hey all,  i went ahead and searched thru the avery index of periodicals for anything relevant to lab design and compiled what i found into a pdf.  i dunno how helpful this may be but there are some interesting precedents as well as a good amount of technical info.  i posted it on my website, here is the link:     http://www.duke.edu/~th26/avery_index_pack.pdf

tong

MIT Media Lab

So I was perusing the MIT media lab website and I hit paydirt. Check out these videos of life at the lab. Be sure to watch "Media Lab @ Night" It's really cute.

Trash

Interesting Report, done with help of the Earth Institute, regarding NYC trash. Lots of stats. Check out the conclusion.
http://www.seas.columbia.edu/earth/EEC-SIPA-report-NYC-Dec11.pdf

Energy Calc Spreadsheet 10-22

Hey guys,
Jung Woo asked me to post this up for everyone. I consider it a work in progress. There are some new calcs since I showed you the first spread sheet last Friday. For instance, at the top is a general idea of what you could power with 3000 sf of solar panels. Actually a significant amount if you get very creative about how you service the rest of your spaces.
Furthermore, keep in mind that there is more to do with this and it's a REALLY rough estimate. Getting a really solid number is a lot of engineering and a lot of research. There's no real "time-saver standard" for this stuff.
Here's the file: right click and download.
To see the background research check out the files I posted earlier. This is where I pulled most of my rule of thumbs:
open PDF
Here's the research for the lab's energy usage. The chart that shows watts over the hours of the day is the one I really pulled from (averaged out the values)
open PDF

If you guys have any questions, just ask! Hopefully, all this can become a lot clearer tomorrow with Klaus Lackner.

DRAWING SET

Hey everyone,

The new drawing set is here in both METRIC and IMPERIAL.... so download it soon and we will all be working from the same measurements... its in .dwg format, so it is autocad, rhino, and illustrator friendly... have a good one.

site pics 1

hey everyone,

here are my pics from last thursday

Photovoltaics and energy

This is a link to the information I compiled on solar power through photovoltaics. The take home message is:

1. photovoltaic cells will not power the entire load of a typical lab building of this size.
2. PVs can and do have higher conversion efficiencies, but the effeciences I calculated are for typical low-cost, high-availability modules, and the building materials with integrated PV that are currently being manufactured are in the low end of 6-10% efficiency, this is expected to improve steadily for some time.
3. Energy is energy. I think in thinking about our entire building system it will be helpful to take a step back and think about what energy really means. Everything in the world contains potential or kinetic energy - energy which is stored or energy which is doing work. Some key relationships are:
energy=mass*c^2
force=mass*acceleration
work=force*distance
Power (Watt)=work/time=force*velocity

So when we are talking about energy and watts and such, I guess I'm just trying to say that all of the typical means of storing energy are wrapped up in this. Useful energies can be thought of as: heat, mechanical, electrical and I guess nuclear energy -for large scale purposes, using these principles we need to convert to a type of energy we can use. The photovoltaic is convenient because the photons in light move electrons to create an electric current which is exactly a type of energy we want - electricity, but steam and turbines and gravity and heat sinks are also energetic processes that we can use to release or store energy for different building systems since we are dealing with water, air, and ground in addition to light.

PV slides

A cheesy but really clear discussion of types potential/kinetic energy and how it is used for our needs (for kids -but I think the simplicity is helpful)