Stirling engines My first Stirling engine

Sometimes I struggle a bit with certain aspects of construction, but in this case I wasnt even certain of what I was attempting to construct.

Most of the problems trend around a certain frantic waste of pace and failure to pay attention to detail.

This time was no different.

A Stirling engines basic list of components include a cylinder, a displacer, and a crankshaft.

They also include a hot bit, and a cold bit.

Its the difference between the hot bit and the cold bit that makes a Stirling engine an engine.

Theres also another really important bit, called the power piston. The power piston is connected to the same crank shaft, but on another crank. This crank is offset from the displacers crank by 90 degrees.

Im not really sure how it does what it does, but this is my first attempt at making a Stirling engine.

The power piston is the bit thats missing, because I didnt get that far.


Some of the other missing bits include the rest of the components that make up a Stirling engine.



120 Things in 20 years - On a scale of one to ten, where one is a total fail, and ten is a total success, I wouldnt bother rating my first attempt at making a Stirling engine.

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Bees Cucumberic life without bees

The worlds bee population is in the process of being wiped out.

Its called "Colony Collapse Disorder",  which is the kind of name doctors tend to give things when they have no idea what the problem is, but want to be able to refer to it in an unambiguous manner that makes other people feel they know what there talking about.

 Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD is wiping out VERY large numbers of honey bee hives. People that keep bees professionally have closed up shop after losing all their bees.

A while ago, a clerk at the patent office named Albert said, "If all the bees were to disappear,  humans would have 4 years before we were wiped out.", but as far as I know he wasnt a bee expert, but was a very clever man.

The reality is that bees make food grow. almost all our food crops rely on the honey bee to make their fruit, nuts and seeds. Without them we will either learn to eat grass and ferns, or die.

In the last half of this summer, we have not seen a single bee.

Ive been looking for them, and Im pretty good at looking.

I hand pollinated half my cucumber flowers with a small artists paint brush, and left the other half to nature, and not one of natures flowers bore fruit.

Not one.

Im trying to arrange some native blue banded bees to try to fix the problem.

Some time ago I set up a time lapse photography shot of some cucumbers that I thought I had hand pollinated, but half way through the shoot, I realised I had the memory stick that was for the camera on my desk.

Oh well. At least it wasnt as big a fail as the idiot that coded the little beep noise that tells you its working. Their design work means the device continues to make the Ive just taken a picture "beep" even when theres no card in the device.

Clever.

Anyway...

Heres some time lapse of the second setup where I used the plants that were not being hand pollinated. Pay particular attention to the 3 already formed little cucumbers just to the right of centre. (sorry about all the black dead space at the end, youtubes edit says it doesnt exist so you must be imagining it just like me) ...




youtube is giving me some grief. The clip works around 50% of the time in the different ways I test stuff.

This might work http://youtu.be/z85OlJScCEE

If its not fixed soon Ill redo it.

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