Harry,
> I take from this that the capacity to be self-sustaining is limited by
> the design question: how long should that capacity persist? , and not by
> some fundamental law.
Well - yes - the Laws of Thermodynamics are not violated if the gain is
accounted for via the Casimir force or ZPE, since they can be considered as
input to the system. And inasmuch as that force or input would affect the
resonance of the alloy, then it could easily result in a small gain. But in any
event the gain would likely be only a few percent, say COP <1.1 - from either a
singing bowl or a "room-full of tuning forks" (all of which will tend to
resonate when any one of them is struck).
The energy audit should consist of a known input in Joules, consisting of the
bowl-strike (force in newtons per meter) and compared against the net kinetic
energy of the vibrations over the period of time till they decay - which can
best be reduced to the added heat of the audible waves, which will result in a
slight temperature gain against the containment walls (of a known mass, and in
a very well insulated enclosure).
This kind of thing could be accomplished using a precision calorimeter, and it
is a bit surprising that it has not been attempted, such as in the MOAC ... or
maybe it has been, but the gain was so negligible that the experimenter did not
want the flac of trying to expalin it, and ultimately of defending the accuracy
of the device against naysayers.
Jones
