James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Why are best calorimetric practices not so firmly established by now that > virtually everyone with any degree of credibility agrees? >
To some extent it is because no single calorimeter type works for every kind of experiment. You have to look at the operating temperature, the size of the cold fusion device and the absolute power. A glow discharge experiment can only be done with some kind of bomb calorimeter, I think. I do not mean to apologize for sloppy work or for people who do not read the literature before doing experiments. A technique that is perfectly reliable and believable with one device may be useless with another. Rossi and the people who have tested his device independently use conventional, off-the-shelve HVAC tools, such as a shielded thermocouple and the kind of mechanical flow meter in millions of houses worldwide. Because Rossi gets so much heat, with such small input power, these instruments and techniques are perfect. In my opinion, you could not improve on them with a million dollars in high precision equipment. A conventional HVAC thermocouple measures to the nearest 0.1 deg C. I would not be one bit more convinced with one that measures to 0.001 deg C, like the ones McKubre uses. Some people strongly disagree with me about this. Rossi's problem is not the techniques he uses, or even the instruments. It is that he is sloppy. Unbelievably sloppy! I mean that literally: I do not believe he is actually that sloppy, I think he is trying to cover up his results and keep doubt alive. He could have made a few minor adjustments to any of the tests he did in 2011 and made the results so bullet-proof, and convincing, nearly everyone would believe him. For example, he had a 4-probe thermocouple that records on an SD-card. He used only 2 probes and he did not insert a card, so the readings are lost, except for ones written down at random times by poor, put-upon Lewan. If Rossi had lifted a finger to insert the other probes a short distance away in the outlet flow, and taken a moment to insert an SD card, his results would be FAR more convincing. Two minutes of effort. I told him to do this! I and others gave Rossi a list of things he should do to improve his demonstrations. He ignored us. He is a smart person. I assume he did a lousy job on purpose. - Jed
