Michel Jullian wrote:
> So, you would not believe the Wright brothers unless they let you fly their
> airplane?
A better analogy is that I would not believe them unless I saw them
flying it with my own eyes.
If that is what you want, you should be satisfied with Rob Duncan
going out to see the calorimeter at Energetics Technology. He is an
expert, much better at determining whether it is working than you or
I would be.
This is actually closer to Wright brothers test than most people
realize. For a non-expert observer, the early flights were difficult
to distinguish from an uncontrolled powered hop. Many people in the
early 1900s put powerful internal combustion engines onto various
contraptions and managed to "fly" them in the same sense you can fly
a washing machine if you put a large-enough propeller on it. This was
not actually flight. The Wrights rigorously defined the technical
attributes of what constitutes flight carefully in their lectures and
papers. At Kitty Hawk in 1903 they flew before the Coast Guard rescue
team. Those people were experienced sailors and experts at small
craft, but probably not qualified to determine this was a flight. In
1904 - 05 in Dayton they flew before hundreds of people, and they got
~50 leading citizens such as a bank president to sign affidavits. By
this time they were a 100 feet in the air, flying for 40 minutes.
However, a bank president is not an engineer or aviation expert, so
an expert might still question his judgment. In 1908 they flew before
a bunch of reporters at Kitty Hawk, but as usual the reports were
garbled and unreliable, much like today's mass media reports of cold fusion.
It wasn't until August 8, 1908 that Wilbur flew before real aviation
experts, at Le Mans: Bleriot, Archdeacon, Zens, Henri de Moy and
others. Those people had been trying to fly for years, but they could
barely stagger off the ground. When they saw Wilbur fly, they were
astounded. Speechless. The difference between what Wilbur could do
and what they could do was analogous to a cold fusion cell producing
100 mW of 15% excess heat, and a working 10 kW cold fusion power
reactor. These were highly egotistical people but they said (for
example) "We are beaten. We don't exist!" The next day every
newspaper in France declared that the Wrights were masters of the air
-- which they were.
What Rob Duncan saw in Israel was a lot closer to a working 10 kW
power reactor than it was to a 1989 style 100 mW reaction.
> Some of the experiments Ed Storms has run use a small cell placed in a
> Seebeck calorimeter, where the two are separate objects.
That's a more sensible way to do things IMHO.
I like Seebeck calorimeters for many reasons, but the other kinds are
fine too. Not particularly less sensible.
> It might be
> possible to move something like this into the EarthTech MOAC,
This would be so nice, I am sure it would make Scott's day to witness
excess heat at last!
He should go to other people's labs, and learn from them.
> but I still
> doubt it would work.
Why?
It is fragile. It probably needs Ed to actually operate it. It might
need the temperatures and conditions inside the Seebeck, which might
be quite different from those of the MOAC. (I don't know. I am not
familiar with the latter.)
- Jed
