At 02:40 PM 9/7/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
My goal is that each test cell be cheap, very cheap, well under,
say, the cost of a Galileo Project replication . . .
I do not understand this goal. The cost of materials has never been
a barrier to replicating cold fusion, except perhaps when I could
not afford to buy 1 kg of Johnson-Matthey Pd.
You are not usual, Jed. What you are showing is part of the thinking
that kept Cold fusion down. I don't blame you, and I certainly
respect your experience. But you have also come up with some real nonsense.
The material cost is trivial -- immaterial if you will -- compared
to the cost of the instruments and effort. I have never seen a
credible cold fusion experiment that costs less than ~$100,000 and
probably a lot more if you take into account the cost of people's time.
I don't think this is true. Galileo project. You know the situation
with Mizuno, how hard it was for him because of the costs.
Perhaps the key word is "credible." There is a "lost performative"
here. "Credible" isn't an absolute characteristic of some phenomenon
or, in this case, experimental result. It refers to a reaction by
people. The reaction by people will depend on many factors that
aren't part of the experimental report!
Many cold fusion researchers were convinced by some happening that
they could not use to convince others. They saw it. Now, suppose we
could create a few hundred young people and a few hundred scientists
who have all see the same phenomenon?
In a certain sense, I don't need to focus on the ultimate effect of a
cheap cold fusion demonstration kit. I only need to look at the
practicality: can it be done? If it can be done, enough money, I
believe, can be made with it to justify the activity and the
investment. The only worrisome possibility is that it can't be done.
I just spend a long time on the phone with Dr. Storms. He's
encouraging, but, at the same time, quite as negative as you about
the possibility of doing such a kit. However, we did examine in some
detail his objections, and the objections were coming largely from
assumptions about what a kit would be like.
In short, it won't be what most researchers in the field expect. It
won't necessarily produce bulletproof evidence, unimpeachable. It
will produce a body of *experience* that is shared.
It's not necessary to convince a lot of people to support this. A few
who are willing to work on it or help it can do it. If people are
interested, they can join the project. If not, that's fine, everyone
decides where to put their effort.
Whether the materials cost $20 or $200, or even $2,000 does not
make the slightest difference and has not stopped anyone from
trying the experiment, as far as I know. I have never heard from
someone who said "I would love to try this but I can't afford the
palladium." I have heard from people who said they can't find the
palladium; or they don't feel competent to test it per Storms'
instructions; or -- most often -- they don't have the time or the
instruments they need.
Codeposition, Jed. Not "palladium," but "palladium chloride." Now,
Storms say that he's been unable to reproduce the codeposition
results of the SPAWAR group. That's worrisome, Jed. On the other
hand, there were some positive results from the Galileo Project. I'm
going to need to ask Mr. Krivit more about that....
The only thing you should look for in materials is something that
works. Whether it costs $20 or $2000 should not be a consideration.
Wrong. If the kit is expensive, it causes two problems. It can't be
purchased by kids or their parents on a limited budget. An
experimenter can't decide to test *many* cells instead of one or a
very few. You are thinking of ordinary scientific replication. I'm
not. I'm thinking of bypassing the entire existing system and
creating something that could be studied by others, later, the
scientists who will publish, if they care to. Standard baseline
experiment, cheap. Some variations may be expensive.
Equipment, you call it "instruments," for simple demonstrations,
fairly cheap and it will be rented to customers. Programmable power
supply. Temp sensors, possibly some other sensors, say, pressure and
acoustic or light or even radiation, though radiation may mostly be
with CR-39, which is pretty expensive, but small pieces. Computer
interface, standard USB.
Storms assumed that individual experimenters would be etching their
own CR-39, and, indeed, some may do this, but I expect the company
will offer that service along with other analysis. Process lots of
chips at once. Done by people who know what they are doing. Storms
assumed a lot of things that would make kit usage much more subject
to individual variations. Perhaps "kit" is a misnomer. The "full kit"
would be a demonstration operated in the base mode, designed for
maximum reliability, whatever that turns out to be. But then
customers could try variations.
In my opinion, the Arata material is more promising, so I think
you should find someone to fabricate it, or ask Santoku Corp. for
some. They have been providing it for free to researchers in Japan,
and they were kind enough to send some to U.S. researchers as well.
I believe the supply is limited and the price has not been set as I
said, so price is not an issue. Availability is the problem. The
biggest issue in my mind is that no one has done truly convincing
calorimetry to prove the stuff works in the first place. Doing
credible calorimetry will cost you $5,000 to $10,000 if you buy a
calorimeter off the shelf, or you can spend several months learning
how to make Seebeck calorimeters of the kind Storms made. If your
time is worth anything that will cost more than $10,000.
You are stating exactly why we might avoid excess heat as a necessary
measurement. Some temperature measurements, perhaps, some rough
calorimetry, but not precise calorimetry. It's not actually
necessary, if one can show correlation with other phenomena. Is, for
example, increased temperature, under otherwise similar operating
conditions, correlated with helium? But Storms indicated that the
SPAWAR type cells don't produce enough helium. Is that true?
The goal of the kits is to reproduce, reliably, at least one LENR
phenomenon, but preferably two that can be correlated. Helium, Jed.
It's possible to drastically lower, I believe, the cost of helium
testing. Or there are ways to split the cost between amalgamated
experiments, I won't go into it. Gotta put the kids to bed....
Came back later, I called Storms and modified the above a little as a
result. Maybe helium won't be possible with small co-dep cells,
unless they can be cycled and run for a long time. I'm going to need
to get a little more electrochemistry going.... what happens if you
reverse the polarity of a co-dep cell, will the plated palladium
dissolve and be deposited on the other electrode? If so....
I need to start discussing this on the coldfusionproject list....,
not so much here.
