William Stoeffhaas
June 6, 2013
C-Even Ms. Davies
"Charge
Your Mobile Phone With Formic Acid?" ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27
May 2013. Web. 06 June 2013.
The article “Charge Your Mobile Phone
With Formic Acid?” is about alternative
energies. It talks about how instead of charging your cellular phone with
batteries you could use formic acid, or fuel cells. Fuel cells are essentially a device that converts
the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction
with oxygen or another oxidizing agent. Hydrogen is the most
common fuel, but hydrocarbons such as natural gas and alcohols
like methanol are sometimes
used. Fuel cells are different from batteries
in that they require a constant source of fuel and oxygen/air to sustain the
chemical reaction, they can however produce electricity continually for as long
as these inputs are supplied. The idea of
using fuel cells, in this article, was brought up by the research done by physicist Florian Nitze
working at Umea University in Swede. One of the problems with fuel cells is
that they take much longer to recharge and they hold the charge for a shorter
amount of time.
I chose this article because it is
about alternative fuels, which is something that I find very interesting. I
feel that with people need to really understand, that as fossil fuels are
depleting, we need alternative fuels or sources of energy. As of now it is not only
because of depleting fossil fuels but also because the environment and how we
are harming it, and that leads to global warming.
Over all I though that the article
was pretty good, and very interesting. The only points that I would make would
be that the language of the article was a bit sophisticated, so for the average
reader they might want to explain more on the details.
I found Will’s article very interesting because I find, batteries that we use in our everyday electronics, like our phone, have been refined and almost perfected, but scientists are still trying to figure out ways to alternatively power our electronic devices. I also think that this specific way is very interesting and creative because it would be using chemical reactions to power the device that would be constantly happening, unlike storing the energy for later use. Overall I enjoyed reading Will’s current event because it opened my eyes to see that almost everything can be improved even if it seems perfect already. I thought Will could have elaborated more on the advantages of these alternative batteries, but the article may have not provided him with enough information.
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