Obama Visits MIT Research Lab, Tours Cutting Edge Green Technology (PHOTOS)

President Barack Obama toured a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he took a tour of some of the cutting edge clean energy technology that has been in development by researchers there.

According to a press release from the White House's office of the press secretary, Obama was scheduled to visit stations at the research lab displaying solar, battery, and wind technology, as well as a LED light experiment.

See pictures of Obama's tour of the lab below.

The press release offered a brief overview of the technologies Obama was planning to see:

At the solar station, Professor Marc Baldo was to show Obama luminescent solar concentrators that collect sunlight for solar cells.

At the wind station, Professor Alex Slocum was to demonstrate an Offshore Renewable Energy Systems (ORES), for which excess power from a wind turbine pumps water out of a storage volume anchored to the seabed.

Professors Angela Belcher and Paula Hammond at the battery station were to display a high-power "clean" battery that can be made using biological processes, without toxic materials, and without adding harmful materials to the environment.

Professor Vladimir Bulovic was to demonstrate quantum dot lighting -- a possible replacement for light bulbs or fluorescent lights -- that combines warm, rich color with efficient LED technology.

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Comments

[Aunt of MIT PhD Student]

Any suggestions on how to get one of the Tee Shirts like the one given to the President with the differential form of the Navier-Stokes equation? My nephew has a passion for fluid mechanics and is in the Ph.D. program in Aero Astro at MIT. Maybe an email address for either President Susan Hockfield or Professor Slocum of the Mech E department or maybe the student (?) in Mech E who thought this up? My nephew says he'll be impressed if 'Santa' can find him one for his Christmas present, so I am going for it!
Aunt of MIT PhD Student aka Santa

[lightningbolt]

I'm glad the President is learning more about what new technologies are being developed. This will give him new ideas on how to solve the country's problems.

[waterbuffalo]

Great!!! Obama is a gift to scientists. The once scientific/research area that Bush or Cheney would ever visit is a gun factory.

[rdiaz921]

A lot of insightful comments. Sorry, but the only thing I have to contribute is

look at all of that gray hair. It turned quickly.

[IntellectuallyHonest]

Nerds are a lot more useful than jocks, most of the time. W is the opposite of a nerd. Not only is he extremely athletic, he got into really good schools (Yale) because of his father's connections. He is a jock that has led us to disaster, despite the best efforts of some to deny it.

Nerds are microbiologists, medical doctors and a whole host of other worthy individuals. As a matter of fact, it's a real shame and telling that our society uses pejorative vocabulary to describe these gentle, often frugal (hence the sneakers and old jeans) that toil away inventing and discovering while pigs like W and Cheney use their inventions for world domination.

It is said that nerds brought on the financial crisis as hedge fund managers at Wall Street. And of course many jocks or simple-minded people are often good workers that aren't irresponsible like the Wall Street crowd. But by and large, nerds tend to make incredibly significant contributions to the progress of humanity. Let's stop beating down on nerds and glorifying evil like 'Shock and Awe.'

[CatTheGadfly]

Love your comments. I have to add, though, that when you say stop beating up on nerds versus glorifiying shock and awe -- I'd be a little more sinister... "Stop beating up on nerds, because if it weren't for nerds, we wouldn't HAVE 'shock and awe'. Kids with chemistry sets? Sure, nerds. Dynamite was invented by Nobel, who was a nerdy guy with a chemistry set, who saw what he'd done and devoted the rest of his life to making amends and rewarding other types of scientific developments. Mass-energy transformation? Albert Einstein. Yes, by all accounts, he was clearly a nerd and wore his pants too short. Led to nuclear weapons. Wrote letters to everyone warning them about the dangers, but didn't stop them. Nerds. BE NICE TO NERDS. Never met a jock who invented a weapon of mass destruction. Though the John Wayne types took off with the technology and the 'nerds' tried to warn them, who derived the theories? Nerds. Be nice."

Actually, when you socially isolate someone, it's not that they'll necessarily get "revenge" on you -- it's that they may not be normally aware of human nature (or the worst of human nature) and what will happen to their technological advancements and theoretical developments. It's a pretty unfortunate pattern.

[ddravla]

If you can call a collage cheerleader a "jock".

[planetjeffy]

science is the devil's laboratory.

i prefer fables and making things up...

[sherifffruitfly]

That might be the first time Obama has NOT been the smartest mofo in the room.

But there are really no losers in this instance, of course. :)

[roshni]

He is a secure man and I'm sure he got a kick out of learning something from them.

[AtheistUS]

Very smart people tend to find a crowd of more smart to learn from.

[stevensnell]

Sure, that's how they get to be so smart in the first place!

[QMech]

Hello, It's the Navier-Stokes equation. "Equations" actually as there are 3 equations when you apply them to a problem in 3-D (x, y, and z coordinates for example).

So right, the equation describes the flow of fluids. Actually the Navier-Stokes equation is the 2nd line on the T-shirt. The first line is the mass continuitiy equation or condition that complements the N-S equation.

By complement I mean that the since the N-S equation applies to continuous mass distributions, you have to have a statement that what you're applying the equation to is continuous, i.e. it's not split up into disconnected chunks.

So if a hypothetical figure of biblical importance would have caused an air gap in a sea so that his coleagues could walk across, then the mathematical relation governing the flow of the water away from the air gap in the middle and onto two lobes on the sides, would be governed by the Navier-Stokes equation.

BTW, the N-S equation is so interesting that it is one of the 10 "Millenium Math Problems" which will earn US$1x10^6 to whomever solves the thing. :)

Excellent T-shirt!

[wagadog]

That form of the continuity equation only applies to incompressible fluids. Water, but not air.

Furthermore with a moving boundary value problem (which this is) the Lagrangian formulation would be more appropriate, whereas the Eulerian form is presented here.

[thepoliticalcat]

Thanks. It's nice to have the informed weigh in. So that equation is totally appropriate to the caption. Science is so cool!

[Libby48]

The informed watch Fox News and miss GW Bush.

[roshni]

It is nice to have the informed weigh in and also to have discussions about science and technology. Science is cool and it is also the way forward.

[AtheistUS]

It is interesting equation, but I never understood why it made it to that short list of really fundamental problems.

[QMech]

Yes, I see your point. I was surprised to find the Navier-Stokes Equation in the list of 10 Millenium Mathematics problems. It is interesting but it was placed side by side w/problems such as the Poincaré conjecture and the Riemann Hypothesis, two clearly pure mathematical problems.

It seems that the answer may be two-fold, at least :). One is that the N-S equation is a good example of non-linear problems. It appears that these types of math problems continue to be at the cutting edge of our knowledge. Secondly, to me, this is testimony of the relationship between theoretical physics and math and the long tradition stretching back ~2500 years ago to the Egyptians and Greeks. Though it is understood that the latter were very much into the pure mathematical thought aspect.

Fascinating how a t-shirt (cloth with scribbling on it) held up by an influential and intelligent person engenders excellent dialog and elevates the conversation. :)

Enjoyed the exchange.

[mariemburns]

Puh-leeze, somebody tell me what the formula on the T-shirt means.

[wagadog]

The first formula means that you can't create or destroy matter. In an incompressible fluid with no sources or sinks, it means that the field of flow field cannot diverge. Div V = 0. It means that two little arrows, side by side, representing the direction of flow in two adjacent places will point in the same direction.

The second one basically means that if you push something, it will move, and push back. How much will the velocity of a fluid change when you put some pressure on it? The left hand side, DV/Dt describes how much the velocity will change with time. The pressure you're putting on it -- how much that pressure varies from side to side -- is the first term on the right hand side: dp/dx. Read it: "the change in pressure with respect to distance." The density term (rho) basically says how heavy the fluid is. It takes a bigger pressure gradient to push something heavy than something light.

Now for that pesky rightmost term: nu (the curly v-shaped thing) is the viscosity. It basically says that if the viscosity is high, it takes more to get it moving than if the viscosity is low. Try to cut through cold butter, then warm butter. Cold butter has a higher viscosity than warm butter: and you have to put more pressure on the knife -- more shear stress -- to get it to move.

[thepoliticalcat]

Cool. Thank you so much.

[sherifffruitfly]

Is saying the word "acceleration" against your religion or something? :P

[foolonthehill]

Another view from MIT

'I am willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now'

- Richard Siegmund Lindzen, Ph.D.
Atmospheric Physicist
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

SOURCE: (Nov 10, 2005) Two Sides to Global Warming. Reason Magazine

[thepoliticalcat]

All of which, of course, has absolutely no bearing on the fact of climate change. The fact that temperatures at a particular point in time are higher or lower does not address the fact that they might have been altered by human activity and might not be conducive to long-term survival of the species. Lindzen, as a physicist, has worded his bet very carefully.

[skeptical2]

Once I heard that Goldman Sachs would be involved in cap and trade, my heart sank. Why doesn't the government invest directly into new, green technologies? I read that Europe's experience with cap and trade is not particularly successful.

[foolonthehill]

It gets worse. The idea for a cap and trade market was proposed by Enron.

[CosmicChaos]

Cap and trade is just exporting your polution elsewhere. It isn't a solid ecological policy.

Taxing and fining poluters and getting nations world wide to follow suit is solid ecological policy.

Make it more expensive to polute than to find ways to lower their polution levels.

[skeck]

TRUE STORY! My parents were on a cruise to Antartica last summer. A group of climate scientists at a research station hitched a ride on their ship back to mainland Argentina. They Gave a lecture on the ship and the question of global warming came up. Is global warming a result of man made activities or part of naturally occurring cycle of cooling and warming of the earth? Every single one of the scientists said they believed it is part of the natural cycle of the earth. My parents, who are big time libs, were incredulous.
To their credit they told me what these guys actually said.

Doesn't sound like the debate is over to me!

[BrettnCalgary]

That story sounds like b*lls*it to me.

[skeck]

Of course it does.

[bungle]

Of course it is...

[GoodFeathers]

Science rules!

[stevensnell]

BILL NYE IS MY HERO!

[globalcitizenlinda]

President Obama appears to be very happy to be learning something new and complex - we are lucky to have a leader who is eager to gain new knowledge and is not ashamed to show it.

The Professors also seem very glad to see him and discuss they research work

Please note that in addition to his Nerd Tee shirt (which inscription I like), President Obama is also sporting a pick tie which I tihnk is in honor of breast cancer (FLOTUS and Dr Biden also held a breast cancer event at the White House today)

[foolonthehill]

Of course they were happy to see him. His administration is shovelling tons of borrowed money at them.

[globalcitizenlinda]

And what in the world is wrong with investing in research - the future of this economy depends on innovation.

Ps. Even this internet you are using is a product of such research so I hope you appreciate the output from labs

[foolonthehill]

Who did the Mayans blame?

Climate change and population history in the Pacific Lowlands of Southern Mesoamerica

Neff, Pearsall, Jones, Pieters and Freidel 2006.Quaternary Research
Volume 65, Issue 3, May 2006, Pp 390-400

Core MAN015 from Pacific coastal Guatemala contains sediments accumulated in a mangrove setting over the past 6500 yr... document Holocene climate variability that parallels the Maya lowlands and other New World tropical locations. Human population history in this region may be driven partly by climate variation: sedentary human populations spread rapidly through the estuarine zone of the lower coast during a dry and variable 4th millennium B.P. Population growth and cultural florescence during a long, relatively moist period (2800–1200 B.P.) ended around 1200 B.P., a drying event that coincided with the Classic Maya collapse.

[foolonthehill]

P.S. Forgot to put the quotation marks around that quoted text.

[thepoliticalcat]

Who did the Mayans blame? Probably their gods.

Population growth - explosive population growth per your quote - is the elephant in the room in discussions of the survival of the species, human and otherwise. That is to say, human population growth is pressuring other species out of existence, as well as endangering the fragile biome we need for our own survival.