On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Joshua Cude <joshua.c...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 1:36 PM, Harry Veeder <hveeder...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> If you came from a community that did not use levers and never >> developed the rudiments of lever science, how would you react upon >> hearing a story that one man shifted a stone with a branch that you >> KNOW from the stones description should require at least 8 strong men? >> >> Is the story a tall tale? Was this man a giant? Perhaps the stone was >> hollow. >> If he is an ordinary man and the story is accurate, then he is a >> magician who knows the magic of the lever. > > If he claimed to be able to perform this feat because of a new technology > that I was unfamiliar with, then I might be skeptical, but open to observing > a demonstration. If he described the method saying he would use a thin > bamboo pole pivoted on yonder tree, I would be skeptical not only of his new > technology, which I was unfamiliar with, but also of the implausibility of a > bamboo pole being strong enough, because between the tree and the rock, the > technology is old. Unless he is claiming that when the new technology of > leverage is used, that the bamboo takes on new strength, and the old laws > don't apply. > So, Rossi is claiming a new heat-producing reaction, and while I'm skeptical > of it, I'm interested in his attempts to demonstrate it. But the > implausibility I expressed above, was not of the reaction Rossi claims, but > of intermediate physics that is not new, and that is necessary to believe > his interpretation of the demo. > The interpretation of the Oct 28 demo, and all the other steam demos, > assumes that the power transfer to the water increases 8-fold at the onset > (or within minutes) of boiling, and that requires an 8-fold increase in the > temperature difference between the heating element and the water. Given the > time it takes to increase the temperature of the heating element to its > first-fold power transfer (hours), this is impossibly implausible. > Or is Rossi also claiming that if heat is produced by nuclear reactions, > then the thermodynamics of heat transport is completely different?
Rossi claims his device produces more energy (in the form of heat) than it consumes (in the form of electricity). This is a performance claim, and it should not be characterised as being more or less plausible. An explanation of performance may be so characterised, but Rossi gets his eCat to perform without an explanation. Unlike the Wright's claim of powered flight which could be adequately guaged without the aid of instruments, Rossi's claim must be guaged with some instruments. If the instrumentation is sound then the claim is true, and the conceptual framework known as the "laws of physics" may not be capable of providing a plausibe explanation of the performance. Harry
