This is just an observation that may or may not be serendipitous, but
striking enough to me to document it.
This morning I thought my electric coffee pot was malfunctioning. It
was very loud and quite disconcerting for a while until I figured out
what was happening. It was cavitating loudly, far more loudly than
usual, so I had the impression the heating filament might have
shorted partially or something and thus be producing a lot more heat
than usual. I opened the top and looked in and saw nothing unusual,
except an atypical slight coating of scale on part of the bottom. I
expected to see a lot of bubbling, but there were no significant
bubbles. The pot did seem to finish heating rapidly too (it has a
thermostatic cut-off).
The salt in my water softener ran out recently, so I've had hard
water for a day or two. The water here is very hard in calcium, but
has very little iron. It scales up coffee pots, silverware and
dishes very quickly. I replaced the salt yesterday so I am now back
to normal softened water, which has some sodium chloride content, but
almost no calcium. I figure the unusual cavitation is due to the
action of the salt water (or possibly just the water) on the heated
calcium scale. Perhaps it is just due to the microscopically rough
surface the calcified stainless steel provides - providing many
bubble nucleation sites. Or ... perhaps there is something
extraordinary going on energetically at the calcium-sodium-water
interface.
This experience reminds me of the various conjectures, centered on
the differences in the water, regarding why the Potapov cavitation
device worked in Russia but not when taken to LANL for evaluation.
LANL supplied pure water was used in the LANL test. Too bad Potopov
didn't bring his own water for the test (which was not pure, but his
local water.) Perhaps calcium, or at least some calcium salt or
microscopic scale flakes, play a key role in nucleating and even
catalyzing energetic hydrogen reactions. Such a hypothesis no longer
seems to me so far fetched now there is evidence that CaO layers
within a Pd matrix can produce heavy nucleus transmutations when in
the presence of diffusing hydrogen.
It may also be of interest that calcium oxide (or calcium hydroxide)
can be purchased at Wal-Mart under the name of "Pickling Lime". The
brand they carried last I bought some was "Ball". Note - CaO added
to water produces calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)2. Hard water scale is
typically calcium carbonate, which can be deposited artificially by
use of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). Scale forms when a
saturated calcium carbonate solution is heated - which is why it
forms in hot water heaters. A possible way to precipitate (I haven't
tried this) carbonate flakes in solution is to add lime to a baking
soda solution. Fine carbonate flakes in solution might provide an
interesting nucleating medium for multi-bubble sonoluminescence
experiments. Just free associating a bit here.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
