On 02/08/2011 12:42 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: > Rich Murray <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > > 1. Presumably, the H-Ni system is not aware of what is happening > inside the conduit, so the notion that at the exact moment the > temperature hits boiling, its power output would increase 8-fold is > not believable. > Even less believable is the notion that it would stop increasing > exactly when the water is all converted to steam, and not a per cent > more. > How could the nickel know? > > > This is nonsense. Has this author ever made a pot of soup?!? When you > adjust the flame, the water boils, stops boiling, and boils again > abruptly.
You are making the objector's point. When boiling water on the stove, the "output flow rate" is /not fixed./ It is determined /by the power level/, and that, in turn, determines the volume of steam produced. In short, the steam volume varies /in order to keep the output temperature at boiling./ In the experiment, the "output flow rate" was necessarily nailed to the input water flow rate, and that, in turn, was nailed by the constant displacement pump. There was no feedback from the applied power level to the input flow rate, and there is no apparent reason for the output temperature to hold steady at barely above boiling, as it did.
