Here is a cute video which many have wider implications than making salt castles in your spare time (hope it does not insult your intelligence):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIZmU-QESFg So - what's the deal with "hot ice"? i.e. are there alternative-energy implications, aside from hand warmers ? Maybe. The chemical responsible for this effect is a sodium salt, not unlike common common table salt in every respect but one, and just as cheap - and it can be made in almost any kitchen by boiling vinegar and baking soda down to give sodium acetate. A solution of this sodium salt is capable of "supercooling" to ambient, well below its melting point, without solidifying. There are hundreds of papers which have looked at supercooling as a Casimir or "pseudo-Casimir" effect. That may or may not be relevant to possible ZPE coherence. This is a delayed phase change. Many energy anomalies involve the shifting of phases, and the coherence of Casimir forces would an input factor. Water at a 2-3 degree C is also interesting in this regard, but that temperature is too far removed from ambient, in most places, to be of use for free energy. Might work for an 'Alaska demon' though ;-) With EM sine waves, this phase-shifting may also be a key to gainfulness; and perhaps that kind of delayed shifting around a balance-point extends to physical phases of some salts as well as combinations of the two - particularly where there is a juxtaposition of EM phases (i.e. RF or AC energy) and the solid-liquid interface, and supercooling. Many bond-forming process - such as are involved in crystallization are exothermic, just as bong breaking can be endothermic. Since "ambient" can supply the heat or heat sink for a few of these bond-forming processes involving sodium, there a possible niche where electrical input can stimulate or initiate a "demon" (Maxwell's demon) as a side effect of another process which is very efficient. The net gain then comes from the combination of the two. This would be in regard to a Stirling engine (mentioned by Horace) where separation of two temperature streams can be put to use for net energy gain, even if the original input was only breakeven. BTW The latent heat of fusion for sodium acetate is about 275 J/g. That may not sound like a barn-burner, but since one Watt (input to an electrolysis cell) represents only 60 J/min, the ratio of 60:275 looks none too shabby - that is - "IF" that heat of fusion (or a fair fraction) represented "gainfulness" (it does not necessarily, at least not so far). But there does seem to be an exploitable crack in the 'dam-laws' here, worthy of being shamelessly exploited by crack-pots. Funny thing - it is also turning out that this kind of low input RF cell does not scale-up very well. (In fact, that suspicion was a motivating influence in the entire effort). There is plenty of evidence that QM effects seldom scale up well. My "reverse-economy-of-scale" essay will be out soon, hopefully. If nothing else, the computer industry (which use QM tunneling extensively in CPUs) should have taught us that if something "small" works well, then make them ever smaller ! (and more plentiful, of course). Personally, I don't have a problem "imagineering" a system where thousands of tiny electrolysis cells are etched onto a substrate which forms the cold-end of a Stirling engine - if it becomes necessary to go that small. But in this precise case, there could be advantages in an intermediate size due to resonance and optimum wavelengths. The above would be independent of a possible 'hot ice' implementation. (sorry for the confusion). Jones
