Word: solarity
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During the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, Virginia's Fairfax County school board decided to build an innovative, energy-saving school. Blueprints called for a partly solar-powered building, buried underground so that the heat generated by students, lights and machinery would not escape. When the board took its plan to the federal Energy Research and Development Administration in search of a grant, it got nowhere. Then, a Washington consultant for Saudi Arabia, who had read about the school, asked the board if it would be interested in a "private" investment. It was, and a $700,000 grant from...
...four large "learning circles," each of which is divided into eight wedge-shaped classrooms, plus a "media center," a gymnasium and a cafeteria. A layer of soil three to five feet thick covers the top and three sides. A panel structure on top of the hill contains 4,900 solar collectors to turn the sun's rays into heat. The yearly cost for energy to run Terraset is a projected $10,000. Conventional heating would require about...
...Middle Ages, Copernicus displaced earth from its position at the center of the solar system. But Aristotle's thinking continued to dominate astronomy until 1572, when Tycho Brahe observed a bright new star (which scientists now know was a supernova, or exploding star) near the constellation Cassiopeia. Beyond any doubt, it had not previously been visible. Other blows to Aristotelian cosmology followed swiftly. By early in the 17th century, Galileo had used his telescope to discover spots on the sun−demonstrating that the solar complexion was somewhat less than perfect−and to prove that...
Died. Donald H. Menzel, 75, one of the world's leading authorities on the sun; in Boston. Menzel observed his first solar eclipse as a boy in Colorado, and spent the rest of his life studying the sun and its corona. A member of the Harvard faculty for nearly 40 years. Menzel watched 15 total solar eclipses, leading expeditions to Siberia, the Sahara and other remote outposts to get the best views. In 1938 he developed the U.S.'s first coronagraph, a telescopic device that allows scientists to study the sun's glowing halo without the help...
ERDA and some privately funded research groups are investigating ways to extract oil from shale, tap the energy from the sun and harness the earth's heat. None of these sources is expected to provide the ultimate solution. Combining solar with conventional energy could help cut some fuel use. One problem: methods of storing solar energy are not effective enough to be relied on as the sole source of electric or heating power in the cold winter climates of such areas as New England and the northern Middle West. Prices for getting shale oil or using wet-steam deposits...