Casually, energy is defined as the strength and the drive that gets us through our day-to-day activities. From the moment we wake up, eat breakfast, and go about whatever we must achieve our needs and wants, all these activities use up energy.
We derive this energy from several areas. Be it food, drinks:
And even other……means:
Energy is actually defined as the capacity to do work. Here lies a difference with the casual meaning of energy, and has a broader application and more uses. But the science is still there because energy is everywhere, such as pumping air into an iron furnace:
Or even singing:
Within the realms of science however, energy is usually geared towards a specific use. Scientists carefully consider the exact source and behavior of the energy. In this post, we'll explore the various energy sources and fuels used in Dr. Stone.
A lot of Dr. Stone is about energy. It's the main part of the equation on Senku's shirt, and a lot of time is spent harnessing energy in different ways and from different sources, for different purposes towards advancing back to modern times.
Our very thoughts themselves are a form of energy -- electrical signals from cells that use chemicals to generate electricity (neuroscience is a wild world). We know our body turns food into energy, but what's happening is our body turns food into chemicals that can be used for energy. The energy was stored in the food until then. In Dr. Stone, Senku considers what could have been a source of energy in the stone for him to be thinking consciously for thousands of years. A sound theory but we still don't know what was in the stone that provided the energy.
The Earth's natural processes can provide energy that we can capture and harness from several sources. The most known ones are wind (Wind energy), water flow (Hydroelectric energy), the ground beneath us (Geothermal energy), and radioactive substances (Nuclear energy).
But what happens when the world gets reset, and humanity loses all its forms of energy? For example, being thrust into a Stone Age. The absence of power means that the world falls into darkness, something that Senku explained to Chrome soon after they met. At that time, they lived in a world run solely by manual labor.
A reset forces you start again, from the very beginning. Early man developed the use of fire in the Old Stone Age, separating us from animals. This was among the first instances humans used ingenuity to harness the energy of nature to do work for them.
Back then, fire was used to cook, keep warm, and as a defense against wild animals. As humanity progressed, we found more uses for fire beyond basic survival. In Dr. Stone, examples of this are making swords and glass.
Fire can also be used to power up hot air balloons, which are a form of transport.
Another form of energy in nature used for transportation is flowing water (the energy comes from gravity).
Moving forward, we entered the age of electricity, which is derived from quite a few sources in Dr Stone. For a while, it still ultimately comes from manual labor (Ginro and Kinro) until Chrome's waterwheel is built. Either way, it's energy from motion that is converted into electrical energy.
In about 600 BC, the Ancient Greeks discovered that rubbing fur on amber (fossilized tree resin) caused an attraction between the two – and so what the Greeks discovered was static electricity.
Michael Faraday was the first person to come up with the concept of an electric generator. In 1831, electricity became viable for use in technology when Michael Faraday created the electric dynamo (a crude power generator), which let to solving the problem of generating electric current in an ongoing and practical way. This was the same prototype generator that Senku initially used to generate electricity. A generator essentially converts motive power (mechanical energy) – the motion of the magnet moving across the conductive material – and converts it into electricity.
Back to natural sources of energy, there is another method through which energy can be extracted from water. Heating it up causes it to turn into steam, and this steam is holding all the energy from being heated, and can be used as a means to create mechanical energy. The steam engine was a commonly used engine during the Industrial Revolution. Denis Papin (French engineer) was the first person who discovered the potential steam energy had as a form of power. Senku's "wobbler engine" in the Steam Gorilla is an oscillating cylinder steam engine. It was chosen for its simplicity since it operates with fewer parts.
The Stone Wars ends. Come the new arc, and the main cast of the story desire to build a ship to navigate the world. But what was this ship supposed to be powered by? Now we're talking about fuel, changing matter directly into energy for a device, machine, or organism to operate. Ryusui mentioned coal as a form of fuel, before quickly discarding it in favor of oil. In history, coal has been an essential source of energy, but oil is king.
In the 1880’s, coal was first used to generate electricity for homes and factories. In 1961, coal was the major fuel used to generate electricity in the USA. It is the most abundant fossil fuel in the world. Xeno’s boat in the USA was powered by coal.
A variation of coal energy can be seen in firewood. Firewood is energy derived from burning timber. While this energy is normally used for cooking in houses, it can also be used to power up vehicles.
Wood gasification is a process whereby organic material is converted into a combustible gas under the influence of heat - the process reaches a temperature of 1,400 °C (2,550 °F). The first use of wood gasification dates to 1870s, when it was used as a forerunner of natural gas for street lighting and cooking.In the 1920s, German engineer Georges Imbert developed a wood gas generator for mobile use. The gases were cleaned and dried and then fed into the vehicle's combustion engine, which barely needs to be adapted. The Imbert generator was mass produced from 1931 on. At the end of the 1930s, about 9,000 wood gas vehicles were in use, almost exclusively in Europe.
Oil was eventually used to power up the Perseus. The oil from the Saraga Oil Fields was refined and used as gasoline for the massive engine. The operation of the engine not only powered propellers under the boat, but also electric generators attached to the engine which provided electricity to the ship. Things like lights, the radar system, communications, and the moving sails would have used the electricity. Powering these things from the engine through the generator takes very little away from the immense power going to the propellers.
The new Perseus is powered by biogas energy. Like Senku explained, it's a form of energy that's derived from waste products. It's produced when organic matter such as food or animal waste is broken down by micro-organisms in the absence of oxygen. This process is called anaerobic digestion. Biogas systems use anaerobic digestion to recycle these organic materials, turning them into both energy (gas), and valuable soil products (liquid and solids).
Simply put, there is a fermentation process that breaks down organic matter, turning what once was waste into a gas that contains enough energy to be used to effectively heat, cook, or produce electricity once it is burned.
The first digestion plant was built in Bombay, India. In 1895, biogas was extracted from a sewage treatment facility and used to fuel streetlamps in Exeter.
Biogas energy is the most recent means of energy discovered in the series. But with the crew now traveling the world, it could be a chance to introduce newer forms of energy. Wind power and geothermal power could make their way into the story very soon. Nuclear power as well, considering one of the items on the rocket road map is a nuclear substance.
The biogas is energetic enough to use for testing Xeno's first Stone World rocket, and for superpowering the Perseus. It won't get them to the moon, so real rocket fuel will be developed eventually. Rocket fuel is some of the most energetic fuel on Earth. It's so powerful, they've spent months preparing seriously tough superalloy metals that will be needed to handle its force and heat without damage.
A last honorable mention is a peculiar source of energy, the diamonds that power the medusa. This technology hasn't been proven in the real world but it's being studied. Although the diamonds are blackened, they aren't burning the diamonds as fuel. Hopefully we'll learn more about it later in the story.
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