|
|
|
May 11, 2008
Tracking Solar
I was looking at a site touting solar energy and remembered an outfit from my hippie days. Zome Works. They have a solar tracker that uses no moving parts. Just liquid in pipes. The liquid is moved by solar energy and because the solar cell holders are balanced it follows the sun. They claim that cell output can increase up to 25% over the course of a day by using their tracking mechanism. Neat stuff. Steve Baer was the inventor of the Zome Works tracker. He also invented something called Zome Geometry based on the Fibonacci series. Also called the Golden Mean or phi. Its value is equal to the square root of five plus one divided by two. (√5+1)/2 or approximately 1.61803398875. The cute thing about buildings built with parts made in that ratio is that any errors in construction (if they are not too great) tend to cancel out in structures made of many parts. All that happens because the Fibonacci series is self healing. You can learn more about this amazing construction method and Zome construction "toys" at Zome Tool. Right now the only embodiment of the Zome construction concept is the the Zome Tool "toys". It is too bad the construction industry is so right angle oriented. With a standard set of Zome Panels housing could be much more modular and creative. There is a nice picture of one of Steve Baer's housing constructs at Zome Tool History. Have a look. I have created a Fibonacci Spread Sheet for those who want to play around. A friend sent a link to The Fibonacci Series which is full of a lot of simple math and interesting observations. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon on 05.11.08 at 01:41 AM
Comments
Steve, You are quite correct. The purpose of the spread sheet was to give people who have not played with the numbers nor had much training in formal mathematics an easy way to get a feel for the Fibonacci series and how it works. Especially the self healing properties I described in the text. M. Simon · May 12, 2008 01:23 AM M- SteveBrooklineMA · May 12, 2008 11:15 AM Post a comment
You may use basic HTML for formatting.
|
|
May 2008
WORLD-WIDE CALENDAR
Search the Site
E-mail
Classics To Go
Archives
May 2008
April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 May 2002 AB 1634 MBAPBSALLAMERICANGOP See more archives here Old (Blogspot) archives
Recent Entries
• Happy Mothers Day
• Holding things accountable for what men do with them • "a wonderful new voice selling old, discredited ideas" • Tracking Solar • The sublime charm of subliminal marketing • Start A Fusion Program In Your Kitchen! • Landslides • Harvard, Hamas, and elitist odds • How Many States? • Starting A Fusion Program In Your Home Town
Links
Site Credits
|
|
Looking at your spreadsheet, I wonder if the self-healing property is really that remarkable. If you have a sequence a(1), a(2), a(3), ... and there is a fixed linear mapping A that takes (a(n-1),a(n-2))to (a(n),a(n-1)) for all n, then the ratio
a(n)/a(n-1) will tend to the largest eigenvalue of A. In the Fibonacci case, the largest eigenvalue of A is phi. I suspect that this would generalize to sequences where the nth term is a linear combination of k previous terms, not just the previous two.