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 months 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 months ago
Draegur@lemm.ee 5 months 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 months 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 months ago
Molten salt?
We can then use compressed CO2 in the place of steam to drive the turbine.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 months ago
Tag yourself! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant
BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Like Dr. Pepper?
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 5 months 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 5 months ago
That’s just boiling water with extra steps
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 months 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 months ago
It was realizing that a lot of our power is still, at its core, a steam engine
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 5 months 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 months ago
Hydro is just more dense steam, wind is less dense steam, it’s steam engines all the way!
Lussy@hexbear.net 5 months ago
Mechanical engineers fist pumping after finding out their entire profession is not yet obsolete
hobovision@lemm.ee 5 months 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 months ago
Seems to be just photovoltaics and spinny things.
Phoonzang@lemmy.world 5 months 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 months 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 months ago
[Encased mentioned] I love that game
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 5 months ago
I have a play through of being a certified idiot. I have never laughed harder at things my character has done.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 5 months 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 months ago
TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee 5 months 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 months 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 months 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 months ago
There are gas turbine generators that directly use shaft power to generate electricity
usrtrv@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Wind? And binary cycle geothermal plants but not sure how common they are.
LegoBrickOnFire@lemmy.world 5 months ago
They just found rocks that are naturally hot and boiled water with it… Engineering is a scam.
johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Sometimes we take the hot rocks and ship them to other planets too.
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Nuclear power is just steampunk with magic rocks.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 months ago
God damnit Jinyang!
disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Errich, is the refrigerator running? This is Mike Hunt, and he’s a rich.
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Eric Bachman, this is your mother. You are not my son.
jballs@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
“This is you as an old man. I’m ugly and dead alone.”
ben_dover@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
“You’re a old, and a fat”
dalekcaan@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Nuclearpower is just boiling waterRagingRobot@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I bet there is a way more efficient way to harness it that we are just missing too lol
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 5 months 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 months 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 months 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 months ago
Big Steam is playing us for suckers!
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 5 months ago
They’re just spinning us in circles!
frezik@midwest.social 5 months 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 months 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 months 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 months ago
But it’s one of the most important steps because it’s where the actual electricity comes from.
uis@lemm.ee 5 months ago
into unstable isotopes
No, they were there all along.
RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 5 months ago
There are some fusion designs that use direct energy conversion.
uis@lemm.ee 5 months ago
And then there is thermonuclear generators
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 5 months ago
plus a side of extra spicy land and groundwater
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
That’s from building nuclear weapons though, not power
plinky@hexbear.net 5 months ago
jerkface@lemmy.ca 5 months 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 months 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.
Draegur@lemm.ee 5 months ago
“what if fire… But… MOAR”
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Or melting salt, or whatever. But yes it’s just making stuff hot.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 5 months ago
And then using that salt to heat water into steam and using that steam to turn a turbine
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 5 months ago
We need high-efficiency thermoelectric generators.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The issue is that boiling water is inside human bodies
Des@hexbear.net 5 months ago
still waiting for those molten fuel MHD reactors
ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 5 months ago
So a nucler reactor is just a kettle with an extra spicy heating element?
neidu3@sh.itjust.works 5 months 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 months 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 months ago
jagungal@lemmy.world 5 months 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 months ago
Not spicy. Everyone knows nuclear power is lemon-lime flavored.
ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Taste: slightly metallic, not great, not terrible.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Cherenkov: The blue raspberry of nuclear radiation
Klear@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
No! I vanted orange!
Shiggles@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Most power generation is just steam spinning turbines. Solar’s just weird. Wind cuts out the steam loop.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 months 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 months ago
What about hydro electric? It uses cold steam
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That’s not a spicy challenge id be willing to try.