On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 10:40 PM, Joshua Cude <joshua.c...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 9:07 PM, Harry Veeder <hveeder...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Rossi claims his device produces more energy (in the form of heat) >> than it consumes (in the form of electricity). This is a performance >> claim, and it should not be characterised as being more or less >> plausible. > > But I wasn't talking about the plausibility of the it. >claimed reaction. I was > talking about the plausibility of his method of measuring
You used a thermodynamic argument in one location to reject a measurement at a different location. This is a rejection of a measurement based on an implausibility, rather than on deficiencies of the instrumentation. >> >> Unlike the Wright's claim of powered flight which could be adequately >> guaged without the aid of instruments, Rossi's claim must be guaged >> with some instruments. > > (This is peripheral to the point, but anyway...) > I don't agree. If it runs without any input, then the fact that it produces > substantial output power can be identified without instruments. You can tell > if a 1.5 kW space heater is working without instruments, just as you can > tell if firewood is burning or not without a thermometer. > Now, to judge whether it exceeds chemical energy requires instruments only > if it exceeds it narrowly, by a factor of 10 or less maybe. But he's > claiming a factor of a million or so, so if he produced 100 times more than > chemical, that would be easy to identify without instruments. > He could use the heat to heat a big swimming pool, or a series of tanker > trucks, or something. If he takes the water from ambient to boiling, and you > estimate the volume, then no instruments are needed. Or if he used the heat > to produce electricity, and then used the electricity to do some work, like > lifting a large truck, or to power an electric car, then instruments would > not be needed to estimate the energy to within a factor of 100. > Of course, Rossi is nowhere near that level, and it would take some time, so > for the demos he is doing, where the claimed output barely exceeds what he > claims is feasible chemically (taking only a fraction of the weight of the > ecat), then yes, instruments are needed, especially since he also has to > provide input either continuously or periodically. > But to me, his need for instruments to demonstrate such a dramatic effect, > makes it much less credible. I think he did such a dramatic demonstration for his customer's reps. The measurements were just a formality. Other people at the Oct 28 demonstration were not allowed to experience the drama up close, so all we have to go on are some measurements contained in a short report. >> If the instrumentation is sound then the claim >> is true, and the conceptual framework known as the "laws of physics" >> may not be capable of providing a plausibe explanation of the >> performance. >> > > > I already agreed with this. If Rossi's reactions depends on new physics to > produce heat from nickel and hydrogen, then so be it. My objection in this > instance was not that. It was that the observations he is basing the claim > on depend on *other* implausibilities. The new physics is presumably in the > H-Ni, but that shouldn't change the way water gets heated by the hot > conduits it flows through. Those are still implausibilities, and IMO the truth of a claim should not be assessed against them or any other implausibilities. A claim should be assessed against the evidence. Where measurements provide evidence they should be be taken at face value unless it can be shown that the instruments are unreliable, or rigged or misplaced. >Those heating elements still have to get hot, and > the way the heat flows through the brass or steel pipes is surely not > affected by Rossi's new H-Ni physics. Heat is still heat, surely. Maybe not. > What if the temperature read 90C at atmospheric pressure, and he claimed > complete vaporization. That would be implausible because water boils at 100C > at atmospheric pressure. Would you then say that this is a new phenomenon, > and so we don't know what temperature water boils at when the heat comes > from a Rossi reaction? Therefore we can't say that it's implausible? Would > you say that? Codifying the laws of thermodynamics in the 1850s had the effect of stamping out alternative conceptions of heat. Everyone learns about the success of the kinetic theory over the caloric theory but there is much more to the history of heat e.g. today we scoff at the idea of cold being a positive quantity rather than being the absence of heat, but it wasn't always so. Rossi's reaction might be boiling water by removing cold, rather than by adding heat. Harry
