North Shore Nancy Drives a Solar Powered School Bus 08 11 2011

North Shore Nancy Drives a Solar Powered School Bus 08 11 2011

Yesterday I saw an add in the newspaper for a lithium ion battery assisted bicycle capable of going 16 mph, it had a 235 watt motor and the battery was 24 volts.  I started to wonder how many watts a similar battery operated motor would require to power the least heavy and bare minimum of an automobile?  I am just guessing that a similar electric motor for a car would require 1000 watts or a kilowatt to drive at a slow speed.  Then I started to add up the watts to see how many solar panels would be needed to power such a vehicle assuming I am using the most efficient solar panel per surface area.  I believe that I have seen one foot by three feet solar panels that are capable of 45 watts of output.  So if one were to put a canopy on such a bicycle to generate electricity through a solar sail one would need a 21 square foot solar sail.  That is 3 feet by seven feet.  That would be doable but you might get blown over. You could go all day though on a sunny day, and that is indeed our future whether you want to believe it or not.  How might this come to be?  One day the whole of the human race might just suffer from Carbon Monoxide intolerance whereby no oil based products would ever be allowed to be burnt again, because at the slightest smell of it people would be dropping over dead.

Then I started to think of the dynamics of solar panels and electric motors.  Surface area is the key, the greater the surface area the more power.  Your average school bus does not have much more horse power than your 1970’s high power sports car did.  So it would take the surface area the size of a school bus to power that type of electric motor.  The structure would not have to be load bearing throughout, but it would have to be road stable.  Indeed the lighter the weight the less horsepower motor it would need.

So that is indeed where we are going.  Every North Shore Nancy will be driving their own solar powered car the size of a school bus.  A north shore Nancy drives a school bus?  Isn’t that the way it should be?  Like I said for a vehicle the equivalent to the size of a school bus- it would not have to be load bearing like a school bus- meaning it would not have to carry all those children and would not be able to.  So North Shore Nancy could decide which ones to drive to school and which ones not to, aren’t I being fair?

Now what would happen when all those North Shore Nancy’s arrived at school to drop off their children in their solar powered vehicles the size of school busses?  All those proud trophy women converging with those oversized vehicles at the same time?  Well, they might learn about logistics, and how to obey traffic laws, and how to wait their turn, patience, respect for others, they might learn that it is rude to talk one another while others are trying to get past you, etc.  -Things people should learn in school or in their homes.  In a word they would learn something they are desperately lacking, “humility.”

The air would clear and become much cleaner for the rest of us.

I know my good Moor friend Barrack Obama will like this one.  I am not too far off, his father was black and his mother was Italian.  The Moors (blacks) conquered Italy.  As a Moor why hasn’t Barrack fed Panetta to the lions, for making torture an American standard?  Is Panetta his master?

Thomas Paul Murphy

Copyright 2011 Thomas Paul Murphy

Originally Published on 08 11 2011 at: www.themilwaukeeandwisconsinnews.blogspot.com