9 research outputs found
Systematic investigations of annealing and functionalization of carbon nanotube yarns
Carbon nanotube yarns (CNY) are a novel carbonaceous material and have received a great deal of interest since the beginning of the 21st century. CNY are of particular interest due to their useful heat conducting, electrical conducting, and mechanical properties. The electrical conductivity of carbon nanotube yarns can also be influenced by functionalization and annealing. A systematical study of this post synthetic treatment will assist in understanding what factors influences the conductivity of these materials. In this investigation, it is shown that the electrical conductivity can be increased by a factor of 2 and 5.5 through functionalization with acids and high temperature annealing respectively. The scale of the enhancement is dependent on the reducing of intertube space in case of functionalization. For annealing, not only is the highly graphitic structure of the carbon nanotubes (CNT) important, but it is also shown to influence the residual amorphous carbon in the structure. The promising results of this study can help to utilize CNY as a replacement for common materials in the field of electrical wiring
The Sun's position in the sky
We express the position of the Sun in the sky as a function of time and the
observer's geographic coordinates. Our method is based on applying rotation
matrices to vectors describing points on the celestial sphere. We also derive
direct expressions, as functions of date of the year and geographic latitude,
for the duration of daylight, the maximum and minimum altitudes of the Sun, and
the cardinal directions to sunrise and sunset. We discuss how to account for
the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, the precessions of the equinoxes and the
perihelion, the size of the solar disk, and atmospheric refraction. We
illustrate these results by computing the dates of "Manhattanhenge" (when
sunset aligns with the east-west streets on the main traffic grid for
Manhattan, in New York City), by plotting the altitude of the Sun over
representative cities as a function of time, and by showing plots ("analemmas")
for the position of the Sun in the sky at a given hour of the day.Comment: 19 pages, 16 figures. v3: Replaced to match published version and to
re-package Mathematica notebook as an ancillary fil