On Sun, Oct 19, 2014 at 10:38 AM, Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote:
I disagree Dave. If you were to count the many hundreds if not thousands of > hours which have been wasted arguing over the thermometry, multiplied by > the hourly rate of the arguers, the actual cost to do excellent water flow > calorimetry would have been a small fraction of that – probably less than > 10%. I kind of agree. I wish they had carried out calorimetry that would not have been open to fiddly questions. And beyond that, I wish there had been multiple, careful calibration runs, instead of something that wasn't really a calibration run. The authors hint that they know they're brushing aside an important detail by giving explanations for the low-temperature of the "dummy" run: So, there was some fear of fracturing the ceramic body, due to the lower > temperature of the thermal generators with respect to the loaded reactor. > For these reasons, power to the dummy reactor was held at below 500 W, in > order to avoid any possible damage to the apparatus. They seem to have known in advance that this decision would be a point of controversy. It is true that they had only one E-Cat, so if they broke it, they might have been in a bind. That constraint on a good test would ultimately go back to Rossi and IH. I don't know what considerations apply to measuring the power output of a body that is as hot as the E-Cat (presumably in the 900-1500 C range). It may be that professionals use approaches similar to the one used in the Lugano test, with IR cameras and so on. We are hampered by a lack of direct professional expertise on this question. We have heard numerous complaints from smart people who have no direct expertise in this stuff. By contrast, there was the suggestion sometime back by someone who does have expertise that the approach of the Lugano test was basically sound, and they did go to the manufacturers and calibrate their equipment. If the calorimetry they did was basically sound, the problem is largely with us. Still, we only have the information that we have, and we can only draw upon the knowledge we already have. Eric
