Jones Beene <[email protected]> wrote:
> For the collection flasks he could have used anything. It was too late. > > Helium diffuses into the electrolysis cell itself during the operation. > Yes, some does come in. This amount can be measured in a null experiment. It is the background amount. As it happens, Miles had many null experiments with no heat. > Diffusion is based on amu. Argon is 10 times heaver than helium and it > diffuses much more slowly through a material - when both can be diffused. > However, argon does not diffuse into Pyrex at all and helium does. > As I said, he looked for other gasses as well, and he looked for the overall amount of helium, which is to say the amount that diffuses in when you do nothing (let the cell sit there), or when you conduct electrolysis but there is no excess heat. When there is no excess heat the amount that diffuses in is always much less than what is measured after there is excess heat. In other words excess heat produces significantly more than the background from diffusion, but much less than the atmospheric background. Other objections have been raised and met. For example, some people said that perhaps the excess heat changed conditions and allowed more helium to defuse in. As Miles pointed out, and as I repeated in my report, this cannot be the case because in some tests with no excess heat the overall input power was greater than the positive tests, and the cell was hotter. - Jed
