Michel Jullian wrote: If they have equal shares in this work, why isn't Focardi on the patent? >
I did not say they have equal shares. I have no idea how much each contributed. I said I am sure Focardi knows about this paper. Anyway, that patent seems worthless, for the reasons already discussed here. I mentioned "elementary cross checking." Calibration, in other words. The paper has no details about the experiment so I do not know if they did this, but I have never heard of an experiment without calibration. Focardi is not a fool or an amateur, although this paper seems amateur. The other thing I should mention is that a good power meter is immune to the high frequency AC problem. Expensive meters will catch all input power, no matter how high or irregular the frequency. They typically use three methods of measuring power including our old friend calorimetry. The power flowing through the system heats up a small element and the temperature is converted to a power level. This is an an analog method. It is slow and imprecise, but accurate and immune to sampling errors. It will not detect very low power. Unfortunately I have no idea what sort of meter Focardi and Rossi use. They could have eliminated many doubts about this experiment by supplying a few details, a schematic, and a photo. If they would tell us what sort of power supply they are using, or include a photo of it, we could see whether it can supply 3,000 W. If you need only 80 W input, why would you use such a big power supply? On the other hand, they should calibrate through the entire range of output power before declaring this is 3,000 W and not 2,800 W or 3,500 W. The Patterson light water cell demonstration that I saw years ago in California had many problems. Really, it was one of the worst experimental setups I have ever seen. I was deeply disappointed and mad as a hornet -- especially after they told me I could not describe it in detail or do some cross-checking with my own instruments. I told them I would take the next plane home if those are the rules. They rescinded. Anyway, it was made of ridiculously low-budget, unreliable parts, and it failed drastically in the middle of the demo, as I described in the report. But the fact that it was so cheap, and rudimentary, also conferred a few advantages. For example, the power supply was a Radio Shack battery eliminator. That was the only source of input power to the system. I had a Radio Shack power supply just like that, and I know for a fact it could not have produced more than a few watts, whereas the cell was definitely producing ~1,000 W. The other advantage was the very simplicity of the thing meant I could confirm it with equally simplistic, crude, 18th century instruments: a mercury thermometer, a stop-watch, and a graduated 1-liter cylinder. I measured the temperature of the water in the tank and stirred it to confirm the inlet temperature. Then I collected the flowing electrolyte for a fixed period of time in the cylinder. I stirred it up with the thermometer, and thereby confirmed the flow rate and the outlet temperature. I also used a Radio Shack thermistor good to 0.1 deg C. Half-way through the test the setup began to fail. As I recall, their flow rate measurement was off. The flow was plugged up and the temperature climbing rapidly. But anyway, with my crude cross-checking this was obvious. I am sure the test before and after that was valid. Plus I am sure the cell was producing *far* more heat than that Radio Shack power supply could supply, because it was palpably hot, and the power supply would have melted or burst into flames if it was producing that much electricity. So, to this day, I do not know of any reason to doubt Patterson's results . . . except for the obvious reason that it cannot be replicated. - Jed
