Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
It's not impossible to draw that from a simple wall plug, but it takes some preparation. While I doubt that's how it was done, unless someone inspected the plug and the cord, it can't be ruled out as being "impossible", particularly if the 12 kW can be shaded a bit.
Shading "a bit" would not work. You have to shade it by a factor of 10. Frankly, that's impossible.
If the person doing the demonstration is not honest, you cannot take /anything/ for granted. And that is why issues with Rossi's background are so important.
If all of the people doing the demonstration are dishonest then you cannot take anything for granted. If Rossi alone is a crook that would make no difference. The calorimetry was designed by the others and the instruments are their property. Rossi cannot fool a thermocouple or a power meter. To engineer the 54 A wall socket, Rossi would have to go to the lab secretly and rewire the place, and then substitute a superconducting wire for the heater power supplies so that the wire does not burn up, and then he would have to replace professors power meter with one that looks exactly identical but gives the wrong values. That sort of thing might happen in a pulp thriller or James Bond movie, but not in real life. This kind of scenario falls in the "rats drinking water in Mizuno's lab" category.
Regarding the quality of the steam, if it is dry that makes the computation simple. If it is wet that reduces the excess enthalpy somewhat, but it does not eliminate it. Assuming the heater is at 400 W, that's 400 W * 60 s = 24,000 J/min, or 5,714 calories. The flow rate is 292 ml/min so the water temperature would rise 20°C, to 33°C. Not even close to boiling, wet or dry. The outlet temperature was measured at 101°C, by the way. Let me add that fact to the description in the News section . . .
I have encountered genuine energy scams and incompetent researchers. It is obvious they are wrong. They do not begin to fool me, and it is inconceivable they would full experienced professors who have been doing calorimetry and electrical measurements for 50 years.
As I said, when people who propose the hypothesis that this might be a scam or a trick, I think it is incumbent upon them to explain how this trick might work. All hypothesis must be rigorously supported. This is a simple physics experiment, albeit one with a black box in the middle. There are some complicated cold fusion experiments with iffy results that might be faked, or at least "shaded." Some are shaded, by wishful thinking. This is not among them. The laws of physics are well defined in this case. I do not see how it could be something like a staged magic trick. Such tricks fool the eye, in any case. They never fool instruments. Penn and Teller cannot change the values displayed by a power meter.
- Jed
