perpetual motion
Lauren Weinstein
just so much rot. I've heard the same story for years about broadcast
power and Tesla. I have yet to see any evidence that it is other than
a fairy tale.
--Lauren--
Greg Kuperberg
While it is certainly true that there is no concrete evidence for perpetual
motion machines, the problem with them is really more fundamental. Since a
PMM displaces air currents (and to the best of my knowledge, no one has
tried to invent a PMM that works only in a vacuum), it must actually create
energy instead of simply conserving it. According to Einstein, if you
can create energy, you can also create *momentum*. The conservation of
momentum is so fundamental (and easy to verify) that even most laymen be-
lieve it; this is why there have been so few "momentum creating" machines.
Unfortunately, most of the public doesn't know about this implication.
Thus these "inventors" are trying to devise a machine which would break a
law of physics which *they themselves* accept, although they don't know it.
Therefore you don't have to wait to "see some evidence"; you can be almost
certain that such people don't know what they are talking about from the
moment they mention PMM's.
---
Greg Kuperberg
harvard!talcott!gjk
"No Marxist can deny that the interests of socialism are higher than the
interests of the right of nations to self-determination." -Lenin, 1918
Charlie Martin
Tesla and broadcast power stories aren't COMPLETE rot. I grew up near
Tesla's Colorado Springs lab (actually Manitou Springs and I grew up in
Pueblo) and got interested in Tesla. I have spoken with old folks who
remember Tesla driving a buckboard through the streets of Manitou, miles
from his lab, with big flourescent lights burning attached only to
copper plate antennae.
But it apparently burned power like crazy -- effiency was *real* low.
--
Opinions stated here.
Charlie Martin
(...mcnc!duke!crm)
Derek Zahn
> even most laymen believe it....
Wow. Thanx for the vote of confidence :-).
> Unfortunately, most of the public doesn't know about this implication.
> Thus these "inventors" are trying to devise a machine which would break a
> law of physics which *they themselves* accept, although they don't know it.
Well, I was more under the impression that most so-called Perpetual Motion
Machines were never really that -- but rather got their energy from the
Earth's rotation and things like that.
As for vacuum PMM's, go out between the galaxies somewhere and spin a
frisbee inside a perfectly evacuated box.
> "No Marxist can deny that the interests of socialism are higher than the
> interests of the right of nations to self-determination." -Lenin, 1918
Phooey.
--
Derek Zahn @ wisconsin
...!{allegra,heurikon,ihnp4,seismo,sfwin,ucbvax,uwm-evax}!uwvax!derek
de...@wisc-rsch.arpa
Doug Gwyn <gwyn>
> momentum is so fundamental (and easy to verify) that even most laymen be-
Also, conservation of momentum is a direct consequence of spatial
translation invariance of the fundamental laws of physics, and
conservation of energy is a result of time translation invariance.
The general relativist would point out that the corresponding exact
physical law (vanishing divergence of stress-energy-momentum tensor)
shows that the exactly-conserved quantity is not purely physical, and
the purely physical quantity is not exactly conserved. However, I
know of no "perpetual motion machine" that claims to exploit this.
I certainly don't think professional physicists have a monopoly on
truth, but the odds are very much against a "backyard inventor" being
able to overthrow well-established theories of physics without himself
having a coherent mathematical theory.
Mike Parker
Please lets not forget the pogue carburetor.
Mike @ AMDCAD
Steve Kaufman
> Also, conservation of momentum is a direct consequence of spatial
> translation invariance of the fundamental laws of physics, and
> conservation of energy is a result of time translation invariance.
>
> The general relativist would point out that the corresponding exact
> physical law (vanishing divergence of stress-energy-momentum tensor)
> shows that the exactly-conserved quantity is not purely physical, and
> the purely physical quantity is not exactly conserved.
>
Could someone kindly translate the above into English
for those of us who don't often see phrases like
"time translation invariance"
and
"vanishing divergence of stress-energy-momentum tensor"?
Thanks.
wallis
> just so much rot. I've heard the same story for years about broadcast
> power and Tesla. I have yet to see any evidence that it is other than
> a fairy tale.
>
> --Lauren--
Actually, Tesla could and did braodcast power
through the air. He did it with a super-sized
Tesla coil, which when operating would send
lightening-like arcs for many feet. The power
could be received miles away by a receiving
antenna. What most people don't realize is that a
Tesla coil operates at radio frequeuency. His
transmitting station was really just a radio
antenna - the arcs were caused by the fact that it
was not tuned to the proper frequency, along with
the tremendous power the coil generated.
Telsa could have gotten much higer efficiency with
tuned antennas, but the overall efficiency and
practicality of such a power distribution system
is much less than for conventional power distribution.
Dave Wallis
ihnp4!ihlpm!snafu
AT&T Network Systems, Inc.
(312) 510-6238
Dave Trissel
buying up or otherwise hiding ideas or patents which are so potent as to
revolutionize (and thus undermine) their field of activity is self-contradict-
ory.
The obvious reason is that if those ideas or patents are so potent, then
billions of dollars could be had by exploiting them, *not* hiding them!
Instead of scenario A:
Charles - "Gee Bob, this new car design could possibly get
120 Miles to the Gallon!"
Bob - "OH NO! That would ruin my stock options. We better
get the leagal beagles on this right away to cover
it up!"
I propose scenario B would really happen:
Charles - "Wow! Bob! This new car just might possibly get
120 Miles to the Gallon!!!!!!!"
Bob - "My God, Charles!!! Lets get the company to sell
this to Ford or GM!!! It must be worth BILLIONS
of dollars to them!!!! And our company will
MAKE A MINT!!!!!
or Bob - "My God, Charles!!! Even if it takes two years,
by the time our tire company starts producing
cars we'll MOP UP THE WORD CAR MAKET AND BE
BILLIONARES!!!!!!!"
In other words, it seems to me that potent ideas are just ripe for picking up
gobs of many any way you look at it, EXCEPT FOR *NOT* USING THEM and gambling
on not LOSING money instead.
Is there something I'm missing?
Dave Trissel {seismo,ihnp4,gatech}!ut-sally!oakhill!davet
Lauren Weinstein
Los Angeles TV and FM stations have their transmitters), and you
can generate a lot of light as well! You can certainly
generate power from RF--but that doesn't make Tesla's work
practical nor indicate that it was buried somehow.
--Lauren--
P.S. Actually, there *is* one thing I know of that *does* share
some elements with perpetual motion much of the time.
It's called Usenet--unfortunately.
--LW--
Doug Gwyn <gwyn>
> for those of us who don't often see phrases like
> "time translation invariance"
> and
> "vanishing divergence of stress-energy-momentum tensor"?
Sorry, that is as simple as you're likely to get. The first phrase
is self-explanatory; just analyze the words. The latter requires a
certain degree of familiarity with tensor calculus and general
relativity.
This IS net.physics (info-physics), isn't it?
Doug Pardee
seems to have turned serious...
> I've always thought that the ideas about oil companies (or any other business)
> buying up or otherwise hiding ideas or patents which are so potent as to
> revolutionize (and thus undermine) their field of activity is self-contradict-
> ory.
>
> The obvious reason is that if those ideas or patents are so potent, then
> billions of dollars could be had by exploiting them, *not* hiding them!
Well, somewhat. First off, it's highly unlikely to happen on anything
patented, since the day the patent expires (which is earlier for ideas
which weren't put into production), everybody and his brother would
jump on the scheme, having had the term of the patent to verify that
it really works and to refine the concept.
While I don't believe that the big companies are hiding major break-
throughs, there are certainly reasons that they would want to hide them,
rather than make a profit. Consider that IBM purposely put an unusable
keyboard on the PCjr, even though they had lots of usuable ones. A big
company often feels that it has to protect its existing products.
Suppose that there really was a "120 mpg car", and GM has control of the
rights. They would almost certainly sit on it, because there aren't
enough automotive engineers to redesign all of the models in GM's
lineup in a short period of time. If they introduce a few models with
120 mpg, the sales of their other models will collapse instantaneously,
as customers decide to keep their old clunkers until they can get one
of the new marvels. Sure, Ford, Chrysler, AMC, Toyota, etc would all
be put out of business. But so would GM. A Pyrrhic victory.
--
Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug
D Gary Grady
> I've always thought that the ideas about oil companies (or any other business)
> buying up or otherwise hiding ideas or patents which are so potent as to
> revolutionize (and thus undermine) their field of activity is self-contradict-
> ory.
>
> The obvious reason is that if those ideas or patents are so potent, then
> billions of dollars could be had by exploiting them, *not* hiding them!
I agree entirely. And to add to your scenarios:
Irving: "Wow, Bill, this car will get 120mpg!"
Bill: "Oh, no! We'd better supress it!"
Irving: "But we could make millions at it..."
Bill: "But if we supress it, we can keep making millions the
way we are already!"
Irving: "Yeah, until somebody else invents it, then we go broke."
Bill: "EEEK!! You're right! Where'd I put that patent
attorney?"
--
D Gary Grady
Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC 27706
(919) 684-3695
USENET: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary
Jeff Hull
While I tend to agree with Lauren that there is a lot of garbage being
passed around as truth, I have to wonder why our cars aren't powered
by liquid hydrogen (a non-polluting fuel) rather than gasoline. And a
host of other similar questions. There is all too much evidence that
people tend to follow their own, very limited, self-interest, rather
than look for ways to benefit themselves while providing for the
common good.
I have no idea whether this alleged invention is or is not what it
claims to be, but I am sure there are people out there who think it
will endanger their livelihood and would be only too happy to suppress
it.
--
Blessed Be,
Jeff Hull {decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,scdrdcf,ucbvax}
13817 Yukon Ave. trwrb!trwspp!spp2!jhull
Hawthorne, CA 90250
The Polymath
>Newsgroups: net.misc,net.physics
>Subject: Re: perpet motion - oil companies hiding plans is self-contradictory
>Message-ID: <3...@oakhill.UUCP>
>
>I've always thought that the ideas about oil companies (or any other business)
>buying up or otherwise hiding ideas or patents which are so potent as to
>revolutionize (and thus undermine) their field of activity is self-contradict-
>ory.
>
>The obvious reason is that if those ideas or patents are so potent, then
>billions of dollars could be had by exploiting them, *not* hiding them!
.
.
>Is there something I'm missing?
Yes, the fact that all of these big businesses are economically geared to
be concerned only with short-term profits. They can't see past the next
quarter's bottom line and can't justify to their stockholders taking a loss
for a year or two even if it means eventual huge profits. Tooling up to
use an entirely new technology is horrendously expensive. That's why
they'd rather suppress it. It's much easier to continue in the old, less
efficient ways.
Note: I'm not saying I believe in perpetual motion or gasoline pills, but
the above principle does hold in real life situations.
--
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe)
Citicorp TTI
3100 Ocean Park Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90405
(213) 450-9111, ext. 2483
{philabs,randvax,trwrb,vortex}!ttidca!ttidcc!hollombe
David Canzi
>Machines were never really that -- but rather got their energy from the
>Earth's rotation and things like that.
>
>As for vacuum PMM's, go out between the galaxies somewhere and spin a
>frisbee inside a perfectly evacuated box.
Won't work. Because the frisbee is an extended body and is not perfectly
rigid, the tidal forces caused by the nearest galaxies will eventually slow
it down and stop it.
--
David Canzi
"Women compromise more than a third of Britain's work force."
-- The Vancouver Sun
David Herron, NPR Lover
remembered seeing Tesla driving through town with flourescent bulbs
lit by power transmitted through the air from his lab.
That reminds me of a short I saw in a Pop. Elect. once. (Or some such
magazine). It showed a picture of a man standing under one of those
high-tension power lines holding a flourescent bulb. It was lit!
The article was some concerns that since those lines transmitted power
enough from them to light a bulb, what would it do to people that
live near them or work on them?
I suppose my concern is why is all that power being wasted? Or better
how not to waste it.
I would think that Tesla's broadcasted power thing was inefficient because
it wasn't focused. If it were focussed it ought to work a lot better.
-------
Another part of this debate, we're talking about companies buying up
inventions. And sitting on them. Supposedly so we remain addicted to
fossil fuels or some such.
Might they not be waiting until the time is right to introduce 200mpg
cars? The right time being when we're all paying $5 per gallon.
Just a thought.
--
--- David Herron
--- ARPA-> ukma!david<@ANL-MCS> or david%ukma...@anl-mcs.arpa
--- Or even anlams!ukma!da...@ucbvax.arpa
--- UUCP-> {ucbvax,unmvax,boulder,oddjob}!anlams!ukma!david
--- cbosgd!ukma!david
"The home of poly-unsaturated thinking".
Chris Henrich
The basic message of the first statement is that conservation
of momentum is deeply imbedded in modern physical theories,
and cannot be removed without totally wrecking the theory.
The second sentence depends on the distinction between "purely
physical" quantities and something else (in the name of
Murphy, what??). If we ignore this distinction, then it also
says that you cannot get away from conservation of momentum
without wrecking general relativity.
Perhaps the writer's meaning is that in general relativity, no
region of space-time can be truly isolated, and so any
measurement of momentum is slightly affected by all the matter
in the universe. And this effect is non-constant, because we
can't get the universe to hold still while we do our
experiment.
Regards,
Chris
--
Full-Name: Christopher J. Henrich
UUCP: ..!(cornell | ariel | ukc | houxz)!vax135!petsd!cjh
US Mail: MS 313; Perkin-Elmer; 106 Apple St; Tinton Falls, NJ 07724
Phone: (201) 870-5853
John L. Templer
> >From: da...@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel)
> >Message-ID: <3...@oakhill.UUCP>
> >
> >I've always thought that the ideas about oil companies buying up or
> >otherwise hiding ideas or patents which are so potent as to
> >revolutionize (and thus undermine) their field of activity is
> From: holl...@ttidcc.UUCP (The Polymath)
> Message-ID: <2...@ttidcc.UUCP>
>
> Yes, the fact that all of these big businesses are economically
> geared to be concerned only with short-term profits. They can't
> see past the next quarter's bottom line and can't justify to their
> stockholders taking a loss for a year or two even if it means
> eventual huge profits.
Along the same lines, there was an article in the newspaper today (from
UPI) about what oil companies are doing about their plight due to the
current oil glut. They are dropping all their holdings in other
industries outside of the oil business, selling or writing off all
those services they got into as a means of diversifying. In other
words, they are trying to solve their problems with more of the same
type of actions which got them into this mess in the first place.
--
John L. Templer
University of Texas at Austin
{allegra,gatech,seismo!ut-sally,vortex}!ut-ngp!lindley
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."
Laura Creighton
a fuel. It seems that John Q. Public isn't ready for it -- street
interviews showed that everybody thought of the Hindenburg.
They had a nice set of scenes where somone shot tanks of propane,
something else, something else again, and hydrogen with a bullet from
a rifle. The hydrogen was the only one that didn't go *BOOM*.
Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura
Jeff Lichtman
> Could someone kindly translate the above into English
> for those of us who don't often see phrases like
> "time translation invariance"
> and
> "vanishing divergence of stress-energy-momentum tensor"?
>
> Thanks.
"Time translation invariance" means that the laws of physics don't change with
time. The results of an experiment are the same, regardless of when you do it.
This law and the law of conservation of energy are equivalent. I don't know how
to prove this, but I read it in a book on the fundamentals of physics.
I don't know what "vanishing divergence of stress-energy-momentum tensor"
means.
--
Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
aka Swazoo Koolak
Carl Clawson
>
>According to Einstein, if you
>can create energy, you can also create *momentum*.
I don't believe Einstein said this. If he did, he was wrong.
(Are you sure it wasn't Tesla? He seems to be the hero of the week.)
Rather than me posting a more detailed explanation, try reading
the first chapter or two of a freshman physics book.
The other possibility is that you've done a terrible job of saying what
you were trying to say, in which case make that a freshman
English comp. book.
snarl
sonntag
> >All these stories about miracle inventions being suppressed are usually
> >just so much rot. I've heard the same story for years about broadcast
> >power and Tesla. I have yet to see any evidence that it is other than
> >a fairy tale.
>
> While I tend to agree with Lauren that there is a lot of garbage being
> passed around as truth, I have to wonder why our cars aren't powered
> by liquid hydrogen (a non-polluting fuel) rather than gasoline. And a
> host of other similar questions. There is all too much evidence that
> people tend to follow their own, very limited, self-interest, rather
> than look for ways to benefit themselves while providing for the
> common good.
All right, I confess. *I*'m the guy who bought up all of the liquid
hydrogen producing wells, and I don't plan to sell until energy prices
rise by a factor of 10 or so. I'm currently storing about 20,000 gallons
of it in my basement, which certainly helps my air conditioning bill in
the summer.
<sarcasm ends>
Just in case some of you out there haven't figured this out yet, it
takes a lot of liquid hydrogen to run a lot of liquid hydrogen burning
cars. Since there aren't any liquid hydrogen wells, it takes a lot of
electricity to tear water molecules open to get the hydrogen from them.
In order to get all of that electricity, you usually create pollution in
one way or another. Since the cycle from fossil fuels => electricity =>
liquid hydrogen => go-power for your car, is not particularly efficient,
you have to burn much more fossil fuels to make liquid hydrogen for your
cars than it would take to just make your car run off fossil fuels in the
first place.
Too bad. It's nice to think that all of your problems are caused by
some conspiracy among humans. Just as often, however, the laws of physics
make life tough, without any help from villains.
But liquid hydrogen burning cars will be great once electricity can be
produced more cheaply and without causing pollution.
--
Jeff Sonntag
ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j
"War is peace."-the ministry of truth
A.VANNUCCI
> >All these stories about miracle inventions being suppressed are usually
> >just so much rot. I've heard the same story for years about broadcast
> >power and Tesla. I have yet to see any evidence that it is other than
> >a fairy tale.
>
> While I tend to agree with Lauren that there is a lot of garbage being
> passed around as truth, I have to wonder why our cars aren't powered
> by liquid hydrogen (a non-polluting fuel) rather than gasoline. And a
> host of other similar questions. There is all too much evidence that
> people tend to follow their own, very limited, self-interest, rather
> than look for ways to benefit themselves while providing for the
> common good.
A few years ago I read a very interesting article in Scientific American
about the technology of hydrogen-burning cars. The hydrogen was not to
be stored in liquid form in pressurized and cooled tanks (too dangerous
and too impractical) but rather as a hydride in a low-pressure room-temperature
tank. The technical problem to be overcome was finding a suitable material
for the hydrogen to form a hydride with; i.e., a material that would be
sufficiently inexpensive to produce, effective and environmentally safe.
Of course, this research for a *practical* hydrogen-powered car was being
supported entirely by those "ogre" companies that are so often blamed for
suppressing innovations, etc. etc. etc.
I work for a big company and, based on my experience, the opposite
is true. Without the support and conducive environment that my employer
provides me with, I would be hard pressed to come up with any research
results that are worth anything.
There are always exceptions and I'm sure that in many cases big business
is to blame for stifling innovation and suppressing initiative. However,
I'm convinced that, by and large, when people complain about big companies
suppressing innovative research they usually don't know what they are talking
about.
Giovanni Vannucci
AT&T Bell Laboratories HOH R-207
Holmdel, NJ 07733
hou2e!gv
sonntag
> > a fuel. It seems that John Q. Public isn't ready for it -- street
> > interviews showed that everybody thought of the Hindenburg.
> > utzoo!laura
> The Hindenburg used helium instead of hydrogen. Helium is
> considerable more flammable. Germany had used it because
> there was an embargo of hydrogen against it.
> Bob Crowley
> ihlpm!crowley
Wrong! Helium is completely non-burnable, as its outer electron shell
is completely filled, it is a noble gas, extremely reluctant to combine
with anything, under any circumstances. As the Hindenburg blew up, it
must have been filled with something flammible, presumably hydrogen.
As a way to verify this, the next time you see a kid with a helium
balloon, just poke it with a lit cigarette or a match, and observe that
while the balloon breaks, the gas inside doesn't ignite. (But watch out
for your ankles, as some kids resent this type of experimenting.)
John R. Rosenberg
> considerable more flammable. Germany had used it because
> there was an embargo of hydrogen against it.
>
> Bob Crowley
> ihlpm!crowley
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR DIRIGIBLE ***
Check your periodic table of the elements Bob. Helium is one of
the so-called Noble Gases. In other words is does not react
with any other elements (except under bizarre conditions of
temp. and pressure). Helium's one and only electron shell is full
of 2 electrons, the capacity of that shell. In other words there
is no way for other atoms to bond to it. Hence, it can NOT burn.
Since the Hindenburg burned, it was not filled with He. It was
in fact full of hydrogen.
John Rosenberg ATT-NS
ihnp4!ihu1m!johnnyr
Jeff Hull
>
> The obvious reason is that if those ideas or patents are so potent, then
> billions of dollars could be had by exploiting them, *not* hiding them!
Could you please move this discussion to net.politics. Please note the
Followup-To line above. Be prepared for flames as various conspiracy
theories have been discussed there already.
J.SCHERER
> > a fuel. It seems that John Q. Public isn't ready for it -- street
> > interviews showed that everybody thought of the Hindenburg.
> > Laura Creighton
> > utzoo!laura
> The Hindenburg used helium instead of hydrogen. Helium is
> considerable more flammable. Germany had used it because
> there was an embargo of hydrogen against it.
> Bob Crowley
> ihlpm!crowley
The Hindenburg did use hydrogen which is flammable (and which mixed
with the proper amount of oxygen - or air - is extremely explosive).
Helium, which is inert, was not available to Germany because the
US (I think) had only recently discovered how to produce it in
quantity, was the sole source, and was somewhat reluctant to give
it to (prewar) Germany to power what could be used as a weapon.
On the subject of cars and peoples "irrational" fear of hydrogen:
gasoline leaks are not uncommon in today's cars - what would
happen with a hydrogen leak? Could indeed be another Hindenburg.
John Scherer Bell Labs - Holmdel NJ
Charlie Martin
>In article <3...@talcott.UUCP> g...@talcott.UUCP (Greg Kuperberg) writes:
>>
>>According to Einstein, if you
>>can create energy, you can also create *momentum*.
>
>I don't believe Einstein said this. If he did, he was wrong.
>(Are you sure it wasn't Tesla? He seems to be the hero of the week.)
>Rather than me posting a more detailed explanation, try reading
>the first chapter or two of a freshman physics book.
>
The problem being that you read *Newtonian* physics/mechanics in the
first couple chapters of a freshman physics book, and the person is
talking about General Relativity here...
This is referring to the something-energy-momentum tensor that was
bandied about in this same group really recently.
--
Opinions stated here.
Charlie Martin
(...mcnc!duke!crm)
Stephen C. Woods
>In article <6...@vortex.UUCP> lau...@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) writes:
>
>While I tend to agree with Lauren that there is a lot of garbage being
>passed around as truth, I have to wonder why our cars aren't powered
>by liquid hydrogen (a non-polluting fuel) rather than gasoline.
Well there's a whole bunch of reasons:
(1) It's MUCH MUCH MUCH (is that enough MUCHes?) more hazardious than Gasoline.
Remember that you're going to have grade school dropouts pumping this
stuff into your car.
(2) It's about 4 times as bulky as the energy equivalent ammount of gasoline.
Most people would not appreciate having to fill their tank with $10/Gal
LH2 every 50-100 miles. Not to mention the insulation on your tank to
keep it from evaporating.
(3) It's much more expensive to make.
(a)extraction from H2O (about 50% efficency?)
(b)Cooling it to (whatever degrees K 10? 20?).
Totally lost energy here (it's not useable to make your car go).
(c)Keeping it COLD.
> And a
>host of other [...] themselves while providing for the
>common good.
Ah! yes, the famous Quarterly Report syndrome.
>
>I have no idea whether this alleged invention is or is not what it
>claims to be, but I am sure there are people out there who think it
>will endanger their livelihood and would be only too happy to suppress
>it.
I suspect that some people would be happy to supress it (if it were
genuiner), but somehow I just can't see it as a real item.
> Jeff Hull {decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,scdrdcf,ucbvax}
--
Stephen C. Woods (VA Wadsworth Med Ctr./UCLA Dept. of Neurology)
uucp: { {ihnp4, uiucdcs}!bradley, hao, trwrb}!cepu!scw
ARPA: cepu!scw@ucla-cs location: N 34 3' 9.1" W 118 27' 4.3"
Mark Brader
> > > a fuel. It seems that John Q. Public isn't ready for it -- street
> > > interviews showed that everybody thought of the Hindenburg.
> > > Laura Creighton
While I'm not advocating the use of hydrogen airships, it is worth noting
that many people survived the Hindenburg disaster, even though most of the
hydrogen was consumed in a matter of seconds. The reason is that the hydrogen
naturally tended to rise away from the rest of the vehicle, which in turn
tended to fall away from the flames, as soon as the fire breached the gasbags.
The other great airship disaster was the R101, which simply ran out of lift
in a storm (low air pressure == need more lift) because of poor design --
its fabric was fraying rapidly, and one or more gasbags apparently burst
under wind stress.
The R101 was designed and built by civil servants in a somewhat hostile
competition to the private enterprise R100. The R100 was scrapped when the
(British) government decided not to support any further development of airships
after (though not entirely because) their pet R101 crashed. The story is told
by Nevil Shute in his nonfiction book "Slide Rule". Shute was the principal
designer of the R100; his full name was Nevil Shute Norway.
By the way, it's not "flammible", it's "flammable".
(Or "inflammable", as was discussed nearly ad nauseam in net.nlang recently.)
Mark Brader
William L. Sebok
> passed around as truth, I have to wonder why our cars aren't powered
> by liquid hydrogen (a non-polluting fuel) rather than gasoline.
You have got to be kidding. Liquid hydrogen is DANGEROUS. At atmospheric
pressure it boils at 20 degrees Kelvin == -253 degrees Celsius one of the
lowest boiling points known next to helium. You have to allow blowoff from a
container (pressurized or not) container to keep it from blowing up as the
liquid boils and the pressure builds up. The blowoff is VERY flameable.
It took quite a bit of effort for the space program to work up the technology
to keep the liquid hydrogen fueled rockets from blowing up on the pad. I
would be very leery of having it in general by any other than very highly
trained people.
Pressurised hydrogen though ... well, maybe.
--
Bill Sebok Princeton University, Astrophysics
{allegra,akgua,burl,cbosgd,decvax,ihnp4,noao,princeton,vax135}!astrovax!wls
Norman Diamond
NO FLAMES PLEASE!
--
Norman Diamond
UUCP: {decvax|utzoo|ihnp4|allegra}!watmath!watdaisy!ndiamond
CSNET: ndiamond%watd...@waterloo.csnet
ARPA: ndiamond%watdaisy%waterlo...@csnet-relay.arpa
"Opinions are those of the keyboard, and do not reflect on me or higher-ups."
Chris Lewis
>> > I saw a film somewhere (whose name I forget) about using hydrogen as
>> > a fuel. It seems that John Q. Public isn't ready for it -- street
>> > interviews showed that everybody thought of the Hindenburg.
>> > Laura Creighton
>> > utzoo!laura
>> The Hindenburg used helium instead of hydrogen. Helium is
>> considerable more flammable. Germany had used it because
>> there was an embargo of hydrogen against it.
>> Bob Crowley
>> ihlpm!crowley
>WRONG! (By exactly 180 degrees!)
>with the proper amount of oxygen - or air - is extremely explosive).
>Helium, which is inert, was not available to Germany because the
>US (I think) had only recently discovered how to produce it in
>quantity, was the sole source, and was somewhat reluctant to give
>it to (prewar) Germany to power what could be used as a weapon.
>
>On the subject of cars and peoples "irrational" fear of hydrogen:
>gasoline leaks are not uncommon in today's cars - what would
>happen with a hydrogen leak? Could indeed be another Hindenburg.
>
> John Scherer Bell Labs - Holmdel NJ
John is correct, it was the US. However, the US was stockpiling
Helium for their own (probably military) purposes and there was
very little of it available - not because of reluctance to give
war material to a possibly hostile Germany. After all, it didn't
stop the US from selling scrap steel to Japan, or other strategic
material to Germany during the first part of WW II.
Germany was (understandably) very annoyed at the US for forcing
them to use hydrogen for their civilian dirigibles (sp?).
I think one source for this info is from the Nevil Shute book
mentioned previously. I believe that it was also mentioned as one
of the reasons for Germany's attack on the US ship that caused
the US to enter WW I.
By the way, a company has started building dirigibles in Toronto
in the Wardair hanger at Toronto International Airport (whoops,
"Pearson International"). They have sold at least one (to the
US Navy). Sure stops traffic on the 401 when they test one!
It's real neat to watch the thing just hang there, puttering
around. Of course they are using helium.
Regarding "irrational fear of hydrogen" - there may be some truth
to it in automobiles. It would be interesting to see some sort
of risk analysis of gasoline vs propane vs hydrogen. There have
been a couple of propane car fires in Toronto recently. Nobody
killed, but several injured. Hydrogen in a car would probably
be stored as a gas (isn't the pressure required to keep hydrogen
liquid too high to be practical in a car? In contrast, propane is
very easy to keep liquid.) The consequences of a leak are probably
somewhat more spectacular.
--
Chris Lewis, Motorola New Enterprises
UUCP: {allegra, linus, ihnp4}!utzoo!utcs!mnetor!clewis
BELL: (416)-475-1300 ext. 321
Ms. Sunny Kirsten
If you take a large solar collector array, and plug the electrodes into the
ocean, you get hydrogen and oxymorons. Bottle the hydrogen, put it into
the tanks of the hydrogen burning cars (which burn it catalytically in
a fuel cell) and you get electricity to run your electric motor). There,
wasn't that easier than mounting a collector array on your car or running
at the end of a long extension cord? No pollution! (As long as we make
solar collectors cleanly). Now, what was the problem?
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***
--
{ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sun!sunny (Ms. Sunny Kirsten)
Herb Chong [DCS]
>>While I tend to agree with Lauren that there is a lot of garbage being
>>passed around as truth, I have to wonder why our cars aren't powered
>>by liquid hydrogen (a non-polluting fuel) rather than gasoline.
>
>Well there's a whole bunch of reasons:
>(1) It's MUCH MUCH MUCH (is that enough MUCHes?) more hazardious than Gasoline.
> Remember that you're going to have grade school dropouts pumping this
> stuff into your car.
>(2) It's about 4 times as bulky as the energy equivalent ammount of gasoline.
> Most people would not appreciate having to fill their tank with $10/Gal
> LH2 every 50-100 miles. Not to mention the insulation on your tank to
> keep it from evaporating.
>(3) It's much more expensive to make.
> (a)extraction from H2O (about 50% efficency?)
> (b)Cooling it to (whatever degrees K 10? 20?).
> Totally lost energy here (it's not useable to make your car go).
> (c)Keeping it COLD.
>
>Stephen C. Woods (VA Wadsworth Med Ctr./UCLA Dept. of Neurology)
well, i have a friend who is converting his van to hydrogen power this summer.
he thinks that there will be little problems with it. so, i will attempt
to reply to the above based upon what he has told me:
1) it is more explosive than gasoline in the sense that it doesn't
need to evaporate first before mixing with air (see point 3).
however, since it is less dense than air, it will rise, and any
flames and stuff will rise also. because it is a gas to begin with
there will be a flash explosion and nothing else except possibly
nearby debris that ignites. natural gas and gasoline are denser
than air and will pool, forming flames that will be underneath any
vehicle and burning anything above. since they also burn less rapidly
than hydrogen, there is a higher likelyhood of igniting nearbly
inflammable material. propane and natural gas powered cars pull up
at the nearest source of supply (some gas stations sell propane for
these cars) and fill up. there's a station about 1 km from where
i write this. you also buy leaded and unleaded gas from the same
person.
2) propane and natural gas powered cars suffer from this same problem
but no-one around here notices it much. most of these cars that i
know of have cruising ranges of about 300 km before requiring
refilling. remember that these engines are more efficient than
gas engines and don't need as much total energy input to get
the same amount out. mind you, the old gas tank is just removed
and the trunk essentially becomes useless for putting all but the
smallest things into.
3) it is not sold as liquid hydrogen, but as compressed gas.
it is mostly extracted from byproducts of natural gas wells, though
electrolysis is another way of getting it. since it's a gas, no
problem with refrigeration. it's cleaner burning than gasoline
though it still produces oxides of nitrogen.
Herb Chong...
I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....
UUCP: {decvax|utzoo|ihnp4|allegra|clyde}!watmath!water!watdcsu!herbie
CSNET: herbie%wat...@waterloo.csnet
ARPA: herbie%watdcsu%waterlo...@csnet-relay.arpa
NETNORTH, BITNET, EARN: herbie@watdcs, herbie@watdcsu
Jim Wall
>There is only ONE renewable energy resource on this planet: Solar Energy.
>If you take a large solar collector array, and plug the electrodes into the
>ocean, you get hydrogen and oxymorons. Bottle the hydrogen, put it into
>the tanks of the hydrogen burning cars (which burn it catalytically in
>a fuel cell) and you get electricity to run your electric motor). There,
>wasn't that easier than mounting a collector array on your car or running
>at the end of a long extension cord? No pollution! (As long as we make
>solar collectors cleanly). Now, what was the problem?
This all brings back the old national forensics league debating that
was I got trapped in so long ago. Solar is wonderful, solar is fabulous,
solar is also so terribly inefficient that it is worthless as a *major*
energy producer. Allow me to clearify...
For small usages such as house heating, and minor electricity production
solar is only expensive. Works pretty good unless the energy has
to be stored for use at night and cloudy days, then you have major losses
associated with the transfer of th energy. However, any time a large
amount of energy needs to be produced, such as lighting Las Vegas, firing
up NASA's wind tunnel, or producing usable amounts of hydrogen it just
doesn't make it. You need so much area covered by solar arrays that it
is impractical. It can be calculated how much, I don't have my debate
cards anymore, but I'm sure the net has people just dying to look things
up. I won't even get into the environmental porblems and atmospheric
problems of establishing large solar arrays.
Don't take my word though, nor the words of all the scientists who
have done the calculations, check it out for yourself.
-Jim
Doug Gwyn <gwyn>
> the first chapter or two of a freshman physics book.
>
> The other possibility is that you've done a terrible job of saying what
> you were trying to say, in which case make that a freshman
> English comp. book.
I thought that most Freshman curricula were taken up with remedial
education to make up for the damage done by public schools?
Doug Gwyn <gwyn>
> > considerable more flammable. Germany had used it because
> > there was an embargo of hydrogen against it.
> in fact full of hydrogen.
Yup, the original poster got the elements reversed.
Helium is also very rare and at the time the main source
was extraction from natural gas wells. Another method
is air liquefaction.
Larry E. Baker
> > I saw a film somewhere (whose name I forget) about using hydrogen as
> > a fuel. It seems that John Q. Public isn't ready for it -- street
> > interviews showed that everybody thought of the Hindenburg.
> > Laura Creighton
> > utzoo!laura
> The Hindenburg used helium instead of hydrogen. Helium is
> considerable more flammable. Germany had used it because
> there was an embargo of hydrogen against it.
> Bob Crowley
>
If I remember my history trivia correctly, one of the reasons the
Hindenberg was on its way to the United States was because Hitler
wanted to convince the US to provide it with Helium, as the Zeppelin
was swiftly becoming an obsolite weapon due to the flammibility of its
*Hydrogen*. They were, with the British incendary bullets, simply too
easy to shoot down.
--
- Larry Baker @ The University of Texas at Austin
- ...{seismo!ut-sally | decvax!allegra | tektronix!ihnp4}!ut-ngp!mercury
Stephen Hutchison
In article <7...@mhuxt.UUCP> js...@mhuxt.UUCP (jeff sonntag) writes:
>> Quoting Bob Crowley
>> > quoting Laura Creighton
>> > I saw a film somewhere (whose name I forget) about using hydrogen as
>> > a fuel. It seems that John Q. Public isn't ready for it -- street
>> > interviews showed that everybody thought of the Hindenburg.
>> > Laura Creighton
>> > utzoo!laura
>> The Hindenburg used helium instead of hydrogen. Helium is
>> considerable more flammable. Germany had used it because
>> there was an embargo of hydrogen against it.
>> Bob Crowley
>> ihlpm!crowley
> Wrong! Helium is completely non-burnable, as its outer electron shell
>is completely filled, it is a noble gas, extremely reluctant to combine
>with anything, under any circumstances. As the Hindenburg blew up, it
>must have been filled with something flammible, presumably hydrogen.
The Hindenburg was a hydrogen filled dirigible. Helium was too expensive
to use for that purpose. Hydrogen is plentiful, cheap, and Germany was
a major industrial power. They MADE THEIR OWN hydrogen! (Well, extracted
it, anyway.) What kind of embargo could possibly succeed against a producer
of the prohibited substance?
Hutch
Mike Ward
Carefully controlled demonstrations are not very persuasive.
The thing that makes hydrogen extremely dangerous is the huge
range of concentrations of mixtures with oxygen at which it is
explosive. (I hope that makes sense)
Then, too can you imagine the effect if thousands of cars were
pouring water vapor out their tailpipes on a hot, humid day?
--
Michael Ward, NCAR/SCD
UUCP: {hplabs,nbires,brl-bmd,seismo,menlo70,stcvax}!hao!ward
ARPA: hplabs!hao!ward@Berkeley
BELL: 303-497-1252
USPS: POB 3000, Boulder, CO 80307
henn...@nmtvax.uucp
Greg Kuperberg object to a statement attributed to Einstein about
"if you can create matter, then you can create momentum."
I for one don't see anything wrong with the statement. As of now
we can't create EITHER but rewriting ONE law of physics is worse
than eating one peanut, to quote Larry Niven.
Einstein was a great theorist, while I am not, but creating BOTH
or NEITHER is believable.
Sincerely;
Greg Hennessy
..ucbvax!unmvax!nmtvax!hennessy
..ucbvax!unmvax!nmtvax!student
Robert St. Aardvarks
.
.
> A few years ago I read a very interesting article in Scientific American
> about the technology of hydrogen-burning cars. The hydrogen was not to
> be stored in liquid form in pressurized and cooled tanks (too dangerous
> and too impractical) but rather as a hydride in a low-pressure room-temperature
> tank. The technical problem to be overcome was finding a suitable material
> for the hydrogen to form a hydride with; i.e., a material that would be
> sufficiently inexpensive to produce, effective and environmentally safe.
>
> Of course, this research for a *practical* hydrogen-powered car was being
> supported entirely by those "ogre" companies that are so often blamed for
> suppressing innovations, etc. etc. etc.
.
.
A few years ago I read an article in OMNI magazine about someone who had
a practical hydrogen powered car. It was an informal, interview-styled
piece--there was a photograph of the inventor drinking a glass of "exhaust."
Apparently he has had some success in promoting the idea; the Midwest
town he lives in has a postal fleet--some 100 vehicles--powered by these
engines. The article said that soon a $1500 kit would be released to convert
gasoline powered engines to hydrogen.
The hydrogen was stored in some metallic hydride, which needed to be
charged every night, and was worth perhaps 100 miles range.
Sorry about the lack of details, but what do you expect from OMNI?
Rob St. Amant
Mike Ward
> ocean, you get hydrogen and oxymorons. Bottle the hydrogen, put it into
> the tanks of the hydrogen burning cars (which burn it catalytically in
> a fuel cell) and you get electricity to run your electric motor). There,
> wasn't that easier than mounting a collector array on your car or running
> at the end of a long extension cord?
Why not bottle the oxygen, too. Then, if you put your solar
collectors on the roof of the car and ran the exhaust back into
the electrowhatsis, you'd have the perfect, closed system.
j...@lanl.arpa
> a fuel. It seems that John Q. Public isn't ready for it -- street
> interviews showed that everybody thought of the Hindenburg.
>
> They had a nice set of scenes where somone shot tanks of propane,
> something else, something else again, and hydrogen with a bullet from
> a rifle. The hydrogen was the only one that didn't go *BOOM*.
I saw that film too. It was on PBS (I think it was the Canadian program
"the Nature of Things"). The shots were at propane cylinders, gasoline
tanks, hydrogen cylinders (both pressurized and liquid hydrogen were used),
and finally at a hydrogen storage tank in which the hydrogen was stored in
a loose chemical bond with something else (I forget what). All but the
gasoline and the chemically stored hydrogen exploded. The gasoline caught
fire and burned (and finally exploded) after a subsequent shot. The
chemically stored hydrogen never even burned. I thought it was an
impressive test.
By the way, I've seen several experimental programs which use hydrogen as
an automotive fuel. Most use safe storage methods like the one described
above. The problem is that hydrogen is still not cost competitive with
gasoline.
J. Giles
j...@lanl.arpa
> considerable more flammable. Germany had used it because
> there was an embargo of hydrogen against it.
You obviously have hydrogen and helium confused. Hydrogen is the most
common element in the universe and chemically reacts with lots of stuff.
Helium is the second most common element in the universe but it is
chemically inert. As a result, hydrogen is common on Earth but helium
doesn't combine with anything and, being lighter than air, escapes the
atmosphere if it is released into the environment. The world's main source
of helium is the U.S. and we embargoed it as a military commodity in the
late thirties. Since the Germans didn't have much helium, they used
hydrogen for their airships.
J. Giles
bn...@burdvax.uucp
>> considerable more flammable. Germany had used it because
>> there was an embargo of hydrogen against it.
>> Bob Crowley
>>
Come, come now. A little high school chemistry, folks. HYDROGEN, the
lightest element, is highly reactive in the presence of oxygen. Remember
what happens when you combine some 'H's and some 'O's and a little heat. You
get water and an explosion. The Hindenburg was full of hydrogen, not
helium. Helium is a non-flammable gaseous element.
--
Tom Albrecht Burroughs Corp.
...{presby|psuvax1|sdcrdcf}!burdvax!bnapl
Edward C. Bennett
> Helium, which is inert, was not available to Germany because the
> US (I think) had only recently discovered how to produce it in
> quantity, was the sole source, and was somewhat reluctant to give
> it to (prewar) Germany to power what could be used as a weapon.
>
One major point that nobody has mention yet is that Hydrogen
is lighter than Helium. So it provides more lift.
edward
{ucbvax,unmvax,boulder,research}!anlams! -|
{mcvax!qtlon,vax135,mddc}!qusavx! -|--> ukma!edward
{Lots of Places}!cbosgd! -|
Theodore Swift
There is one big advantage of hydrogen over helium: hydrogen
has a much greater "lifting power", four times as much according
to a book _Airships_ I read a long, long time ago. Four times
strikes me as off, since hydrogen, though of atomic weight 1.00X,
is diatomic. Thus it would only have "twice" the lifting power.
This same _Airships_ book (sorry I don't remember the author/publ.)
stated that "helium was a biproduct of the American natural gas
industry, something Germany didn't have <natural gas>". Whether or
not there was stockpiling or embargoing going on, I dunno.
As to hydrogen running cars, you wouldn't store the stuff as a
compressed gas or as a liquid; that'd still be too hairy if there
was an accident (and there would be, unless we drastically change
the basic natures of the maniacs we call drivers). One way of
*safely* storing hydrogen that's being investigated is lithium
hydrides: saturating lithium metal with hydrogen. I saw an article
about a prototype VW van with LiH[n] cells on the floor in the back.
I think they were using heat from the exhaust to drive the hydrogen
out of the lithium cells. They had some kind of heating coils to get
things going in cold weather. I can't say much more without going off
into speculation-land.
Scott P. Herzig
producer of helium, was embargoing shipment of helium to Nazi
Germany.
Norman Diamond
> range of concentrations of mixtures with oxygen at which it is
> explosive. (I hope that makes sense)
It might help make cents, if you start out with bronze ingots.
(Sorry I couldn't resist, and it's not quite up to the standards of net.jokes.)
Sean Casey
Hydrogen is flammable?????? Wow! I swear I must have
heard thus at least 30 times before!
Look, folks. The average person on the net is not so
stupid as to believe one man's bogus posting about the flam-
mability of helium/hydrogen. So if you MUST send flames then
PLEASE send to to him personally, NOT to the net. You are
gaining nothing except enemies and benefitting no one by
posting (1) The Obvious and (2) What has aleady been posted
30 times.
Sean (Phone Bills) Casey
--
Sean Casey UUCP: {hasmed, cbosgd}-\
{ucbvax, unmvax, boulder, research}!anlams---ukma!sean
{mcvax!qtlon, vax135, mddc}!qusavx-/
ARPA: "ukma!sean"@ANL-MCS or sean%ukma...@anl-mcs.arpa
John L. Templer
From: henn...@nmtvax.UUCP (Greg Hennessy)
> Greg Kuperberg object to a statement attributed to Einstein about "if
> you can create matter, then you can create momentum."
> I for one don't see anything wrong with the statement. As of now we
> can't create EITHER but rewriting ONE law of physics is worse than
> eating one peanut, to quote Larry Niven.
There's a small problem of terminology here; depending on what you
define as matter and momentum, we both can and can't make them.
To explain, in special releativity, momentum is a four-vector. The
firt three components are just the three components of what we normaly
think of as momentum, and the fourth component is proportional to the
total energy.
Now, changing refference frames is equivalent to transforming the
four-vector according to the Lorentz transformations. So the energy
and momentum can change, but the momentum vector's magnitude doesn't.
As far as "making" momentum or energy, all you can do is trade one off
against the other by using this process.
Looking back at what I just wrote, I see I wasn't too clear. I can
only say it's been a while since I took phy 353.
--
John L. Templer
University of Texas at Austin
{allegra,gatech,seismo!ut-sally,vortex}!ut-ngp!lindley
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."
Stephen Hutchison
In article <2...@rtech.ARPA> je...@rtech.ARPA (Jeff Lichtman) writes:
>>
>> Could someone kindly translate the above into English
>> for those of us who don't often see phrases like
>> "time translation invariance"
>> and
>> "vanishing divergence of stress-energy-momentum tensor"?
>>
>> Thanks.
>
>"Time translation invariance" means that the laws of physics don't change with
>time. The results of an experiment are the same, regardless of when you do it.
>This law and the law of conservation of energy are equivalent. I don't know how
>to prove this, but I read it in a book on the fundamentals of physics.
>
>I don't know what "vanishing divergence of stress-energy-momentum tensor"
>means.
>--
>Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
>aka Swazoo Koolak
UUUUuuuuummmm.... I have a question, please pardon my ignorance, but about
three years ago I read a short article in "Science News" which claimed that
they had found evidence that the weak and strong nuclear forces were actually
a unified force which split when the universe "cooled" (expanded?) to its
present "temperature" of about 4 degrees Kelvin. Would it not be true that
before this time, that some experiments would show different results?
Or was this simply a poor translation of what the original math showed?
Hutch
s.e.badian
>There are plenty of ways to transfer energy from one point to another;
>it's just that gasoline is still one of the most cost-effective (short
>term anyway).
It's cost effective in the short term if ignore all the other costs which
are quickly becoming short term, like acid rain. Our reckless use of
fossil fuels has killed 99% of the lakes in the Adirondacks, and it's
doing the same to lakes in the high Sierra and New England. I wonder
how long it will take the country to realize that it really is cost
effective to stop using so much fossil fuel. Ever wonder how much
revenue the state of Vermont gets from trees, trees that are being killed
by acid rain? Think about it.
Sharon Badian ihnp4!hocsp!ahutb!seb
Doug Pardee
Not quite. I'll grant that direct solar and indirect solar (oceanic
temperature differences, nuclear fusion, wind, etc.) are the largest
energy sources in which the entropy is beyond our control. But there
are others. One which comes to mind is gravitational, available
indirectly in tides. Another is from the rotation of the earth. Some
of the wind power could be considered indirect rotational energy.
--
Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug
Doug Pardee
> of the reasons for Germany's attack on the US ship that caused
> the US to enter WW I.
Now how could the Germans have known in 1917 that in the '30s we were
going to develop a method of extracting helium, and that we would
embargo that technology? And why would that serve as a reason to
sink a British ship? The Lusitania was a British trans-Atlantic
passenger liner, owned by Cunard. (If anyone's interested, the "ia"
at the end of the name was a hallmark of a Cunard ship, as the "ic"
at the end of the name was a hallmark of the rival White Star line).
Jeff Hull
>> If you take a large solar collector array, and plug the electrodes into the
>> ocean, you get hydrogen and oxymorons. Bottle the hydrogen, put it into
>> the tanks of the hydrogen burning cars (which burn it catalytically in
>> a fuel cell) and you get electricity to run your electric motor). There,
>> wasn't that easier than mounting a collector array on your car or running
>> at the end of a long extension cord?
>
>Why not bottle the oxygen, too. Then, if you put your solar
>collectors on the roof of the car and ran the exhaust back into
>the electrowhatsis, you'd have the perfect, closed system.
>--
>
>Michael Ward, NCAR/SCD
This is precisely the kind of thinking all too few of us are willing
to do (It was the lack of this kind of thinking that my original
article, where hydrogen fueled cars were mentioned, was deploring).
I am sure there are plenty of people out there who will say, "But that
won't work because..." To them, I say, please tell us how we can make
it work (& why it needs to be changed).
I would imagine the system proposed above would not be a closed system
because the solar collectors that will fit on a car will not generate
enough power to be the car's sole power source. But they can reduce
the amount of externally provided power needed & the difference can be
made up by plugging into electrical outlets when the car is parked.
Refills will probably be needed due to minor leaks & possibly less
than perfect reclamation of used fuel.
Come on, all you creative people out in netland. Let's refine this to
the level someone can build a working model!
--
Blessed Be,
Jeff Hull {decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,scdrdcf,ucbvax}
13817 Yukon Ave. trwrb!trwspp!spp2!jhull
Hawthorne, CA 90250
William L. Sebok
> pouring water vapor out their tailpipes on a hot, humid day?
They are: water vapor plus carbon dioxide (plus traces of more noxious
things like NO, NO2, CO, unburnt hydrocarbons, etc.).
--
Bill Sebok Princeton University, Astrophysics
{allegra,akgua,burl,cbosgd,decvax,ihnp4,noao,princeton,vax135}!astrovax!wls
Mark Brader
> has a much greater "lifting power", four times as much according
> to a book _Airships_ I read a long, long time ago. Four times
> strikes me as off, since hydrogen, though of atomic weight 1.00X,
> is diatomic. Thus it would only have "twice" the lifting power.
No, what it would have twice is the density. The buoyancy is proportional
to the difference between the density of the gas and the density of air.
As I calculated in another article, the average molecular weight of air is
29.1; hydrogen is 2.0 and helium is 4.0. And the density of a gas is
in direct proportion to the molecular weight. So hydrogen is nowhere near
twice as buoyant as helium, but only 27.1/25.1 = about 1.08 times.
This is still enough to be significant in airship contexts, though.
(Another disadvantage of helium is that its tiny atoms leak through materials
that won't pass other gases. I don't know how bad hydrogen is this way,
though, or how significant this effect is.)
Mark Brader
sonntag
> >> If you take a large solar collector array, and plug the electrodes into the
> >> ocean, you get hydrogen and oxymorons. Bottle the hydrogen, put it into
> >> the tanks of the hydrogen burning cars (which burn it catalytically in
> >> a fuel cell) and you get electricity to run your electric motor). There,
> >> wasn't that easier than mounting a collector array on your car or running
> >> at the end of a long extension cord?
> >
> >Why not bottle the oxygen, too. Then, if you put your solar
> >collectors on the roof of the car and ran the exhaust back into
> >the electrowhatsis, you'd have the perfect, closed system.
>
> This is precisely the kind of thinking all too few of us are willing
> to do (It was the lack of this kind of thinking that my original
> article, where hydrogen fueled cars were mentioned, was deploring).
>
> I am sure there are plenty of people out there who will say, "But that
> won't work because..." To them, I say, please tell us how we can make
> it work (& why it needs to be changed).
But that won't work because there's absolutely no point in bottling the
oxygen when 20% of the atmosphere is made of O2 anyhow. Also, a solar
collector small enough to fit on the roof of your car could, with a day of
nice sunshine, probably generate enough hydrogen to allow you to drive 400
yards or so.
>
> I would imagine the system proposed above would not be a closed system
> because the solar collectors that will fit on a car will not generate
> enough power to be the car's sole power source. But they can reduce
> the amount of externally provided power needed & the difference can be
> made up by plugging into electrical outlets when the car is parked.
> Refills will probably be needed due to minor leaks & possibly less
> than perfect reclamation of used fuel.
>
> Come on, all you creative people out in netland. Let's refine this to
> the level someone can build a working model!
>
> --
> Blessed Be,
>
> Jeff Hull {decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,scdrdcf,ucbvax}
> 13817 Yukon Ave. trwrb!trwspp!spp2!jhull
> Hawthorne, CA 90250
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***
--
Jeff Sonntag
ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j
"No, not bird, nor plane, nor even frog.
Just little old me, UNDERDOG! <crash!>"- not Idi Ahmin
John Woods
> very easy to keep liquid.) The consequences of a leak are probably
> somewhat more spectacular.
Not necessarily. Hydrogen is both highly volatile (as a liquid) and lighter
than air (as a gas). It turns out that it doesn't hang around in flammable
concentrations for very long (unless you put a gasbag around it -- and if
you watch the film footage of the Hindenburg (which I did recently), the
hydrogen didn't burn very long--likely most of it just escaped). Gasoline
(vapor) and propane, on the other hand, hang around in much higher
concentrations for greater lengths of time, hence they are easier to convince
to explode (and give you more time to do it).
--
John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101
...!decvax!frog!john, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw%mit...@MIT-XX.ARPA
Think of it as "evolution inaction".
There are no unintentional spelling errors in this article.
John Woods
> The thing that makes hydrogen extremely dangerous is the huge
> range of concentrations of mixtures with oxygen at which it is
> explosive. (I hope that makes sense)
It does, but gasoline has a nice range too (and tends to stay in that range,
since it is a liquid slowly evaporating to a heavy vapor).
>
> Then, too can you imagine the effect if thousands of cars were
> pouring water vapor out their tailpipes on a hot, humid day?
CH4 + 2O2 = CO2 + 2 H2O + heat (scale it up for bigger hydrocarbons)
Hint: they do already.
Can you imagine the effect if thousands of cars were NOT pouring carbon
monoxide and lead out their tailpipes on that same hot, humid (and thermal-
inverted) day?
Steve Kaufman
> If you take a large solar collector array, and plug the electrodes into the
> ocean, you get hydrogen and oxymorons.
This is prime _New_Yorker_ column-filling material.
Or was it simply an "intentional inadvertence"?
Helen Anne Vigneau
=> 1) it is more explosive than gasoline in the sense that it doesn't
=> need to evaporate first before mixing with air (see point 3).
=> however, since it is less dense than air, it will rise, and any
=> flames and stuff will rise also. because it is a gas to begin with
=> there will be a flash explosion and nothing else except possibly
=> nearby debris that ignites. natural gas and gasoline are denser
=> than air and will pool, forming flames that will be underneath any
=> vehicle and burning anything above. since they also burn less rapidly
=> than hydrogen, there is a higher likelyhood of igniting nearbly
=> inflammable material.
Sounds like a lot of fun in a tunnel. Really a blast. (Don't worry about your
car; you'll be busy trying to put out the flames on the ceiling of the tunnel.)
=> 3) . . . since it's a gas, no
=> problem with refrigeration. it's cleaner burning than gasoline
=> though it still produces oxides of nitrogen.
=> Herb Chong
Oxides of nitrogen, huh? Now *that* sounds like fun! :-) What a gas! :-)
Helen Anne
{ucbvax,ihnp4,cbosgd,hplabs,decwrl,unisoft,fortune,sun,nsc}!dual!hav
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music he hears,
however measured or far away.
we...@pyuxa.uucp
energy source, right? I would hate to have to
go in that direction though. I like tidal action
as an energy source for coastal areas. Then again,
how about wave action along the shore? For smaller
uses, the wind is a renewable energy source.
How about a large fan on the front of your car?
Use batteries to get going and then use the
fan to recharge your batteries. How about deep
well thermal energy? They use it in California
to generate power. Dig a VERY deep well, pump
water down, get steam back, turn a generator.
Simple,huh? Instead of great big power plants,
how about small, self contained, local units to
serve an small area using one of the energy
sources above? In order to cut down on the
use of non-renewable resources, we should
perhaps localize using available resouces which
do not pollute or use that which we are losing.
There are all kinds of ways to produce smaller
amounts of power. We should be using them where
they are available, thus cutting down on their
(not their, the) use of giant producers.
I'm just a dreamer who wishes for a windmill. CHARGE!!!!
T. C. Wheeler
Chris Lewis
>> I believe that it was also mentioned as one
>> of the reasons for Germany's attack on the US ship that caused
>> the US to enter WW I.
>
>Now how could the Germans have known in 1917 that in the '30s we were
>going to develop a method of extracting helium, and that we would
>embargo that technology? And why would that serve as a reason to
Whoops! Musta gotten the wrong war or something. I don't have a
copy of Shute's book handy (I *think* that's where I remember it
from). Maybe the book suggested it as contributary to the German
declaration of war on the US for WWII. Oh well, since I don't have
the quote handy, you might as well forget I said it.
--
Chris Lewis, Motorola New Enterprises
UUCP: {allegra, linus, ihnp4}!utzoo!utcs!mnetor!clewis
BELL: (416)-475-1300 ext. 321
Martin Taylor
>> There is only ONE renewable energy resource on this planet: Solar Energy.
>
>Not quite. I'll grant that direct solar and indirect solar (oceanic
>temperature differences, nuclear fusion, wind, etc.) are the largest
>energy sources in which the entropy is beyond our control. But there
>are others. One which comes to mind is gravitational, available
>indirectly in tides. Another is from the rotation of the earth. Some
>of the wind power could be considered indirect rotational energy.
>--
Still not quite! Tidal energy is misleading in two ways: (i) it subtracts
from the rotational energy of the earth and of the earth-moon system,
slowing the earth and driving the moon away, so it isn't "renewable".
Once the Earth stops, it stops. (ii) The height of a tide depends
on resonance between the 13-ish hour forcing function and the bays
in the coastline. If their surge resonance is around 13 hours (or a
subharmonic?) the tides will be high. Lowering the Q of the resonance
by taking work from the tide will to some extent lower to tide in
question, (usually -- I expect you could find situations where the
resonant frequency was such that a tidal power station might actually
raise the tide height, but that's speculation).
Both of these effects are very small, so the "not quite" is really "almost".
Wind power is really direct solar power, just as is power derived
from burning biomass.
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
{uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt
s.e.badian
There's an added advantage to localized energy production. You
don't have to haul the coal, or oil, or whatever to the far reaches of
the universe. Seems like a lot of energy must be used to haul all
that crude from Saudi Arabia to New Jersey, and then on to the rest
of the Northeast. Same argument can be said for coal burned in the
eastern part of the country; most of it comes from out west in South
Dakota, or Montana, or one of those other ex-Carboniferous Period
seas.
Why do you think there are few small power plants that
use local resource to their advantage? Economy of scales? Not
enough money in it for the big utilities to research and develop
it? My college drilled for gas on college property while I was
there. They even found some, and have been saving quite a bit of
fuel with the natural gas they pump out of their own well. It's
not a lot of gas, but it's enough for pay for the drilling.
Why don't more private parties research this kind of thing?
Sharon Badian ihnp4!hocsd!ahutb!seb
John Slasher Wersan III
>
> => 1) it is more explosive than gasoline in the sense that it doesn't
> => need to evaporate first before mixing with air (see point 3).
> => however, since it is less dense than air, it will rise, and any
> => flames and stuff will rise also. because it is a gas to begin with
> => there will be a flash explosion and nothing else except possibly
> => nearby debris that ignites. natural gas and gasoline are denser
> => than air and will pool, forming flames that will be underneath any
> => vehicle and burning anything above. since they also burn less rapidly
> => than hydrogen, there is a higher likelyhood of igniting nearbly
> => inflammable material.
>
> Sounds like a lot of fun in a tunnel. Really a blast. (Don't worry about your
> car; you'll be busy trying to put out the flames on the ceiling of the tunnel.)
>
> => 3) . . . since it's a gas, no
> => problem with refrigeration. it's cleaner burning than gasoline
> => though it still produces oxides of nitrogen.
>
> => Herb Chong
>
> Oxides of nitrogen, huh? Now *that* sounds like fun! :-) What a gas! :-)
>
> Helen Anne
>
I think that the use of hydrogen is an excelent idea, what
makes it so safe is that they are experimenting with what
I believe is called "Metal Hydrides", what this does is
only allow a slow release of the hydrogen gas (No boom
or the mess afterwards). If this works out you may one day
be able to supply all of the "fuel" needed by your car
from a little hydrolysis device, installed in your house.
--
John Wersan
UUCP :
decvax \ "Any statements made are not mine,
dual \ this computer has me mistaken for
rocksanne >!sunybcs!daemen!wersan someone else, of lower intelligence."
watmath /
rocksvax /