D. Britz estimate from Mizuno book
Jed Rothwell
confusing. Dieter Britz quotes parts of it:
> Here is a precis of what you wrote in the book.
What Mizuno wrote, and I translated.
> Mizuno had a cold fusion
> electrolysis cell running and it got very hot, and even when he cut the
> current it stayed hot. To cool it (and here I start using your own text,
> abbreviated):
>
> <Mizuno>
> I filled a large plastic bucket with water and partially submerged the
> cell in it [the cell temp drops from 100C to 60C and stays there]
>
> The next morning [...] The water, which had been around eight-tenths
> full [sic], was nearly all evaporated, [...] (nearly 9 liters).
Okay, that's ~9 l
> At that point I decided to get a big 20-liter bucket. I filled it with
> 15 liters of water [...] Three days later, the water had again
> evaporated.
> The waterline was below the cell.
~10 l evaporated. There was still about 5 liters below the waterline. (His
estimate and mine, looking at the bucket later.)
> For the second time I filled the bucket with 15 liters of water.[...]
> I added 5 liters on May 1, and again on May 2.
> Then on May 7 when the
> holiday ended, the water was about half gone [...].
To determine the total volume of the last three additions, start with 15
(full bucket), add 5, add 5, subtract the 7.5 that remained in the bucket
when the cell finally cooled (it was "half full").
15+5+5-7.5=17.5
So that's 9+10+17.5=36.5. In my introduction I made the first and second
additions ~10 liters each. (Note the tilde in my text.)
> </Mizuno>
>
> Several things here. Note the use of "around", "about" and "nearly",
> all indicating rough estimates. It seems, too, that you forgot the
> initial "nearly" 9 L, because your 37.5 must be the twice 15, once 5 and
> half of 5 at the end.
> So maybe you should change the figure to 46.500 L
> in future.
I don't understand this statement "your 37.5 must be twice 15 . . ." I don't
see where the 46.5 liters comes from. Anyway, my estimate is conservative,
and Mizuno and I went over it very carefully.
> Now, starry droog, you'll possibly come back and tell us that I am
> calling you a liar. Well, I'm not. I am saying that you got that
> wrong, the source does not have that number, your own arithmetic is
> wrong and you are not a scientist.
Your arithmetic is wrong.
> No shame in that, I'm not a
> Japanese expert . . .
And you got the arithmetic wrong but don't sweat it. The account is
confusing.
> As for my calling you a forger of Miles' letters, please provide the
> evidence.
Okay, if you insist. In 1998 you repeatedly wrote, "claims of excess
heat ---- are largely based on use of ---- calorimeters with single-point
temperature sensors." I sent you the following e-mail from Miles:
"Jones and Hansen heard my seminar, asked many questions, and published a
detailed critic of my work, hence they obviously know that I used two
thermistors in my calorimeter. Is it then not dishonest of Jones and Hansen
to make this statement concerning single-point temperature sensors? I have
also worked with Fleischmann / Pons cells here at NHE. Their calorimeters
also use two thermistors in each cell. These two thermistors are located at
completely different positions, yet they give almost identical results."
I provided copies of this and several other letters from Miles about the
subject, but you ignored them. I urged you to contact Miles directly.
Finally, you told me you did not believe Miles actually wrote the messages I
was forwarding:
Date: 12-Mar-98 04:31 EST
From: britz > INTERNET:br...@kemi.aau.dk
Subj: Re: Okay, not cooperative
On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, Jed Rothwell wrote:
> . . . the number of thermocouples he sees in a cell on his workbench. I
think
> Miles can count to two, and I think your standard of proof is too narrow
and
> legalistic. Furthermore, when you were casting about for a reason to
*reject*
> a cold fusion paper, you were happy to cite your telephone call with Ed
Storms
> about his thermal gradations. So I think you have a double standard:
evidence
> in favor of cold fusion must be peer-reviewed; evidence against it can
come
> over the phone.
You keep on about Miles; the only info I have "from" him comes through you,
and you can undoubtedly understand why I don't regard that as trustworthy.
. . .
"Don't regard that as trustworthy" can only mean "I don't believe it." No
one was asking you to believe it. I was asking you to verify the account
with Miles himself. (You should have done that yourself, without any
prompting from me.)
You "skeptics" are foolish to challenge me on matters of fact that anyone
can check.
- Jed
sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il
: Anyway, my estimate is conservative, and Mizuno and I went over
^^
: it very carefully.
Tee hee. (And don't expect him to have a clue about the question of
precision either.)
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"Schultz has zero knowledge, zero credibility, and as far as anyone knows he
has never published anything about CF. For all we know he is janitor at the
university, not a researcher. He certainly does not talk like a researcher."
-- Jed Rothwell, sci.physics.fusion, 5 July 2001
Jed Rothwell
> : Anyway, my estimate is conservative, and Mizuno and I went over
> ^^
> : it very carefully.
>
> Tee hee. (And don't expect him to have a clue about the question of
> precision either.)
Tee hee yourself. You should avoid this topic, I think. You are the one who
looked at these numbers, the 85 MJ, 100 grams of palladium, and famously
wrote:
"In other words, we have no evidence whatsoever that the "heat-after-death"
was due to CF rather than to a more mundane explanation such as D2 + O2
combustion . . ."
How can you forget? This was the most bone-headed, idiotic error in the
history of CF, and you made it after hearing about the limits of chemistry
for TWELVE YEARS! And you still have the chutzpa to post messages! You
never learn, do you? You quote me:
> "Schultz has zero knowledge, zero credibility, and as far as anyone knows
he
> has never published anything about CF. For all we know he is janitor at
the
> university, not a researcher. He certainly does not talk like a
researcher."
> -- Jed Rothwell, sci.physics.fusion, 5 July 2001
Your own words I quoted above prove this! Nothing I can say about you is
one-tenth as mortifying as your own mistakes. I think I'll rub it in your
face, and post the whole exchange again, just in case there are any new
"lurkers" here who actually think you have some credibility.
- Jed
sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il
: Richard Schultz writes:
:
:> : Anyway, my estimate is conservative, and Mizuno and I went over
:> ^^
:> : it very carefully.
:>
:> Tee hee. (And don't expect him to have a clue about the question of
:> precision either.)
:
: Tee hee yourself. You should avoid this topic, I think.
Why? If anyone wanted clearer proof of your inability to tell the truth,
how else could you give it to them? And if anyone wanted clearer evidence
that you are clueless about quantitation of data, what better way than by
providing the overly precise numbers you insist on repeating?
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"You just make this crap up and publish it without thinking. . . You did not
have the foggiest, vaguest idea what the man was doing. . . Did you ever
think, for even a second, what might happen to you if these people turn
out to be right?" -- Jed Rothwell, sci.physics.fusion, 6 January 1993
Jed Rothwell
> Why? If anyone wanted clearer proof of your inability to tell the truth,
> how else could you give it to them? And if anyone wanted clearer evidence
> that you are clueless about quantitation of data, what better way than by
> providing the overly precise numbers you insist on repeating?
I remind you, you were off by a factor of ~600. You should never again
accuse anyone of being clueless about quantitative analysis.
- Jed
John
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
>> <Mizuno>
>> At that point I decided to get a big 20-liter bucket. I filled it with
>> 15 liters of water [...] Three days later, the water had again
>> evaporated.
>> The waterline was below the cell.
"the waterline was below the cell"
If the waterline was below the cell, heat from the cell couldn't have
been the only thing that was responsible for evaporating the water.
Dieter Britz
>
> This is from another thread. The account in the Mizuno book is a little
> confusing. Dieter Britz quotes parts of it:
>
> > Here is a precis of what you wrote in the book.
>
> What Mizuno wrote, and I translated.
>
> > Mizuno had a cold fusion
> > electrolysis cell running and it got very hot, and even when he cut the
> > current it stayed hot. To cool it (and here I start using your own text,
> > abbreviated):
> >
> > <Mizuno>
> > I filled a large plastic bucket with water and partially submerged the
> > cell in it [the cell temp drops from 100C to 60C and stays there]
> >
> > The next morning [...] The water, which had been around eight-tenths
> > full [sic], was nearly all evaporated, [...] (nearly 9 liters).
>
> Okay, that's ~9 l
>
> > At that point I decided to get a big 20-liter bucket. I filled it with
> > 15 liters of water [...] Three days later, the water had again
> > evaporated.
> > The waterline was below the cell.
>
> ~10 l evaporated. There was still about 5 liters below the waterline. (His
> estimate and mine, looking at the bucket later.)
I took that to mean what it says first, "had evaporated". I know that
"below the waterline" contradicts that, but I got 15L evaporation
from it.
So, all in all, 9 + 15 + 15 + 5 + 2.5, all rough guesses, giving
roughly 46 L (+- a litre or so). You seem to have some inside
knowledge that you didn't transmit in the translation. But, I repeat,
nowhere is there a figure of 37.5 L in the book, and that sort of
precision is not justified, and Mizuno would not use it.
This is a quote of your own writing, not mine. What is your point?
Or did you cut/paste the wrong bit?
As for "trustworthy", that is an example of what I mean when I say that
you overreact. If I doubt that what you say is quite correct, I am not,
as you claim, saying that you are lying or making things up, I am only
saying that you got it wrong. With the number of thermistors, I felt
that you were making wishful assumptions. Maybe you were not. I don't
remember the Miles story as well as I remember the F&P one. We've
argued about the number of thermistors they used. I pointed out that
all their papers show a single one. In their 55-page 1990 paper, they
mention using 5 for a particular calibration run. It seems to me that
you took that to mean that they always used 5. They did not. Their
papers always show one. It so happens that I telephoned Fleischmann
recently and asked him. He told me they always had two. So you were
wrong on that too, but I am not calling you a liar.
For those of you who don't know the reason for this argument, let me
repeat that I believe that F&P did not suffer from temperature gradients
in their cells (even though Storms seems to find such gradients
himself), because I know a bit about the mixing power of bubbles in
an electrolysis cell. If there are errors in their calorimetry, I
believe they lie elsewhere.
> You "skeptics" are foolish to challenge me on matters of fact that anyone
> can check.
Quite right, and I did check, and found that you were wrong.
-- Dieter Britz http://www.chem.au.dk/~db
Jed Rothwell
> > ~10 l evaporated. There was still about 5 liters below the waterline.
(His
> > estimate and mine, looking at the bucket later.)
>
> I took that to mean what it says first, "had evaporated". I know that
> "below the waterline" contradicts that, but I got 15L evaporation
> from it.
No, it says there was still about 5 l left in the bucket.
> So, all in all, 9 + 15 + 15 + 5 + 2.5, all rough guesses, giving
> roughly 46 L (+- a litre or so). You seem to have some inside
> knowledge that you didn't transmit in the translation.
No, you have misinterpreted the text, which is confusing.
> But, I repeat,
> nowhere is there a figure of 37.5 L in the book . . .
It is right there in the introduction! I put it there myself, by adding up
Mizuno's numbers.
, and that sort of
> precision is not justified, and Mizuno would not use it.
Neither did I. As I said here, and as you see in the book, my numbers have
tildes (~) meaning "approximate." It is quite clear from my description I
meant approximately 37.5. Not 34, and not 41.
> > Storms
> > > about his thermal gradations. So I think you have a double standard:
> > evidence
> > > in favor of cold fusion must be peer-reviewed; evidence against it can
> > come
> > > over the phone.
>
> This is a quote of your own writing, not mine. What is your point?
> Or did you cut/paste the wrong bit?
You are mistaken. Go back and look at your own copy of the e-mail, if you
still have it. You wrote this part:
"You keep on about Miles; the only info I have "from" him comes through you,
and you can undoubtedly understand why I don't regard that as trustworthy."
> As for "trustworthy", that is an example of what I mean when I say that
> you overreact. If I doubt that what you say is quite correct, I am not,
> as you claim, saying that you are lying or making things up, I am only
> saying that you got it wrong.
Don't give us that song and dance! I told you it was a letter from Miles.
You said "I don't regard that as trustworthy." "That" = "this letter came
from Miles." You meant that I forged it. No other interpretation is
possible.
> With the number of thermistors, I felt
> that you were making wishful assumptions.
In that case I would have be forging the letter, wouldn't I? I quote Miles
directly about the number. You call that a "wishful assumption." That means
the quote is a wishful assumption, or imaginary, right? What else could it
mean?
I told you, again and again, to communicate directly with Miles to verify
the number of thermistors. You refused. You were the only person engaged in
wishful thinking and evasion. I proved what I said by providing an
authoritative statement from a leading expert, who was looking directly at a
cell used by Pons. You cannot ask for better verification than that.
- Jed
Jed Rothwell
> "the waterline was below the cell"
>
> If the waterline was below the cell, heat from the cell couldn't have
> been the only thing that was responsible for evaporating the water.
The cell radiates heat in all directions, including downward. The water will
drop until it falls a little below the cell. At that time, most of the heat
from the cell goes into the air, and very little reaches the remaining
water.
You can try this with a joule heater in a bucket. A cell is cylindrical, but
some other shape should do. It is a very basic experiment, but pretty
interesting. An ordinary bucket is poorly insulated, so you will see that
much of heat does not go into evaporation. This means Mizuno's cell actually
produced much more heat than we compute by multiplying 37.5 kg x heat of
vaporization. Also, it was left without cooling water for an undetermined
number of hours.
Also, I believe the cell was partly sitting on a brick or something like
that, to keep it from touching the bottom of the bucket and melting the
plastic. Some of the heat from the cell would pass through the holder into
the water below by conduction.
- Jed
John
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
>John writes:
>
>> "the waterline was below the cell"
>>
>> If the waterline was below the cell, heat from the cell couldn't have
>> been the only thing that was responsible for evaporating the water.
>
>The cell radiates heat in all directions, including downward. The water will
>drop until it falls a little below the cell. At that time, most of the heat
>from the cell goes into the air, and very little reaches the remaining
>water.
And since the emissivity of water is pretty low, the radiative heat
transfer is a small quantitity compared to the convective heat
transfer, very little heat from the cell reaches the water once the
water level falls below the cell, as you say. Simple evaporation to
relatively dry air would dwarf any effect of radiative heat transfer.
Unless, of course, the cell was glowing red hot.
>You can try this with a joule heater in a bucket. A cell is cylindrical, but
>some other shape should do. It is a very basic experiment, but pretty
>interesting. An ordinary bucket is poorly insulated, so you will see that
>much of heat does not go into evaporation. This means Mizuno's cell actually
>produced much more heat than we compute by multiplying 37.5 kg x heat of
>vaporization. Also, it was left without cooling water for an undetermined
>number of hours.
>
>Also, I believe the cell was partly sitting on a brick or something like
^^^^^^^^^
You believe a lot of things that few other people do, Jed.
>that, to keep it from touching the bottom of the bucket and melting the
>plastic.
A big worry when the cell started out at 100C, huh?
Don't you ever get tired of making things up?
>Some of the heat from the cell would pass through the holder into
>the water below by conduction.
You really are desperate to believe, aren't you? You're the cold
fusion equivalent of a Christian Apologist, and it's really quite
entertaining to watch you defend your religion. One difference: while
Christians tell us the Second Coming is soon, you tell us it's already
here and we refuse to admit it.
Dieter Britz
I've been saying that the figure 37.5 L does not appear in Mizuno's
book, and Rothwell has several times pointed at "the introduction",
where he says it does appear.
I have just checked again, and indeed Rothwell is correct. In the
Introduction, written not by Mizuno but by Rothwell, R summarises
what later appears in Chapter 4, "A Serious Experiment", where the
original text is Mizuno's. In that Introduction, Rothwell adds up
a lot of additions of water to buckets, to 37.5 L. I was wrong, sort
of. Sort of, because the figure is in the book as he pointed out,
but not in the original Japanese version or, in the English version,
in the part originally written by Mizuno. This is perhaps a pedantic
point and I apologise for denying the figure.
I was also correct, however, in believing that Mizuno would not state
such a figure, to that sort of precision. Rothwell, e.g., writes
"~10 liters", where Mizuno writes "nearly 9 liters", thereby proving
that a figure to the nearest 0.1 L is not justified.
All this obscures the point made by Mizuno, i.e. that 30-40 L water
were evaporated off by the heat from a cold fusion cell that had been
turned off and itself could not have contained the required energy,
either as stored heat or chemical energy. If this is true, then
something extraordinary did indeed happen. All the more reason for
trying to
reproduce this result, and a pity that Mizuno, or someone else, has not.
Mitchell Jones
[snip]
> All this obscures the point made by Mizuno, i.e. that 30-40 L water
> were evaporated off by the heat from a cold fusion cell that had been
> turned off and itself could not have contained the required energy,
> either as stored heat or chemical energy. If this is true, then
> something extraordinary did indeed happen. All the more reason for
> trying to reproduce this result, and a pity that Mizuno, or someone
> else, has not.
***{If some kind soul were to loan you a 100 lb palladium cathode, would
you dare to test it? :-) --MJ}***
> -- Dieter Britz http://www.chem.au.dk/~db
===============================================
Quotes may have been edited for appropriateness. Killfile inmates:
Mark Mallory, John_justjohn, Cliff Frost, Lynn Kurtz, Bill Snyder,
Bob Lutz, Maury Markowitz.
Gordon D. Pusch
> In article <3CCD28A0...@chem.au.dk>, Dieter Britz <d...@chem.au.dk> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > All this obscures the point made by Mizuno, i.e. that 30-40 L water
> > were evaporated off by the heat from a cold fusion cell that had been
> > turned off and itself could not have contained the required energy,
> > either as stored heat or chemical energy. If this is true, then
> > something extraordinary did indeed happen. All the more reason for
> > trying to reproduce this result, and a pity that Mizuno, or someone
> > else, has not.
>
> ***{If some kind soul were to loan you a 100 lb palladium cathode, would
> you dare to test it? :-) --MJ}***
Yes, since I'm quite confident that nothing even mildly interesting will happen,
let alone dangerous.
-- Gordon D. Pusch
perl -e '$_ = "gdpusch\@NO.xnet.SPAM.com\n"; s/NO\.//; s/SPAM\.//; print;'
Mitchell Jones
(Gordon D. Pusch) wrote:
> mjo...@jump.net (Mitchell Jones) writes:
>
> > In article <3CCD28A0...@chem.au.dk>, Dieter Britz
<d...@chem.au.dk> wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > All this obscures the point made by Mizuno, i.e. that 30-40 L water
> > > were evaporated off by the heat from a cold fusion cell that had been
> > > turned off and itself could not have contained the required energy,
> > > either as stored heat or chemical energy. If this is true, then
> > > something extraordinary did indeed happen. All the more reason for
> > > trying to reproduce this result, and a pity that Mizuno, or someone
> > > else, has not.
> >
> > ***{If some kind soul were to loan you a 100 lb palladium cathode, would
> > you dare to test it? :-) --MJ}***
>
> Yes, since I'm quite confident that nothing even mildly interesting will
happen,
> let alone dangerous.
***{In other words, you are willing to bet your life that Mizuno is lying,
right? :-) --MJ}***
> -- Gordon D. Pusch
Dieter Britz
>
> In article <3CCD28A0...@chem.au.dk>, Dieter Britz <d...@chem.au.dk> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > All this obscures the point made by Mizuno, i.e. that 30-40 L water
> > were evaporated off by the heat from a cold fusion cell that had been
> > turned off and itself could not have contained the required energy,
> > either as stored heat or chemical energy. If this is true, then
> > something extraordinary did indeed happen. All the more reason for
> > trying to reproduce this result, and a pity that Mizuno, or someone
> > else, has not.
>
> ***{If some kind soul were to loan you a 100 lb palladium cathode, would
> you dare to test it? :-) --MJ}***
Dare, why not? But I have other work to do and too many distractions
already, so I would not do the test. I do wonder why Mizuno hasn't
repeated it. It sounds a bit unconvincing that he is afraid, as has
been hinted at. Maybe he has repeated it, and didn't get the same
result again. One could ask him, I guess.
sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il
: I do wonder why Mizuno hasn't
: repeated it. It sounds a bit unconvincing that he is afraid, as has
: been hinted at. Maybe he has repeated it, and didn't get the same
: result again. One could ask him, I guess.
I wonder why, when he first saw that the cell was not cooling down, he
didn't think to put a second bucket of water in the room as a control
experiment. I also wonder why he took a cell that he had reason to
suspect was putting out high-energy radiation and carried it in his hands
from one place to another.
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
". . .Mr Schutz [sic] acts like a functional electro-terrorist who
impeads [sic] scientific communications with his too oft-silliness."
-- Mitchell Swartz, sci.physics.fusion article <EEI1o...@world.std.com>
Gordon D. Pusch
> In article <gik7qow...@pusch.xnet.com>, gdp...@NO.xnet.SPAM.com
> (Gordon D. Pusch) wrote:
>
>> mjo...@jump.net (Mitchell Jones) writes:
>>
>>> In article <3CCD28A0...@chem.au.dk>, Dieter Britz
>>> <d...@chem.au.dk> wrote:
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>>> All this obscures the point made by Mizuno, i.e. that 30-40 L water
>>>> were evaporated off by the heat from a cold fusion cell that had been
>>>> turned off and itself could not have contained the required energy,
>>>> either as stored heat or chemical energy. If this is true, then
>>>> something extraordinary did indeed happen. All the more reason for
>>>> trying to reproduce this result, and a pity that Mizuno, or someone
>>>> else, has not.
>>>
>>> ***{If some kind soul were to loan you a 100 lb palladium cathode, would
>>> you dare to test it? :-) --MJ}***
>>
>> Yes, since I'm quite confident that nothing even mildly interesting
>> will happen, let alone dangerous.
>
> ***{In other words, you are willing to bet your life that Mizuno is lying,
> right? :-) --MJ}***
Yes.
Jed Rothwell
> ***{If some kind soul were to loan you a 100 lb palladium cathode, would
> you dare to test it? :-) --MJ}***
There is effectively zero chance that a randomly selected, untreated sample
of palladium would work. As Ed Storms says, this is like collecting some
gravel from your driveway and trying to make a semiconductor out of it.
Actually, there was an amusing incident similar to Storm's scenario at Bell
Labs. I described it in my review of the book "Crystal Fire:"
"One day in 1940, a scientist named Wooldridge found [Shockley] fiddling
around in the lab with a piece of oxidized copper, which 'had apparently
been cut out of some very old copper back porch screen with very dull
scissors.' Shockley was trying to position wires so they would barely touch
the green oxide coating. He hoped to adjust the voltage applied to the mesh
to control the current flow. In other words, he was trying to make a crude
transistor. Wooldridge later wrote: 'so here he had the three elements of a
transistor, these two wires and the copper screen. Of course, he was *orders
of magnitude* away from anything that would work!'" (I.E. #25; Crystal Fire,
p. 86)
Randomly selected Pd in the hands of an untrained person would be orders of
magnitude away from anything that would work.
- Jed
Dieter Britz
>
> In article <3CCF9E02...@chem.au.dk>, Dieter Britz <d...@chem.au.dk> wrote:
>
> : I do wonder why Mizuno hasn't
> : repeated it. It sounds a bit unconvincing that he is afraid, as has
> : been hinted at. Maybe he has repeated it, and didn't get the same
> : result again. One could ask him, I guess.
>
> I wonder why, when he first saw that the cell was not cooling down, he
> didn't think to put a second bucket of water in the room as a control
> experiment. I also wonder why he took a cell that he had reason to
> suspect was putting out high-energy radiation and carried it in his hands
> from one place to another.
As for the first part, at that point they were only trying to get
the cell to cool down, and didn't expect it to evaporate a lot of
water.
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
***{For starters, I didn't say anything about "randomly selected Pd." What
I had in mind was a scale up in terms of size, while keeping the various
other identifiable characteristics of the cathode constant. Indeed, in my
first post on this topic I said:
"why didn't he [Mizuno] run the experiment again to collect the additional
information that he thought was required, using either the same cathode or
a different, identical one?"
Further down in the same post, I said:
"The sad thing about all this is that if the Mizuno "heat after death"
story is true, it suggests that the way to scale up the CF effect is to
simply scale it up--i.e., use *big* cathodes. In that case, the efficiency
of the process, as well as the energy output, ought to be improved.
(Therefore, what would happen if a 100 lb cathode were used? Since Pd
closed at $364 per Troy ounce on Friday, it will only cost $436,800 to
find out! :-)"
The point: if we assume Mizuno wasn't lying, his result strongly suggests
that there is an economy of scale at work here--i.e., that the efficiency
of the process improves as the size of the cathode increases. Your theory
that this is not the case, however firmly held, is just a theory. My own
view is that the "surface effect" hypothesis is bunk, and that if CF is
real, it can occur anywhere, whether in the bulk of the metal or at the
surface, when the necessary conditions are met. If that is the case, and
given the rather obvious fact that the necessary conditions have not yet
been identified, the use of large cathodes seems to me a plausible way,
from a statistical perspective, to attempt to ensure that they *will* be
met. Indeed, it seems possible that success in these investigations has
remained so tantalizingly out of reach precisely because of the small size
of the cathodes that have typically been used. While that theory may be
wrong, it seems to me that it ought to be investigated.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> - Jed
sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il
: sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il wrote:
:> I wonder why, when he first saw that the cell was not cooling down, he
:> didn't think to put a second bucket of water in the room as a control
:> experiment. I also wonder why he took a cell that he had reason to
:> suspect was putting out high-energy radiation and carried it in his hands
:> from one place to another.
:
: As for the first part, at that point they were only trying to get
: the cell to cool down, and didn't expect it to evaporate a lot of
: water.
I can understand why they didn't do it originally. But after a day with
the cell still not cooled down, you'd think that they'd say, "maybe we can
estimate how much heat this thing is putting out by comparing the evaporation
from the bucket to that from a similar control bucket."
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"P&F are getting so much heat that you hardly need any calorimetry at all."
--Jed Rothwell, sci.physics.fusion, 19 Jul 1992
"The palladium based systems are a useless dead end. Who cares about them?"
--Jed Rothwell, sci.physics.fusion, 10 Dec 1992
Cliff Frost
It seems to me that much of the criticism of Mizuno may be unfair. After
all, he isn't the one posting the wildly exaggerated claims on this newsgroup,
it's Jed fRothwell who does that. At this point we all should know that Jed
could ruin the reputation of a saint by siding with him(her).
Actually, I think Jed is in the employ of the Big Oil International
Conglomerates. He is the secret weapon in their crafty campaign to
completely discredit all CF research.
Cheers,
Cliff
ps I heard the true cause of Stanley Meyers' untimely death was that he
stuck his head in a Griggs gadget trying to find the 17 thermocouples
Jed had sworn were measuring it. Gad, that man is devious!!!
Kirk Shanahan
news:aap3sl$9b6$1...@news.iucc.ac.il
>
> I can understand why they didn't do it originally. But after a day with
> the cell still not cooled down, you'd think that they'd say, "maybe we can
> estimate how much heat this thing is putting out by comparing the evaporation
> from the bucket to that from a similar control bucket."
>
Then again, it would have also tested the vermin consumption rate...
---
Kirk Shanahan {My opinions...noone else's}
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Jed Rothwell
> ***{For starters, I didn't say anything about "randomly selected Pd." . .
.
Ah, I misunderstood. I thought you were suggesting that Gorden D. Pusch try
this with 100 lbs of Pd that he selects, or some other untrained person ("a
kind soul")selects.
You want one prepared by J-M or the NRL. They cannot handle a 100 lb sample!
They could make a few hundred smaller ones, which is probably a much better
approach, since large surface area seems to be the key to high performance.
Note that Mizuno's 100 gram sample was a hollow cylinder.
> The point: if we assume Mizuno wasn't lying, his result strongly suggests
> that there is an economy of scale at work here--i.e., that the efficiency
> of the process improves as the size of the cathode increases.
I don't think so! The performance was not 200 times better then P&F's 0.5
gram samples. As Storms says, only a tiny fraction of the surface is in a
nuclearactive state, judging by the autoradiographs, heat sensors and
transmutations. A 1 gram sample could easily have more nuclearactive spots
with more overall area than a 100 gram sample.
> Your theory
> that this is not the case, however firmly held, is just a theory.
No, it is an observation. It is not based on any theory. I have no idea what
causes a surface to become nuclearactive, but you can confirm it is active.
> My own
> view is that the "surface effect" hypothesis is bunk, and that if CF is
> real, it can occur anywhere, whether in the bulk of the metal or at the
> surface, when the necessary conditions are met.
If that were true, the transmutations would extend deep into the bulk, which
is not observed. I don't see how the deuterium could go down there anyway.
Of course the effect is seen somewhat below surface. See Bockris et al.
> If that is the case, and
> given the rather obvious fact that the necessary conditions have not yet
> been identified, the use of large cathodes seems to me a plausible way,
> from a statistical perspective, to attempt to ensure that they *will* be
> met.
I doubt it. A gigantic cathode might easily be fouled by a thin film of
crud, or cracked to pieces. As long as the ratio of contamination to cathode
is the same, or the ratio of cracks to cathode, or the percent the cathode
expansion, the experiment will fail. Scale up the cell and you will have
more contamination, unless you know what you are doing. There are a hundred
other ways to screw up the experiment, and they apply at any scale as far as
I know.
> Indeed, it seems possible that success in these investigations has
> remained so tantalizingly out of reach precisely because of the small size
> of the cathodes that have typically been used.
I agree that many cathodes are too small, especially in the Italian
experiments. In my critique in I.E., I suggested they make an array of 10 x
10 of their thin film cathodes. In a more recent article I described some of
the reasons researchers give for keeping cathodes so small. There are good
reasons and bad ones. See I.E. #36, "Butter Side Down."
> While that theory may be
> wrong, it seems to me that it ought to be investigated.
That has been investigated. It is still being investigated at this moment. A
friend of mine is testing a 600 gram cathode, which would be impossible with
an ordinary calorimeter.
- Jed
Jed Rothwell
> It seems to me that much of the criticism of Mizuno may be unfair. After
> all, he isn't the one posting the wildly exaggerated claims on this
newsgroup . . .
When Britz contacted Mizuno, Mizuno confirmed that my translation of his
book is correct, and the events transpired as I described them. He & Akimoto
may be wildly exaggerating, but I am not.
If you have doubt about this, I suggest you contact him yourself, at:
miz...@athena.hune.hokudai.ac.jp
If you fail to do this, and you continue posting this nonsense about me, you
make a fool of yourself. Britz and others have contacted him, and they will
know that you are dead wrong.
- Jed
Jed Rothwell
> I can understand why they didn't do it originally. But after a day with
> the cell still not cooled down, you'd think that they'd say, "maybe we can
> estimate how much heat this thing is putting out by comparing the
evaporation
> from the bucket to that from a similar control bucket."
They did not do that because it is not necessary. Millions of people have
performed that experiment over the last 100,000 years. No one has ever seen
anything remotely like one liter evaporate every three hours. You might as
well run a test to be sure your cow cannot jump over the moon.
For that matter, you could run the test now, at this moment -- and you
should. Put a bucket into any room anywhere in the Department of Chemistry,
even in direct sunlight. You will not see evaporation rates even 100 times
smaller than this. It is absolutely, positively impossible. The fact that
you suggest it might be possible, and you apparently seriously believe that
someone should check this once again proves that you have no common sense
and you know nothing about elementary physics.
- Jed
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > ***{For starters, I didn't say anything about "randomly selected Pd." . .
> .
>
> Ah, I misunderstood. I thought you were suggesting that Gorden D. Pusch try
> this with 100 lbs of Pd that he selects, or some other untrained person ("a
> kind soul")selects.
>
> You want one prepared by J-M or the NRL. They cannot handle a 100 lb sample!
> They could make a few hundred smaller ones, which is probably a much better
> approach, since large surface area seems to be the key to high performance.
> Note that Mizuno's 100 gram sample was a hollow cylinder.
***{What I would want, then, would be a 100 lb hollow cylinder cut in the
same proportions, taken from the same source and prepared in the same way,
as the sample that Mizuno used. (And I would want Gordon or Dieter to test
it. I would ensconce myself in a bunker and watch via television, at a
location many miles from ground zero. :-) --MJ}***
> > The point: if we assume Mizuno wasn't lying, his result strongly suggests
> > that there is an economy of scale at work here--i.e., that the efficiency
> > of the process improves as the size of the cathode increases.
>
> I don't think so! The performance was not 200 times better then P&F's 0.5
> gram samples. As Storms says, only a tiny fraction of the surface is in a
> nuclearactive state
***{That's just Ed's opinion. While he is a bright person and one of the
very few who can deal with persistent arguments without becoming hostile,
that doesn't mean he has to be right about this. My view of his Pt results
has always been that they were not sufficiently robust to support his
claim that this is a surface effect. In my view, 2% OU can easily be the
result of an error. Since the only logical view of CF which does not
dismiss all of the claims seems to rest on some sort of neutron-like
behavior by shrunken H-atoms, either as "protoneutrons," "hydrinos," or
various other, similar notions, and since such particles would mediate
fusion *wherever* they might appear in the metal, I believe it would be
premature to devote all research dollars to the hypothesis that this is a
surface effect. Diversity is desperately needed in this effort, if it is
to succeed, because the fact of the matter is that none of us is going to
know what the best approach is until the problem has been solved. Besides,
what I am suggesting is that there may be a benefits-of-size effect
operating here. That would apply both to the surface effect hypothesis and
to the bulk effect hypothesis. --MJ}***
, judging by the autoradiographs, heat sensors and
> transmutations. A 1 gram sample could easily have more nuclearactive spots
> with more overall area than a 100 gram sample.
***{It might, if the 100 gram sample has been prepared in a substantially
different way. However, if the samples differ only in size, the odds in
favor of success are vastly greater with the larger sample, for reasons
that ought to be obvious. Think of it this way: if you want to toss twenty
coins in the air and get 20 heads, will your chances be better if you toss
them once, or if you toss them 100 times? The point: if there is some
unknown arrangement of atoms which is necessary to CF, then the more atoms
you have in your sample, other things equal, the greater the likelihood
that it will contain that arrangement. This reasoning applies whether CF
is a surface effect or not. --MJ}***
> > Your theory
> > that this is not the case, however firmly held, is just a theory.
>
> No, it is an observation. It is not based on any theory. I have no idea what
> causes a surface to become nuclearactive, but you can confirm it is active.
***{Your view that this is exclusively a surface effect is *obviously*
just a theory, Jed. I'm not denying that it *can* happen on the surface,
if the conditions are right. What I am saying is that you have no basis
for your belief that it cannot happen deep inside the metal. *That* is
your theoretical presupposition. And, to repeat one more time: if there is
a benefits-of-size effect associated with using larger cathodes, that
consideration could apply not merely to a bulk effect, but to a surface
effect as well. --MJ}***
> > My own
> > view is that the "surface effect" hypothesis is bunk, and that if CF is
> > real, it can occur anywhere, whether in the bulk of the metal or at the
> > surface, when the necessary conditions are met.
>
> If that were true, the transmutations would extend deep into the bulk
***{That doesn't follow. The conditions necessary for transmutation may
be, and probably are, different from those that are necessary for fusion.
In particular, transmutation may be dependent on the presence of impurity
nuclei from the solution--nuclei which are too large to penetrate into the
bulk of the metal. --MJ}***
, which
> is not observed.
***{I don't know whether that is true or not, but in any case it is
irrelevant, for two reasons: (a) transmutations and fusion are different
processes, with fusion being the one of primary interest here; and (b) if
transmutations are not observed deep in the metal, that doesn't
necessarily tell us anything about where the fusion is taking place.
--MJ}***
I don't see how the deuterium could go down there anyway.
***{A deuterium atom is electrically neutral, and would not be attracted
into the cathode even if it were small enough to go there, which it isn't.
A deuteron, however, is a naked deuterium nucleus. As such, it has no
electron shell, and is capable of easily passing deep into the interior of
a Pd lattice, provided a charge gradient is present to pull it there.
--MJ}***
> Of course the effect is seen somewhat below surface. See Bockris et al.
***{Which effect? Are you talking about the finding of transmuted atoms
lodged in used cathodes, or about the helium nuclei that are produced by
fusion? --MJ}***
> > If that is the case, and
> > given the rather obvious fact that the necessary conditions have not yet
> > been identified, the use of large cathodes seems to me a plausible way,
> > from a statistical perspective, to attempt to ensure that they *will* be
> > met.
>
> I doubt it. A gigantic cathode might easily be fouled by a thin film of
> crud, or cracked to pieces. As long as the ratio of contamination to cathode
> is the same, or the ratio of cracks to cathode, or the percent the cathode
> expansion, the experiment will fail.
***{As I noted earlier, the primary cause of failure may be the absence of
the required constellation of atoms, on or within the metal, to promote
fusion. If so, then the bigger the cathode, the better the chance that
those requirements will be met. You may theorize that this is not the
case, but it would be ill-advised to exclude such a possibility from the
research effort. (Note that your words, if CF should gain access to looted
funds, may be studied by the grant givers, as they decide which proposals
are plausible and which are implausible. They may decide that your opinion
represents the mainstream, and that mine represents the "fringe." If so,
then looking for a benefit associated with size will be frozen out, and,
if that is the road to success, CF will be killed--killed by Jed Rothwell,
its most ardent supporter! :-) --MJ}***
Scale up the cell and you will have
> more contamination, unless you know what you are doing. There are a hundred
> other ways to screw up the experiment, and they apply at any scale as far as
> I know.
***{I never argued that people who don't know what they are doing ought to
test out the benefits-of-size theory. --MJ}***
> > Indeed, it seems possible that success in these investigations has
> > remained so tantalizingly out of reach precisely because of the small size
> > of the cathodes that have typically been used.
>
> I agree that many cathodes are too small, especially in the Italian
> experiments. In my critique in I.E., I suggested they make an array of 10 x
> 10 of their thin film cathodes. In a more recent article I described some of
> the reasons researchers give for keeping cathodes so small. There are good
> reasons and bad ones. See I.E. #36, "Butter Side Down."
>
>
> > While that theory may be
> > wrong, it seems to me that it ought to be investigated.
>
> That has been investigated. It is still being investigated at this moment. A
> friend of mine is testing a 600 gram cathode, which would be impossible with
> an ordinary calorimeter.
***{Good. --MJ}***
Kirk Shanahan
news:mjones-0205...@jump-tnt-0192.customer.jump.net
> In article <3cd041a1$1...@nopics.sjc>, "Jed Rothwell"
> <jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
>
> > Mitchell Jones writes:
> >
{snip}
> ***{What I would want, then, would be a 100 lb hollow cylinder cut in the
> same proportions, taken from the same source and prepared in the same way,
It is unlikely to support the internal pressure without considerable
design. You will also have to account for the natural swelling of
hydriding.
{snip}
>
> ***{A deuterium atom is electrically neutral, and would not be attracted
> into the cathode even if it were small enough to go there, which it isn't.
> A deuteron, however, is a naked deuterium nucleus. As such, it has no
> electron shell, and is capable of easily passing deep into the interior of
> a Pd lattice, provided a charge gradient is present to pull it there.
> --MJ}***
>
Care to explain how I can load Pd to ~0.7 H/M with simple gas loading,
and how Baranowski got up to ~1.0 with high pressure gas loading?
No electrical fields there.
{snip}
> >
> > That has been investigated. It is still being investigated at this moment. A
> > friend of mine is testing a 600 gram cathode, which would be impossible with
> > an ordinary calorimeter.
>
> ***{Good. --MJ}***
>
> > - Jed
Make sure they check their calorimeter calibration _during_ a CF
event, and via the electrolysis, not with a Joule heater, assuming
they get an event.
Mitchell Jones
"Kirk Shanahan" <kirk.s...@srs.gov> wrote:
> "Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message
> news:mjones-0205...@jump-tnt-0192.customer.jump.net
>
> > In article <3cd041a1$1...@nopics.sjc>, "Jed Rothwell"
> > <jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Mitchell Jones writes:
> > >
> {snip}
> > ***{What I would want, then, would be a 100 lb hollow cylinder cut in the
> > same proportions, taken from the same source and prepared in the same way,
>
> It is unlikely to support the internal pressure without considerable
> design. You will also have to account for the natural swelling of
> hydriding.
***{You mean redesign, presumably. And that may be so, since the volume
would increase faster than the surface area, if the proportions were held
constant. Perhaps it would be better to hold the ratio of volume to
surface area constant, by changing the proportions. In any case, the main
point is to investigate the possibility, that the heat-after-death effect,
and perhaps other very robust OU numbers, would arise more reliably in the
larger cathodes than in the smaller ones. (If there is a lesson to be
learned from Mizuno's heat-after-death result, that would seem to be it.)
--MJ}***
> {snip}
> >
> > ***{A deuterium atom is electrically neutral, and would not be attracted
> > into the cathode even if it were small enough to go there, which it isn't.
> > A deuteron, however, is a naked deuterium nucleus. As such, it has no
> > electron shell, and is capable of easily passing deep into the interior of
> > a Pd lattice, provided a charge gradient is present to pull it there.
> > --MJ}***
> >
>
> Care to explain how I can load Pd to ~0.7 H/M with simple gas loading,
> and how Baranowski got up to ~1.0 with high pressure gas loading?
> No electrical fields there.
***{Jed and I were talking about electrolytic loading, not gas loading. (A
pressure or a concentration gradient can obviously accomplish the same
effect as a charge gradient, if the circumstances are right.) --MJ}***
> {snip}
> > >
> > > That has been investigated. It is still being investigated at this
moment. A
> > > friend of mine is testing a 600 gram cathode, which would be
impossible with
> > > an ordinary calorimeter.
> >
> > ***{Good. --MJ}***
> >
> > > - Jed
>
> Make sure they check their calorimeter calibration _during_ a CF
> event, and via the electrolysis, not with a Joule heater, assuming
> they get an event.
***{Remember: we are talking about trying to produce unarguably huge OU
numbers along the lines of Mizuno's heat-after-death result, with the idea
being that *big* cathodes are the key. Given that aim, I really don't see
how tiny fluctuations in calorimeter calibration are important: if the
cathode continues to evaporate copious amounts of water long after the
power has been turned off, or, e.g., shows ten times as much energy out as
in, then the game is pretty much up, is it not? :-) --MJ}***
> ---
> Kirk Shanahan {My opinions...noone else's}
===============================================
Dieter Britz
[...]
> I had in mind was a scale up in terms of size, while keeping the various
> other identifiable characteristics of the cathode constant. Indeed, in
So, a chunky 100 lb (and why stop there?) Pd lump, charged with
deuterium (it would take a few years, I think, what with the Nernst
diffusion layer thickness), and of course a huge bucket for the many
litres of water to be evaporated. And by all means follow Rothwell's
advice, latex gloves on at all times! If this pans out, you'd be
getting a step closer to "infinite energy".
Jed Rothwell
> ***{What I would want, then, would be a 100 lb hollow cylinder cut in the
> same proportions, taken from the same source and prepared in the same way
. . .
No one could prepare such a thing with existing equipment. Also, as Britz
pointed out, it would take forever to load. The only sensible way to scale
up would be to use an array of small cathodes. If CF is ever made practical,
I doubt the cathodes will be any larger than today's cathodes. They will
resemble the individual uranium fuel pellets in fission reactors, which are
1.5 cm long, about 0.7 cm diameter. (I have a fake one here from the
American Nuclear Society.)
> > I don't think so! The performance was not 200 times better then P&F's
0.5
> > gram samples. As Storms says, only a tiny fraction of the surface is in
a
> > nuclearactive state
>
> ***{That's just Ed's opinion.
No, it is an observation.
> , judging by the autoradiographs, heat sensors and
> > transmutations. A 1 gram sample could easily have more nuclearactive
spots
> > with more overall area than a 100 gram sample.
>
> ***{It might, if the 100 gram sample has been prepared in a substantially
> different way. However, if the samples differ only in size, the odds in
> favor of success are vastly greater with the larger sample, for reasons
> that ought to be obvious.
Nope. The odds are the larger sample will be contaminated, because the
forges and other equipment is not designed for large samples. In any case,
0.5 gram samples have produced more heat than the 100 gram sample did, so I
see no point in scaling up if your purpose is to improve the s/n ratio.
> Think of it this way: if you want to toss twenty
> coins in the air and get 20 heads, will your chances be better if you toss
> them once, or if you toss them 100 times?
If that is your approach, it is far better to test 200 cathodes each 0.5
grams, rather than another 100 gram one, or a single 100 lb one.
> The point: if there is some
> unknown arrangement of atoms which is necessary to CF . . .
The arrangement is unknown to me, but others understand it, and make it
produce heat in every test.
> ***{Your view that this is exclusively a surface effect is *obviously*
> just a theory, Jed.
No, as I said it is an observation, based on heat, autoradiographs,
transmutations, vaporized metal, trapped helium and so on. I have no
theories.
> I'm not denying that it *can* happen on the surface,
> if the conditions are right.
> What I am saying is that you have no basis
> for your belief that it cannot happen deep inside the metal.
Of course I do! There is never any heat damage, transmutations, tritium,
helium or any other sign that a CF reaction occured in layers deep inside
the metal. I mean at macroscopic depths, a millimeter or more, I think.
> > If that were true, the transmutations would extend deep into the bulk
>
> ***{That doesn't follow. The conditions necessary for transmutation may
> be, and probably are, different from those that are necessary for fusion.
There are no other signs that a fusion reaction occured, such as tritium,
helium etc.
> > Of course the effect is seen somewhat below surface. See Bockris et al.
>
> ***{Which effect? Are you talking about the finding of transmuted atoms
> lodged in used cathodes . . .
Read Bockris et al.
> ***{As I noted earlier, the primary cause of failure may be the absence of
> the required constellation of atoms, on or within the metal, to promote
> fusion. If so, then the bigger the cathode, the better the chance that
> those requirements will be met.
Why bigger? Why not use lots more identical cathodes?
- Jed
Jed Rothwell
> Make sure they check their calorimeter calibration _during_ a CF
> event, and via the electrolysis, not with a Joule heater, assuming
> they get an event.
It is gas loading. A 600 gram electrochemical experiment would be crazy.
- Jed
Mitchell Jones
> Mitchell Jones wrote:
> [...]
> > I had in mind was a scale up in terms of size, while keeping the various
> > other identifiable characteristics of the cathode constant. Indeed, in
>
> So, a chunky 100 lb (and why stop there?) Pd lump
***{You aren't listening. Nobody said anything about a "chunky Pd lump." I
explicitly suggested that the characteristics of Mizuno's original
cathode ought to be retained, insofar as possible, when the move to a
larger size is made. My original idea in that regard was to simply keep
the same proportions, in terms of length, width, etc. (In other words, if
you double one dimension, then double them all.) But after Kirk's
comments, I decided that a better idea might be to keep the same ratio of
volume to surface area as Mizuno's original cell, rather than to retain
the length ratios. As for the 100 lb cathode idea, that is just an
example, deliberately exaggerated to make the point, which is this:
Mizuno's heat-after-death results suggests that *size matters*--i.e., that
larger cathodes may be more efficient at producing the CF effect. I think
the possibility that size matters ought to be investigated. --MJ}***
, charged with
> deuterium (it would take a few years, I think, what with the Nernst
> diffusion layer thickness), and of course a huge bucket for the many
> litres of water to be evaporated. And by all means follow Rothwell's
> advice, latex gloves on at all times! If this pans out, you'd be
> getting a step closer to "infinite energy".
***{That's very nice. You have proven that you can post up sarcastic
comments which have exactly diddley squat to do with what I said. Now
let's see if you can post up some relevant comments, OK? --MJ}***
> -- Dieter Britz http://www.chem.au.dk/~db
===============================================
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > ***{What I would want, then, would be a 100 lb hollow cylinder cut in the
> > same proportions, taken from the same source and prepared in the same way
> . . .
>
> No one could prepare such a thing with existing equipment. Also, as Britz
> pointed out, it would take forever to load.
***{No it wouldn't. If you keep the same ratio of volume to surface area,
and you boost the load current , the cell size, and everything else as
required, the load time should not change at all. --MJ}***
The only sensible way to scale
> up would be to use an array of small cathodes.
***{You aren't listening. The whole idea is to test out the possibility
that *size matters*. You obviously cannot do that unless you increase the
SIZE of the cathode. --MJ}***
If CF is ever made practical,
> I doubt the cathodes will be any larger than today's cathodes.
***{I know you doubt that, but so what? Your doubts are not facts. The
reality is that Mizuno's heat-after-death result suggests the possibility
that size matters, and experiments ought to be done to obtain the FACTS
vis-a-vis that possibility. --MJ}***
They will
> resemble the individual uranium fuel pellets in fission reactors, which are
> 1.5 cm long, about 0.7 cm diameter. (I have a fake one here from the
> American Nuclear Society.)
***{I repeat: your opinions are not facts. We need to obtain the facts. In
order to do that, experiments must be done. --MJ}***
> > > I don't think so! The performance was not 200 times better then P&F's
> > > 0.5 gram samples. As Storms says, only a tiny fraction of the surface is
> > > in a nuclearactive state
> >
> > ***{That's just Ed's opinion.
>
> No, it is an observation.
***{No, it's an opinion, based on a number of assumptions. Assumption
number 1 is that Ed's Pt based results are not due to error. I'm not
convinced of that. Assumption number 2 is that, even if they are correct,
they can be applied to the Pd results. I am not convinced of that, either.
And there are lots more assumptions in his chain of reasoning which I'll
not go into here, because it is irrelevant to the main point. Now please
stop chanting this "it's an observation" mantra, OK? You know, or you
ought to know, that it is impossible to state any fact in a manner that is
divorced from the theoretical presuppositions of the speaker. And that's
all I mean when I say "That's just an opinion." I'm just pointing out that
I disagree with the underlying assumptions of the person who stated the
opinion. --MJ}***
> > , judging by the autoradiographs, heat sensors and
> > > transmutations. A 1 gram sample could easily have more nuclearactive
> > > spots with more overall area than a 100 gram sample.
> >
> > ***{It might, if the 100 gram sample has been prepared in a substantially
> > different way. However, if the samples differ only in size, the odds in
> > favor of success are vastly greater with the larger sample, for reasons
> > that ought to be obvious.
>
> Nope. The odds are the larger sample will be contaminated, because the
> forges and other equipment is not designed for large samples. In any case,
> 0.5 gram samples have produced more heat than the 100 gram sample did
***{I don't believe that for a second. In the Mizuno heat-after-death
claim, the conclusion about heat output rests on a single assumption: that
Mizuno is not lying. There is no reasonable possibility that he simply
made a mistake, and there are no complex calculations of C.O.P's, with
questionable assumptions about the accuracy of measuring instruments,
involved. Thus there is literally *no comparison* between some .5 gram
sample which, when electrolyzed for six months, was *calculated* to have
produced more heat than Mizuno's sample, and his claim, which rests on no
complex analysis whatsoever. --MJ}***
, so I
> see no point in scaling up if your purpose is to improve the s/n ratio.
***{I repeat: my purpose is to investigate the possibility that size
matters--which means: the possibility that unarguable proof of CF has been
lacking because virtually all of the efforts have been focused on the use
of tiny samples. --MJ}***
> > Think of it this way: if you want to toss twenty
> > coins in the air and get 20 heads, will your chances be better if you toss
> > them once, or if you toss them 100 times?
>
> If that is your approach, it is far better to test 200 cathodes each 0.5
> grams, rather than another 100 gram one, or a single 100 lb one.
***{That is just silly. Testing 200 cathodes each weighing.5 gm will tell
you exactly *nothing* about the events that might occur deep within the
bulk of the metal. All you would be investigating would be surface
characteristics. If size matters, the only way to find out is to use big
cathodes. That is obvious. --MJ}***
> > The point: if there is some
> > unknown arrangement of atoms which is necessary to CF . . .
>
> The arrangement is unknown to me, but others understand it, and make it
> produce heat in every test.
***{So you say. However, thus far they have not succeeded in proving that
the effect even exists, much less in producing a commercial product. I
would suggest that the reason may be that they have focused their efforts
almost exclusively on small samples, with the consequence that their
claims of excess heat invariably rest on complex, hence questionable,
analysis. --MJ}***
> > ***{Your view that this is exclusively a surface effect is *obviously*
> > just a theory, Jed.
>
> No, as I said it is an observation, based on heat, autoradiographs,
> transmutations, vaporized metal, trapped helium and so on. I have no
> theories.
***{Yes you do: your theory is that the assumptions underlying the above
conclusion are correct. I, however, doubt those assumptions, because I
doubt the lengthy and complex chains of reasoning on which they are based.
What you guys need is a result like Mizuno's heat-after-death claim, which
is based on a short, brutal, and uncomplicated line of reasoning. Once
such a result has been widely replicated and, thus, does not rest on the
word of one man, the game is up. And I suggest that the way to achieve
that end may be to investigate the possibility that size matters. (Another
way to accomplish it, which I have already suggested in other threads,
might be to run a hydrosonic pump using heavy water.) Bottom line: you
guys need to get off the pot and *prove* that CF is real. Otherwise this
whole endeavor is simply going to die, whether justifiably or not.
--MJ}***
> > I'm not denying that it *can* happen on the surface,
> > if the conditions are right.
> > What I am saying is that you have no basis
> > for your belief that it cannot happen deep inside the metal.
>
> Of course I do! There is never any heat damage, transmutations, tritium,
> helium or any other sign that a CF reaction occured in layers deep inside
> the metal. I mean at macroscopic depths, a millimeter or more, I think.
***{I repeat: Mizuno's heat-after-death claim suggests otherwise. Unless
you believe he is lying, you cannot say that there is no evidence
supporting a bulk effect. --MJ}***
> > > If that were true, the transmutations would extend deep into the bulk
> >
> > ***{That doesn't follow. The conditions necessary for transmutation may
> > be, and probably are, different from those that are necessary for fusion.
>
> There are no other signs that a fusion reaction occured, such as tritium,
> helium etc.
***{Here is what you need to support your position. First, you need
incontrovertible evidence that CF occurred in a large cathode. Second, you
have to look deep in the bulk of that cathode, and fail to find helium.
Third, you need a solid basis for believing that *all* cathodes,
regardless of their shape, size, loading, electrolyte, current, voltage,
etc., must behave in the same way. Since no study meets all three of those
requirements, your belief that size doesn't matter is unproven. --MJ}***
> > > Of course the effect is seen somewhat below surface. See Bockris et al.
> >
> > ***{Which effect? Are you talking about the finding of transmuted atoms
> > lodged in used cathodes . . .
>
> Read Bockris et al.
***{Reading Bockris isn't going to tell me what *you* meant by "the
effect," now is it? :-) --MJ}***
> > ***{As I noted earlier, the primary cause of failure may be the absence of
> > the required constellation of atoms, on or within the metal, to promote
> > fusion. If so, then the bigger the cathode, the better the chance that
> > those requirements will be met.
>
> Why bigger? Why not use lots more identical cathodes?
***{For the reasons given above. --MJ}***
Jed Rothwell
> ***{You aren't listening. The whole idea is to test out the possibility
> that *size matters*.
That's already been tested. We know the answer. Size doesn't matter. Within
broad limits -- obviously a milligram sample is too small! Geometry matters.
Cleanliness matters. The index of expansion matters. Lots of things matter.
>You obviously cannot do that unless you increase the
> SIZE of the cathode. --MJ}***
Or use lots of cathodes simultaneously.
> The
> reality is that Mizuno's heat-after-death result suggests the possibility
> that size matters . . .
And results from P&F, Arata, McKubre and many others proves that it does not
matter.
> > Nope. The odds are the larger sample will be contaminated, because the
> > forges and other equipment is not designed for large samples. In any
case,
> > 0.5 gram samples have produced more heat than the 100 gram sample did
>
> ***{I don't believe that for a second.
Why not? Why are you so sure that P&F, Arata, McKubre are wrong? For that
matter, Mizuno himself has gotten a lot more power out of smaller samples,
albeit not as much energy. Why do you believe one claim and reject these
others, when they are much better documented & instrumented?
> In the Mizuno heat-after-death
> claim, the conclusion about heat output rests on a single assumption: that
> Mizuno is not lying.
Mizuno and Akimoto. I talked to him as well.
> There is no reasonable possibility that he simply
> made a mistake, and there are no complex calculations of C.O.P's, with
> questionable assumptions about the accuracy of measuring instruments,
> involved. Thus there is literally *no comparison* between some .5 gram
> sample which, when electrolyzed for six months, was *calculated* to have
> produced more heat than Mizuno's sample . . .
The calculation Mizuno used, based on the heat of evaporation, is exactly
the same one P&F used to prove their heat after death event a few years
later. If you believe Mizuno, you will believe them too. They have much
better evidence: photographs, videos, a properly insulated vessel. They did
it hundreds of times, on demand, not just once. Their 0.5 gram sample
evaporated the water at considerably higher power than Mizuno accidentally
achieved with 100 grams. Lots of other people saw their tests, and a close
up video of the test on BBC proves that this is not heat from electrolysis.
(It would be physically impossible; these is no circuit, and no bubbles on
the anode.) There is no reasonable possibility that they simply made a
mistake, and it is less likely they were lying, since many witnesses agreed
it happened.
> . . . and his claim, which rests on no
> complex analysis whatsoever. --MJ}***
The other experiments use simple physics that were well established by 1850,
and they produce high s/n ratios. They require no complex analysis
whatsoever. There are no rational objections to these other tests, such as
McKubre's. The skeptics have been trying to come up with an objection for 12
years, but they have not, and they never will.
> ***{I repeat: my purpose is to investigate the possibility that size
> matters--which means: the possibility that unarguable proof of CF has been
> lacking because virtually all of the efforts have been focused on the use
> of tiny samples. --MJ}***
The size of the sample is irrelevant. A large amount of heat is convincing,
not a large sample. 130 watts coming from 0.5 grams is more convincing than
~100 watts from 100 grams. Mills and Thermacore made gigantic nickel cells,
with 40 lbs of Ni in a 10 gal container, but they produced only ~50 watts,
even assuming no recombination took place. The large size made it difficult
to measure the heat. A smaller cell would have been more convincing, even if
it produced only ~5 watts.
> ***{That is just silly. Testing 200 cathodes each weighing.5 gm will tell
> you exactly *nothing* about the events that might occur deep within the
> bulk of the metal.
Nothing happens deep within the bulk of the metal. We already know that.
Researchers peel away the metal in layers after experiments, or section the
metal, and find no evidence that anything happened. There was no evidence of
a bulk reaction in Mizuno's 100 gram sample, which was (eventually)
completely disintegrated in destructive testing.
If you want to test a large mass of metal, why not test 200 normal cathodes
simultaneously, in the same calorimeter? It is sorta pointless, but it might
be fun!
> > The arrangement is unknown to me, but others understand it, and make it
> > produce heat in every test.
>
> ***{So you say. However, thus far they have not succeeded in proving that
> the effect even exists . . .
They proved it by 1990. No skeptic has ever challenged this proof.
> > Of course I do! There is never any heat damage, transmutations, tritium,
> > helium or any other sign that a CF reaction occured in layers deep
inside
> > the metal. I mean at macroscopic depths, a millimeter or more, I think.
>
> ***{I repeat: Mizuno's heat-after-death claim suggests otherwise. Unless
> you believe he is lying . . .
He looked in the bulk and found nothing! No evidence for fusion. It was all
on the surface and near surface layers.
> ***{Here is what you need to support your position. First, you need
> incontrovertible evidence that CF occurred in a large cathode.
We have that! Heat, transmutations, neutrons etc.
> Second, you
> have to look deep in the bulk of that cathode, and fail to find helium.
They could not look for helium, I think. The other testing would have
liberated it.
> Third, you need a solid basis for believing that *all* cathodes,
> regardless of their shape, size, loading, electrolyte, current, voltage,
> etc., must behave in the same way.
No one has ever seen one behave some other way, as far as I know.
> > Read Bockris et al.
>
> ***{Reading Bockris isn't going to tell me what *you* meant by "the
> effect," now is it? :-) --MJ}***
What Bockris meant, not me. This isn't about me. Bockris showed the effect
occurs at surface layers.
- Jed
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > ***{You aren't listening. The whole idea is to test out the possibility
> > that *size matters*.
>
> That's already been tested.
***{You admit, further down, that it hasn't. --MJ}***
We know the answer. Size doesn't matter.
***{Nope. See below. --MJ}***
Within
> broad limits -- obviously a milligram sample is too small! Geometry matters.
> Cleanliness matters. The index of expansion matters. Lots of things matter.
>
>
> >You obviously cannot do that unless you increase the
> > SIZE of the cathode. --MJ}***
>
> Or use lots of cathodes simultaneously.
***{You deleted, and dropped, the context. The meaning of the above, in
context, was this: you obviously cannot test whether size matters unless
you increase the size of the cathode. --MJ}***
> > The
> > reality is that Mizuno's heat-after-death result suggests the possibility
> > that size matters . . .
>
> And results from P&F, Arata, McKubre and many others proves that it does not
> matter.
***{You admit, below, that they did not. --MJ}***
> > > Nope. The odds are the larger sample will be contaminated, because the
> > > forges and other equipment is not designed for large samples. In any
> case,
> > > 0.5 gram samples have produced more heat than the 100 gram sample did
> >
> > ***{I don't believe that for a second.
>
> Why not?
***{I gave my reasons immediately after the statement to which you
responded with "Why not?" and you deleted those reasons. --MJ}***
Why are you so sure that P&F, Arata, McKubre are wrong? For that
> matter, Mizuno himself has gotten a lot more power out of smaller samples,
> albeit not as much energy. Why do you believe one claim and reject these
> others, when they are much better documented & instrumented?
***{I didn't say I believed Mizuno's claim. What I said was that it was
based on simple and straightforward reasoning, and, if replicated, it
would be very convincing. --MJ}***
> > In the Mizuno heat-after-death
> > claim, the conclusion about heat output rests on a single assumption: that
> > Mizuno is not lying.
>
> Mizuno and Akimoto. I talked to him as well.
>
>
> > There is no reasonable possibility that he simply
> > made a mistake, and there are no complex calculations of C.O.P's, with
> > questionable assumptions about the accuracy of measuring instruments,
> > involved. Thus there is literally *no comparison* between some .5 gram
> > sample which, when electrolyzed for six months, was *calculated* to have
> > produced more heat than Mizuno's sample . . .
>
> The calculation Mizuno used, based on the heat of evaporation, is exactly
> the same one P&F used to prove their heat after death event a few years
> later. If you believe Mizuno, you will believe them too. They have much
> better evidence: photographs, videos, a properly insulated vessel. They did
> it hundreds of times, on demand, not just once.
***{Let me see if I've got this straight: you are saying that P&F have
been able to produce robust, unmistakeable heat-after-death "on demand,"
literally *for years*, and yet still only a few insiders believe them?
Frankly, that is a claim so outrageous that I find it almost
incomprehensible, for lots of reasons. For example, why didn't they take
that show on the road? Mizuno wrapped his heat-after-death thingie in a
towel and toted it across campus, so why can't P&F do the same? Hell, a .5
gm cathode ought to be a lot easier to carry around! Why didn't they
produce zillions of the things, and hand them out like cookies? --MJ}***
Their 0.5 gram sample
> evaporated the water at considerably higher power than Mizuno accidentally
> achieved with 100 grams. Lots of other people saw their tests, and a close
> up video of the test on BBC proves that this is not heat from electrolysis.
> (It would be physically impossible; these is no circuit, and no bubbles on
> the anode.) There is no reasonable possibility that they simply made a
> mistake, and it is less likely they were lying, since many witnesses agreed
> it happened.
***{Then why, pray tell, does the world remain unconvinced? Yeah, I know:
people are mostly idiots. But even idiots would believe a proof of that
sort, if it were really as strong as you say. So the question remains: why
didn't P&F take their show on the road? --MJ}***
> > . . . and his claim, which rests on no
> > complex analysis whatsoever. --MJ}***
>
> The other experiments use simple physics that were well established by 1850,
> and they produce high s/n ratios. They require no complex analysis
> whatsoever. There are no rational objections to these other tests, such as
> McKubre's. The skeptics have been trying to come up with an objection for 12
> years, but they have not, and they never will.
***{I repeat: if they could produce unequivocal heat-after-death on
demand, why didn't they--or someone trained by them--take the show on the
road? --MJ}***
> > ***{I repeat: my purpose is to investigate the possibility that size
> > matters--which means: the possibility that unarguable proof of CF has been
> > lacking because virtually all of the efforts have been focused on the use
> > of tiny samples. --MJ}***
>
> The size of the sample is irrelevant. A large amount of heat is convincing,
> not a large sample. 130 watts coming from 0.5 grams is more convincing than
> ~100 watts from 100 grams.
***{Not if the former conclusion rests on a complex analysis and lots of
assumptions, and the latter is "heat after death." --MJ}***
Mills and Thermacore made gigantic nickel cells,
> with 40 lbs of Ni in a 10 gal container, but they produced only ~50 watts,
> even assuming no recombination took place. The large size made it difficult
> to measure the heat. A smaller cell would have been more convincing, even if
> it produced only ~5 watts.
***{See above. --MJ}***
> > ***{That is just silly. Testing 200 cathodes each weighing.5 gm will tell
> > you exactly *nothing* about the events that might occur deep within the
> > bulk of the metal.
>
> Nothing happens deep within the bulk of the metal. We already know that.
> Researchers peel away the metal in layers after experiments, or section the
> metal, and find no evidence that anything happened. There was no evidence of
> a bulk reaction in Mizuno's 100 gram sample, which was (eventually)
> completely disintegrated in destructive testing.
***{You admit, below, that all of the above statements are false. --MJ}***
> If you want to test a large mass of metal, why not test 200 normal cathodes
> simultaneously, in the same calorimeter? It is sorta pointless, but it might
> be fun!
***{I've told you why several times already, Jed. --MJ}***
> > > The arrangement is unknown to me, but others understand it, and make it
> > > produce heat in every test.
> >
> > ***{So you say. However, thus far they have not succeeded in proving that
> > the effect even exists . . .
>
> They proved it by 1990. No skeptic has ever challenged this proof.
***{ROTFL. --MJ}***
> > > Of course I do! There is never any heat damage, transmutations, tritium,
> > > helium or any other sign that a CF reaction occured in layers deep
> > > inside the metal. I mean at macroscopic depths, a millimeter or more, I
> > > think.
> >
> > ***{I repeat: Mizuno's heat-after-death claim suggests otherwise. Unless
> > you believe he is lying . . .
>
> He looked in the bulk and found nothing! No evidence for fusion. It was all
> on the surface and near surface layers.
***{He didn't make the only test that mattered, as you admit below. --MJ}***
> > ***{Here is what you need to support your position. First, you need
> > incontrovertible evidence that CF occurred in a large cathode.
>
> We have that! Heat, transmutations, neutrons etc.
***{None of those tell you that fusion didn't take place deep in the bulk
of the cathode. Transmutations may be limited to the surface due to the
need for large nuclei from the solution--nuclei that are too large to
penetrate into the bulk of the metal. And, of course, heat and neutrons
tell you nothing about their specific sources within the metal. --MJ}***
> > Second, you
> > have to look deep in the bulk of that cathode, and fail to find helium.
>
> They could not look for helium, I think. The other testing would have
> liberated it.
***{Yup, and that's the fatal admission: helium and/or tritium are the key
proof of fusion, and both are very mobile in the metal, and easily
liberated. If you don't look for them, you won't find them even if they
are there; and even if you do look for them, and do find them, it is
difficult to say for sure whether they originated where you found them.
Bottom line: you have no more basis for asserting that size doesn't matter
than a government bureaucrat has for denying funds to cold fusion. You,
like the bureaucrat, are making a decision based on a guess about what the
"experts" you have talked to regard as plausible. The rest is just noise,
and signifies nothing.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> > Third, you need a solid basis for believing that *all* cathodes,
> > regardless of their shape, size, loading, electrolyte, current, voltage,
> > etc., must behave in the same way.
>
> No one has ever seen one behave some other way, as far as I know.
***{And no one has seen them behave as you claim, unless someone,
subsequent to a heat-after-death episode in a large cathode, has tested
said cathode for helium or tritium in the bulk, and failed to find them.
But the only large cathode that has exhibited heat-after-death, to my
knowledge, is the one used by Mizuno, and you have explicitly denied that
such testing was done in that case. --MJ}***
> > > Read Bockris et al.
> >
> > ***{Reading Bockris isn't going to tell me what *you* meant by "the
> > effect," now is it? :-) --MJ}***
>
> What Bockris meant, not me. This isn't about me. Bockris showed the effect
> occurs at surface layers.
***{I don't give a fig about Bockris. I asked *you* what *you* meant by
what *you* said. Bockris can't tell me that; only you can. --MJ}***
Jed Rothwell
> ***{Let me see if I've got this straight: you are saying that P&F have
> been able to produce robust, unmistakeable heat-after-death "on demand,"
> literally *for years*, and yet still only a few insiders believe them?
Lots of "insiders" believe them! Hundreds. I presume you define the term
"insider" recursively, as anyone who believes cold fusion.
> Frankly, that is a claim so outrageous that I find it almost
> incomprehensible, for lots of reasons.
Whether you believe it or not, it is true. It was published in Physics
Letters A and several ICCF proceedings. Several people I know observed it in
person. I only saw the videos, but they were quite convincing, as I
mentioned.
> For example, why didn't they take
> that show on the road? Mizuno wrapped his heat-after-death thingie in a
> towel and toted it across campus, so why can't P&F do the same?
You would have to ask the executives at Toyota and the Japanese
government.You will find a partial answer in the second volume of the Navy
report, written by Fleischmann. When I asked Martin that question, he
answered a memorable and out-of-character string of obscenities that I
believe I have recorded on audio tape for posterity. If Minoru Toyoda had
lived, perhaps the story would have had a happier ending.
> > the anode.) There is no reasonable possibility that they simply made a
> > mistake, and it is less likely they were lying, since many witnesses
agreed
> > it happened.
>
> ***{Then why, pray tell, does the world remain unconvinced? Yeah, I know:
> people are mostly idiots. But even idiots would believe a proof of that
> sort, if it were really as strong as you say.
I cannot answer for the world. I was convinced. Especially in light of
similar heat after death observations made by Mizuno, McKubre the people at
Motorola and others, and the gas loading experiments. If one group of
researchers had reported this, I might have some doubts.
> > They proved it by 1990. No skeptic has ever challenged this proof.
>
> ***{ROTFL. --MJ}***
A lot of people roll on the floor, but only one skeptic tried to rebut the
evidence: the late Douglass Morrison. His paper was completely wrong. I do
not of any other formal, published attempts to disprove CF. The claptrap
posted here does not count. I will be charitable and not count the book "Bad
Science." It was so inept, it probably even embarrasses the "skeptics."
> > He looked in the bulk and found nothing! No evidence for fusion. It was
all
> > on the surface and near surface layers.
>
> ***{He didn't make the only test that mattered, as you admit
below. --MJ}***
He tested for heat damage and transmutation. That matters. You seem to
define what matters as whatever he did not do. In any case other people have
tested for other products, and they have never found them in the bulk as far
as I know.
, and failed to find them.
> But the only large cathode that has exhibited heat-after-death, to my
> knowledge, is the one used by Mizuno, and you have explicitly denied that
> such testing was done in that case. --MJ}***
Hundreds of samples have exhibited heat after death. (Some are not
cathodes -- they are Pd black or diaphragms.) All of the ones that produced
heat from gas loading did, by definition, and they have been exhaustively
investigated by Arata, McKubre, Iwamoto and others. They are easier to
investigate, and free of contamination from electrolyte.
> > What Bockris meant, not me. This isn't about me. Bockris showed the
effect
> > occurs at surface layers.
>
> ***{I don't give a fig about Bockris. I asked *you* what *you* meant by
> what *you* said. Bockris can't tell me that; only you can. --MJ}***
I meant exactly what I said. Bockris found no evidence for CF in the bulk.
For more information read his papers. Don't argue with me about it, and
don't ask me what I meant. Find out for yourself.
- Jed
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > ***{Let me see if I've got this straight: you are saying that P&F have
> > been able to produce robust, unmistakeable heat-after-death "on demand,"
> > literally *for years*, and yet still only a few insiders believe them?
>
> Lots of "insiders" believe them! Hundreds. I presume you define the term
> "insider" recursively, as anyone who believes cold fusion.
***{No. I define "insider" as someone who is privy to information which is
not available to the rest of us--as these mysterious demonstrations of
"heat-after-death" have not been. Indeed, it is precisely that
non-availability which I find so surprising, given that these techniques
for the routine production of heat-after-death exist at all, as you claim.
--MJ}***
> > Frankly, that is a claim so outrageous that I find it almost
> > incomprehensible, for lots of reasons.
>
> Whether you believe it or not, it is true. It was published in Physics
> Letters A and several ICCF proceedings. Several people I know observed it in
> person.
***{Those people are the insiders. The rest of us are the outsiders--the
peons who, for unknown reasons, have not been privy to this information.
--MJ}***
I only saw the videos, but they were quite convincing, as I
> mentioned.
***{If you are convinced by videos, then you must believe in bigfoot, the
Loch Ness monster, and scores of other things that defy reasoned analysis.
My view, however, is that a video is useful only insofar as it gives a
picture of what is being claimed--the experimental setup, the appearance
of the phenomenon under discussion, etc. After one has those matters
straight, plus evidence of lots of replications, one still has to go
through a reasoned analysis in one's own mind, and find some pathway that
enables one to conclude that the claim is possible, or else one has to see
it oneself, under circumstances that one controls, before one ought
actually to believe it.
For example, I have seen a video of "bigfoot" that looked very real, and
there are lots of "replications"--i.e., lots of people who claim to have
seen such creatures, and, obviously, large, hairy, apelike creatures are
possible. But the bigfoot tale--that such creatures live within the
borders of the United States, one of the most thoroughly explored and
hunted areas on Earth, yet none have been captured or shot, and no remains
have ever been found--is simply incomprehensible. Result: the only way I
would ever believe in bigfoot would be if one were standing in front of
me.
Similarly, you tell me that Pons and Fleischman can produce .5 gm cathodes
that exhibit "heat-after-death" on demand--which means they could produce
lots of them, and hand them out like cookies to doubters, thereby
convincing any person who is not certifiably insane that CF is real. Yet
they don't do that. They prefer, instead, to slink about amid the ruins of
their shattered careers, and let the world believe that they are
incompetents or frauds and that the phenomenon which they discovered is
not real. Well, pardon me for saying so, but this tale strikes me as fully
as incomprehensible as "bigfoot." Result: I will believe in CF
"heat-after-death" on the day when I have one of those .5 gm cathodes
sitting on my desk, happly boiling away liter after liter of water, in a
beaker under my own personal control.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> > For example, why didn't they take
> > that show on the road? Mizuno wrapped his heat-after-death thingie in a
> > towel and toted it across campus, so why can't P&F do the same?
>
> You would have to ask the executives at Toyota and the Japanese
> government.You will find a partial answer in the second volume of the Navy
> report, written by Fleischmann. When I asked Martin that question, he
> answered a memorable and out-of-character string of obscenities that I
> believe I have recorded on audio tape for posterity. If Minoru Toyoda had
> lived, perhaps the story would have had a happier ending.
***{You seem to be hinting that P&F do not crank out the .5 gm
heat-after-death cathodes, or teach others how to do it, because of fear
of being sued, or some such. Well, again, that is simply not a believable
story. You are talking about two old men both of whose careers are in
ruins and whose reputations stink to the high heavens, in the minds of the
general public and most scientists. They have nothing to lose, and no
reason to not violate any confidentiality agreements which they may have
signed, and they have everything to gain by doing so. If they are too
stupid to see that, how could they be smart enough to have come up with
cold fusion? --MJ}***
> > > the anode.) There is no reasonable possibility that they simply made a
> > > mistake, and it is less likely they were lying, since many witnesses
> > > agreed it happened.
> >
> > ***{Then why, pray tell, does the world remain unconvinced? Yeah, I know:
> > people are mostly idiots. But even idiots would believe a proof of that
> > sort, if it were really as strong as you say.
>
> I cannot answer for the world. I was convinced. Especially in light of
> similar heat after death observations made by Mizuno, McKubre the people at
> Motorola and others, and the gas loading experiments. If one group of
> researchers had reported this, I might have some doubts.
***{You say that P&F have the capability to produce a proof that would
convince anyone, yet refuse to do so, preferring to slink about amid the
ruins of their shattered careers, and die with most of the world believing
that they are incompetents or frauds. Why should we believe that? --MJ}***
> > > They proved it by 1990. No skeptic has ever challenged this proof.
> >
> > ***{ROTFL. --MJ}***
>
> A lot of people roll on the floor, but only one skeptic tried to rebut the
> evidence: the late Douglass Morrison. His paper was completely wrong. I do
> not of any other formal, published attempts to disprove CF. The claptrap
> posted here does not count. I will be charitable and not count the book "Bad
> Science." It was so inept, it probably even embarrasses the "skeptics."
***{That's an argument for another time. Our present concern is with the
question of why P&F refrain from taking their show on the road, and using
their supposed capability to produce heat-after-death on demand, to
convince the world that CF is real. --MJ}***
> > > He looked in the bulk and found nothing! No evidence for fusion. It was
> > > all on the surface and near surface layers.
> >
> > ***{He didn't make the only test that mattered, as you admit
> below. --MJ}***
>
> He tested for heat damage and transmutation. That matters. You seem to
> define what matters as whatever he did not do.
***{No, I define "evidence of fusion" as requiring demonstration of some
unique effect of fusion--e.g., 2He3 and/or 1T3--and I define evidence of
transmutation as requiring demonstration of the effects of
transmutation--i.e., abnormal isotopic ratios. I have not claimed that
transmutation takes place very often in the bulk of the metal, because I
believe that Pd nuclei are protected by too many layers of electron shells
to be penetrated by unstable protoneutrons. Thus I believe that
transmutation is primarily a surface effect which requires lighter nuclei
obtained from the solution--nuclei that are too large to penetrate deeply
into the Pd lattice. On the other hand, 1H1 and 1D2 nuclei can easily
penetrate deeply into the Pd lattice, and after they have been handed
electrons and have wedged themselves into fixed locations, possibly deep
within the bulk of the metal, they are vulnerable to fusion, if they
encounter the type of shrunken, unstable hydrogen atom that I call a
"protoneutron." The reason they are vulnerable is that their electron
shells are too thin to provide their nuclei with the protection they need.
To sum up, I believe that if CF is real, it requires the protoneutron
state as an explanation; and I believe such an explanation (a) supports
the view that transmutation is primarily a surface effect; and (b)
supports the view that fusion is *not* primarily a surface effect--which
means: a protoneutron can penetrate the electron shell of a 1D2 *wherever*
it happens to be wedged in the lattice.
Since the main identifiable effects of fusion--i.e., 2He3 or 1T3--are
highly mobile within the metal lattice, proof that they cannot originate
from locations deep within the bulk of the cathode would require the use
of large cathodes, and some sort of experimental protocol that enabled us
to pinpoint their points of origin. But what would that be? Shaving off
layers of the cathode and testing them for 2He3 and 1T3 wouldn't work,
because every time you sliced off a layer, you would heat the portion that
remained, thereby facilitating de-loading; and if you waited for the
sample to cool again before taking off the next slice, you would have
given the 2He3 and 1T3 atoms time to move away from their original
locations within the lattice. The only way I can imagine which might get
around such a problem would be to cool the sample to liquid nitrogen
temperatures before beginning the shaving process. But, of course, working
at those temperatures would introduce other problems.
Anyway, while such things are interesting, they are a side issue, because
the reason I think large cathodes ought to be looked at is not to
demonstrate some putative "bulk effect," but rather because the Mizuno
heat-after-death claim suggests that there may be a benefits-of-size
relationship. If that is the case, it will apply regardless of how the
surface effect/bulk effect debate turns out.
--Mitchell Jones}***
In any case other people have
> tested for other products, and they have never found them in the bulk as far
> as I know.
***{There is no mystery about what products ought to be tested for. (See
above.) The problem is figuring out how to do a test that will
successfully identify their points of origin. --MJ}***
> , and failed to find them.
> > But the only large cathode that has exhibited heat-after-death, to my
> > knowledge, is the one used by Mizuno, and you have explicitly denied that
> > such testing was done in that case. --MJ}***
>
> Hundreds of samples have exhibited heat after death. (Some are not
> cathodes -- they are Pd black or diaphragms.) All of the ones that produced
> heat from gas loading did, by definition, and they have been exhaustively
> investigated by Arata, McKubre, Iwamoto and others. They are easier to
> investigate, and free of contamination from electrolyte.
***{You aren't listening. I said "large cathode that has exhibited
heat-after-death." "Large" is the operative word. You can't determine
whether there is a benefit of size unless you work with large cathodes.
--MJ}***
> > > What Bockris meant, not me. This isn't about me. Bockris showed the
> > > effect occurs at surface layers.
> >
> > ***{I don't give a fig about Bockris. I asked *you* what *you* meant by
> > what *you* said. Bockris can't tell me that; only you can. --MJ}***
>
> I meant exactly what I said. Bockris found no evidence for CF in the bulk.
> For more information read his papers. Don't argue with me about it, and
> don't ask me what I meant. Find out for yourself.
***{You are being ridiculous. Here, between the lines of asterisks, is
your original comment and my reply:
******************************************************
> Of course the effect is seen somewhat below surface. See Bockris et al.
***{Which effect? Are you talking about the finding of transmuted atoms
lodged in used cathodes, or about the helium nuclei that are produced by
fusion? --MJ}***
******************************************************
There is nothing unreasonable about my question, and there is no reason
why I should have to drive 60 miles and spend half a day in a library to
find out what you are talking about. Indeed, your behavior is so absurd
that the impulse to reply to you with a string of profanity is almost
irresistible.
--Mitchell Jones}***
Jed Rothwell
> > Whether you believe it or not, it is true. It was published in Physics
> > Letters A and several ICCF proceedings. Several people I know observed
it in
> > person.
>
> ***{Those people are the insiders. The rest of us are the outsiders . . .
Well, that makes me an outsider but I still believe it, and I think most
ICCF participants do too.
> I only saw the videos, but they were quite convincing, as I
> > mentioned.
>
> ***{If you are convinced by videos, then you must believe in bigfoot . . .
Well, I suppose the video alone out of context would not be convincing, but
as I said the combination of video plus the lectures, papers and independent
observation of the same phenomenon by others, such as Mizuno, together are
convincing.
> My view, however, is that a video is useful only insofar as it gives a
> picture of what is being claimed--the experimental setup, the appearance
> of the phenomenon under discussion, etc. . . .
This particular video also tells you a great deal about the nature of the
reaction.
> ***{You seem to be hinting that P&F do not crank out the .5 gm
> heat-after-death cathodes, or teach others how to do it, because of fear
> of being sued, or some such.
No, that has nothing to do with it. They cannot because they no longer have
a laboratory, a staff, millions of dollars, and an inside line to Johnson
Matthey. They were never able to make cathodes themselves in a literal
sense. They do not have the metallurgical skills. Imam at the Navy and the
people at J - M do have the tools and skills to make cathodes, but I doubt
they can handle the electrochemistry.
> Well, again, that is simply not a believable
> story.
Yes that is not believable. It is also a strawman argument, since I never
said or meant anything like that.
> ***{You say that P&F have the capability to produce a proof that would
> convince anyone . . .
Nope. They helped Toyota develop that capability, but for political reasons
Toyota apparently decided not to convince anyone.
> > Of course the effect is seen somewhat below surface. See Bockris et al.
>
> ***{Which effect? Are you talking about the finding of transmuted atoms
> lodged in used cathodes, or about the helium nuclei that are produced by
> fusion? --MJ}***
I repeat: read the papers.
> There is nothing unreasonable about my question, and there is no reason
> why I should have to drive 60 miles and spend half a day in a library to
> find out what you are talking about.
Oh yes there is! From my point of view there is. You do not believe what I
told you about P&F. You set up absurd strawman arguments to disprove
statements that I never made in the first place. It seems you do not
consider me a credible source of information. That's fine with me, but I
will refrain from telling you anything more about Bockris, or P&F or anyone
else, because I see now that you will immediately distort the information. I
will not play this game. You will get the information directly from
original sources or from other people -- not me. I will not give you an
excuse to invent nonsense about Bockris, putting the blame on me.
- Jed
ralph sansbury
"Jed Rothwell" <jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote in message
news:3cd001fb$1...@nopics.sjc...
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > ***{If some kind soul were to loan you a 100 lb palladium cathode, would
> > you dare to test it? :-) --MJ}***
>
> There is effectively zero chance that a randomly selected, untreated
sample
> of palladium would work. As Ed Storms says, this is like collecting some
> gravel from your driveway and trying to make a semiconductor out of it.
>
of
> magnitude away from anything that would work.
What is done to the Pd -eg .1cm by 1.24cm- rod , besides submerging it
in an electrolyte of the right
amount of Lithium and D2O and applying a voltage to it and a Pt wire coil
around the rod at a distance of
a centimeter from the rod, to make it attract deuterons and after several
days show the marrked excess in temperature
in the water above that explained by the resistance heating of the
electrodes etc. ?
Jed Rothwell
> > Randomly selected Pd in the hands of an untrained person would be orders
> of
> > magnitude away from anything that would work.
>
> What is done to the Pd -eg .1cm by 1.24cm- rod , besides submerging
it
> in an electrolyte of the right
> amount of Lithium and D2O and applying a voltage to it and a Pt wire coil
> around the rod at a distance of . . .
You have described the actual cold fusion electrolysis phase of the
experiment. (You left out some important details, such as starting at low
power to condition the Pd.) I was describing the cathode fabrication,
selection and testing process, which is much more expensive and time
consuming. It takes a year or two per cathode done by hand, whereas
electrolyis takes about a month. If you do not prepare the cathode properly
the Pd swells, fractures, and emit visible lines of large bubbles from
cracks during electrolysis. As far as I know it never produces the CF
effect. Edmund Storms described some important details in "How to Produce
the Pons-Fleischmann Effect," Fusion Technology, 1995.
Many of the techniques to make robust CF cathodes were developed years ago,
for things like Pd hydrogen purifiers and fuel cells. Unfortunately, these
techniques are often trade secrets.
- Jed
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > > Whether you believe it or not, it is true. It was published in Physics
> > > Letters A and several ICCF proceedings. Several people I know observed
> it in
> > > person.
> >
> > ***{Those people are the insiders. The rest of us are the outsiders . . .
>
> Well, that makes me an outsider but I still believe it, and I think most
> ICCF participants do too.
>
> > I only saw the videos, but they were quite convincing, as I
> > > mentioned.
> >
> > ***{If you are convinced by videos, then you must believe in bigfoot . . .
>
> Well, I suppose the video alone out of context would not be convincing, but
> as I said the combination of video plus the lectures, papers and independent
> observation of the same phenomenon by others, such as Mizuno, together are
> convincing.
***{All of those things are present vis-a-vis bigfoot. What seems to be
lacking, in both cases, is an explanation that addresses the generalized
implausibilities of the situation. With bigfoot, one wonders why no such
creature has ever been captured, or shot, and why no remains have ever
been found. With these heat-after-death cathodes that are supposedly
producible "on demand," one wonders why it is only the demands of a select
few, which have been met. If I, for example, "demand" a heat-after-death
cathode, will one be supplied to me? I think not. Yet, in spite of that, I
am somehow supposed to be convinced, as you have apparently been. Why,
then, do I not feel convinced? :-) --MJ}***
> > My view, however, is that a video is useful only insofar as it gives a
> > picture of what is being claimed--the experimental setup, the appearance
> > of the phenomenon under discussion, etc. . . .
>
> This particular video also tells you a great deal about the nature of the
> reaction.
***{Maybe, but as noted, I do not think I could ever be convinced unless
the generalized implausibilities of the situation were suitably addressed.
Specifically: if proof that CF is real can be produced "on demand," then
why doesn't someone produce it? Am I unreasonable to be disturbed by the
lack of a satisfactory answer to that question? If so, why? --MJ}***
> > ***{You seem to be hinting that P&F do not crank out the .5 gm
> > heat-after-death cathodes, or teach others how to do it, because of fear
> > of being sued, or some such.
>
> No, that has nothing to do with it. They cannot because they no longer have
> a laboratory, a staff, millions of dollars, and an inside line to Johnson
> Matthey. They were never able to make cathodes themselves in a literal
> sense. They do not have the metallurgical skills. Imam at the Navy and the
> people at J - M do have the tools and skills to make cathodes, but I doubt
> they can handle the electrochemistry.
***{So you are saying that P&F do *not* have the capability to produce
heat-after-death on demand, because all they can handle is the
electrochemistry, whereas only Johnson Matthey can make a cathode which
will work. Well, then, why hasn't anybody revealed the secret of the
cathodes? Are you telling me that each and every person who knows the
secret is so corrupt that he would sit by and permit the world to be
denied this technology, rather than simply writing up a recipe and
clandestinely leaking it to the appropriate parties? Or are you telling me
that P&F are the guilty ones--that they are sitting there with zipped
lips, due to confidentiality agreements, while the most important
technology in human history, which they discovered, is slowly dying? Maybe
I don't fully understand what you are saying, but what is coming across so
far does not seem too distantly removed from the bigfoot situation.
--MJ}***
> > Well, again, that is simply not a believable
> > story.
>
> Yes that is not believable. It is also a strawman argument, since I never
> said or meant anything like that.
***{If I'm misinterpreting you, it isn't deliberate. I am tossing this
stuff at you in hopes that you will be able to lay these misgivings to
rest. --MJ}***
> > ***{You say that P&F have the capability to produce a proof that would
> > convince anyone . . .
>
> Nope. They helped Toyota develop that capability, but for political reasons
> Toyota apparently decided not to convince anyone.
***{So Toyota, in addition to Johnson Matthey, knows how to make
heat-after-death cathodes? Then why are *they* sitting on the information?
And, if they are, why is every single person who knows the secret so
corrupt that he or she is willing to let the most important technology in
human history slowly die, rather than leak the secret recipe? --MJ}***
> > > Of course the effect is seen somewhat below surface. See Bockris et al.
> >
> > ***{Which effect? Are you talking about the finding of transmuted atoms
> > lodged in used cathodes, or about the helium nuclei that are produced by
> > fusion? --MJ}***
>
> I repeat: read the papers.
***{Since it would have been far easier for you to say, in response to by
above question, something such as "The former," or "The latter," than to
say all the other stuff you have come up with while refusing to answer, I
can only conclude that the answer, if given, would support my position
rather than yours. --MJ}***
> > There is nothing unreasonable about my question, and there is no reason
> > why I should have to drive 60 miles and spend half a day in a library to
> > find out what you are talking about.
>
> Oh yes there is! From my point of view there is. You do not believe what I
> told you about P&F.
***{I have no doubt that you are convinced that what you said is the
truth, just as bigfoot aficionados are convinced that the creatures exist,
and I neither said nor implied that you were lying. What I tried to do,
instead, was convey to you why I have difficulty being convinced by your
presentation. --MJ}***
You set up absurd strawman arguments to disprove
> statements that I never made in the first place.
***{As noted above, if I misinterpreted some of your statements, it was
unintentional. Perhaps your remarks were not as clear as you think.
--MJ}***
It seems you do not
> consider me a credible source of information.
***{That's not the way I operate. I don't say: "He is a credible source of
information, and so in the future I'll believe everything he says."
Instead, I recognize that everyone is fallible, and, thus, that I have to
verify each and every significant claim that anyone makes, including you,
before accepting it as the truth. That verification process involves the
asking of pointed questions, and the stating of arguments that may not be
easy to answer. However, it is necessary, if a person is to be able to
separate truth from falsehood. --MJ}***
That's fine with me, but I
> will refrain from telling you anything more about Bockris, or P&F or anyone
> else, because I see now that you will immediately distort the information. I
> will not play this game. You will get the information directly from
> original sources or from other people -- not me. I will not give you an
> excuse to invent nonsense about Bockris, putting the blame on me.
***{Relax. You are taking this personally, and it isn't. The misgivings
that I have been voicing in this thread are felt by many others who, for
various reasons, have not bothered to state them. Thus your best response
is to employ substantive reasoning to shoot these arguments down, if you
can. --MJ}***
Jed Rothwell
> ***{All of those things are present vis-a-vis bigfoot. What seems to be
> lacking, in both cases, is an explanation that addresses the generalized
> implausibilities of the situation. With bigfoot, one wonders why no such
> creature has ever been captured, or shot, and why no remains have ever
> been found.
I know nothing about Bigfoot and I have no opinion about it, but CF
experiments have often been "captured" in a sense. That is, they have
observed, recorded and replicated. Even I have observed them.
> With these heat-after-death cathodes that are supposedly
> producible "on demand," one wonders why it is only the demands of a select
> few, which have been met. If I, for example, "demand" a heat-after-death
> cathode, will one be supplied to me? I think not.
If you have enough money I am sure it can be arranged. J - M once told
Martin and I they would supply them for $30,000, I think it was. That was
for the smallest lot of palladium they fabricate on special order, something
like a kilogram as I recall. The price would be a great to higher today.
Perhaps $50,000? I don't know. I tried to find people who would be willing
to share the cost but I never could.
> Yet, in spite of that, I
> am somehow supposed to be convinced, as you have apparently been. Why,
> then, do I not feel convinced? :-) --MJ}***
Because you have not read the papers. You have no basis to be convinced or
not convinced, or to have any opinion about the matter.
> Specifically: if proof that CF is real can be produced "on demand," then
> why doesn't someone produce it?
Politics, I suppose. You would have to ask people who have decided not to
produce it. I cannot determine the reason, because they will not communicate
with Fleischmann or with me.
> Am I unreasonable to be disturbed by the
> lack of a satisfactory answer to that question? If so, why? --MJ}***
It is not unreasonable I suppose, but irrelevant. The issue must be decided
by observing experiments and analyzing calorimetry, not by asking
unanswerable questions about human nature and behavior. People are often
inscrutable and self-destructive. Corporations like DEC destroyed themselves
by not manufacturing personal computers when it was obvious the demand was
huge and their survival dependent upon meeting it. I cannot explain such
behavior.
> ***{So you are saying that P&F do *not* have the capability to produce
> heat-after-death on demand, because all they can handle is the
> electrochemistry, whereas only Johnson Matthey can make a cathode which
> will work. . . .
Naturally, yes. You would know that if you had read the literature. A CF
experiment is a complicated, high-tech undertaking requiring the cooperation
of many experts, and millions of dollars of a specialized tools and
instruments. That is why I doubt garage inventors are capable of
contributing to it. Of course a very wealthy garage inventors might buy a
special order palladium from Johnson Matthey, but in that case he would not
be inventing the material, merely verifying performance that P&F, Miles and
others have already verified. That would be helpful, but not an original
contribution.
> Well, then, why hasn't anybody revealed the secret of the
> cathodes?
I suppose for the same reason Johnson Matthey does not tell everyone exactly
how to make catalytic converters. Of course a great deal about it has been
revealed and published. It is the material they made until about 10 years
ago for their hydrogen purifiers -- for the filters. Probably, the new
formula material would work equally well, but that has not been verified in
experiments as far as I know. Every detail about the Imam's NRL cathodes is
made public because the taxpayers financed the research.
> Are you telling me that each and every person who knows the
> secret is so corrupt that he would sit by and permit the world to be
> denied this technology, rather than simply writing up a recipe and
> clandestinely leaking it to the appropriate parties?
Your scenario is fit for a thriller novel, but the real world is less
exciting. "The secret" does not exist. There is no single recipe that you
could write down and walk out the door with. To the extent there is a single
unified description, I already have it, because Fleischmann described it
many times during his lectures. There is no single "recipe" but rather a
constellation of technical knowledge which the staff at Johnson Matthey as a
group knows. No single individual knows everything, any more than one person
that IBM knows how they make their hard disk drives. The decision to
fabricate more of the material would be made by managers at Johnson Matthey
in response to a purchase order -- from you if you happen to have $50,000
handy! -- or on their own initiative. Some of the managers at J - M know a
great deal about the Toyota research and they probably think it would be
good idea to continue that line of work on their own. Others do not know
about it, or they doubt ths results, so they oppose such research. In my
opinion they resemble the managers at DEC who opposed building personal
computers, but they have not asked my opinion. As far as I know J - M is not
doing CF research.
> Or are you telling me
> that P&F are the guilty ones--that they are sitting there with zipped
> lips, due to confidentiality agreements . . .
They both spoke about it quite freely to me and to others during lectures at
ICCF conferences. The people at J-M were also very helpful, but of course
they cannot reveal every trade secret. Imam, at NRL, has volunteered to come
and assist anyone making a batch of his material. The top brass at the Navy
ordered him and all others at the NRL not to work on CF in 1995 -- I think
it was -- but a few years ago they told him he is allowed to talk about it
or assist others on his own vacation time.
Don't ask me why the U.S. Navy banned this research and gagged their
researchers for five years. I really cannot say. I was told the orders came
from high up in the command structure. I suppose it was for the usual
political reasons.
> . . . while the most important
> technology in human history, which they discovered, is slowly dying?
Many important technologies have slowly died in the past, often because of
misplaced concern for national security, for example. The Chinese
periodically discovered how to make effective clocks, but the information
was a state secret, and discussing it was high treason, so they forgot, and
relearned, and forgot again. Many societies learned that filth causes
disease and you should wash your hands before you perform surgery, yet the
information was lost. The principles of the Babbage computer were ignored
for a century. The British World War II computers used to crack the enigma
had the some advanced features, but the designs were deliberately destroyed
in 1945. They were developed again from scratch ten or twenty years later.
When Bell Labs developed the transistor in 1948, they discovered that
Lilienfeld had patented a very similar device in 1930, but it had been
ignored and forgotten. It was similar enough that Bell could not get a
patent for the overall idea, only the specific implementation.
> > Nope. They helped Toyota develop that capability, but for political
reasons
> > Toyota apparently decided not to convince anyone.
>
> ***{So Toyota, in addition to Johnson Matthey, knows how to make
> heat-after-death cathodes? Then why are *they* sitting on the information?
I am sure they know! They paid millions to find out. I have no idea why they
are sitting on this. Actually, they might be developing CF in a crash
program . . . but I expect I would hear rumors about it.
You would have to ask them. They are upset with me, and they tell me
nothing. Someone mailed me a government report on CF experiments that Toyota
and others participated in. I translated it for Fleischmann & Miles. Toyota
and the gov't were apparently trying to keep them out of the loop.
> And, if they are, why is every single person who knows the secret so
> corrupt . . .
No single person knows the secret. No single person can make an Intel CPU or
an automobile, for that matter. But anyone who happens to have several
million dollars burning a hole in his pocket and the staff of crackerjack
metallurgists could probably launch a joint venture with J - M or consult
with Imam and make effective cathodes again. It would cost much less than
making your own tokamak reactor!
- Jed
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > ***{All of those things are present vis-a-vis bigfoot. What seems to be
> > lacking, in both cases, is an explanation that addresses the generalized
> > implausibilities of the situation. With bigfoot, one wonders why no such
> > creature has ever been captured, or shot, and why no remains have ever
> > been found.
>
> I know nothing about Bigfoot and I have no opinion about it, but CF
> experiments have often been "captured" in a sense. That is, they have
> observed, recorded and replicated. Even I have observed them.
***{Lots of people claim to have seen bigfoot. --MJ}***
> > With these heat-after-death cathodes that are supposedly
> > producible "on demand," one wonders why it is only the demands of a select
> > few, which have been met. If I, for example, "demand" a heat-after-death
> > cathode, will one be supplied to me? I think not.
>
> If you have enough money I am sure it can be arranged. J - M once told
> Martin and I they would supply them for $30,000, I think it was. That was
> for the smallest lot of palladium they fabricate on special order, something
> like a kilogram as I recall. The price would be a great to higher today.
> Perhaps $50,000? I don't know. I tried to find people who would be willing
> to share the cost but I never could.
***{Do they get their money back if there is no heat-after-death? (I'll
bet I can guess the answer. :-) --MJ}***
> > Yet, in spite of that, I
> > am somehow supposed to be convinced, as you have apparently been. Why,
> > then, do I not feel convinced? :-) --MJ}***
>
> Because you have not read the papers. You have no basis to be convinced or
> not convinced, or to have any opinion about the matter.
***{Or perhaps for the reasons I've already stated: the generalized
context associated with your alleged "proofs" is mountainously
implausible, in much the same way that the generalized context of the
bigfoot theory is implausible. And the more information I drag out of you,
the more implausible your story seems. Now you are telling me that just
about any physics lab in the world could simply order up a lot of this
special Pd from Johnson-Mathey, pay P&F a consultation fee, and produce a
bunch of .5 gm cathodes that would happily boil away liter after liter of
water, not merely long past the time when the power was turned off, but
also long past the time when any conceivable source of chemical energy had
been exhausted, and yet none do so. That makes no sense to me, because it
flies in the face of everything you and Gene Mallove have been saying for
years--to wit: that you were looking for a way to manufacture and sell a
cheap kit to consumers which would enable them to see undeniable cold
fusion for themselves. Yet here you are claiming to be able to purchase a
kilo of the magical Johnson-Mathey palladium for $50,000. That breaks down
into 2,000 .5 gm samples, or a cost of $25 each for the cathodes. Set up a
bank of electrolysis cells to load them and kick them into
"heat-after-death" mode, and then begin selling them for $100 or $200 a
pop. Result: when glowing reports start coming back, the circulation of
your magazine explodes, CF goes mainstream, you all get rich, etc. So why
don't you do it? --MJ}***
> > Specifically: if proof that CF is real can be produced "on demand," then
> > why doesn't someone produce it?
>
> Politics, I suppose. You would have to ask people who have decided not to
> produce it. I cannot determine the reason, because they will not communicate
> with Fleischmann or with me.
***{You are one of those people, and I just asked you. Why don't you do
it? --MJ}***
> > Am I unreasonable to be disturbed by the
> > lack of a satisfactory answer to that question? If so, why? --MJ}***
>
> It is not unreasonable I suppose, but irrelevant. The issue must be decided
> by observing experiments and analyzing calorimetry, not by asking
> unanswerable questions about human nature and behavior. People are often
> inscrutable and self-destructive.
***{Are you and Gene inscrutable and self-destructive? If not, then why
aren't you guys producing and selling these things as if they were
chocolate-chip cookies? --MJ}***
Corporations like DEC destroyed themselves
> by not manufacturing personal computers when it was obvious the demand was
> huge and their survival dependent upon meeting it. I cannot explain such
> behavior.
***{It's just the way you behave, right? :-) --MJ}***
> > ***{So you are saying that P&F do *not* have the capability to produce
> > heat-after-death on demand, because all they can handle is the
> > electrochemistry, whereas only Johnson Matthey can make a cathode which
> > will work. . . .
>
> Naturally, yes. You would know that if you had read the literature. A CF
> experiment is a complicated, high-tech undertaking requiring the cooperation
> of many experts, and millions of dollars of a specialized tools and
> instruments. That is why I doubt garage inventors are capable of
> contributing to it. Of course a very wealthy garage inventors might buy a
> special order palladium from Johnson Matthey, but in that case he would not
> be inventing the material, merely verifying performance that P&F, Miles and
> others have already verified. That would be helpful, but not an original
> contribution.
***{Yes, but I'll dare say that thousands of people would pony up $200
apiece to obtain an active, heat-after-death cathode, including virtually
every university physics lab on planet Earth, if you were producing and
selling them. So why aren't you doing it, if you really can? --MJ}***
> > Well, then, why hasn't anybody revealed the secret of the
> > cathodes?
>
> I suppose for the same reason Johnson Matthey does not tell everyone exactly
> how to make catalytic converters. Of course a great deal about it has been
> revealed and published. It is the material they made until about 10 years
> ago for their hydrogen purifiers -- for the filters. Probably, the new
> formula material would work equally well, but that has not been verified in
> experiments as far as I know. Every detail about the Imam's NRL cathodes is
> made public because the taxpayers financed the research.
***{Even better: you and Gene don't need to pony up the $50,000 to
Johnson-Mathey: make 'em yourself! Why not? --MJ}***
> > Are you telling me that each and every person who knows the
> > secret is so corrupt that he would sit by and permit the world to be
> > denied this technology, rather than simply writing up a recipe and
> > clandestinely leaking it to the appropriate parties?
>
> Your scenario is fit for a thriller novel, but the real world is less
> exciting. "The secret" does not exist. There is no single recipe that you
> could write down and walk out the door with. To the extent there is a single
> unified description, I already have it, because Fleischmann described it
> many times during his lectures. There is no single "recipe" but rather a
> constellation of technical knowledge which the staff at Johnson Matthey as a
> group knows. No single individual knows everything, any more than one person
> that IBM knows how they make their hard disk drives. The decision to
> fabricate more of the material would be made by managers at Johnson Matthey
> in response to a purchase order -- from you if you happen to have $50,000
> handy! -- or on their own initiative. Some of the managers at J - M know a
> great deal about the Toyota research and they probably think it would be
> good idea to continue that line of work on their own. Others do not know
> about it, or they doubt ths results, so they oppose such research. In my
> opinion they resemble the managers at DEC who opposed building personal
> computers, but they have not asked my opinion. As far as I know J - M is not
> doing CF research.
***{I repeat: why aren't you and Gene manufacturing these gadgets? --MJ}***
> > Or are you telling me
> > that P&F are the guilty ones--that they are sitting there with zipped
> > lips, due to confidentiality agreements . . .
>
> They both spoke about it quite freely to me and to others during lectures at
> ICCF conferences. The people at J-M were also very helpful, but of course
> they cannot reveal every trade secret. Imam, at NRL, has volunteered to come
> and assist anyone making a batch of his material. The top brass at the Navy
> ordered him and all others at the NRL not to work on CF in 1995 -- I think
> it was -- but a few years ago they told him he is allowed to talk about it
> or assist others on his own vacation time.
>
> Don't ask me why the U.S. Navy banned this research and gagged their
> researchers for five years. I really cannot say. I was told the orders came
> from high up in the command structure. I suppose it was for the usual
> political reasons.
***{I repeat: why aren't you and Gene manufacturing these gadgets? --MJ}***
> > . . . while the most important
> > technology in human history, which they discovered, is slowly dying?
>
> Many important technologies have slowly died in the past, often because of
> misplaced concern for national security, for example. The Chinese
> periodically discovered how to make effective clocks, but the information
> was a state secret, and discussing it was high treason, so they forgot, and
> relearned, and forgot again. Many societies learned that filth causes
> disease and you should wash your hands before you perform surgery, yet the
> information was lost. The principles of the Babbage computer were ignored
> for a century. The British World War II computers used to crack the enigma
> had the some advanced features, but the designs were deliberately destroyed
> in 1945. They were developed again from scratch ten or twenty years later.
> When Bell Labs developed the transistor in 1948, they discovered that
> Lilienfeld had patented a very similar device in 1930, but it had been
> ignored and forgotten. It was similar enough that Bell could not get a
> patent for the overall idea, only the specific implementation.
***{Why aren't you and Gene producing and selling these things? --MJ}***
> > > Nope. They helped Toyota develop that capability, but for political
> reasons
> > > Toyota apparently decided not to convince anyone.
> >
> > ***{So Toyota, in addition to Johnson Matthey, knows how to make
> > heat-after-death cathodes? Then why are *they* sitting on the information?
>
> I am sure they know! They paid millions to find out. I have no idea why they
> are sitting on this. Actually, they might be developing CF in a crash
> program . . . but I expect I would hear rumors about it.
>
> You would have to ask them. They are upset with me, and they tell me
> nothing. Someone mailed me a government report on CF experiments that Toyota
> and others participated in. I translated it for Fleischmann & Miles. Toyota
> and the gov't were apparently trying to keep them out of the loop.
***{Why are you and Gene trying to keep the rest of us out of the loop?
:-) --MJ}***
> > And, if they are, why is every single person who knows the secret so
> > corrupt . . .
>
> No single person knows the secret. No single person can make an Intel CPU or
> an automobile, for that matter. But anyone who happens to have several
> million dollars burning a hole in his pocket and the staff of crackerjack
> metallurgists could probably launch a joint venture with J - M or consult
> with Imam and make effective cathodes again. It would cost much less than
> making your own tokamak reactor!
***{If manufacturing your own will cost that much, then buy it for $50,000
a kilo from Johnson-Mathey. The question remains: why aren't you guys
doing selling these things, assuming this is more than just talk? --MJ}***
Dieter Britz
[...]
> Many of the techniques to make robust CF cathodes were developed years ago,
> for things like Pd hydrogen purifiers and fuel cells. Unfortunately, these
> techniques are often trade secrets.
You mean there is some trade going on, that we don't know about?
They have something to sell? Please tell us.
Jed Rothwell
> > I know nothing about Bigfoot and I have no opinion about it, but CF
> > experiments have often been "captured" in a sense. That is, they have
> > observed, recorded and replicated. Even I have observed them.
>
> ***{Lots of people claim to have seen bigfoot. --MJ}***
But they do not usually bring back photographs and samples of hair, skin DNA
and so on, whereas people who measure heat and transmutations pass around
used cathodes with isotope-shifted elements.
> > Perhaps $50,000? I don't know. I tried to find people who would be
willing
> > to share the cost but I never could.
>
> ***{Do they get their money back if there is no heat-after-death? (I'll
> bet I can guess the answer. :-) --MJ}***
They said they would buy it back at the market price per gram of Pd. That
would be somewhat less than what they charge us, because they have to
process the material, adding value.
> > Because you have not read the papers. You have no basis to be convinced
or
> > not convinced, or to have any opinion about the matter.
>
> ***{Or perhaps for the reasons I've already stated: the generalized
> context associated with your alleged "proofs" is mountainously
> implausible . . .
It does not matter how implausible something may seem, when replicated,
high-sigma data proves it is real, it is real. You cannot argue with Mother
Nature.
Now you are telling me that just
> about any physics lab in the world could simply order up a lot of this
> special Pd from Johnson-Mathey, pay P&F a consultation fee, and produce a
> bunch of .5 gm cathodes that would happily boil away liter after liter of
> water . . .
Good heavens no! I never said that. That ridiculous. That is like suggesting
that any lab can order up some silicon and make a Pentium processor from
scratch.
> > Politics, I suppose. You would have to ask people who have decided not
to
> > produce it. I cannot determine the reason, because they will not
communicate
> > with Fleischmann or with me.
>
> ***{You are one of those people, and I just asked you. Why don't you do
> it? --MJ}***
I don't have the skills, and I don't have a fully equipped lab. I know some
people who do, but they did not have the time or resources to try J-M
samples, or they had been ordered not to work on CF (in the Navy).
> ***{Are you and Gene inscrutable and self-destructive? If not, then why
> aren't you guys producing and selling these things as if they were
> chocolate-chip cookies? --MJ}***
Because, as I said in the previous message, no one I know has the money and
wants one.
> ***{Yes, but I'll dare say that thousands of people would pony up $200
> apiece to obtain an active, heat-after-death cathode . . .
If you can find a few dozen people, I'd be happy to help arrange the
purchase. The J-M employees who made this type have retired, but they told
me they would come back for a few weeks to make more.
> ***{I repeat: why aren't you and Gene manufacturing these
gadgets? --MJ}***
You repeated this several times. If you had read the literature, you would
know that we are not capable of doing the experiment. You will save yourself
time & confusion by reading the literature.
- Jed
Jed Rothwell
> > Many of the techniques to make robust CF cathodes were developed years
ago,
> > for things like Pd hydrogen purifiers and fuel cells. Unfortunately,
these
> > techniques are often trade secrets.
>
> You mean there is some trade going on, that we don't know about?
> They have something to sell? Please tell us.
I am not sure what you mean by "trade." Anyway, as Fleischmann explained
several times during lectures, when he set about doing cold fusion he asked
J-M what type of palladium they would recommend for this purpose; i.e.,
material that would stand up to high loading without expansion and cracking,
which would not undergo internal chemical reactions when permeated with
hydrogen or deuterium, from leftover oxygen, carbon or what-have-you. They
recommended the type of palladium they use in their hydrogen purifiers, and
they made him a large number of samples in sizes suitable for cathodes. (I
think the Pd rods used inside actual purifiers are too big, or the wrong
shape.)
Fleischmann called this palladium "Type A," but as he explained that is his
own designation and it just means J-M purifier type. P&F, Miles, McKubre and
several others tested it and found that it works in every experiment, and it
usually produces much more excess heat and other types.
J-M changed the formula 5 or 10 years ago, and they have no more of old
type. The new type might work equally well, but it has not been tested as
far as Fleischmann knows.
J-M have been making these purifiers since the 1930s. They have been quite
friendly and cooperative in many ways, telling Fleischmann and others
(including me) how the material is made, the silver content, specifications
and so on, but they do not reveal every single detail. Some of it is a trade
secret. Even if they did reveal everything I would not understand it, since
I do not know much about metalurgy.
Here are some notes about this material that I published in J. Rothwell,
"The Collapse of the NHE Project," I.E. #30, April 2000:
Type A Palladium
For many years Martin Fleischman has recommended a particular type of
palladium made by Johnson Matthey. He handed out several samples of this
material to experienced researchers, and as far as he knows in nearly every
test the samples produced excess heat. [The cases in which it did not work
have now been accounted for.] The material is called "Type A" palladium. It
was developed decades ago for use in hydrogen diffusion tubes: filters that
allow hydrogen to pass while holding back other gasses. It was designed to
have great structural integrity under high loading. It lasts for years,
withstanding cracking and deformation that would quickly destroy other
alloys and allow other gasses to seep through the filters. This robustness
happens to be the quality we most need for cold fusion. The main reason cold
fusion is difficult to reproduce is because when bulk palladium loads with
deuterium, it cracks, bends, distorts and it will not load above ~60% to
~70%. Below 85 to 90%, bulk palladium never produces excess heat. A sample
of palladium chosen at random from most suppliers will never reach this
level of loading. . . .
[Fleischmann] wrote:
. . . We note that whereas "blank experiments" are always entirely normal
(e.g. See Figs 1-5) it is frequently impossible to find any measurement
cycle for the Pd-D2O system which shows such normal behaviour. Of course, in
the absence of adequate "blank experiments" such abnormalities have been
attributed to malfunctions of the calorimetry, e.g. see (10). [Ikegami et
al.] However, the correct functioning of "blank experiments" shows that the
abnormalities must be due to fluctuating sources of excess enthalpy. The
statements made in this paragraph are naturally subject to the restriction
that a "satisfactory electrode material" be used i.e. a material
intrinsically capable of producing excess enthalpy generation and which
maintains its structural integrity throughout the experiment. Most of our
own investigations have been carried out with a material which we have
described as Johnson Matthey Material Type A. This material is prepared by
melting under a blanket gas of cracked ammonia (or else its synthetic
equivalent) the concentrations of five key classes of impurities being
controlled. Electrodes are then produced by a succession of steps of square
rolling, round rolling and, finally, drawing with appropriate annealing
steps in the production cycle. [M. Fleischmann, Proc. ICCF-7, p. 121]
Fleischman recently gave me some additional information. The ammonia
atmosphere leaves hydrogen in the palladium which controls
recrystallization. Unfortunately, this material is very difficult to acquire
and there is practically none left in the world, because Johnson Matthey
stopped making it several years ago. Palladium for diffusion tubes is now
made using a different process in which the palladium is melted under argon.
Material made with the newer technique might also work satisfactorily in
cold fusion experiments, but Fleischman never had an opportunity to test it
so he does not know. I asked him how confident he is that this material is
effective, and how much batch-to-batch variability he observed. He said that
since 1980 he has used samples from eight or nine batches. Only one batch
failed to work, and was returned for credit.
. . . I once asked Fleischman how he learned about Type A palladium. He
said: "It is very simple. When we began this research, I went to Johnson
Matthey, told them what I needed, and they recommended this material."
Fleischmann has a baroque imagination and he often goes about doing things
in indirect, recondite ways, but in this case he used the direct approach.
[End of extract]
- Jed
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > > I know nothing about Bigfoot and I have no opinion about it, but CF
> > > experiments have often been "captured" in a sense. That is, they have
> > > observed, recorded and replicated. Even I have observed them.
> >
> > ***{Lots of people claim to have seen bigfoot. --MJ}***
>
> But they do not usually bring back photographs and samples of hair, skin DNA
> and so on, whereas people who measure heat and transmutations pass around
> used cathodes with isotope-shifted elements.
***{There are lots of processes--e.g., electrolysis--that can shift
isotopic ratios. You will find, for example, that the water residue which
remains in a beaker after long electrolysis will exhibit an unnaturally
high percentage abundance of deuterium. --MJ}***
> > > Perhaps $50,000? I don't know. I tried to find people who would be
> > > willing to share the cost but I never could.
> >
> > ***{Do they get their money back if there is no heat-after-death? (I'll
> > bet I can guess the answer. :-) --MJ}***
>
> They said they would buy it back at the market price per gram of Pd. That
> would be somewhat less than what they charge us, because they have to
> process the material, adding value.
***{Let's see: we pay $50,000 for 1 kg, which is $50 per gram. With Pd
trading on the spot market this morning at $355 per Troy ounce, that comes
to [355(12)(2.2)/1000] = $9.37 per gram. So we pay $50 per gram, and, if
it doesn't work, we get a refund of $9.37 per gram, for a loss of $40.63
per gram, or $40,630 per kilo. And that assumes the spot price of Pd
doesn't go down while we wait to see whether the experiment is going to
work as promised. From an investment standpoint, that doesn't sound very
appealing, to put it mildly. --MJ}***
> > > Because you have not read the papers. You have no basis to be convinced
> > > or not convinced, or to have any opinion about the matter.
> >
> > ***{Or perhaps for the reasons I've already stated: the generalized
> > context associated with your alleged "proofs" is mountainously
> > implausible . . .
>
> It does not matter how implausible something may seem, when replicated,
> high-sigma data proves it is real, it is real. You cannot argue with Mother
> Nature.
***{And, of course, she speaks through you, right? :-) --MJ}***
> Now you are telling me that just
> > about any physics lab in the world could simply order up a lot of this
> > special Pd from Johnson-Mathey, pay P&F a consultation fee, and produce a
> > bunch of .5 gm cathodes that would happily boil away liter after liter of
> > water . . .
>
> Good heavens no! I never said that. That ridiculous. That is like suggesting
> that any lab can order up some silicon and make a Pentium processor from
> scratch.
***{Really? The resemblance escapes me, so let's go through the steps and
you stop me when I come to the part about the Pentium processor. First, I
consult with P&F to obtain the answers to the following questions:
(1) What size and shape do I need for the .5 gm cathode?
(2) By what technique ought it to be sliced off of the 1 kilo obtained
from Johnson-Mathey?
(3) How should it be cleaned and prepared?
(4) What size and type of beaker (covered or uncovered, fat or skinny,
glass or quartz, etc.) ought I to use for the electrolysis?
(5) What solute, at what concentration, in what amount, should I place in
the beaker?
(6) What sorts of wire leads ought I use for the cathode and the anode?
(7) What voltage and current regime ought I to apply, and for how long,
before I can shut the thing off and observe "heat-after-death"?
Note: since you said this method produces heat-after-death "on demand," I
don't need to do no steenking calorimetry and I don't need no steenking
data acquisition system. All I need to do is apply a recipe discovered by
P&F, using the right cathode materials, and I should be home free.
Now where does that Pentium processor come in, exactly?
--Mitchell Jones}***
[snip]
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
***{Since Pd loads from the outside to the inside, the above statement, if
true, constitutes virtual smoking gun proof that CF is a bulk effect
(assuming, of course, that it is a real effect). How you could be aware of
such a statement, and apparently believe it to be true, and at the same
time argue that the benefits-of-size hypothesis does not merit
investigation, is a mystery to me. --MJ}***
===============================================
Jed Rothwell
> ***{There are lots of processes--e.g., electrolysis--that can shift
> isotopic ratios. You will find, for example, that the water residue which
> remains in a beaker after long electrolysis will exhibit an unnaturally
> high percentage abundance of deuterium. --MJ}***
Yes, but the shifts are orders of magnitude smaller than those observed in
CF experiments, and they are usually light elements (H and Li), whereas CF
experiments produce shifts in heavy elements. Also the shifts occur in
non-electrochemical systems such as gas loading and ion-beam CF.
> > They said they would buy it back at the market price per gram of Pd.
That
> > would be somewhat less than what they charge us, because they have to
> > process the material, adding value.
>
> ***{Let's see: we pay $50,000 for 1 kg, which is $50 per gram. With Pd
> trading on the spot market this morning at $355 per Troy ounce, that comes
> to [355(12)(2.2)/1000] = $9.37 per gram. So we pay $50 per gram, and, if
> it doesn't work, we get a refund of $9.37 per gram, for a loss of $40.63 .
. .
Whoa! I was only estimating. I do not recall how much the minimum order was,
or the precise cost. I recall it varied from $20,000 to $30,000, and I think
Pd is now more expensive, so I guess it would be more. This discussion was
several years ago. As I recall, the value added was reasonable, something
like 10% or 20%. The terms were generous, especially with Fleischmann
involved.
As Fleischmann noted at ICCF in response to my question, J-M made 8 or 9
batches, and when one failed to work it was returned for a full credit.
(They gave him another.) So, to answer your earlier question, yes they do
guarantee excess heat.
> > Good heavens no! I never said that. That ridiculous. That is like
suggesting
> > that any lab can order up some silicon and make a Pentium processor from
> > scratch.
>
> ***{Really? The resemblance escapes me . . .
That is because you have not read the literature.
, so let's go through the steps and
> you stop me when I come to the part about the Pentium processor. First, I
> consult with P&F to obtain the answers to the following questions:
>
> (1) What size and shape do I need for the .5 gm cathode?
You would not need to consult with P&F. A good electrochemistry textbook
will answer this question.
> (2) By what technique ought it to be sliced off of the 1 kilo obtained
> from Johnson-Mathey?
J-M should do all slicing! That is a major source of contamination and
material damage.
> (3) How should it be cleaned and prepared?
With great care, as described in the textbooks. See Bockris, Storms and
others.
> (4) What size and type of beaker (covered or uncovered, fat or skinny,
> glass or quartz, etc.) ought I to use for the electrolysis?
>
> (5) What solute, at what concentration, in what amount, should I place in
> the beaker?
>
> (6) What sorts of wire leads ought I use for the cathode and the anode?
>
> (7) What voltage and current regime ought I to apply, and for how long,
> before I can shut the thing off and observe "heat-after-death"?
All covered in standard electrochem. literature and CF papers.
> data acquisition system. All I need to do is apply a recipe discovered by
> P&F, using the right cathode materials, and I should be home free.
P&F did not invent the field of electrochemistry. A "recipe" for what you
just asked would be several hundred pages long. For example, see the three
textbooks by Bockris et al. Most of the knowledge used to do CF was
discovered before 1989. Learning how to do a CF experiment takes years and
it constitutes a graduate level course in electrochemisty at places like
Yokohama National University or Hokkaido National University. See, for
example, "Electrolysis of Titanium in Heavy Water," R. Kopecek, masters
thesis, Portland State U., 1995.
> Now where does that Pentium processor come in, exactly?
To understand that, you need to read the literature. Start with catalysis,
surface chemistry, electrodeposition, material purity, material science etc.
- Jed
Jed Rothwell
> > happens to be the quality we most need for cold fusion. The main reason
cold
> > fusion is difficult to reproduce is because when bulk palladium loads
with
> > deuterium, it cracks, bends, distorts and it will not load above ~60% to
> > ~70%. Below 85 to 90%, bulk palladium never produces excess heat. A
sample
> > of palladium chosen at random from most suppliers will never reach this
> > level of loading. . . .
>
> ***{Since Pd loads from the outside to the inside, the above statement, if
> true, constitutes virtual smoking gun proof that CF is a bulk effect . . .
That is what many people thought, years ago, but perhaps not. It now seems
that full loading of Pd is only required because until the bulk is filled,
not much deuterium remains at the surface levels, and other essential
surface conditions, such as high OCV are not achieved. It is like filling a
10 cm deep cup, you might say, and then using only the water at the top 1
centimeter. There is evidence that when you quickly crowd the surface with
deuterons, you get the effect even before the deuterium sinks in to saturate
the bulk. You cannot quickly crowd the surface with electrolysis, but you
can by other means.
- Jed
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > ***{There are lots of processes--e.g., electrolysis--that can shift
> > isotopic ratios. You will find, for example, that the water residue which
> > remains in a beaker after long electrolysis will exhibit an unnaturally
> > high percentage abundance of deuterium. --MJ}***
>
> Yes, but the shifts are orders of magnitude smaller than those observed in
> CF experiments
***{Not possible. In ordinary tap water, the proportionate abundance of
deuterium is .00015, and in reactor grade heavy water, which is prepared
by various processes that aim to shift isotopic ratios, including
electrolysis, the proportionate abundance is .995 or greater. Clearly, an
increase of even 1 order of magnitude would be impossible, since that
would take the proportionate abundance above 1.0. --MJ}***
, and they are usually light elements (H and Li), whereas CF
> experiments produce shifts in heavy elements.
***{Similar processes are used to enrich uranium, which can hardly be
described as a light element. I find it entirely conceivable, for example,
than an electric arc which blasted a microcrater into the surface of a Pd
cathode might massively shift isotopic ratios in that region, and I would
have to see a study of isotopic ratios around microcraters known to have
been blasted by electric arcs, to convince me otherwise. It seems like a
logical leap to attribute such craters to fusion, when there are other
possible explanations. --MJ}***
Also the shifts occur in
> non-electrochemical systems such as gas loading
***{Do gas loaded Pd samples--e.g., the Pd grains in the catalysts used by
Case and George--show the sorts of surface cratering studied by Mizuno? If
so, please cite references. --MJ}***
and ion-beam CF.
***{Ion beams and electric arcs are kissing cousins. --MJ}***
> > > They said they would buy it back at the market price per gram of Pd.
> > > That would be somewhat less than what they charge us, because they have to
> > > process the material, adding value.
> >
> > ***{Let's see: we pay $50,000 for 1 kg, which is $50 per gram. With Pd
> > trading on the spot market this morning at $355 per Troy ounce, that comes
> > to [355(12)(2.2)/1000] = $9.37 per gram. So we pay $50 per gram, and, if
> > it doesn't work, we get a refund of $9.37 per gram, for a loss of $40.63 .
> . .
>
> Whoa! I was only estimating. I do not recall how much the minimum order was,
> or the precise cost. I recall it varied from $20,000 to $30,000, and I think
> Pd is now more expensive, so I guess it would be more. This discussion was
> several years ago. As I recall, the value added was reasonable, something
> like 10% or 20%. The terms were generous, especially with Fleischmann
> involved.
***{In that case, the financial risk would be minimal, which once again
raises the question: why don't you and Gene make such a purchase, and set
yourselves up an assembly line that turns out heat-after-death cathodes?
--MJ}***
> As Fleischmann noted at ICCF in response to my question, J-M made 8 or 9
> batches, and when one failed to work it was returned for a full credit.
> (They gave him another.) So, to answer your earlier question, yes they do
> guarantee excess heat.
***{All the more reason for wondering why you and Gene have declined to do
what Fleischman apparently cursed Toyota for not doing. --MJ}***
> > > Good heavens no! I never said that. That ridiculous. That is like
> suggesting
> > > that any lab can order up some silicon and make a Pentium processor from
> > > scratch.
> >
> > ***{Really? The resemblance escapes me . . .
>
> That is because you have not read the literature.
***{Or it's because you are full of beans. :-) --MJ}***
> , so let's go through the steps and
> > you stop me when I come to the part about the Pentium processor. First, I
> > consult with P&F to obtain the answers to the following questions:
> >
> > (1) What size and shape do I need for the .5 gm cathode?
>
> You would not need to consult with P&F. A good electrochemistry textbook
> will answer this question.
***{Good. That means any competent electrochemist can do step (1). --MJ}***
> > (2) By what technique ought it to be sliced off of the 1 kilo obtained
> > from Johnson-Mathey?
>
> J-M should do all slicing! That is a major source of contamination and
> material damage.
***{Good. That means we don't even need a trained electrochemist for step
(2). --MJ}***
> > (3) How should it be cleaned and prepared?
>
> With great care, as described in the textbooks. See Bockris, Storms and
> others.
***{Good. Any competent electrochemist can take care of step (3) . --MJ}***
> > (4) What size and type of beaker (covered or uncovered, fat or skinny,
> > glass or quartz, etc.) ought I to use for the electrolysis?
> >
> > (5) What solute, at what concentration, in what amount, should I place in
> > the beaker?
> >
> > (6) What sorts of wire leads ought I use for the cathode and the anode?
> >
> > (7) What voltage and current regime ought I to apply, and for how long,
> > before I can shut the thing off and observe "heat-after-death"?
>
> All covered in standard electrochem. literature and CF papers.
***{Good. That means any competent electrochemist can do all seven
steps--which means: any competent electrochemist can produce
heat-after-death cathodes, if the uses the Type-A palladium from
Johnson-Mathey. Why, you even make it sound like there is no need to
consult with P&F! --MJ}***
> > data acquisition system. All I need to do is apply a recipe discovered by
> > P&F, using the right cathode materials, and I should be home free.
>
> P&F did not invent the field of electrochemistry. A "recipe" for what you
> just asked would be several hundred pages long. For example, see the three
> textbooks by Bockris et al. Most of the knowledge used to do CF was
> discovered before 1989. Learning how to do a CF experiment takes years and
> it constitutes a graduate level course in electrochemisty at places like
> Yokohama National University or Hokkaido National University. See, for
> example, "Electrolysis of Titanium in Heavy Water," R. Kopecek, masters
> thesis, Portland State U., 1995.
>
>
> > Now where does that Pentium processor come in, exactly?
>
> To understand that, you need to read the literature. Start with catalysis,
> surface chemistry, electrodeposition, material purity, material science etc.
***{No, Jed, you have already answered the question: as I suspected,
"Pentium processor" type difficulties don't come into the picture at all.
By your own words, above, any competent electrochemist, starting with the
Johnson-Mathey type A palladium, could grind out heat-after-death cathodes
"on demand." And the implication is straightforward: you and Gene could
consult with such a person, set yourselves up a production line, buy some
Johnson-Mathey type-A palladium, and win the epic battle that would decide
the cold fusion war, all by yourselves--assuming, of course, that you are
not talking through your hat.
And that, of course, explains why I find the generalized context of your
claims to be eerily similar to that of the bigfoot claims. Just as I
wonder why no one has ever captured or killed a bigfoot, or found bigfoot
remains, so too do I wonder why you and Gene aren't producing
heat-after-death cathodes, if it is as easy as you say.
Bottom line: in addition to "Where's the water heater?" we now have a
second question: "Where's the heat-after-death cathode?"
Well, where is it? :-)
--Mitchell Jones}***
Dieter Britz
[...]
> ***{There are lots of processes--e.g., electrolysis--that can shift
> isotopic ratios. You will find, for example, that the water residue which
> remains in a beaker after long electrolysis will exhibit an unnaturally
> high percentage abundance of deuterium. --MJ}***
Playing Devil's advocate here again, my favourite pasttime. What you
say is true, and must be eliminated when people claim the production
of, e.g., tritium. Indeed, in some papers, tritium has been
attributed to electrolytic enrichment, and in some, to be over and
above such enrichment (Fleischmann himself has worked on the
phenomenon oe electrolytic enrichment). But electrolysis has hardly
any effect on the heavier elements claimed to be produced by
transmutation, so this is not relevant. It is even less relevant in
those cases where elements are claimed to be formed, that were not
there previously (or only present at trace levels). Not that I am
convinced that transmutation takes place in electrolytic cells,
but I just want us to be clear about this electrolysis effect and
its range of application.
ralph sansbury
applying rapidly switched high voltage pulses of 20 to 40ns duration and
with various
time intervals between pulses to the palladium after loading according to
the P&F method but with a small current in a weakly conductive Lithium etc
electrolyte.
Would appreciate very much your advice as to where to obtain .1cm by
1.25cm rods of Pd and what one might expect with weakly conductive
electrolyte and then later with the HV pulses eg it might crack the
palladium more than it increased the nuclear reactions producing excess
heat?
"Jed Rothwell" <jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote in message
news:3cd7e7b6$1...@nopics.sjc...
>
> Fleischman recently gave me some additional information. The ammonia
> atmosphere leaves hydrogen in the palladium which controls
> recrystallization. Unfortunately, this material is very difficult to
acquire
> and there is practically none left in the world, because Johnson Matthey
> stopped making it several years ago. Palladium for diffusion tubes is now
> made using a different process in which the palladium is melted under
argon.
> Material made with the newer technique might also work satisfactorily in
> cold fusion experiments, but Fleischman never had an opportunity to test
it
> so he does not know. I asked him how confident he is that this material is
> effective, and how much batch-to-batch variability he observed. He said
that
> since 1980 he has used samples from eight or nine batches. Only one batch
> failed to work, and was returned for credit.
>
What do you mean here by "this material" here?
You say Fleischman didnt test the palladium melted under argon
so I gather that the eight out of nine or seven out of eight batches that
worked refers to palladium melted under ammonia
according to the old process at Johnson Matthey. Or does it refer to the
palladium melted under argon?
I am trying to replicate the C&F effect and to test the effect of
applying rapidly switched high voltage pulses of 20 to 40ns duration and
with various
time intervals between pulses to the palladium after loading with a small
current in a weakly conductive Lithium etc electrolyte.
Would appreciate your advice as to where to obtain .1cm by 1.25cm rods of
Pd and what to expect with weakly conductive electrolyte.
Mike Staker
ralph sansbury wrote:
Dear Ralph,
I have used Pd wire from AESAR - Johnson Matthey that worked to give as much as
63
Watts/cc of Pd excess heat. I do not recomend weak electrolyte as the voltage
for a given
current density will be higher than it you use a higher molarity. I like to
minimize the power
input (by reducing voltage of cell) for high current density. I think high
current density is
the key to high fugacity and high loading and therefore to getting the excess
heat. In addition,
then keeping the anode and cathode close together also reduces voltage. Having
a high ratio
of anode surface area to cathode surface area is good too in that it reduces
heat at the anode.
Also I like to monitor the R/R0 ratio so as to know when you are loaded. Only
after loading
above 0.9 D/Pd ratio do I turn up the curent density. Another helpful hint is
to load and unload
the cathode (via reversing polarity of cell volatage) several times before
acheaving the final high
loading ratio. I think this is helpful because the loading and unloading
produces a high dislocation
density and effectively converts annealed Pd into cold worked Pd. This high
dislocation density
within the Pd is an aid to inward diffusion of D+. It may do other things such
as create dislocation
cell structure of the appropriate size that aid in conditions necessary for the
nuclear active state
to be produced. It definitely aids the formation of superabundant vacancies via
enhancement
of diffusion both of vacancies as well as dueteron diffusion. I have used a
constant electro-
migration current with unknown aid to the onset of excess heat. This current
(through the Pd wire
which is also independent of the electrolysis current) gives you the D/Pd ratio,
in situ, and drives the
D+ to one end of the Pd wire for enhanced D/Pd ratio, even higher than the
measured D/Pd ratio,
which is only an average value. Good Luck, Mike
Jed Rothwell
> > > ***{There are lots of processes--e.g., electrolysis--that can shift
> > > isotopic ratios. You will find, for example, that the water residue
which
> > > remains in a beaker after long electrolysis will exhibit an
unnaturally
> > > high percentage abundance of deuterium. --MJ}***
> >
> > Yes, but the shifts are orders of magnitude smaller than those observed
in
> > CF experiments
>
> ***{Not possible. In ordinary tap water, the proportionate abundance of
> deuterium is .00015 . . .
I meant that a single pass of electrolysis isotope separation can only
produce effects orders of magnitude smaller than this. According to Bockris
the technique takes thousands or tens of thousands of passes.
> Also the shifts occur in
> > non-electrochemical systems such as gas loading
>
> ***{Do gas loaded Pd samples--e.g., the Pd grains in the catalysts used by
> Case and George--show the sorts of surface cratering studied by Mizuno?
I don't know.
> ***{In that case, the financial risk would be minimal, which once again
> raises the question: why don't you and Gene make such a purchase . . .
The answer is the same as before: I could not find anyone capable of doing
the experiment who had the money and time to use the Pd.
> > > ***{Really? The resemblance escapes me . . .
> >
> > That is because you have not read the literature.
>
> ***{Or it's because you are full of beans. :-) --MJ}***
Since you have not read the literature you cannot judge.
> > You would not need to consult with P&F. A good electrochemistry textbook
> > will answer this question.
>
> ***{Good. That means any competent electrochemist can do step
(1). --MJ}***
Any competent electrochemist could do the entire experiment from start to
finish, in a year or two. There are, however, surprisingly few competant
electrochemists, and some incredibly incompetant ones, such as the ones who
tried to do it in six weeks, back in 1989.
> > J-M should do all slicing! That is a major source of contamination and
> > material damage.
>
> ***{Good. That means we don't even need a trained electrochemist for step
> (2). --MJ}***
You need a trained electrochemist for every step. The electrochemist would
have to decide which cathode geometries and sizes she wished to explore, in
consultation with J-M. That is a complicated issue. It depends on the choice
of calorimeters and other factors. A person who is not trained will be by
the time he or she finishes.
> ***{Good. That means any competent electrochemist can do all seven
> steps--which means: any competent electrochemist can produce
> heat-after-death cathodes, if the uses the Type-A palladium from
> Johnson-Mathey.
Certainly. Since hundreds of electrochemists replicated CF, and since the
J-M Pd is far superior to other types, that is definitely the case. But it
is a circular definition: if the electrochemist cannot do it after a year or
two, he is not competent, by definition. Electrochemists who struggled with
other materials from other companies were competent but ignorant, and they
had no hope of success.
> > > Now where does that Pentium processor come in, exactly?
> >
> > To understand that, you need to read the literature. Start with
catalysis,
> > surface chemistry, electrodeposition, material purity, material science
etc.
>
> ***{No, Jed, you have already answered the question: as I suspected,
> "Pentium processor" type difficulties don't come into the picture at all.
I did not answer your question. You will have to read the literature to
learn why the surface chemistry, materials problems, electrolytic deposition
and other aspects of CF resemble semiconductor manufacturing. Note that CF
scientists often use semiconductor fab equipment. That is definitely a
resemblance, in my opinion.
> By your own words, above, any competent electrochemist, starting with the
> Johnson-Mathey type A palladium, could grind out heat-after-death cathodes
> "on demand." And the implication is straightforward: you and Gene could
> consult with such a person, set yourselves up a production line . . .
It isn't a matter of "consulting." The person would have to actually do the
work, over many months or years. You introduce me to such a person and I'll
take it from there. Fleischmann and I know most of the CF scientists on
earth, and he knows a significant fraction of all electrochemists. As far as
we know none of them has the money or the time to do this. Some -- like the
people in the Navy -- have been ordered not to do it.
> Bottom line: in addition to "Where's the water heater?" we now have a
> second question: "Where's the heat-after-death cathode?"
>
> Well, where is it? :-)
All cathodes produce heat after death, but it is usually too small to
detect.
- Jed
Jed Rothwell
> Would appreciate very much your advice as to where to obtain .1cm by
> 1.25cm rods of Pd and what one might expect with weakly conductive
> electrolyte and then later with the HV pulses . . .
I see that Mike Staker has addressed your question. He knows way more than I
do. I strongly recommend you consult with Edmund Storms
(Sto...@ix.netcom.com) and Dennis Cravens (phy...@tularosa.net). Start
with the Storms paper, "How To Produce the Pons-Fleischmann Effect."
> that
> > since 1980 he has used samples from eight or nine batches. Only one
batch
> > failed to work, and was returned for credit.
> >
> What do you mean here by "this material" here?
> You say Fleischman didnt test the palladium melted under argon
> so I gather that the eight out of nine or seven out of eight batches that
> worked refers to palladium melted under ammonia . . .
I meant all batches were of the older material, one failed to work, and they
exchanged it for another. Fleischmann has not tried the newer material as of
a few years ago, but maybe he did lately. I will see him next week at ICCF,
and I'll ask him. (Actually, he himself does not do experiments hands on. He
works with other people who do.)
> I am trying to replicate the C&F effect and to test the effect of
> applying rapidly switched high voltage pulses of 20 to 40ns duration and
> with various
> time intervals between pulses to the palladium . . .
That is much faster pulsing than any I have heard about. That isn't to say
it will not work. I wouldn't know about that. Takahashi and others have
reported success with pulses 1 to 10 minutes long. People researching
hydrogen embrittlement years ago discovered that pulsing on this time scale
enhances absorption.
> Would appreciate your advice as to where to obtain .1cm by 1.25cm rods of
> Pd and what to expect with weakly conductive electrolyte.
Mike has addressed that. Talk to the people at J-M (AESAR - in the U.S.)
They have been very helpful over the years to many people.
- Jed
ralph sansbury
"Mike Staker" <mst...@arl.mil> wrote in message
news:3CD92B6C...@arl.mil...
>
>
> ralph sansbury wrote:
>
> > I am trying to replicate the P&F effect and to test the effect of
> > applying rapidly switched high voltage pulses of 20 to 40ns duration and
> > with various
> > time intervals between pulses to the palladium after loading according
to
> > the P&F method but with a small current in a weakly conductive Lithium
etc
> > electrolyte.
> > Would appreciate very much your advice as to where to obtain .1cm by
> > 1.25cm rods of Pd and what one might expect with weakly conductive
> > electrolyte and then later with the HV pulses eg it might crack the
> > palladium more than it increased the nuclear reactions producing excess
> > heat?
> >
Thanks very much for your helpful answers. Would like to know more about
your electromigration current and measurment of R/R0.
I see the problem you mention of a weak electrolyte requiring more
voltage to
produce the same current and that a current focused on a small Pd electrode
from a large Pt electrode, one finds, produces
higher loading or a higher loading sooner which I gather one infers from the
excess heat produced.
But accompanying this increased current density is an increased electric
field force on each point of the Pd electrode
from an increased number of positions on the Pt electrode.
How do you tell what is due to the current and what is due to the
sustained voltage producing the field.
It seems reasonable that protons or deuterons are pulled to the Pd electrode
by an excess of electrons there
that is continually replenished from the power supply and that a sustained
deficiency of electrons at the Pt electrode helps chemical
reactions there that make more available the deuterons at the Pd electrode.
If one cuts off this replenishment of electrons and or the availability of
deuterons you wont add any more deuterons but you wont lose the deuterons
that are there. The added electrons and deuterons on the Pd surface will
hold each other unless other electrons or polarized molecules in the air or
liquid surroundings pull the deuterons away and/or other positve ions or
polarized molecules there pull the electrons holding the deuterons.
One way to do this perhaps is to be sure there is a force pushing the
deuterons into the surface. This force will also attract electrons from the
surface, and so connecting the Pd electrode to the ground will provide
additional electrons as needed.
Thus the current through the liquid and Pt electrode could be eliminated
by replacing the electrolyte with pure D2O
Then the increase in short HV pulses of the LV field maintaining
deuterons on the Pd surface etc. could produce effects on deuterons during
the first fraction of a picosecond of such pulses before a redistribution
in charge in all molecules and atoms will cancel the HV field at each pulse.
Dieter Britz
>
> I am trying to replicate the P&F effect and to test the effect of
> applying rapidly switched high voltage pulses of 20 to 40ns duration and
> with various
> time intervals between pulses to the palladium after loading according to
> the P&F method but with a small current in a weakly conductive Lithium etc
> electrolyte.
This underlines the advice I have given you before: leave it alone.
I know that sounds arrogant but it isn't intended like that. There
are things you don't know about electrochemistry, and a ng is not the
best place to learn.
For example, the metal/electrolyte interface acts like a (rather pure)
capacitor, around 40 uF/cm^2, and the electrolytic current can be
equivalenced as a small resistance parallel to that capacitor. The
resulting interface impedance is in series with the electrolyte
and maybe some other, resistances. Voltage pulses as short as those
you mention would merely charge and discharge the capacitor, and most
of the voltage would be across the resistance. Did you know this?
Don't you wonder what else you don't know?
Besides all this, your ide fixe of high voltages, and now short pulses,
can hardly be called a replication of the F&P effect. They didn't do
that.
Mike Staker
the best thing to do at this point is to try these approaches and
measure the power produced. Thus the most important concern
is to have top-notch calorimetry. No way to be sure of this
except to spend a lot of time on it and really learn your
system inside and out.
As far as the electromigration current is concerned,
it requires the Pd be connected at both ends instead
of at just one end and it requires a seperate power supply.
Best of Luck and good sleuthing. Mike
Mike Staker
from the R/Ro curves from the literature and from
the oservation of passing the maximum in the R/Ro
curve (in this way you verify the D/Pd vs R/Ro
relationship yourself). You do not work in the
dark without knowing the D/Pd ratio ! ! Without
High loading it is not a good idea to expect excess
heat (it may be possible, but I would not frustrate
myself looking for it in view of McKubre work etc)
The high fugacity and high loading is NOT determined
from excess heat, but rather high loading is a
prerequisit for excess heat! Mike
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > > happens to be the quality we most need for cold fusion. The main reason
> cold
> > > fusion is difficult to reproduce is because when bulk palladium loads
> with
> > > deuterium, it cracks, bends, distorts and it will not load above ~60% to
> > > ~70%. Below 85 to 90%, bulk palladium never produces excess heat. A
> sample
> > > of palladium chosen at random from most suppliers will never reach this
> > > level of loading. . . .
> >
> > ***{Since Pd loads from the outside to the inside, the above statement, if
> > true, constitutes virtual smoking gun proof that CF is a bulk effect . . .
>
> That is what many people thought, years ago, but perhaps not.
***{You say perhaps, which indicates uncertainty, and yet you insist that
looking for a benefits-of-size effect would be a waste of time. You can't
have it both ways. --MJ}***
It now seems
> that full loading of Pd is only required because until the bulk is filled,
> not much deuterium remains at the surface levels, and other essential
> surface conditions, such as high OCV are not achieved. It is like filling a
> 10 cm deep cup, you might say, and then using only the water at the top 1
> centimeter.
***{That may be what you think is most likely, but your adamant insistence
that the approach ought to be narrowly focused on small cathodes requires
certain evidence that this is the way it works. Frankly, to take such a
position strikes me as absurd. Electrons are far more mobile in a Pd
lattice than are deuterons, and it seems obvious that when loading begins,
the electrons will reach the surface before the deuterons penetrate deeply
into the bulk. Result: loading will begin at the surface and, as the
available surface sites become filled, loading will proceed more and more
slowly, as lower and lower layers are successively filled, via lower and
lower probability interactions. Thus your coffee-cup analogy, which
implies that loading begins deep in the bulk and only reaches the surface
at the end, seems counter to the plain facts of the situation. And what
this illustrates, vis-a-vis the original issue, is why research funding
should be disseminated by its original owners, so that it will flow into a
broadly diverse array of approaches, rather than being filtered through a
monolithic governmental bureaucracy, which will narrow the field of
investigation to what it regards as plausible, and, in all likelihood,
prevent the approach that would have worked from ever being investigated.
--MJ}***
There is evidence that when you quickly crowd the surface with
> deuterons, you get the effect even before the deuterium sinks in to saturate
> the bulk. You cannot quickly crowd the surface with electrolysis, but you
> can by other means.
>
> - Jed
===============================================
Jed Rothwell
> > > ***{Since Pd loads from the outside to the inside, the above
statement, if
> > > true, constitutes virtual smoking gun proof that CF is a bulk effect .
. .
> >
> > That is what many people thought, years ago, but perhaps not.
>
> ***{You say perhaps, which indicates uncertainty, and yet you insist that
> looking for a benefits-of-size effect would be a waste of time. You can't
> have it both ways. --MJ}***
I was merely being polite. I think the evidence for a surface reaction is
overwhelming.
> It now seems
> > that full loading of Pd is only required because until the bulk is
filled,
> > not much deuterium remains at the surface levels, and other essential
> > surface conditions, such as high OCV are not achieved. It is like
filling a
> > 10 cm deep cup, you might say, and then using only the water at the top
1
> > centimeter.
>
> ***{That may be what you think is most likely . . .
No me, actually. Storms and many others. Also bear in mind that my statement
was a mere analogy.
> Frankly, to take such a
> position strikes me as absurd. Electrons are far more mobile in a Pd
> lattice than are deuterons, and it seems obvious that when loading begins,
> the electrons will reach the surface before the deuterons penetrate deeply
> into the bulk . . .
Are you seriously hypothesizing about this idea based on a single, grossly
oversimplified analogy from me? You have no clue what evidence has been
found in favor of a surface reaction!
>And what
> this illustrates, vis-a-vis the original issue, is why research funding
> should be disseminated by its original owners, so that it will flow into a
> broadly diverse array of approaches, rather than being filtered through a
> monolithic governmental bureaucracy . . .
WHAT governmental bureaucracy?!? What on earth are you talking about? That's
the craziest thing I have read in quite a while. Let us get a few things
straight here:
1. My analogy about surface versus bulk originated from lectures and
discussions at ICCF and JCF conferences, and informal chats. I did not get
the idea from a monolithic governmental bureaucracy -- I got it directly
from the researchers, the "original owners" as you put it. I cannot imagine
what made you think a government had anything to do with it.
2. Research funding for CF in most labs does not come from monolithic
governmental bureaucracy. It does not come from anywhere. We pay for it
ourselves. Mizuno, Ohmori, I and many others purchase the instruments and
materials. Obviously the research at Mitsubishi is paid for out of corporate
funding. The Japanese and Italian governments do contribute a little to some
experiments, but as Takahashi says, it hardly amounts to sparrow's tears.
3. In the U.S., as far as I know, the only government contribution to CF in
the last ten years has been a small amount of DARPA funding on the positive
side, and on the negatives side direct orders from high Navy brass shutting
down all Navy research and gagging the researchers -- that is, ordering them
not to discuss or publish the research. Perhaps there has been other
government involvement but I did not hear about it.
- Jed
Jed Rothwell
> For example, the metal/electrolyte interface acts like a (rather pure)
> capacitor, around 40 uF/cm^2, and the electrolytic current can be
> equivalenced as a small resistance parallel to that capacitor. . . .
> . . . Did you know this?
>
> Don't you wonder what else you don't know?
In my case, I don't wonder, I know! I have attended enough lectures about
electrochemistry at ICCF conferences and elsewhere to know that most of the
Bockris textbooks are over my head. WAY over my head.
Dieter's statements illustrate why Flieschmann, Mallove and I discussed
buying a new batch of J-M Pd, but we never went ahead with the plans. We
would need to find expert hands-on electrochemists who are anxious to test
the material. I couldn't find any. Bockris is retired, and the others are
busy with other materials. I do not think Fleischmann did hands-on lab work,
and he does not have a lab. He is now working with Celani and other
researchers in Italy. I do not know what materials they are using. I should
find out next week.
Mitchell Jones wanted to know why I did not "consult with" an electrochemist
and try to do the experiment myself. Britz begins to answer that question,
by showing how much you have to know. It would be a little like consulting
with a surgeon and than trying to operate on your wife at home.
- Jed
Dieter Britz
[...]
> There is evidence that when you quickly crowd the surface with
> > deuterons, you get the effect even before the deuterium sinks in to saturate
> > the bulk. You cannot quickly crowd the surface with electrolysis, but
Here are some thoughts about bulk vs surface. Let's assume that CNF
in fact happens. What is "bulk"? A given deuteron in the Pd lattice
is not likely to feel interactions with other atoms further away than
some number of crystal units. That number might be 10, 100, 1000. So,
beyond a Pd dimension of that magnitude, it would all be bulk. This
means that a thin Pd foil of 0.1 mm thickness is as bulky as a 100 lb
chunk.
The difference, of courese, is in the loading speed, a thin foil
loading much more quickly. Full bulk loading might be needed, and
if CNF is a surface effect, full bulk loading would do no harm
anyway. What happens during loading is that you apply, via the electrode
potential you impose by the current, a certain loading of the top few
atomic layers, with the loading rapidly falling off as you go into the
bulk. The penetration distance increases with time. To a rough
approximation, this might be about the diffusion layer thickness,
given by SQRT(D*t), D being about 10^{-10} m^2/s (get out the old
envelope and try this, you might be surprised how slow this is). Until
the whole bulk is filled up, the "pressure" you apply at the surface
will thus be weakened by the flux into the interior. This is why even
with thin foils, you probably need full bulk loading, whether or not,
as I say, the effect be bulk- or surface.
Dieter Britz
[...]
> bulk. The penetration distance increases with time. To a rough
> approximation, this might be about the diffusion layer thickness,
> given by SQRT(D*t), D being about 10^{-10} m^2/s (get out the old
> envelope and try this, you might be surprised how slow this is). Until
An error there: the D I gave is about that for normal diffusion in an
electrolyte. Deuterons in Pd have a much smaller D, about 10^{-12} or
even smaller. Sorry.
In case you want to save that envelope, here is a quickie calculation.
A foil of 0.1 mm thickness, charged from both sides, would need around
2500 s for the diffusoin layer to get to the centre of the foil. At
this point, there is still a loading gradient, and you'd need a number
of these 2500 s units to get close to full loading. Use even thinner
foil! This is still very bulky.
Jed Rothwell
> . . . some number of crystal units. That number might be 10, 100, 1000.
So,
> beyond a Pd dimension of that magnitude, it would all be bulk. This
> means that a thin Pd foil of 0.1 mm thickness is as bulky as a 100 lb
> chunk.
. . .
> Until
> the whole bulk is filled up, the "pressure" you apply at the surface
> will thus be weakened by the flux into the interior. This is why even
> with thin foils, you probably need full bulk loading, whether or not,
> as I say, the effect be bulk- or surface.
Thank you. That is in line with what Oriani, Storms and many others have
said in lectures and discussions. I was trying to express -- hint at -- the
idea with a crude analogy about a glass of water. I do not know know enough
about materials to explain it the way you did.
I was under the impression that what you call "full bulk loading" is
difficult and time consuming to achieve even with thin films and finely
divided Pd black. But McKubre told me: "Resistance ratios that look like
loadings of 1.1 (or more) can easily be obtained in very thin wires (less
than 125 microns) in periods of only a few hours. The problem is a
thermodynamic one, NOT diffusion times (which are only seconds or minutes in
these structures)." Apparently the thin wires and films do load very high,
but it is not clear how high. McKubre explained that these ratios may "look
like" high loadings because of the uncertainty of the measuring techniques.
Resistance ratios have not been explored in these domains. He and Tripodi
published a paper about this.
- Jed
Kirk Shanahan
news:mjones-0205...@jump-tnt-0055.customer.jump.net
:In article
<b7966ab0a33747b6b4a...@mygate.mailgate.org>,
:"Kirk Shanahan" <kirk.s...@srs.gov> wrote:
{snip}
:***{You mean redesign, presumably.
What I meant was that you will need to make sure whatever hollow cathode
you make will be able to hold a perhaps 100-200,000 psi without
rupturing. If you've already designerd such a vessel, then you might
have to redesign it if it fails in use. If you haven't designed it yet,
then you need to. Make sure you consider hydridation-induced swelling.
(BTW, we are talking about a big, empty Arata cell here you realize.)
{snip}
: (If there is a lesson to be learned from Mizuno's heat-after-death
: result, that would seem to be it.) --MJ}***
Just to clarify, this heat-after-death event is the bucket anecdote?
Or are we speaking of something else?
{snip}
:
:***{Jed and I were talking about electrolytic loading, not gas loading.
(A
:pressure or a concentration gradient can obviously accomplish the same
:effect as a charge gradient, if the circumstances are right.) --MJ}***
:
Dieter, am I correct in assuming that electric field gradients do not
exist in the bulk of Pd cathodes? Aren't they a surface phenomenon?
{snip}
:***{Remember: we are talking about trying to produce unarguably huge OU
I've never seen such. This must not be the bucket anecdote. Where is
this published?
:numbers along the lines of Mizuno's heat-after-death result, with the
idea
:being that *big* cathodes are the key. Given that aim, I really don't
see
:how tiny fluctuations in calorimeter calibration are important: if the
:cathode continues to evaporate copious amounts of water long after the
:power has been turned off, or, e.g., shows ten times as much energy out
as
:in, then the game is pretty much up, is it not? :-) --MJ}***
:
Wait a minute! Now it's back to sounding like the bucket anecdote.
We need to clarify something here. The bucket anecdote is not an
acceptable proof of anything. There are unresolved issues, and the
scientific procedure is that when you conduct an experiment that
has unresolved issues associated with it, you have not proven
anything. A reasonable doubt exists.
The bucket 'experiment' was not a controlled experiment, which is
why I am calling it an 'anecdote'. It might have served to stimulate
Mizuno to do replications, but he didn't, so it stands as another
anomalous incident that won't be explained or even be explainable
until more work is done. Show me the 'more' and I'll worry about it.
BTW, to repeat a quote:
: I really don't see how tiny fluctuations in calorimeter calibration
: are important
That's a real problem Mitch. You need to see it. Once you do,
it becomes clear how all the claims of excess heat are, in high
probability, bogus.
---
Kirk Shanahan {My opinions...noone else's}
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Kirk Shanahan
> Kirk Shanahan writes:
>
> > Make sure they check their calorimeter calibration _during_ a CF
> > event, and via the electrolysis, not with a Joule heater, assuming
> > they get an event.
>
> It is gas loading. A 600 gram electrochemical experiment would be crazy.
>
> - Jed
If they intend on getting above the magic 0.85 D/Pd ratio, they will
need to be above 1 kbar (maybe 2) pressure. That's high pressure
apparatus.
My comment above still stands, but now I can add that they must
also describe their apparatus and how they determine loading
carefully. Note that if you plot the Baranowski data and normal
loading data on the same plot, there is a disconnect in H/M ratios.
It's hard to accurately determine the actual loading ratio in high
P apparatus. And I reemphasize that the calorimetric calibration
methodology is critical here.
ralph sansbury
"Mike Staker" <mst...@arl.mil> wrote in message news:3CDA94D5...@arl.mil...
Dieter Britz
(See my follow-up post for some numbers and a correction). Maybe
the physics buffs in this ng can help out here, but I have a feeling
that in thin films and wires, the resistance is largely that of the
surface layers, electrons tending to spend a lot of time there. Is that
correct? If so, then the R/R0 ratio would reflect that for the
near-surface loading, without the main bulk necessarily being loaded
to that extent. But, of course, if not, not.
Without cracking (and this might be McKubre's secret), transport of
deuterons into the bulk is as slow as I posted.
Kirk Shanahan
{snip}
> I have used Pd wire from AESAR - Johnson Matthey that worked to give as much as
> 63 Watts/cc of Pd excess heat.
Please describe how you determined this.
Dieter Britz
[...]
> Dieter, am I correct in assuming that electric field gradients do not
> exist in the bulk of Pd cathodes? Aren't they a surface phenomenon?
Correct; the conductivity takes care of that. But there are people
who try to pull deuterons through the metal by forcing such a field
gradient, e.g. by applying an external current between 2 points on
the electrode. Obviously, you need (and they use) rather large
currents. These are the "proton conductor" mob, they seem to like
the ring of those words, and citing Cohn's papers.
Kirk Shanahan
news:3CDBDE1D...@chem.au.dk
> Kirk Shanahan wrote:
> [...]
> > Dieter, am I correct in assuming that electric field gradients do not
> > exist in the bulk of Pd cathodes? Aren't they a surface phenomenon?
>
> Correct; the conductivity takes care of that.
So my point to Mitch is then that using field gradient arguments
to explain things in his proposed experiment is inappropriate,
unless he is planning on doing what you describe.
> But there are people
> who try to pull deuterons through the metal by forcing such a field
> gradient, e.g. by applying an external current between 2 points on
> the electrode. Obviously, you need (and they use) rather large
> currents. These are the "proton conductor" mob, they seem to like
> the ring of those words, and citing Cohn's papers.
>
> -- Dieter Britz http://www.chem.au.dk/~db
Just thinking about some of the impacts of this...
It seems to me that since you are pulling a second, much larger
current through the cathode, then it would now be heated by the
total of the two currents. (Tell me if I'm wrong.) That means
in a calorimeter a typical FPH effect calibration constant shift
would be measured on a much higher Pin. Assuming my 'under-the-
surface' recombination proposal is correct, that would suggest
that any observed Pex would be lower than in the more usual
configuration. It seems to me that this configuration is what
Mike Staker is describing. Thus it becomes even more important
that we understand his calorimetry.
I also worry about the nonidealities of reality creeping in here.
Cross-talk, spot heating, thermal gradients, all seem more likely
to cause problems, as one is apparently trying to measure the
same (approximately) size effect (small) on a larger background.
Any clarifications?
Jed Rothwell
> (See my follow-up post for some numbers and a correction). Maybe
> the physics buffs in this ng can help out here, but I have a feeling
> that in thin films and wires, the resistance is largely that of the
> surface layers, electrons tending to spend a lot of time there. Is that
> correct? If so, then the R/R0 ratio would reflect that for the
> near-surface loading, without the main bulk necessarily being loaded
> to that extent. But, of course, if not, not.
>
> Without cracking (and this might be McKubre's secret), transport of
> deuterons into the bulk is as slow as I posted.
No, it did not crack. That would be counterproductive! I wouldn't understand
the details. You should discuss it with M&T directly. Here is one of the
papers they referred to:
Physics Letters A 276 (2000) 1-5, "Temperature coefficient of resistivity at
compositions approaching PdH," P. Tripodi, M.C.H. McKubre, F.L. Tanzellaa,
P.A. Honnor, D. Di Gioacchino, F. Celani b, V. Violante, accepted 30
September 2000
Abstract
"Measurements have been made of the temperature coefficient of resistivity,
lambda, versus hydrogen concentration, H/Pd, at very high concentrations in
the Pd-H system. Unusually high hydrogen compositions were achieved using an
electrochemical loading procedure which allowed stable Pd-H systems to be
obtained. It is well known that increasing the H/Pd concentrations leads to
three different phases (alpha, alpha + beta, beta), respectively, in the
Pd-H system; the phase is thought to end in an asymptotic limit. Possible
evidence that a new phase (gama) exists, bordering the phase at compositions
H/Pd > 0.9 is reported and discussed."
- Jed
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones writes:
>
> > > > ***{Since Pd loads from the outside to the inside, the above
> statement, if
> > > > true, constitutes virtual smoking gun proof that CF is a bulk effect .
> . .
> > >
> > > That is what many people thought, years ago, but perhaps not.
> >
> > ***{You say perhaps, which indicates uncertainty, and yet you insist that
> > looking for a benefits-of-size effect would be a waste of time. You can't
> > have it both ways. --MJ}***
>
> I was merely being polite. I think the evidence for a surface reaction is
> overwhelming.
***{A belief which, thus far, you have utterly failed to support. --MJ}***
> > It now seems that full loading of Pd is only required because until
the bulk is
> > > filled, not much deuterium remains at the surface levels, and other
essential
> > > surface conditions, such as high OCV are not achieved. It is like
filling a
> > > 10 cm deep cup, you might say, and then using only the water at the top
> > > 1 centimeter.
> >
> > ***{That may be what you think is most likely . . .
>
> No me, actually. Storms and many others.
***{My remarks are replies to *your* comments, and are based on the
assumption that you believe what you are saying. If that is incorrect,
then any discussion with you is a waste of time. --MJ}***
Also bear in mind that my statement
> was a mere analogy.
***{The main point is that it is a false analogy: its inherent pattern
does *not* parallel the physical reality which it supposedly illustrates.
--MJ}***
> > Frankly, to take such a
> > position strikes me as absurd. Electrons are far more mobile in a Pd
> > lattice than are deuterons, and it seems obvious that when loading begins,
> > the electrons will reach the surface before the deuterons penetrate deeply
> > into the bulk . . .
>
> Are you seriously hypothesizing about this idea based on a single, grossly
> oversimplified analogy from me?
***{You made a false analogy, and I responded by pointing out why it is
false. What did you expect me to do, shower you with praises? --MJ}***
You have no clue what evidence has been
> found in favor of a surface reaction!
***{That's just more non-substantive silliness. If you want to defend your
position, do so. Otherwise, please stop wasting my time. --MJ}***
> >And what
> > this illustrates, vis-a-vis the original issue, is why research funding
> > should be disseminated by its original owners, so that it will flow into a
> > broadly diverse array of approaches, rather than being filtered through a
> > monolithic governmental bureaucracy . . .
>
> WHAT governmental bureaucracy?!? What on earth are you talking about?
> That's the craziest thing I have read in quite a while.
***{I'm sorry. I assumed that your long-term memory was intact and
functioning, and thus that you would remember the full context of the
discussion. However, since that is clearly not the case, let me be more
explicit: your continued insistence that pursuing a benefits-of-size
hypothesis would be a waste of time, despite the obvious deficiencies in
the reasoning by which you have reached that conclusion, is a perfect
illustration of why, for 50 years, all governmental funding for fusion
research has gone to people who were bent on the brute force approach to
getting nuclei together--i.e., to "hot fusion" research. The point is that
people are prone, in order to appear more knowledgeable than they are, to
claim more certainty than the facts warrant, and when flawed individuals
of that sort make the research funding decisions for an entire nation, it
is virtually guaranteed that they, like you, will rule out approaches
that, in fact, ought to be investigated. The implication of such an
insight, as I said earlier, is that research funding should be
disseminated by its original owners rather than by the government, so that
it will flow into a broadly diverse array of approaches, and the chance
that the problem will be solved will thereby be maximized. --MJ}***
Let us get a few things
> straight here:
>
> 1. My analogy about surface versus bulk originated from lectures and
> discussions at ICCF and JCF conferences, and informal chats. I did not get
> the idea from a monolithic governmental bureaucracy -- I got it directly
> from the researchers, the "original owners" as you put it. I cannot imagine
> what made you think a government had anything to do with it.
***{I didn't think that, and if your brain were not shorting out under the
stress of this discussion, you would be aware of that state of affairs.
--MJ}***
> 2. Research funding for CF in most labs does not come from monolithic
> governmental bureaucracy. It does not come from anywhere. We pay for it
> ourselves. Mizuno, Ohmori, I and many others purchase the instruments and
> materials. Obviously the research at Mitsubishi is paid for out of corporate
> funding. The Japanese and Italian governments do contribute a little to some
> experiments, but as Takahashi says, it hardly amounts to sparrow's tears.
>
> 3. In the U.S., as far as I know, the only government contribution to CF in
> the last ten years has been a small amount of DARPA funding on the positive
> side, and on the negatives side direct orders from high Navy brass shutting
> down all Navy research and gagging the researchers -- that is, ordering them
> not to discuss or publish the research. Perhaps there has been other
> government involvement but I did not hear about it.
>
> - Jed
===============================================
Mitchell Jones
<jedro...@infinite-energy.com> wrote:
***{So you say. But given the rewards that would be attendant upon success
if you actually believed your own excuses, and the decade that has passed
during which you guys could have been bringing your skills up to speed,
your story is sounding more and more like the bigfoot myth to me. On the
one hand, we have a supposed giant anthropoid ape wandering about in
western North America, one of the most thoroughly explored, trapped, and
hunted areas on the face of the Earth, and despite "sightings" going back
more than 100 years, not a single "bigfoot" has ever been captured or
killed or caught in a trap, and no remains have ever been found. On the
other hand, we have supposed "heat-after-death" cathodes that "any
competent electrochemist" can produce "on demand" if he uses the magical
"Johnson-Matthey type-A palladium," and, as a consequence, the aforesaid
"competent electrochemist" can solve world hunger and air pollution,
become rich and famous, win a Nobel prize, etc. And yet, despite your
allegations that this state of affairs has existed for more than a decade,
all of the "hundreds" of people who are supposedly privy to this
information, including you, Gene Mallove, and the lab staff at NERL, are
just sitting around moaning, deterred by the supposedly gargantuan task of
learning the required electrochemistry. Well, pardon me for saying so, but
that story reeks, and the longer you guys sit on your hands and lament
your fate while using it as an excuse, the less credibility you are going
to have. --MJ}***
ralph sansbury
> ralph sansbury wrote:
> >
> > I am trying to replicate the P&F effect and to test the effect of
> > applying rapidly switched high voltage pulses of 20 to 40ns duration and
> > with various
> > time intervals between pulses to the palladium after loading according
to
> > the P&F method but with a small current in a weakly conductive Lithium
etc
> > electrolyte.
>
> This underlines the advice I have given you before: leave it alone.
> For example, the metal/electrolyte interface acts like a (rather pure)
> capacitor, around 40 uF/cm^2, and the electrolytic current can be
> equivalenced as a small resistance parallel to that capacitor. The
> resulting interface impedance is in series with the electrolyte
> and maybe some other, resistances. Voltage pulses as short as those
> you mention would merely charge and discharge the capacitor, and most
> of the voltage would be across the resistance.
There would also be a greater voltage across the charged capacitor and
like the voltage across the resistance it would be very small during each of
the thousands of pulses per second.
And, as you suggest there would be little charge transport during the
rise and fall times of the 40ns pulse.
That is ok.
The effects of charge transport in terms of pushing deuterons next to
the free electrons on the Pd electrode etc will have occurred.
The idea is to then add these voltage pulses to produce effects on the
interiors of the deuterons on the Pd and not to disturb the presence of the
deuterons on the Pd.
If a cylindrical surface around the Pd rod in the center is positvely
charged and the Pd rod in the center is grounded and the electrolyte is
replaced with pure D2O then there would even less charge transport.
The effect of the voltage difference then would be to produce a
redistribution of charge in the Pd etc that would cancel the effects of the
applied field. Mostly more electrons would be drawn from the ground into the
Pd rod.
But before and during this charge transport, the voltage difference will
act briefly- without being cancelled- on the atomic nuclei including the
deuterons. And each time the voltage increases during the rise time of the
voltage pulse there may be an effect on the deuterons and other atomic
nuclei.
Gordon D. Pusch
> Maybe the physics buffs in this ng can help out here, but I have a
> feeling that in thin films and wires, the resistance is largely that
> of the surface layers, electrons tending to spend a lot of time there.
> Is that correct?
Not for D.C. currents, no. For a wire conducting a D.C. current, there will
be an essentially uniform current density throughout the bulk of a wire;
thin films are more complicated, because the current flow will be quasi-
two-dimensional rather than quasi-one-dimensional, and will tend to
diverge from the positive contact and converge on the negative contact.
(I think you may be confusing the tendency for a net _electrostatic_ charge
to reside on the outer surface of a conductor with what conduction electrons
do in the presence of a voltage gradient.)
-- Gordon D. Pusch
perl -e '$_ = "gdpusch\@NO.xnet.SPAM.com\n"; s/NO\.//; s/SPAM\.//; print;'
ralph sansbury
"ralph sansbury" <sans...@bestweb.net> wrote in message news:udnn17q...@corp.supernews.com...
How exactly do you measure R/Ro and D/Pd?
Another question:Assuming the excess heat produced by electrolysis of D2O and Pd is due to heat produced inside the palladium by nuclear or other reactions, then the heat could be transferred from the Pd rod to a lead connecting the Pd rod to ground through a second chamber.The D2O electrolyte could be released by a glass valve connection to this chamber before the HV pulses are applied to the Pd rod and a surrounding cylindrical surface or coil.The excess heat produced in the Pd rod conducted into the lead would warm the electrolyte and thermistor inside this chamber.Other causes of heat would be 1) the previous effect of continuous current on the solution and on the lead2) the effect of non continuous pulses of current through the lead.The values for these could be subtracted from the observed thermistor readings in the lower chamber.The question then is how to accurately determine these values?
ralph sansbury
"Mike Staker" <mst...@arl.mil> wrote in message news:3CDA94D5...@arl.mil...
Dieter Britz
>
> Dieter Britz writes:
>
> > (See my follow-up post for some numbers and a correction). Maybe
> > the physics buffs in this ng can help out here, but I have a feeling
> > that in thin films and wires, the resistance is largely that of the
> > surface layers, electrons tending to spend a lot of time there. Is that
> > correct? If so, then the R/R0 ratio would reflect that for the
> > near-surface loading, without the main bulk necessarily being loaded
> > to that extent. But, of course, if not, not.
> >
> > Without cracking (and this might be McKubre's secret), transport of
> > deuterons into the bulk is as slow as I posted.
>
> No, it did not crack. That would be counterproductive! I wouldn't understand
> the details. You should discuss it with M&T directly. Here is one of the
> papers they referred to:
>
> Physics Letters A 276 (2000) 1-5, "Temperature coefficient of resistivity at
> compositions approaching PdH," P. Tripodi, M.C.H. McKubre, F.L. Tanzellaa,
> P.A. Honnor, D. Di Gioacchino, F. Celani b, V. Violante, accepted 30
> September 2000
Damn, I don't think I saw that one. Thanks for the tip-off.
But, if they don't have cracks, then transport of deuterons within
the Pd will be slow, slow. I will get and read that paper and see
what they say.
Dieter Britz
>
> Dieter Britz <d...@chem.au.dk> writes:
>
> > Maybe the physics buffs in this ng can help out here, but I have a
> > feeling that in thin films and wires, the resistance is largely that
> > of the surface layers, electrons tending to spend a lot of time there.
> > Is that correct?
>
> Not for D.C. currents, no. For a wire conducting a D.C. current, there will
> be an essentially uniform current density throughout the bulk of a wire;
> thin films are more complicated, because the current flow will be quasi-
> two-dimensional rather than quasi-one-dimensional, and will tend to
> diverge from the positive contact and converge on the negative contact.
>
> (I think you may be confusing the tendency for a net _electrostatic_ charge
> to reside on the outer surface of a conductor with what conduction electrons
> do in the presence of a voltage gradient.)
Thanks; I had an idea I was off the track here. OK; in that case,
the R/R0 must follow the loading as from the calibration curve,
period.
However, if the loading proceeeds (as it does) from the outside in,
then, before full uniform loading, we have a nonuniform conductor
and the R/R0 ratio will be an integrated quantity that will reflect
the average loading and can't give any information about the loading
distribution through the cathode piece. R might even be anisotropic,
come to think of it. All very complicated.
Dieter Britz
message along with this and had to cut/paste it and add my own
citation marks, which will make me think twice about replying to
one og his messages again)
> I gather the R/Ro measurement is based on changes in current associated > with a given applied voltage and that as deuterons are pulled
> onto the Palladium, there is an increase or decrease in the current and > so a decrease or increase in resistance in the electrolyte relative to
> the initial resistance.
> What again are some possible reasons for this and what is the > correlation of this with excess heat and the delay before the sudden > spike
> in excess heat is observed??
Once again, you show us why you should not try these sorts of
experiments. Deuterons do not get pulled onto the Pd. Heavy water,
already sitting near the Pd/electrolyte interface, gets reduced to
D atoms that sit on the Pd surface, and can either dip in and become
deuterons inside the Pd, or a given D can go off and find another one
of its kind, form D2, which then can go on to find more of the same,
and eventually form a bubble that floats to the top. The latter is
the main reaction after full loading.
Changes in R/R0 cannot (or can only to an insignificant extent) be
seen in the electrochemical parameters like cell voltage or -current.
R/R0 needs to be measured directly on the Pd piece, independently of
the electrochemistry. They use a four-point setup, passing a current
through the metal by two of them, and measuring the voltage across the
other two. That current has no impact on the electrochemical processes
taking place.
When I say, to an insignificant extent, above, I mean by that the
following. If the Pd's geometry is such that the cathode itself has
a resistance not below some tiny fraction of the electrolyte
resistance, then it would affect the total cell voltage, and thus,
if it increases (R/R0 ratio increases initially with loading), it
would cause an increase in cell voltage. That might just apply to
very fine, long, Pd wires or very thin Pd foils. Normally, the Pd's
resistance is tiny compared with that of the electrolyte, and then
R/R0 changes would have no effect on total cell voltage.
Gordon D. Pusch
Correct: If the conductor is non-uniform, the current density will also
be non-uniform, and one will only get an estimate of the cross-sectional
average of the conductivity. One will not be able to uniquely infer the
radial loading profile from the resistance curve alone.
(Given a detailed time-history of the resistance, and a reasonable physical
model of D diffusion in Pd, one *might* be able to get *some* idea of the
radial profile by treating it as an ``inverse problem,'' but I would not
consider the results very reliable...)
ralph sansbury
>Deuterons do not get pulled onto the Pd. Heavy water,
> already sitting near the Pd/electrolyte interface, gets reduced to
> D atoms that sit on the Pd surface, and can either dip in and become
> deuterons inside the Pd,
But how does it get reduced and why does it dip in? Maybe you missed
the high school physics requirement for chemistry and electrochemistry in
college.
There are electrical forces that in billions of thermal collisions of
charged and neutral but polarized or of sometimes polarized particles in the
electrolyte causes a breakup of D2O and possibly D2 near the negatively
charged Pd surface and a break up of D2O near the postively charged Pt
electrode releasing O and forming O2 bubbles etc.
I dont see how you can tell if the deuterium nuclei are pulled in or the
deuterium atoms are pulled in. Since the surface is charged I would think
the deuterium atoms might be broken up and free electrons in the Pd surface
might push away an electron from the deuterium atom in the solution and pull
just the deuterium nucleus in.
Or it may be that there is a slight polarization of positive charge due
to the neutron in the nucleus of deuterium and so one side of the atom might
be slightly positive and oriented toward the Pd surface and pulled in as a
whole into the surface more often than not.
> or
or a given D can go off and find another one
> of its kind, form D2, which then can go on to find more of the same,
> and eventually form a bubble that floats to the top. The latter is
> the main reaction after full loading.
> Changes in R/R0 cannot (or can only to an insignificant extent) be
> seen in the electrochemical parameters like cell voltage or -current.
> R/R0 needs to be measured directly on the Pd piece, independently of
> the electrochemistry. They use a four-point setup, passing a current
> through the metal by two of them, and measuring the voltage across the
> other two.
So for example in the P&F experiment with a 1.25cm long and .1cm
diameter rod Pd rod there are a total of four Pt connecting wires heat
welded to the Pt rod.
And while the electrolysis current is going through one of these a
voltage is applied across the other two connecting wires perhaps joined at
points on opposite sides of the rod and then another two connecting wires
from these same points are connected to the points of a voltmeter so as to
show the voltage drop across this other current going through the Pd
rod.Right?
>That current has no impact on the electrochemical processes
> taking place.
>
Dont forget the heat welding of the contacts. It is hard to believe
that this process might not influence the strange stuff that happens in this
particular electrochemical process as well as in other electrochemical
processes. Its not just enough to state that it doesn't.
> When I say, to an insignificant extent, above, I mean by that the
> following. If the Pd's geometry is such that the cathode itself has
> a resistance not below some tiny fraction of the electrolyte
> resistance, then it would affect the total cell voltage, and thus,
> if it increases (R/R0 ratio increases initially with loading), it
> would cause an increase in cell voltage. That might just apply to
> very fine, long, Pd wires or very thin Pd foils. Normally, the Pd's
> resistance is tiny compared with that of the electrolyte, and then
> R/R0 changes would have no effect on total cell voltage.
>
This depends on what you mean by 'tiny' describing the ratio of Pd
resistance to electrolyte resistance
I should think there are resistance measurment devices out there showing
small associated voltage changes that could show the small increase in
resistance you say is associated with loading but maybe not.
By the way I assume the reference point for this increase of resistance
in the Pd is the resistance before electrolysis begins and that the ratio of
R/Ro is greater than one.??
Also how does it again correlate over time with the beginning of
electrolysis and the beginning of loading?
I assume the reason for the increase in resistance in the Pd is due to the
loss of free electrons in the Pd as they become more tightly bound to the
deuterium atoms amid the Pd atoms. The power supply sustaining the voltage
between the Pd and the Pt should replenish lost electrons on the surface but
the inner layers where the current is moving when it is direct or at low
frequencies will be influenced by the loss of free electrons in these
regions.
Dieter Britz
>
> "Dieter Britz" <d...@chem.au.dk> wrote in message
> news:3CDD3260...@chem.au.dk...
>
> >Deuterons do not get pulled onto the Pd. Heavy water,
> > already sitting near the Pd/electrolyte interface, gets reduced to
> > D atoms that sit on the Pd surface, and can either dip in and become
> > deuterons inside the Pd,
> But how does it get reduced and why does it dip in? Maybe you missed
> the high school physics requirement for chemistry and electrochemistry in
> college.
And maybe I didn't. What are you trying to say here?
> There are electrical forces that in billions of thermal collisions of
> charged and neutral but polarized or of sometimes polarized particles in the
> electrolyte causes a breakup of D2O and possibly D2 near the negatively
> charged Pd surface and a break up of D2O near the postively charged Pt
> electrode releasing O and forming O2 bubbles etc.
> I dont see how you can tell if the deuterium nuclei are pulled in or the
> deuterium atoms are pulled in. Since the surface is charged I would think
> the deuterium atoms might be broken up and free electrons in the Pd surface
> might push away an electron from the deuterium atom in the solution and pull
> just the deuterium nucleus in.
> Or it may be that there is a slight polarization of positive charge due
> to the neutron in the nucleus of deuterium and so one side of the atom might
> be slightly positive and oriented toward the Pd surface and pulled in as a
> whole into the surface more often than not.
Or not. Before we speculate in a ng, it might help to look at what
is already concensus among the experts. Just because you don't know
something, doesn't mean that nobody else knows it either. The hydrogen
evolution reaction, and specifically the her taking place at Pd, has
been extensively studied. Maybe you could start with Green et al,
J. Electroanal. Chem. 412 (1996) 59-, where the various reactions for
deuterium evolution are measured and discussed.
The experts can be wrong, but the likelihood is that they are not.
> This depends on what you mean by 'tiny' describing the ratio of Pd
> resistance to electrolyte resistance
Tiny might mean so small that the effect falls within the precision
of the measurement. I.e. that of total cell voltage. Remember, that
fluctuates in time. I'd put "tiny" at about 1% of the total.
> By the way I assume the reference point for this increase of resistance
> in the Pd is the resistance before electrolysis begins and that the ratio of
> R/Ro is greater than one.??
Initially, R/R0 goes up as loading increases, goes through a maximum
of 1.8 at some loading which I forget, then goes down again. This too,
you can look up in the literature, in books with titles like Hydrogen
in Metals. There are a few.
ralph sansbury
> ralph sansbury wrote:
> >
> > "Dieter Britz" <d...@chem.au.dk> wrote in message
> > news:3CDD3260...@chem.au.dk...
>
If you have read this and still think that deuterium dips into
the Pd surface and is not pulled in or that the deuterium nucleus
is not pulled in (which seems more likely from the basic physics
of electrical forces here),
I dont see much point.
If on the other had this paper indicates shows that neither of
these things is happening and that something else is, what is it
and what is the evidence?
Dieter Britz
[...]
> what
> > is already concensus among the experts. Just because you don't
> know
> > something, doesn't mean that nobody else knows it either. The
> hydrogen
> > evolution reaction, and specifically the her taking place at
> Pd, has
> > been extensively studied. Maybe you could start with Green et
> al,
> > J. Electroanal. Chem. 412 (1996) 59-, where the various
> reactions for
> > deuterium evolution are measured and discussed.
>
> If you have read this and still think that deuterium dips into
> the Pd surface and is not pulled in or that the deuterium nucleus
> is not pulled in (which seems more likely from the basic physics
> of electrical forces here),
> I dont see much point.
> If on the other had this paper indicates shows that neither of
> these things is happening and that something else is, what is it
> and what is the evidence?
Er, have YOU read this? Your response reads as if I would agree
with what you are claiming, if I had read that paper. I assure you,
I have {:], but have you?
When heavy water is reduced, a D atom sits at the interface (and an
OD- ion wanders off). The D is a neutral object, so there is no
electrostatic "pull" into the Pd. There is a thermodynamic probability
that it will enter the crystal lattice, but no "pull". Now you'll tell
me once again that I don't know enough physics. Well, one never knows
enough, does one.
ralph sansbury
> ralph sansbury wrote:
> [...]
> > > > "Dieter Britz" <d...@chem.au.dk> wrote in message
> > > > news:3CDD3260...@chem.au.dk...
> > al,
> > > J. Electroanal. Chem. 412 (1996) 59-, where the various
> > reactions for
> > > deuterium evolution are measured and discussed.
> >
> > If you have read this and still think that deuterium dips
into
> > the Pd surface and is not pulled in or that the deuterium
nucleus
> > is not pulled in (which seems more likely from the basic
physics
> > of electrical forces here),
> > I dont see much point.
> > these things is happening and that something else is, what is
it
> > and what is the evidence?
>
>
(and an
> OD- ion wanders off).
greater probability
that a D ion and an OD ion are formed and then that a D ion loses
its charge when
D2O or LiOD is sitting next to Pd and the Pd is connected to a
negative charge source like the ground
and there is a Pt electrode separated by the electrolyte
connected to a positive power source that removes
free electrons from the Pt electrode so as to maintain a given
level, all of this implies a reason for the
themodynamic greater probability in this context than is some
other context.
Lets work backwards. When you push something that is not too
heavy in a specific direction, there is a greater
probability it will move in that direction. Hence when you notice
a number of things have moved in one direction than
another and this happens again and again, then you conclude from
the non uniform relative frequency distribution that there is
something
pushing or pulling these things in this preferred direction.
The D is a neutral object, so there is no
> electrostatic "pull" into the Pd.
This is impossible initially because you are breaking up a
neutral molecule into parts such that the total charge is zero.
Also, neutral objects contain charged particles in constant
motion that under the influence of other neutral or non neutral
groups of moving charged particles
become polarized over short time intervals and may have a net
polarization in some preferred direction over long time interval.
This is the basic physics of the electrical interactions that
explain chemical reactions.
>There is a thermodynamic probability
> that it will enter the crystal lattice, but no "pull". Now
you'll tell
> me once again that I don't know enough physics. Well, one never
knows
> enough, does one.
But you do know where a table of probabilities exists and
smoler ar ochsa brod.
Dennis Towne
>
> "Dieter Britz" <d...@chem.au.dk> wrote in message
> news:3CDFCF48...@chem.au.dk...
[snip, and reformat for readability]
> > When heavy water is reduced, a D atom sits at the interface
> (and an
> > OD- ion wanders off).
[snip]
> > The D is a neutral object, so there is no
> > electrostatic "pull" into the Pd.
>
> This is impossible initially because you are breaking up a
> neutral molecule into parts such that the total charge is zero.
Ralph, what part of 'heavy water is reduced' do you not understand in
the above context? Your statement implies a complete lack of knowledge
of what electrolosis even is, yet here you are arguing about it. And
with Dieter Britz no less! Incredible...
-dennis T
sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il
: In my case, I don't wonder, I know! I have attended enough lectures about
: electrochemistry at ICCF conferences and elsewhere to know that most of the
: Bockris textbooks are over my head. WAY over my head.
And yet he never even considers for a moment the possibility that the
scientific criticisms of the CF experiments might be justified, but WAY
over his head.
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
". . .Mr Schutz [sic] acts like a functional electro-terrorist who
impeads [sic] scientific communications with his too oft-silliness."
-- Mitchell Swartz, sci.physics.fusion article <EEI1o...@world.std.com>
Jed Rothwell
> : In my case, I don't wonder, I know! I have attended enough lectures
about
> : electrochemistry at ICCF conferences and elsewhere to know that most of
the
> : Bockris textbooks are over my head. WAY over my head.
>
> And yet he never even considers for a moment the possibility that the
> scientific criticisms of the CF experiments might be justified, but WAY
> over his head.
Two types of scientific criticisms of CF experiments have been offered:
1. Criticisms based on conventional thermodynamics and chemistry, such as
your claim that 100 grams of matter can evaporate 37 liters of water with a
"mundane explanation." I understand these arguments perfectly. They are all
incorrect. Strictly speaking, your arguments are not "scientific" and they
have no logical content because they are not falsifiable. You refuse to
specify any method of detecting this phantom "mundane" reaction. Others such
as Kunich have suggested that a liter of water can evaporate in a few hours
from a bucket left in a room. This is, at least, falsifiable. It might be
true, and we can do a test to find out. Of course in the real world it is
false, and ludicrous.
2. Criticisms based on nuclear physics. I do not understand these, however
they are all overruled by experiment and by much more basic,
well-established laws of chemistry. CF produces orders of magnitude more
energy than any chemical system can. It also produces tritium,
transmutations, gamma rays and other widely replicated, high-sigma,
incontrovertible proof of a nuclear reaction. Appeals to theory and
criticism based upon theory can never overrule such experimental proof.
- Jed
Nick Maclaren
In article <3ce2c...@nopics.sjc>,
"Jed Rothwell" <jedro...@infinite-energy.com> writes:
|>
|> Two types of scientific criticisms of CF experiments have been offered:
|>
|> 1. Criticisms based on conventional thermodynamics and chemistry, such as
|> your claim that 100 grams of matter can evaporate 37 liters of water with a
|> "mundane explanation." I understand these arguments perfectly. They are all
|> incorrect. Strictly speaking, your arguments are not "scientific" and they
|> have no logical content because they are not falsifiable. You refuse to
|> specify any method of detecting this phantom "mundane" reaction. Others such
|> as Kunich have suggested that a liter of water can evaporate in a few hours
|> from a bucket left in a room. This is, at least, falsifiable. It might be
|> true, and we can do a test to find out. Of course in the real world it is
|> false, and ludicrous.
|>
|> 2. Criticisms based on nuclear physics. I do not understand these, however
|> they are all overruled by experiment and by much more basic,
|> well-established laws of chemistry. CF produces orders of magnitude more
|> energy than any chemical system can. It also produces tritium,
|> transmutations, gamma rays and other widely replicated, high-sigma,
|> incontrovertible proof of a nuclear reaction. Appeals to theory and
|> criticism based upon theory can never overrule such experimental proof.
Well, some years back I posted a question about the claimed "energy
storage" explanation, pointing out that it offered the capability
to beat LiH battery capacity by a considerable margin. I asked
a definite question:
Was anyone doing CAREFUL measurements on the MINIMUM amount of
stored energy to explain the phenomena observed, and calculations
of the MAXIMUM amount that could be explained by KNOWN physical
and chemical processes using THOSE materials?
There was a deafening silence from both sides. Yes, there have been
such claims - that is not my point. It doesn't actually matter
whether fusion is going on from the point of view of scientific and
commercial importance. If there is hard evidence that more energy
can be produced (whether from conversion or storage) than can be
accounted for by existing theory, then there is a phenomenon worth
investigating. Whatever it is.
And that is the reason that I regarded many of the "explanations"
as unscientific. Showing the absence of emissions is merely part
of a proper explanation. If there is still something incompatible
with existing theory, no true scientist would close the book and
say "this is not worth investigating". It wouldn't be the first
time that scientists started looking for A and found B.
Note that I don't have a clue if the prerequisite is the case,
which is why I asked. I still don't know - not that my views
matter.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email: nm...@cam.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679
Jed Rothwell
> to beat LiH battery capacity by a considerable margin. I asked
> a definite question:
>
> Was anyone doing CAREFUL measurements on the MINIMUM amount of
> stored energy to explain the phenomena observed, and calculations
> of the MAXIMUM amount that could be explained by KNOWN physical
> and chemical processes using THOSE materials?
>
> There was a deafening silence from both sides.
I never saw that question. The answer is yes, countless people have made
careful measurements of the minimum and maxiumum chemical energy in CF
systems. These estimates have sometimes shown that CF reactions can produce
5 or 6 orders of magnitude more energy than any possible chemical reaction.
Perhaps the most carefull inventory may be found in: McKubre, M. C. H., et
al., Development of Advanced Concepts for Nuclear Processes in Deuterated
Metals, EPRI TR-104195, p. 3A-14 through 3A-16.
- Jed
Kirk Shanahan
news:acvqaj$65q$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk
{snip}
> Well, some years back I posted a question about the claimed "energy
> storage" explanation, pointing out that it offered the capability
> to beat LiH battery capacity by a considerable margin. I asked
> a definite question:
>
> Was anyone doing CAREFUL measurements on the MINIMUM amount of
> stored energy to explain the phenomena observed, and calculations
> of the MAXIMUM amount that could be explained by KNOWN physical
> and chemical processes using THOSE materials?
>
{snip}
If you believe the excess heat calorimetry, the amount of heat
released so far exceeds the amount storable in _any_ chemical form
in the _entire_ cell+calorimeter, that your question is
meaningless.
The idea is that the released heat is so large that it must be a
nuclear process at work, because that's the only way to get those
high energies. Of course, the alternative is to suspect an error
in the energy measurement, and I have just published a paper that
shows what that error might be in a real world case. I find the
error more believable than the nuclear option. And that means -
no excess heat.
Dieter Britz
Given the SUBJECT of this thread, I point out that while you examined
a case of a few % excess heat, the discussion started with about 40 L
of water being evaporated by a turned-off cell. You must admit that,
if that actually happened, no amount of calorimeter calibrating can
explain that away. I mention this before Rothwell does (or maybe he
has, already).
Kirk L. Shanahan
:Kirk Shanahan wrote:
:>
:> "Nick Maclaren" <nm...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
:> news:acvqaj$65q$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk
:>
{snip}
:
:Given the SUBJECT of this thread, I point out that while you examined
:a case of a few % excess heat, the discussion started with about 40 L
:of water being evaporated by a turned-off cell. You must admit that,
:if that actually happened, no amount of calorimeter calibrating can
:explain that away. I mention this before Rothwell does (or maybe he
:has, already).
:
:-- Dieter Britz http://www.chem.au.dk/~db
Wow! In 5+ lines you've required me to generate a longish answer
by raising several topics at once!
Re: "the SUBJECT"
I think the thread has mutated a bit, and I interpreted Nick's
comments/questions to be more general, so I answered him in
general. If Nick was discussing only the Mizuno bucket
observation, I apologize.
Re: the Mizuno bucket anecdote
After seeing what hs been described here, and a couple of relevant pages
from the Mizuno book, I have to conclude the event described should be
classed as an anecdote. There was no explicit _control_ of anything,
and data collection was spotty over an extended time frame. This
doesn't qualify as an 'experiment' in my lexicon.
So what we have is a report that c. 40L of water disappeared over a few
days time frame. I have proposed two different scenarios as to how
that could happen without invoking cold fusion: 1) Evaporation driven
by air flow in the room, and 2) vermin using the bucket as a watering
hole. Since no observations were made relevant to either of these two
scenarios, they can't be eliminated. This leaves us with possible
mundane explanations and the revolutionary new physics proposal. I
opt to be conservative here and believe there is a mundane explanation
that would be found with some real investigative follow-up. If Mizuno
and supporters want us to believe the new physics thing, then they need
to convincingly prove it, which leads me back to the calorimetry
issue.
Re: the "few % excess"
My paper reanalyzing Ed Storms' work did suggest a few % excess heat
signal could be the systematic error I describe. However, defining
exactly the number of %'s is an attempt to define the maximum
amount a given experimenter can mess up an experiment. I think we
all realize that is almost undefineable. I find it easy to
believe that since Ed was a reasonably careful experimentalist, his
few % (~5% 3-sigma) could easily be multiplied by a factor of 10 in
worst cases, but that 'belief' doesn't place any limits on how bad
a particular run might get. The interesting observation is that
that 50% number encompasses a large majority of excess heat reports,
and since no one has documented their calibration procedure to show
they avoid the systematic error, I again conservatively conclude
no compelling evidence for excess heat exists. Note that I do
explicitly acknowledge a real FPH effect, but it is not nuclear
and requires no new physics, just some intriguing chemistry.
So my general comments to Nick were aimed at pointing out that
a) if you believe the calorimetry (including the bucket anecdote!)
then there is more energy showing up than can be explained
chemically, and b) that suggests the excess heat numbers might
be erroneous. My paper shows how that would work. Now it's up
to the CF researchers to prove they don't have the error I
describe in their work.
Re: "You must admit that, if that actually happened, no amount of
calorimeter calibrating can explain that away"
Actually, in the bucket scenario, to do it right you would have
to calibrate the water loss rate by evaporation, and control
vermin access, so I _don't_ have to admit any such thing...;-}
Jed Rothwell
> days time frame. I have proposed two different scenarios as to how
> that could happen without invoking cold fusion: 1) Evaporation driven
> by air flow in the room, and 2) vermin using the bucket as a watering
> hole.
That is preposterous for the following reasons:
1. You ignore the fact that the cell remained palpably hot, and the
thermocouple inside it showed the temperature was between 60 and 100 deg C
(gradually cooling).
2. No amount of evaporation in a habitable room could evaporate water at
this rate.
3. No "vermin" drinks water at the rate of 1 liter every three hours. Even a
person would have difficulty drinking this much, and homo sapiens is one of
the largest species. There are, in any case, countless other water sources
around including a large pond right outside the building, with ducks and
fish, which probably does not freeze through.
- Jed
sch...@gefen.cc.biu.ac.il
: 1. You ignore the fact that the cell remained palpably hot, and the
: thermocouple inside it showed the temperature was between 60 and 100 deg C
: (gradually cooling).
Why did he keep the thermocouple connected to the power supply but fail
to do the obvious control experiment?
: 2. No amount of evaporation in a habitable room could evaporate water at
: this rate.
It has been shown that the rate of evaporation is not unreasonable.
: 3. No "vermin" drinks water at the rate of 1 liter every three hours. Even a
: person would have difficulty drinking this much, and homo sapiens is one of
: the largest species. There are, in any case, countless other water sources
: around including a large pond right outside the building, with ducks and
: fish, which probably does not freeze through.
The "vermin" explanation does not have to account for *all* of the
evaporation. Or didn't you know that? Personally, I prefer the "bucket
got kicked over by a student" theory.