At 01:04 PM 7/14/2007 -0400, Jed Rothwell wrote:
William Beaty wrote:
And whatever did happen with the CETI/Patterson-cell investors, staff,
management, etc.?
I head different things about the Patterson cell. Gene Mallove told me
that it did, in fact, STOP WORKING when they ran out of the beads that
were manufactured in the 1960s. Patterson told me that wasn't true, and he
could make more beads any time. On the other hand he did not produce any
more working cells as far as I know. What happened to his staff and
management is well known, and tragic. His grandson, Jim Redding, was
running CETI. He dropped dead one day after playing tennis. I guess it was
a heart attack. He was still in his 40s. Patterson lost heart, and I do
not think he pursued the invention much after that. He was old back then.
I do not know if he is still alive.
Fortunately, Dr. Patterson is still alive.
The Patterson cell was set up deliberately in a vertical flow system
which created
large false postive levels of excess heat. I know from speaking to those
who did
the experiments at that time, that the levels of excess heat decreased when
horizontal flow
was (correctly) used. THAT proves the importance of Bernard instability
in this matter.
This has been extensively discussed in Swartz, M, "Improved Calculations
Involving Energy Release
Using a Buoyancy Transport Correction", Journal of New Energy, 1, 3,
219-221 (1996)
and Swartz, M, "Potential for Positional Variation in Flow Calorimetric
Systems",
Journal of New Energy, 1, 126-130 (1996),
and Swartz. M.., "Patterns of Failure in Cold Fusion Experiments",
Proceedings of the
33RD Intersociety Engineering Conference on Energy Conversion, IECEC-98-I229,
Colorado Springs, CO, August 2-6, (1998).
These papers show the error of a vertical flow system, and how to
correct the false positive results
which result from Bernard instability, so that the actual excess heat can
be calculated
in a semiquantitative fashion, thus avoiding said error.
The upcoming MIT colloquium [which continues to grow in its presenters]
will have have
at least two presentations on calorimetry, and if there is more interest,
perhaps this problem and its solution will be briefly discussed then.
Hope that helps.
Dr. Mitchell Swartz
