ENSEÑAR MATEMATICAS.

INTRODUCTION

Electricity is the most practical energy form that we have and its access is directly related to quality of life. It allows machines and industry to work, it allows us to have light, refrigeration and heating, comfort in our homes and even access to communication technologies. Without electricity, we would be back in The Middle Ages, and the future of the planet will depend on the way we will produce it. In the present time, most of the electrical energy consumed is obtained from non-renewable sources: uranium, oil, gas, coal…raw materials that their use seems to be in the base of global warming, but, is there a way back? Is there a solution? The experts on Climate Change of The United Nations (IPCC) are clear about the fact that oil, coal and other fossil fuels are located in the root of the problem and its substitution for clean energies is an inevitable fact.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

To start, the renewable energies are the cleanest alternative for the environment. They are found in nature in unlimited amounts, and once consumed, they can be regenerated in a natural or artificial way. According to the Institute for Diversification and Energy Saving (IDAE), compared to conventional sources, the renewable energies are clean resources, and their impact is practically null and always reversible.

The more developed a society is, the more energy it consumes. But the energy obtained from coal, oil, and gas, is not renewed and is getting exhausted year after year. The intelligent thing to do is to take advantage of other energy sources that are next to us: the wind, the sun, the waste, etc. which are renewable year after year, they neither get exhausted nor contaminate the environment, which means a double advantage for the citizens.

Energy consumption is necessary for the economic and social development. Then, why is it necessary to use energy sources different from the traditional ones? With this question, several reasons can be mentioned, for example: – Nonrenewable energies are getting exhausted – They can produce negative effects in the environment – They don’t guarantee the energy supply from the exterior. The renewable energies come from the sun, the wind, the water of rivers, the sea, the core of planet Earth, and the waste. At present, they become a complement for the conventional fossil energies (coal, oil, natural gas) and their consumption, every time more elevated, is causing the exhaustion of resources and severe environmental problems.

Most of the renewable energy is, as a last resort, solar energy. The energy from the sun can be used directly to generate heat or electricity. Hydraulic energy comes from waterfalls, originated because the solar energy evaporates the water in low places, and later, it falls in the form of rain in higher places. The sun also generates wind by the differential heating of the Earth’s surface. The energy from the biomass comes from plant material, started in the photosynthesis produced by the sun. As a consequence, the biomass, the wind and the hydraulic energy are only secondary sources of solar energy. The sources of renewable non-solar energy include the geothermal energy that comes from the core of planet Earth, in a combination of the remaining energy of the origin and the continuous disintegration of nuclear materials. The tidal energy is another renewable, non-solar energy produced by the moon. Although nuclear energy by fission is not renewable, there is a great debate about if nuclear energy should become part of the energetic mix after the fossil fuels.

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