I agree Jed. They did this the right way and it will be difficult for anyone to prove otherwise.
You mention the cooling time shape not being that associated with normal processes which agrees with the model that I constructed earlier. In an ideal world with a very high COP the cooling curve would hesitate at the maximum temperature point for a relatively long time before beginning its decline. The trick is to come close to a zero slope at the initial point but ensure that the curve is always falling after the heating resistance is un powered. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> To: vortex-l <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, May 20, 2013 10:10 pm Subject: [Vo]:Levi Hot Cat paper is a gem I just read this paper for the third time. This is a gem. These people think and write like engineers rather than scientists. That is a complement coming from me. They dot every i and cross every t. I can't think of a single thing I wish they had checked but did not. In ever instance, their assumptions are conservative. Where there is any chance of mismeasuring something, they assume the lowest possible value for output, and the highest value for input. They assume emissivity is 1 even though it is obviously lower (and therefore output is higher). The add in every possible source of input, whereas any factor that might increase output but which cannot be measured exactly is ignored. For example, they know that emissivity from the sides of the cylinder close to 90 degrees away from the camera is undermeasured (because it is at an angle), but rather than try to take that into account, they do the calculation as if all surfaces are at 0 degrees, flat in front of the camera. In the first set of tests they know that the support frame blocks the IR camera partly, casting a shadow and reducing output, but they do not try to take than into account. Furthermore, this is a pure black box test, exactly what the skeptics and others have been crying out for. They make no assumptions about the nature of the reaction or the content of the cylinder. They make no adjustments for it; the heat is measured the same way you would measure an electrically heated cylinder or a cylinder with a gas flame inside it. It is hands-off in the literal sense, with only the thermocouples touching the cell, and the rest at a distance, including the clamp on ammeter which placed below the power supply. You do not have to know anything about the reaction to be sure these measurements are right. There is nothing Rossi could possibly do to fool these instruments, which the authors brought with them. They left a video camera on the instruments at all times to ensure there was no hanky-panky. They wrote: "The clamp ammeters were connected upstream from the control box to ensure the trustworthiness of the measurements performed, and to produce a nonfalsifiable document (the video recording) of the measurements themselves." They estimate the extent to which the heat exceeds the limits of chemistry by both the mass of the cell and the volume of the cell. In the first test, they use the entire weight of the inside cell as the starting point, rather than just the powder, as if stainless steel might be the reactant. In the second test they determine that the powder weighs ~0.3 g but they round that up to 1 g. They use Martin Fleischmann's favorite method of looking at the heat decay curves when the power cycles off. Plot 5 clearly shows that the heat does not decay according to Newton's law of cooling. There must be a heat producing reaction in addition to the electric heater. I like it! - Jed
