Renewable Energy

According to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics energy changes form and moves from place to place, but the total amount does not change. Therefore, you would think that if the total amount never changes we would never have to worry about conserving energy. Unfortunately, when we use up energy only a small amount of reusable energy is created in the process. Most cars only give out about 40% or less useful energy and the old steam locomotives barely got 5 or 6 useful work out of 100 units of wood or coal energy. If you take a look at the picture, you will notice only 41% of useful energy leaves the engine. Engineers are supposedly trying to come up with a more efficient engine that will convert more energy into work rather than waste heat.

Therefore, it is possible to reuse energy. We need to come up with a way of creating more useable energy from the energy we use up from day to day. By increasing the output of energy in the form of work rather than heat energy, we will have more reusable energy.

Food Rules

I borrowed a couple of foods from my roommate to read the ingredients and found that in Rice Roni there are 30 ingredients and of those, more than half are chemical ingredients. The other food I looked at was Special K Cereal Bars, which have 41 ingredients and all but 10 were chemicals.

Because of all of the chemicals that are put in foods today it has become increasingly difficult for American's to eat healthy. I personally find it difficult to eat healthy at times, but because I am aware of the terrible things that are being put into foods, I try very hard to stay away from processed foods and eat only foods that I cook. I grew up in a household where we had family dinners and breakfast everyday and the only food you would find in the refrigerator or pantry were real foods with the occasional junk food. So once I moved out I found it easy to continue my eating habits that were instilled in me by my parents. From time to time I have weeks where I will get lazy and eat poorly rather than taking the time to make food, but the result of eating this way literally makes me sick, which puts me right back into the regimen of eating healthy once again.

Hello

Hey guys hows it going. My name is Courtney Koch and this is my third semester at Sierra. Next year will be my last and I hope to transfer to Pepperdine University. I love the beach so it would be the perfect college town for me. I am really excited to take biology this semester and I have heard a lot of great things about this particular class from several of my friends. So here's to a great semester see you all in class :)