At 02:49 PM 10/24/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
I wrote:
Naturally, I see why theory is important to the researchers, but I
am not a researcher, so it isn't my department. Glassware is
important to them too . . .
That is not a joke, by the way. An experiment with the right theory
but the wrong glassware will still fail. Nature does not care
whether the fault is in the design or the execution. An airplane may
crash because it is poorly designed. A well-designed airplane may
crash because the engines ingest geese.
In experimental science the devil is in the details.
Or can be, for sure, especially when dealing with an effect with
unknown cause and obvious rarity, or it would have been recognized
before. (LENR may be happening all the time, all around us, but
without easily detectable radiation, so, as long as it's rare enough,
it could escape being noticed. That, indeed, is what some of the
biological transmutation experimenters claim. And they might be
wrong, i.e., that it is as common as they claim, but still it might
happen under unusual conditions, such as in the presence of a certain
protein from dienococcus radiodurans that seems to be able to convert
manganese to iron in the presence of deuterium, which is normally
present in very small quantities....
Who knows what biology is capable of.... it certainly seemed
preposterous to me when I first read the reports.
In any case, and speaking of cases, or cells, the Galileo project
uses a specific acrylic box, and that is exactly what I'll start
with. I may start with everything exactly the same, as close as I can
make it. I may not be able to get the exact batch numbers, unless
someone will kindly supply some of those batches.... but indications
are that as long as the grade is appropriate, it should work. If I'm lucky!
Then I'll start screwing around with the parameter space. Indications
are that codeposition is much more forgiving than bulk palladium,
reports are that it's 100% reliable (done according to protocol, at
least), so I'm hopeful. Besides all kinds of monkeying around with
instrumentation and stuff outside the box, I may first vary things
like electrolyte volume, leaving the absolute amounts of palladium
the same. Obviously, if these cells function as the heavy water
evaporates or is lost as evolved gas, the process can handle an
increase in lithium concentration, so I may reduce the lithium so
that I start with the same concentration. I want the same palladium
amount so that the maximum deposit is the same thickness. I want to
make the cell smaller, equals cheaper. Which then means one can run
twice as many cells for the same cost. Indeed, same current source,
current-regulated, it merely has to be able to provide more voltage.
Reducing the gap between the cathode and anode should reduce the
necessary voltage, which should then reduce input power, making any
excess heat results more significant. I'm not expecting any
conclusive heat results, but maybe there will be a little temperature
elevation over what would be expected from calibration of the effect
of Joule heating. Just one more thing for my customers to see, cheaply.
Hey, it's heating up! The cell voltage has suddenly gone up, but it's
getting hotter than the new voltage would predict! What do you see in
the microscope compared to yesterday? Has the sound changed? How?
Lucky: Look! Tiny flashes of light, only a few pixels across. Popcorn
from the microphone that wasn't there before. Turn off the current!
What happens? Do the flashes of light increase or decrease
immediately? The sound?
Anyone with experience with codeposition, please, I'm all ears. What
did you see? What were your results?
I haven't asked the SPAWAR people yet, but I will. Right now, I want
to hear what is out there in the less formal work.
