Great Scientists: Nikola Tesla Mystery Cache

This cache has been archived.

muddypuddles: Went to retrieve the container today, but it had gone AWOL. Thanks to the one who visited [;)]

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Hidden : 5/24/2012
Difficulty:
4 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

The cache is not at the above co-ordinates



“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”

Tesla is not exactly a household name, but this great man is almost single-handedly responsible for the electrical supply systems that light the entire globe, and the reason why most of the world has a mains supply of 240V AC at 50Hz.
 
Tesla was born in 1856, in Croatia, the son of an orthodox priest. His mother was uneducated, but very intelligent and was an inventor in her own right. He went to university in Austria and Czechoslovakia. It was whilst in Europe that he developed his ideas of a rotating magnetic field, which was to be the basis for a lot of his life’s work.
 
He emigrated to the US of A in 1884, arriving almost penniless. A letter of introduction from one of his mentors to the great Thomas Edison secured young Tesla a job, but the two men never really hit it off. Whilst working for Edison,Tesla patented his ideas on AC power supplies, based on his magnetic field work, along with plans for an AC motor, new types of transformers and other equipment which would make AC power a practical possibility. These patents were later bought by George Westinghouse, who had the industrial muscle behind him to make Tesla’s ideas a reality.
 
The new power system brought Tesla and Westinghouse head to head with Edison’s own company that distributed DC power to the eastern US, and a major commercial battle ensued, the so-called “War of the Currents”.
 
The problem was, that although DC power was good for lighting and electric motors, it could not be easily transformed to the high voltages that were more efficient to distribute the electricity to people’s houses. This meant that effectively a consumer could not be more than two miles from a power station. The inherent superiority of Tesla’s system eventually won the day, even after some serious skulduggery on the part of Edison, who was desperately trying to preserve his business interests.
 
Tesla eventually set up his own labs, and among his other inventions was his work that underpinned the later development of radio communications. One of the first practical demonstrations of this was a radio controlled boat, with which he wowed crowds in Madison Square Garden.
 
Tesla became very reclusive in his later life, and lived alone in a New York hotel room, where he died in 1943. He never received a Nobel Prize for his contributions to humanity, but did have the honour of the SI unit of magnetic flux being named after him in 1960.
 
To find this cache, you will need to find out for yourself why the electricity companies just love Tesla’s method of power transmission, as follows:
 
The average UK home uses about 3300kWh of electricity per year. With 8760 hours in a 365 day year, this means the average house uses electrical power at the rate of 376W. Let’s call it 400W, for simplicity.
 
Imagine your average house is in Tavistock, and its electricity comes from Langage power station, 20km away, along aluminium cables 2cm thick.
 
The electrical power lines will be heated up by the electricity flowing through them, due to the electrical resistance of the cables themselves. You will need to work out how much energy is lost, over a whole year, through this resistive heating of the power lines. First, calculate the energy lost if the power company used Edison’s 100V DC system. Then calculate how much it would lose with Tesla’s 400kV AC system. Convert the losses into money, which is what the power company is interested in, and find out the difference in cost between the two systems for each average house supplied. Quite surprising, isn’t it?
 
Your answer should be in pounds sterling, £AB.CD, rounded to the nearest penny. The cache can be found at: N50 25.B(B-C)(C+C-A) W004 02.(A+B)CA
 
[Assume the resistivity of aluminium is 28.2nΩm, The voltage used is that at the end of the power line in Tavistock. A year is 365.0 days, pi = 3.14. Average electricity cost at the time of writing is 14.5p per kWh, calculate your answer for a single power line, and don’t round your answer until the final step.]
 
When you have your answer, click on the link below to check it out, and if you are right, you will be given instructions on an interesting experiment to try out for yourselves at ground zero.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Onfr bs ubyyl gerr

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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