Further googling on Graneau "cold fog" has turned up this interesting paragraph
========================================================== http://www.df.lth.se/~snorkelf/Longitudinal/node3.html The production of fog and mist has made Peter and Neal Graneau suggest that the chemical bonding energy may be altered. Recent measurements also indicate that the energy released substantially exceeds the energy supplied by the arc [28, 29]. Their theory is that the bonding energy of very small droplets may be less (i.e. more negative) than that of liquid water. The difference in energy would then be released during the conversion into fog. Investigations indicate that only the smallest droplets explode, a fact supporting the theory. ========================================================== Years ago I carried out a lot of research on glass fibre used as a reinforcement. As most Vorts will know, glass can't be used as a reinforcement on the macro-scale because it is full of surface cracks which weaken it disastrously. By drawing it out into a fibre the probability of a crack in a given length is reduced to negligible proportions. Indeed, one might view the development of glass fibre having micro-metre diameters a precursor to the science of nano-technology. 8-) This suggests that the importance of droplet size is in its relevance to the presence or absence of internal defects - cf. manufacture of chips (silicon not potato(e)<G>). Interestingly enough, the requirement for explosion of a "water bomb" is the inverse of the requirement for the explosion of a fission bomb. Now bulk water might be considered the dynamic equivalent of bulk glass. With a material containing multiple cracks failure consists of multiple internal crack propagation and the and the kinetic energy is contained and rapidly degraded to heat. Gravel concrete exhibits just such behaviour. Internal cracking propagation is very great all that way up to the point of maximum stress. Given a stiff enough testing machine the cracking continues in a controlled fashion all the way now the negative stress strain slope. In short, the concrete exhibits quasi-ductile behaviour. Such concretes are heterogeneous in their stress strain properties. At the macro level of structure they may be described as a hard aggregate in a soft matrix. These concretes are characterized by relatively high power stress strain curves, between 2.5 and 3.1 say, with the power being measured from the point of maximum stress as origin. With lightweight concretes where aggregate and matrix have the same stiffness, stress-strain curve power is only just above one. Hardly any internal cracking occurs up to the point of failure which cannot be controlled even by an infinitely stiff testing machine. This is because the specimen is its own testing machine, so to speak and one region of the specimen which is slightly stronger will offload its strain into a neigbouring section which is slightly weaker. Given the above analysis it is clear that the requirements for maximising the kinetic energy of cold fog explosions are similar to the maximization of the yield of defect free silicon chips, i.e. purity and homogeneity of the water so that the droplet structures are as identical in size and as homogeneous in structure as possible. I would be surprised if the same kind of considerations don't apply to the achievement of successful cold fusion as well (cf. Mizuno's use of sintered specimens. Ideally one needs to prepare droplets just above the critical size and then explode them by a change in the environment. One can imagine this as being carried out on a continuous basis in as jet engine say. Come to think of it I seem to have read somewhere that they found injecting water into jet engines improved the performance - a case of harnessing the Beta-atmosphere without even realising it perhaps. Can anyone remember the reference? Cheers. Frank Grimer
