Re: Hydrogen car

[Stephen A. Lawrence]

Actually this sounds like a pretty impressive item to have built, if 
indeed it works and was built from scratch.  The news story is 
perfunctory in the extreme:  What's it store the hydrogen in?  How does 
it convert the chemical energy of the hydrogen to mechanical energy -- 
burn it, use a fuel cell, or something else?  Does it, indeed, actually 
work, or is it just a "model"?  If it works, how far did it run before 
being put in a display case, and how far could it run at 3:00 in the 
afternoon in Boston before it had to stop to build up more hydrogen?  
There's a lot left out of the story, but if really works and if it was 
done from scratch, there was a lot of engineering involved in building it.

Public wrote:
http://durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=earth&article_path=/earth/earth050505.htm 


I don't think he understands his own invention. Obviously, it's the 
solar panel that provides the energy.
I suspect he understands that perfectly well, and is just using language 
sloppily.

---"On a commercial level, you're actually combusting hydrogen," 
Hinton said, so a solar panel would not be necessary.
Right -- what he actually built was a hydrogen-powered car, along with 
an onboard gadget for making the fuel using a solar panel.

---During the six-week project, Hinton learned basic electrolysis and 
a little physics.

---"It's interesting to me that you can use water as fuel," he said.
I think he just mis-used the word "fuel" here.

Craig Haynie (Houston)