Mystery Cone

Its funny sometimes how learning occurs. When I found out Pastor Dan was going out to California, I casually asked if he saw a large sequoia cone to pick it up and bring it back for me. I thought it would make an excellent teaching tool, little did I realize it would be teaching me too.

The large cone made its way back to Iowa via the long route and eventually found its way to my desk one afternoon. Ah…. This was one very large looking pine cone!

So, I had forgotten if he was going to see Redwood trees, or sequoia trees, so I started looking up information about both trees to see what kind of cone he had brought me. First I read that a sequoia cone might take a long time to grow, and hang onto the tree for over 20 years! Then that it might have 10,000 cones hanging on it at any give time. Well, I suppose one of the largest trees around might have quite a few cones on it, but that number was surprising. Then finally, I read that the sequoia for all its size, only has a cone a couple inches long.

Ok, not a sequoia cone. And the literature (can we call internet information literature???) also indicated that I did not have a Redwood cone on my desk either. So, as the Scooby do gang might have said, we had a mystery on our hands.

It soon led to the sugar pine tree and its cone. This tree is the largest of the white pine family (up to 200 feet tall), and has cones that may reach 2 feet long. So it is still a big tree, but not as large as the sequoia, or as tall as the redwood ( some recent and current ones vary a little around 400 feet in some cases). For reference, the largest trees in Iowa barely top 100 feet. There is a white pine at 110 feet, and a walnut at 107 according to the Iowa DNR.

While leaning about the redwood and sequoia, I soon found out that my information about the planets tallest trees is a little off. They are not the tallest, or at least were not the tallest. That distinction falls to Eucalyptus regnans the Mountain Ash of Australia though no living specimens can make that claim to being the tallest trees.

In the 1800’s settlers and explorers of Australia found groves of these huge trees in the very southern tip and on Tasmania. The Mountain Ash is an evergreen tree (evergreen meaning that it keeps green foliage on its branches year around).

Some of these trees approached 500 feet tall though they were difficult to measure in those days unless they were laying on the ground and thus, it became somewhat common place to try and find the largest of them, and cut it down just to measure it and have the satisfaction of felling the largest tree. There was even a cash reward for finding the largest. As a consequence, they tallest of all tree species no longer holds that record.

Its feared that the genetics of the tallest of the species may be been decimated with the trees back in the 1800’s and new generations may never again reach that size.

Some younger specimens growing on the island of Tasmania are trying to catch up, and with time, may be able to top the tallest Redwood (50 plus feet needed).

Power Problem

And, while we were learning about things, I looked at my last power bill and found an interesting web site to apply some of the numbers on my power bill to. For instance, my family used 949 KWH’s of electricity last month. One (1) KWH or kilo watt hour is the electricity that would be needed (or used) by something taking 1000 watts (say ten, 100 watt light bulbs) for an hour.

http://www.mhi-inc.com/Converter/watt_calculator.htm

This handy web page will convert a variety of power usages into other numbers or measurements. Punching in my electricity use and averaging it over the month indicated that my household used the average equivalent of 1236 watts every minute of the day (12, 100 watt bulbs). It also showed a neat little conversion that this is also equal to the full sunlight falling on a 63 square foot surface for 5 hours a day. So, if we could ever get a really efficient (cheap) solar cell, covering an area 8 feet wide (and long) it could conceivably power my house on an average sunny day.

Best price I could find today on a solar energy panel was $4500 for a set of panels and inverters that would allow me to “plug” right into a house outlet and potentially feed my home with 1000 watts of electricity when the sun shined. At that payback rate, we would be talking around 10 years (or more) to break even.

Best winder generator that would supply a little over 1000 watts would cost $6000-10,000.

While I could probably hang a set of solar panels on the house somewhere, its unlikely that I can put a wind turbine up in my yard without running into trouble. I wish there was a way we could all chip in on a really large wind turbine that would say “power the town” or even a handful to power the county.

If you could get a big wind generator for say $1 Million, and you could get say 500 homes to chip in on the purchase price ($2000 each) that would be attractive. From the little bit of research I was able to do, an installed wind farm electricity cost is around 2 cents per KWH to pay for upkeep and maintenance of the equipment. If I could pay $2000 now for 2 cents a KWH electricity, I’d make my $2000 back in a couple years, then my power bill could conceivably be around $20 a month! That’s an economic stimulus plan I could support.