JAPAN’S POWER PROBLEM

As a developed and densely populated country, Japan requires vast amounts of energy. It is the third largest producer of electricity in the world, after the USA and China, and the per capita electrical consumption of Japan is the 18th largest in the world. Japan lacks significant fossil fuels, however, and in 2010 it was the world’s largest importer of coal and natural gas. In 2009, Japan generated a total amount of electricity of 1041 Terra-Watt hours; its average generating capacity was 120GW. 27% was from coal and natural gas, 9% from oil, 27% from nuclear, 8% from hydroelectricity and 2% from other sources, including solar, geothermal and burning waste and biofuel.

Following the Tohoku Earthquake and resultant tsunami, amid concern that Japan’s nuclear reactors could not survive future earthquakes and growing public pressure to phase out nuclear power, the Japanese government shut down all 54 nuclear reactors, and began restarting them after safety checks in June 2012. This has created a loss of generating capacity of approximately 30 GW (GigaWatts or 30 000MW), which is currently being made up for mostly by existing thermal power stations, however this results in them running at a higher capacity than normal and should not be maintained indefinitely (in case there is another accident or problems with other power stations). Increased use of fossil fuels will further contribute to climate change, and were also cited as one cause for Japan’s first balance of trade deficit in decades.

Kawagoe Power Station (4802MW), Mie (image from Wikipedia)

Your task is draft a plan for how Japan can generate the 30 GW of power needed to make up for the shortfall left after the nuclear power plants were shut down. You must be specific about how the power will be generated and where the power generation facilities will be located. You may also choose to replace some or all of the remainder of Japan’s electricity generation system (for example, you may wish to replace its current fossil fuel production with renewable energy sources, or with nuclear power.) It should be presented to the class in a two to five minute presentation to the class. By the end of that time, the audience should have an understanding of
1) where and how the electricity will be produced (or saved).

2) why your solution is the best solution to Japan’s power shortage.

The Japanese government announced in May 2011 that it had set a goal of having 20% of the nation’s electricity come from renewable energy sources by the early 2020s, however it is your choice whether or not to meet this claim, or to exceed it. Assume that all of Japan’s current nuclear power stations are deemed unsafe in light of recent earthquake predictions and need to be replaced (even though this is quite unlikely and some are already operating again).

Nunobiki Pleateau Wind Farm, Fukushima (image from wikipedia)

As an alternative, you may choose to partially or wholly make up for this loss in electricity production by reducing demand for electricity, however you must be specific in how the government will ensure that Japan’s electricity consumption is reduced by 30GW.

Facts and images here come from Wikipedia and Sustainable Energy – without the hot air by David JC MacKay, an excellent resource which is available for download from www.withouthotair.com.

Possible Solutions

Possible Solutions

 Alternative Option:

Present an overview of an energy issue from another country. Your presentation should be about half explaining the issue, and about half your opinion on it, but this may of course vary.

Possible Examples:
Should France continue to be the most nuclear-reliant country in the world?
Are Germany’s renewable energy targets realistic? Should they be more ambitious?
Should Taiwan continue construction and use of the fourth nuclear power plant, or should the project be cancelled?
Is Denmark’s plan of generating 50% of its electricity by wind power in 2020 realistic, and if so should it go ahead?
OR another topic or country of your choice.

This is not really a study guide, since the test includes content from the last year and a half. However, here are a few suggestions.

First, here is the official IGCSE Coordinated Science Syllabus.

I suggest your best resources are your own notes (?) and the textbook. Relevant chapters are all of chapter 1 (as essential skills), all of chapter 2, all of chapter 3 except pages 62-70 (covered in the final energy resources unit), all of chapter 4 up to seismic waves (nothing from page 112), all of chapter 5 and all of chapter 6. The mock exam will not include and chapters 7 (next unit), 8 (unfortunately not covered in IGCSE) or the ‘Further Topics’. For students sitting the Modified Mock Exam, it will only cover this year’s work, which has been chapters 4 and 6 (not seismic waves starting page 112).

Also, all my presentations are below. I personally do not recommend using these as a study resource, because I make them to support my classroom teaching, for example to show images, work through sample problems or sometimes just to (hopefully) create an interesting context for teaching the concepts. For this reason, not everything here is in the syllabus (but it should all help in the learning of the syllabus, if indirectly), and not everything in the syllabus is necessarily here (as it may have been covered elsewhere in the course). The textbook, however, is designed to be a resource for students to read and study from independently, so I recommend it for this purpose. However, since everyone finds different study strategies effective (and because people request them) here they are.

Light and Waves

The final Energy Resources and Radioactivity units in the presentation below are NOT covered in the upcoming mock exam; I am embedding them here only so that all my presentations for this year are in one place.

If you have any questions about the mock exam or of course the physics itself, please email me.

Here is my final presentation for the Physics course, covering Energy Resources and Radioactivity.

The assignment will be due on the third week back after Winter Break. Here are some additional details.

Work through this assignment. It was summative for 10A and 10B, but will be formative for 10C, and we will do a similar summative investigation on convex lenses shortly after I return. However, I will leave the rubric there for familiarity. Since I will not be there to discuss the method first, I will suggest a method below. It should be possible to finish it this period.

1. Go to this site and run the PHET simulation (“run now” will not work in chrome).

2. Go to the third tab (“more tools”) at the top, and add a protractor, as shown below.

We will investigate how the critical angle changes with refractive index (a measure of how much light slows down as it enters a medium). Total internal reflection (and therefore a critical angle) only occurs when light passes from a more dense (higher refractive index) to a less dense (lower refractive index) medium. Therefore, we want the medium on the bottom to be as low as possible, therefore we set the refractive index on the bottom medium to 1. It will stay 1 throughout the whole investigation.

We will change the refractive index on the top and measure the critical angle for each. Note that at the critical angle, the light ray disappears, so we have to estimate the point at which the light would exit the medium with an angle of refraction of 90 degrees. This might be annoying and lead to less accurate results, however as we saw last week this is what happens in the ‘real world’.

3. Change the refractive index of the top medium to 1.1 (it is 1.050 in the screenshot below).

4. Move the laser by dragging it. If it is vertical or close to it (a low angle of incidence), you will see refraction. If it is close to horizontal (a high angle of incidence) you will see total internal reflection. The critical angle is the angle in between, where the ray disappears or both rays are shown. The laser in the screenshot below is at the critical angle.

5. Change the refractive index of the top medium to 1.2. Then move the laser again to determine the new critical angle. Repeat for values of 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6.

RESULTS

6. Draw a table of refractive index and critical angle values.

7. Plot a graph of critical angle (Y axis) verses refractive index (X axis). You should see a pattern in your results.

8. Explain your results as best you can, however we will follow up on this after the break.

Due Date:  TBD when I return to school

JAPAN’S POWER PROBLEM

As a developed and densely populated country, Japan requires vast amounts of energy. It is the third largest producer of electricity in the world, after the USA and China, and the per capita electrical consumption of Japan is the 18^th largest in the world. Japan lacks significant fossil fuels, however, and in 2010 it was the world’s largest importer of coal and natural gas. In 2009, Japan generated a total amount of electricity of 1041 Terra-Watt hours; its average generating capacity was 120GW. 27% was from coal and natural gas, 9% from oil, 27% from nuclear, 8% from hydroelectricity and 2% from other sources, including solar, geothermal and burning waste and biofuel.

Following the Tohoku Earthquake and resultant tsunami, amid concern that Japan’s nuclear reactors could not survive future earthquakes and growing public pressure to phase out nuclear power, the Japanese government shut down all 54 nuclear reactors, and began restarting them after safety checks in June 2012. This has created a loss of generating capacity of approximately 30 GW (GigaWatts  or 30 000MW), which is currently being made up for mostly by existing thermal power stations, however this results in them running at a higher capacity than normal and should not be maintained indefinitely (in case there is another accident or problems with other power stations). Increased use of fossil fuels will further contribute to climate change, and were also cited as one cause for Japan’s first balance of trade deficit in decades.

Kawagoe Power Station (4802MW), Mie (image from Wikipedia)

Your task is draft a plan for how Japan can generate the 30 GW of power needed to make up for the shortfall left after the nuclear power plants were shut down. You must be specific about how the power will be generated and where the power generation facilities will be located. You may also choose to replace some or all of the remainder of Japan’s electricity generation system (for example, you may wish to replace its current fossil fuel production with renewable energy sources, or with nuclear power.) It should be presented as an essay (with diagrams and figures as appropriate) and saved as a Google Document with me (or, like other assignments, you may send it to me as an attachment if you prefer.)
The Japanese government announced in May 2011 that it had set a goal of having 20% of the nation’s electricity come from renewable energy sources by the early 2020s, however it is your choice whether or not to meet this claim, or to exceed it. Assume that all of Japan’s current nuclear power stations are deemed unsafe in light of recent earthquake predictions and need to be replaced (even though this is quite unlikely and some are already operating again).

Nunobiki Pleateau Wind Farm, Fukushima (image from wikipedia)

As an alternative, you may choose to partially or wholly make up for this loss in electricity production by reducing demand for electricity, however you must be specific in how the government will ensure that Japan’s electricity consumption is reduced by 30GW.

Facts and images here come from Wikipedia and Sustainable Energy – without the hot air by David JC MacKay, an excellent resource which is available for download from www.withouthotair.com.

Possible Solutions

Since the test will be made of old IGCSE questions, and since the test is practice for the ‘real’ IGCSE exam, the study guide will be no more detailed than can be provided for the exam itself.

The test on Tuesday will cover Light and Waves, which could include anything we have covered since the beginning of the year until before October Break. It will not test the magnetism unit started this week. My presentations are on my blog, but I recommend reading the textbook (and taking notes if it helps) and going through the questions at the end of each section.

We have covered all of Chapter 4 (Rays and Waves) up to but not including Seismic Waves (pages 82-111).

Please email me if you have any questions.

Sound wave simulations (for use in class):

http://www.kettering.edu/physics/drussell/Demos/waves/wavemotion.html

http://www.phy.hk/wiki/englishhtm/Lwave.htm