RECYCLING POWER!Sure, recycling recycling, the process of recovering and reusing waste products—from household use, manufacturing, agriculture, and business—and thereby reducing their burden on the environment. saves landfill space--but it also saves energy. Creating a new aluminum can from melted melt v. melt·ed, melt·ing, melts v.intr. 1. To be changed from a solid to a liquid state especially by the application of heat. 2. recycled cans consumes just 5 percent of the energy it takes to make one from scratch! What would you do with the energy leftovers? Follow the steps at right to calculate what appliances you could power from the energy savings of just one recycled can: 1 SAVE ENERGY! Mining, processing, and forming one ton of new aluminum soda cans from the mineral bauxite bauxite (bôk`sīt, bŏk`–), mixture of hydrated aluminum oxides usually containing oxides of iron and silicon in varying quantities. takes about 200 million Btu of energy. (A Btu--British thermal unit--is a common way to measure energy.) Using recycled aluminum to make the same amount of soda-cans takes about 45 million Btu, blow much energy does this process save? 2 ENERGY PER CAN One ton of empty soda cans contains about 66,667 cans. Use this information to determine how many Btu of energy just one recycled can saves. (Round to the nearest whole number). 3 ENERGY UNIT CONVERSION Your home's electricity meter doesn't does·n't Contraction of does not. use Btu to measure how much energy your family uses over a given period of time. Instead it uses the unit kilowatt-hour kil·o·watt-hour n. Abbr. kWh or kW-hr A unit of electric energy equal to the work done by one kilowatt acting for one hour. (kWh). But to measure much smaller electricity use, such as a light bulb bulb, thickened, fleshy plant bud, usually formed under the surface of the soil, which carries the plant over from one blooming season to another. It may have many fleshy layers (as in the onion and hyacinth) or thin dry scales (as in some lilies)—both of which or hair dryer, it's more practical to use the unit watt-hour. There are 3.4 Btu per one watt-hour. How many watt-hours does one recycled can save? (Round to the nearest whole number). 4 CHOOSE YOUR USE You might be surprised at how much "juice" you can squeeze from one recycled can! Pick an appliance A stand-alone hardware device or software environment dedicated to a specific task. See hardware appliance and software appliance. on the chart below. It will show how many watts of electricity the appliance uses per hour. Calculate how many hours you can use the appliance of your choice from the energy savings of one soda can: I could use a(n) [APPLIANCE] for [NUMBER] more hours with the energy I saved by recycling my soda can today!
Average number
Appliance of watt-hours
radio 70
TV 200
hair dryer 750
electric toothbrush 7
light bulb 75
electric blanket 180
SOURCE: Science Projects About Electricity and Magnets
by Robert Gordner (Enslow Publishers, Inc.), 1994.
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