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Students travel to Europe to observe sustainable energy approaches

7/7/09

Learning about global sustainable energy practices via lectures is one thing. Visiting Europe to see sustainable energy approaches firsthand is another. Students from the colleges of Arts and Architecture, Earth and Mineral Sciences, and Engineering got to do both as a part of a unique interdisciplinary course, "Living with Sustainable Energy in a Global Society," this spring.

What is deep time?

5/25/05

Richard Alley explains deep time and how it tells the story of our planet in the accompanying videos.

Industrial Revolution & Beyond

9/1/03

On a rainy spring morning in Cynwyd, Wales, a group of Penn State students and faculty gather in the local youth hostel, a coal fire burning in the small stove, to recount the stops on their energy tour of Iceland and the United Kingdom. Lara Owens, an undergraduate studying geosciences, begins by describing Icelandic hydroelectric and geothermal power plants that produce enough energy for the small nation, and the country's lone hydrogen-powered car—the first in a fleet, the government hopes—with its own fueling station.

Dispatch Five

5/1/03

Stanlow, England—While thundering along the highways in our diesel-powered van, I've been noticing fields of bright yellow-flowered plants, waving in the wind and glowing during those rare moments the sun comes out.

Dispatch Four

5/1/03

Llanberis, Wales, UK—Three quarters of a mile inside "Electric Mountain" in Snowdon National Park, out of the rain but still damp, we watch six massive black turbines—each the combined weight of the seven largest dinosaurs ever found—rotate a dizzying 500 times a minute. Their vibration rumbles deep in my chest and throat, and as I step on the metal platform around one of the turbines, a slightly painful buzz travels from my toes to my stomach. Nearby, bright yellow valves the size of VW Beetles control the flow of water from a glacial lake 600 meters above.

Penn State Road Rules

5/1/03

This May sixteen Penn State undergraduates and three faculty members spent two weeks traveling through Iceland and the United Kingdom. They stayed in youth hostels, ate at truckstops, rode for hours in large diesel-powered vans, and suffered through days and days of bone-chilling rain. Their mission: to chart the West's progress from 18th-century rural economy to the post-industrial economy of the 21st century, focusing on the significant role that energy resources have played in that transformation.

Dispatch One

5/1/03

England and Wales, UK—The bus from Heathrow airport is nearly full, and a sticker posted on its back bumper advertises reasons to opt for public transportation over a personal car: "Avoid high petrol prices and the hassle of parking!" Petrol prices here are around 75.9 pence per liter, which translates to nearly five dollars a gallon. Low-sulfur diesel—a popular alternative in the UK—is a tad more expensive, but can yield nearly twice the gas mileage.

Dispatch Three

5/1/03

It's not an easy trek to Harlock Hill's wind farm: You have to drive several miles northwest of Ulverston on England's notorious back roads, barely wide enough for a bicycle. The roads are lined by four-foot stone walls, and surrounded by the vivid green foliage only possible in this country where it has rained every day for the last week and a half.

Dispatch Two

5/1/03

Ironbridge Gorge, England, UK—We wake up early at St. Briaevel's in Lydney, a 12th-century castle turned youth hostel with modern amenities, including fantastic hot showers and Internet access.

Learn More

5/1/03

A curriculum that includes touring windmill farms in the UK? How about scaling New Zealand's Southern Alps, scuba diving in the Florida Keys, or camping along the Colorado River?

That's all in a day's work for students involved in the interdisciplinary courses sponsored by the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences' Center for Advanced Undergraduate Study and Experience (CAUSE).

Bios

5/1/03

Derek Elsworth

Age: 40-something

Profession: professor of energy and geo-environmental engineering

What the students call him: Dr. Elsworth

His tough love travel advice: "What do you mean you need a chaperone? You're adults. You have tickets. Get on the plane and fly."

Profile: Traveling Man

Stumped

9/1/00

The lab is littered with stumps. Matt Beaty heaves one onto the counter and runs his fingers along its severed edge and over its rough-hewn surface, where its autobiography has been written in the language of tree rings. Luckily for Beaty, he's fluent in Tree Ring. He knows the grammar of ring width, the syntax of discoloration, and the context clues of scar patterns that tell the story of one tree's life—and the scenes that interest him most are those in which the tree was injured: forest fire.

Energy Choices for 2000 and Beyond

5/1/00

The Center for Advanced Undergraduate Study and Experience (CAUSE) funds seminars that promise a "real world experience" for students—a chance to leave the classroom and textbooks behind and spend time seeking solutions to environmental problems in the field. The students in the CAUSE 2000 seminar traveled from Colorado to California to examine our energy choices for the new millennium. Their goal? To find "technological solutions" to global warming. By Gina Cancelliere.

CAUSE 2001

5/1/00

The Red Sea, the Nile River, the Sinai Desert—you've probably seen images of these places on television, in a magazine, or in a textbook. And most likely, pictures will be the only way you’ll experience Egypt's richness. Not for the CAUSE 2001 class. Under the guidance of geophysicist Shelton Alexander, twenty-or-so students will spend a year studying Egypt's archeology, geology, and biology.

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