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Online
Courses at ARI
ARI’s online course selection—ARIONLINE—offers a virtual opportunity to study engineering.
“ARIONLINE is the Alexandria Research Institute's virtual center for distance learning students,” said Saifur Rahman, ARI director and professor.
The virtual center offers a variety of classes including “Network Architecture and Protocols II” taught by Luiz DaSilva, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and “Electric Energy and Environmental Systems” presented by Rahman. For a complete list, please visit
www.arionline.vt.edu
Currently, one of ARI’s online course options is “Alternate Energy Systems.” The course, which has been taught by Rahman as an online class for four years, has over 80 students enrolled for the current spring 2004 semester.
“Given the interest from both on-campus and off-campus students, and the diversity of backgrounds the students come from, I can say this alternate energy systems class attracts a broad spectrum of students,” Rahman said. “This class is something very different from what our students get from their other electrical and computer engineering classes because we focus on naturally occurring energy sources, and discuss how these sources can meet our energy needs without impacting the environment in a negative way.”
Rahman’s follow-up class to “Alternate Energy Systems” is titled “Electric Energy and Environmental Systems.” It is a graduate level class taught in the fall semester. The course has attracted a wide cross-section of students in the past.
Rahman also plans a course on energy infrastructure that will be taught live in the fall 2004 semester, and will later be converted to an online course.
For more information contact Saifur Rahman.
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Energy Information
Even though energy has four definitions in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, capturing the meaning of energy can be difficult.
“Unlike an apple for example, which we can point to and say, ‘There, that's an apple,’ energy is very hard to point to,” wrote Christian Murphy, PhD candidate and researcher, in the online course material “Renewable Energy Systems.” “We have to be satisfied with observing its effects.”
Murphy has worked with Saifur Rahman, ARI director and professor of the online material “Renewable Energy Systems,” to create online information about energy.
Energy is used to perform some action or work. It is consumable in that one may say a car used X amount of energy when operated for an hour.
Energy can be categorized into two categories, kinetic and potential. Kinetic energy, which is the more easily observed form, is the energy of an object in motion. Potential energy is the energy that can be used to do work, but is not currently producing work.
“When you pull back a swing and hold it, that swing has potential energy,” Murphy said.
Energy can be also converted between its kinetic and potential forms.
“When a swing is pulled all the way back—just before it’s let go—it has a maximum of potential energy. As it’s released and starts to move, the potential energy becomes kinetic. And, as the swing slows at the other end of its swing, the kinetic energy has become all gravitational potential energy,” Murphy said.
Energy can also be stored and later extracted. A chemical bond can store energy that can be released through combustion.
“This is where the heat comes from as you burn wood in a campfire or gasoline in your
car," Murphy said.
For more information about energy, please visit: http://www.arionline.vt.edu/RES/
http://www.energy.gov/engine/content.do
http://www.eia.doe.gov/
or contact Saifur Rahman or Christian
Murphy.
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