Sustainable Energy: Fact or Fiction
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) McCormick Tribune Campus Center McCloska Auditorium 3201 South State Street
5pm Reception & Registration 6pm Presentation $10 Advance Reg / $15 Door / $5 Student/Free for Members
The dependence on oil and other fossil fuels for over 80% of our energy and the continued emission of carbon dioxide threatening stable climate are captured in a single term: sustainability. Although we generally agree that sustainability is valuable, there is less agreement on how much sustainability is necessary or desirable. In this talk, three criteria describing increasingly strict features of sustainability will be presented and applied to evaluate the alternatives to oil and carbon dioxide emission, such as tapping unused energy flows in sunlight and wind, producing electricity without carbon emissions from clean coal and high efficiency nuclear power plants, and replacing oil with biofuel or electricity. The implementation of these more sustainable alternatives will require new cost effective nanoscale materials. The successful development of such materials will have a marked impact on the production of energy in a sustainable and environmentally benign fashion.
The Believers
12:00pm Screening
RSVP REQUIRED
$15.00 non-members / $5.00 Students
137 Films in association with The Chicago council on Science and Technology Present "a-work-in-progress' screening of The Believers. The Believers tells the strange story of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, chronologically documenting the summer of 1989 as well as new developments today. The tale includes mystery, scandal, personal tragedy, and scientific wonder. Understanding of events shifts depending on who is telling the story. A mixture of interviews, vérité footage, archival media, scientific animation, and reenactments will compliment interviews with scientists, journalists, politicians, and officials. Woven together, they paint a vivid, often contradicting account of what happened.
