Good Tire Gauge – Save $500.00+ Per Year!

When tires are not inflated to the recommended PSI (pounds per square inch) as recommended by tire manufacturers, the flat part in contact with the ground is greater and the tires require more energy to flex as they roll.  This phenomenon is known as rolling resistance.  Rolling resistance goes up as pressure goes down.   Low tire pressure reduces the efficiency of your car and shortens the life of your tires – a double penalty.

Tire inflation has become a smoldering issue this election season.  Let’s look past the smoke to see if inflating your tires can really save a measurable amount of energy.

From About.com, “Keeping Your Tires Inflated”  (with a few edits)

An informal study by students at Carnegie Mellon University found that the majority of cars on U.S. roads are operating on tires inflated to only 80 percent of capacity.   (One Dept. of Transportation study has it at 80% of all vehicles have under-inflated tires, 27% have tires under-inflated by 25% or more)  According to the website, fueleconomy.gov, inflating tires to their proper pressure can improve mileage by about 3.3 percent, whereas leaving them under-inflated can lower mileage by 0.4 percent for every one PSI drop in pressure of all four tires.

That may not sound like much, but it means that the average person who drives 12,000 miles yearly on under-inflated tires uses about 144 extra gallons of gas, at a cost of $300-$500 $576.00 a year.  And each time one of those gallons of gas is burned, 20 pounds of carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere as the carbons in the gas are released and combine with the oxygen in the air. As such, any vehicle running on soft tires is contributing as much as 1.5 extra tons (2,880 pounds) of greenhouse gases to the environment annually.

Lets Check The Math:

There are about 250 million vehicles on the road in the U.S.  Some are trucks, but trucks need to keep their tires inflated too.  The average distance driven in a year is 12,000 miles.  With 80% needing to inflate their tires – that makes 200 million of us driving on low tires, each adding an extra 1.5 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.

200 million cars with under inflated tires x 144 gallons of gas per car per year = 28,800,000,000 gallons of gas.

28,800,000,000 gallons of gas divided by 19.6 gallons of gas per barrel of oil (U.S. Energy Information Agency) = 1,469,387,755 barrels of oil per year.

According to estimates from the Interior Dept.’s Minerals Management Service (MMS), the U.S. has roughly 18 billion undiscovered and technically recoverable bbl. of oil offshore.  Total.  It would take a decade to get the first barrel to flow and we could recover maybe 1 billion barrels per year.

In other words, if we inflate our tires to the proper pressure we would save just about the entire amount of oil available offshore before the first barrel was pumped.  Furthermore we save more oil per year than offshore drilling will product.  Period.  Offshore oil will flow at a rate less than what we can save by inflating our tires, and we have the additional benefit of not emitting 1.5 tons x 200 million cars x 10 years – 3 billion tons of CO2 in the interim.

Looks like inflating our tires is a smarter policy.

Make it easy to check your tires, this Accutire Gauge has big numbers and is easy to read in bright daylight.  This gauge is heavy duty, easy to grip and it beeps when it has a correct reading.  Pretty foolproof.

TechShop – Tool Heaven

TechShop - BoingBoing

Xeni at BoingBoing TV has a great short video on the San Francisco area TechShop. Video Link

From the TechShop Website:

TechShop is a fully-equipped open-access workshop and creative environment that lets you drop in any time and work on your own projects at your own pace. It is like a health club with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment…or a Kinko’s for geeks.

TechShop was founded in 2006 by Jim Newton, a lifetime maker, veteran BattleBots builder and former MythBuster. TechShop is located in Menlo Park, California, on the San Francisco peninsula 25 miles south of San Francisco.

Anyone can come in and build and make all kinds of things themselves using the TechShop tools, machines and equipment, and draw on the TechShop instructors and experts to help them with their projects.

TechShop is designed for everyone, regardless of their skill level. TechShop is perfect for inventors, “makers”, hackers, tinkerers, artists, roboteers, families, entrepreneurs, youth groups, FIRST robotic teams, arts and crafts enthusiasts, and anyone else who wants to be able to make things that they dream up but don’t have the tools, space or skills.

The TechShop workshop provides a wide variety of machinery and tools for the open and unlimited use of its members, including milling machines and lathes, welding stations and plasma cutters, sheet metal working equipment, drill presses and band saws, industrial sewing machines, hand tools, plastic working equipment, electronics design and fabrication facilities, tubing and metal bending machines, electrical supplies and tools, and pretty much everything you’d ever need to make just about anything all by yourself.

The community of DIY makers at the TechShop looks pretty fantastic to me. I have several projects that are waiting for tools and some pointers on how to use them. A TechShop in my neighborhood would be a great asset.

Check out: TechShop

Astro Scan Telescope

AstroScan Telescope

We have had an Edmund Scientific Astroscan telescope for over 20 years. This simple to use instrument is a pleasure to use, you just set it in the cast aluminum cradle and point it at whatever you want to see.

By day we use ours for viewing shipping traffic in the Straits of Mackinac, at night it is perfect for viewing the moon or the moons of Jupiter.

From Edmonds:

The original Edmund Scientific Astroscan is an inexpensive, high-performance telescope that is easy-to-use, maintenance-free and completely portable. Its wide field of view, beautiful images and ease of use make it an excellent telescope for beginner and expert stargazers alike.

The heart of the Astroscan is its 1/8 wave, overcoated primary parabolic mirror. Where other telescopes use an inexpensive spherical mirror, the Astroscan’s parabolic mirror has a deeper, more complex figure that focuses all incoming light rays to the same point. This results in crisp, clear images without any of distorting effects of spherical mirror aberration.

The Astroscan is a Newtonian Rich-Field reflector that provides a breathtaking 3 degrees (or six full moons) of field, literally making this instrument an open window to the universe. The wide field-of-view makes finding astronomical objects far easier than with other telescopes and allows for the best views of deep sky objects, or groups of objects, that won’t even fit into the fields of other telescopes.

With the optional Barlow Lens (available separately or included in the Deluxe Package), you can view Saturn’s rings and the Cloud bands of Jupiter. The Astroscan really excels, though, when you turn it to deep sky objects like galaxies, nebulae and star clusters…the Pleiades are truly stunning! At higher magnifications, the Astroscan’s images are crisp, clear and powerful.

Astroscan Telescope The Astroscan has a unique design that won it the 1976 Industrial Design Award. Its creative design has eliminated the cumbersome and complicated mounts typical of most telescopes. Simply place its padded base on any firm, flat surface and you are immediately ready to observe. Its motions are positive and natural, with nothing to tighten or adjust. It’s simple enough for a child to use the first time out.

Find the Astroscan at Edmund Scientifics

Canon PowerShot SD800

Canon SD800

The new Canon SD800 is an ergonomically comfortable 7.1-megapixel camera that has a long list of extra features, like Canon’s very cool face recognition and autofocus, plus highly functional image stabilization. It is worth the effort to read the manuals that come with this multi feature wonder. You can easily set up time exposures or change the sensitivity (ISO) so that you can capture fast action. The video output looks a bit YouTube-ish but there are some rudimentary video editing features built into the camera.

Wired magazine rates the Canon PowerShot SD800 at 8/10, which is a high rating for Wired.

Price: A little over $300.00 at Amazon

(Amazon has the highest customer satisfaction rating for purchasing small appliances according to the latest Consumer Reports)

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