The Correa's gold leaf electroscope claims were brought to my
attention by Ed Storms, who exchanged a series of messages with the
Correas about this years ago. As I mentioned, the claim was that the
extended leaves are doing work. They are not, since they do not move,
and the fact that the Correas (both of them, I assume) think the
leaves are doing work convinces me they need a remedial course in
grade-school Newtonian physics.
I think the Correas mentioned the example of a person holding up a
weight. That is entirely different since the muscles are continually
contracting and working. The gold leaf electroscope is more like a
weight tied to a string, hanging from the ceiling. However, as I
pointed out to Ed, that system actually does a tiny bit of work. The
string gradually stretches. If you leave it for years, the threads
separate. Eventually, the string breaks, and the weight falls, doing
a bunch of work, but in the months leading up to that event, the
gradual stretching and breaking of molecular bonds in the string is
mechanical work. It is such a small amount of work that I doubt any
calorimeter or other instrument will ever be able to measure it.
Maybe it makes a tiny noise as each string filament breaks?
It is interesting to look for other examples of ultra-low energy
expenditure. A machine can be defined as an object that consumes
energy and makes some sort of internal or external state change. All
machines consume energy, although in some cases it may not seem that
way. A needle and thread consumes energy supplied by a person. In the
old days, people used to cite the wristwatch as the machine that
consumes the least amount of energy. They also defined a machine as
something with moving parts. Nowadays digital watches, LEDs, motion
sensors for airbags and many other devices consume far less energy
than a wind-up wristwatch, and they have no moving parts. (Arthur
Clarke wrote that the ultimate goal of technology is to make a full
set of machines for any purpose that have no moving parts. It is
difficult to imagine fabrication and machine tools without parts, but
not impossible, especially if something like force fields can exist.)
Anyway . . . this makes me wonder what the ultimate low energy
machine would be.
Cracked automobile glass is a well-known ultra-slow, ultra-low energy
mechanical phenomenon. The glass is under tension, like the string
holding the weight from the ceiling. The crack spreads slowly,
sometime a few centimeters a year. It is breaking apart molecules. It
must be very few molecules per hour, at a remarkably even, well
controlled rate. Otherwise the crack would do nothing for weeks and
then progress rapidly (which does happen in response to temperature
changes). A micro-calorimeter that could detect the heat from
cracking auto glass would be an astounding device. I doubt it will
ever be made, but perhaps these is some other way to detect the
individual fracturing of the molecules, by putting some sort of
sensor on the glass. Maybe look for fracto-fusion. Relatively simple
and cheap devices, such as Atomic Force Microscopes (AFM), can detect
far smaller bodies and events than I ever imagined possible. When I
was a kid it was taken for granted that "we will never see an
individual atom with any kind of microscope." Never say never with
technology! In the not too distant future, Fisher Price may be
selling AFMs. I have read that an AFM is roughly as complicated as a
CD-ROM player. The most difficult part is dampening the vibrations
from outside the sensor.
- Jed
- [Vo]:OFF TOPIC Slow to no work -- smallest possible en... Jed Rothwell
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