair out to the pasture on a breezy day and just hang out with a kite bobbing overhead.

One notable kite I had was a five-pointed Green Giant kite, similar to those in the pictures below, except that I'm pretty sure mine was all green. I remember being a bit disappointed, as it didn't fly as well as I'd liked, and it was not so durable either. But cool nonetheless.

I eventually started making my own kites. I tried box kites but never had a lot of luck with them. I made a snake kite from plastic trash bags that was 20 or 30 feet long - see the picture - and this flew pretty well.

Our pasture was good for kite flying, but it wasn't terribly big. There was a large cornfield adjacent to our property, and in the fall after the corn was combined I'd go out there to see how far I could get a kite to go. I had about half a mile of kite string! On a good day, this worked well. I'd even make little parachutes with a paperclip hanger; hung from the kite string, they would be blown along and up the string until I'd give the string a big pluck to drop the parachute. Super fun! Sometimes the wind would give out and the kite would drop to the ground; I'd have no choice but to trudge half a mile across the cornfield to retrieve the kite, winding the string as I went.

22 Rifle Bullet Shooter

This one is one of the stupider things I made, as I could have gotten seriously hurt. I will say right now that I recognized the danger, and despite that, I built and tested this thing anyway. I will also say that I abandonded it pretty quickly as the stupidity of it was clear. So, what was it?

The device was simple. I obtained a small aluminum plate, about four inches square and a quarter-inch thick, and drilled a quarter-inch hole in the middle of it. This is just slightly larger than the diameter of a 22-caliber rifle bullet.

With this plate came the fun. I clamped a vise grip onto the plate to use as a handle, inserted a 22 short bullet into the hole (short because I wasn't sure what would happen, and thought it would be safer - hah!), sidled up to a tree against which I could brace the plate and shield myself from the bullet-side of the shell, and then hit the firing rim of the bullet with a hammer. POW! The bullet flew off into the woods; I knew this because I could hear it crashing through the brush and branches. Pretty cool! Turning over the plate, I discovered that the shell casing had split and splayed out against the plate like a rivet. Also cool! After extracting the rivet-shell, I tried a 22LR bullet. Bigger POW, similar outcome. That was enough.