Lecture #22 Monday, May 18th

Day of Midterm Exam #2

Today I introduced the very last unit of our class, which will look into alternate forms of energy. To start the introduction, I played a clip (the 23:25 mark) form a speech given by President Obama where he outlined the need for coming up with renewable energy.

I also highlighted the key points from a lecture given by Dr. Daniel Nocera, The Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry, at MIT. Dr. Nocera's research has a large focus on chemical energy conversion, which is based on the foundations of electrochemistry, which will be the next main topic discussed in class.

Nocera's lecture is posted on carmen and it describes the energy crisis we are currently facing, and gives an idea of how much time we have left using our current fuels. The key I wanted to emphasize from his talk is that there is so much potential energy stored in a chemical bond and if we can somehow figure out a way to utilize it, we will solve the worlds energy crisis.

This helped set the stage for the importance of the upcoming electrochemistry unit, as electrochemistry is the study of the conversion between chemical and electrical energy.