At 04:14 PM 9/8/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Alexander Hollins wrote:
well,,,, just remove the infrared filter from any webcam, and its
an ir camera. quick and easy. what kind of definition are you looking for?
Honestly, I do not know.
I knew this, it's why I wrote what I wrote.... I'm assuming that the
cameras in these nifty little microscopes are similar, and that they
will image what we need; but I do recognize these as assumptions.
This is *brainstorming*. Bad idea, in brainstorming, to immediately
shoot down every idea with what's wrong with it.
If this method works, fine -- problem solved. I will grant there are
times when relatively simple, cheap instruments suffice even in a
professional lab. For example, ordinary handheld voltage meters are fine.
Yup. And you can get even cheaper than that, if you want a bunch of
voltage measurements and you are going to make a few hundred of these
kits or a few thousand.
I was just using this to illustrate some larger points about the
limitations and inherent problems in low-budget experiments with
"kludged" equipment.
I'm an engineer, Jed. We kludge stuff to get it to work, then we
design what is to be manufactured from that.
Generally speaking, it is more trouble than it is worth. I have no
experience with IR cameras but I have more experience than I wish
with other cold fusion related equipment such as: used equipment
especially coolers, cheap pumps, and low tech rotary flowmeters.
Which is why I'm thinking of avoiding serious calorimetry. If we make
cells, someone could put them in a calorimeter, and maybe a
calorimetric option could exist, but I see calorimetry as *hard*.
Primitive calorimetry, maybe, one could, with some temperature
sensors -- cheap -- and with some calibration with known power
dissipation at various levels, come up with some reasonable estimate
of power, but, as you well know, there are lots of complications.
You don't want to deal with that stuff if you can afford something
better. Used equipment or obsolete equipment is Trouble. An
expensive flowmeter has no moving parts. It adds a pulse of heat to
the flowing water, which it detects downstream. It is a high tech
black box; the kind of instrument you just gotta believe is
working, but it is far less trouble, believe me. Actually, you
don't just gotta believe. You test it with low tech measures: you
take the return hose out of the cooler, click a stopwatch and let
it flow into a graduated cylinder for a given duration. That gives
a pretty good answer which you check against the precision flowmeter.
Storms and McKubre dispense with flowmeters altogether, using weight
scales and a siphon in an automated procedure similar to what I just
described. Anyone who has dealt with flowmeters will be inclined to
dispense with them by tossing them in front of an oncoming steam roller.
I thought that was how we test them.
What I'd prefer you to do, Jed, if you do want to help (do you?) is
start to think of what *can* be done, not what can't. There may be a
dozen things we can do, and a million we can't. Easy to think of what
won't possibly work, but is there anything you can think of that
would be affordable and of any interest?
You've already suggested Arata-type cells. Arata's "calorimetry" is
about our speed, perhaps. Nevertheless, if we had some idea of what
power dissipation it takes to keep one of his cells at four degrees
C. above ambient, wouldn't that be useful? I don't know whether his
demonstration is brilliant or simply a subtle form of delayed
deuteride formation, because the calibration is completely missing.
How would kids run an Arata cell? Well, I imagine a small cell, it's
filled at the factory with deuterium, in a calorimeter, and the same
kind of data Arata shows is recorded, pressure and temperature.
Possibly weight of the cell, very accurate, before being filled, when
evacuated, and when "full" of gas. The cell (and the filling data)
are couriered to the buyer, who monitors temperature. How long does
it last? For steady generation of heat, resistor calibration for a
well-designed cell should be pretty good at determining power, and
since there aren't a pile of other distractions, at estimating total
energy production.
What if the filling is slow, so that temperature never rises to a
high level, and a CR-39 chip has been dropped in the cell? Will it
show anything when the cell is opened later? Indeed, would there be
any damage to the CR-39? No electrolyte, only a bit of hydrate
formation heat, which could be kept low.
