peatbog <peat...@teksavvy.com> wrote:
> > > > Cold fusion > > has been replicated thousands of times in hundreds of labs.... > > Straighten me out here, but I thought that the replications were > one-off things that could not be reliably repeated, or the supposed OU from > them was so small that it could be written off as error. > That is incorrect. Replications are not one-off. The control parameters are well understood, and in many labs reproducibility is high. The necessary parameters such as loading are sometimes hard to achieve, but when they are achieved, the effect always appear. (McKubre) At some labs, with some techniques, reproducibility is around 80%. Experiments have been repeated dozens of times in some labs, and hundreds in others, depending on how many cells and calorimeters the labs have. (An experiment usually goes for months, so if you have only one calorimeter you can only do 6 per year.) At the Nice, France Toyota lab, Fleischmann et al. ran a bank of 64 cells at at time. They all worked, as far as I know. The over-unity effect is not small. It is "neither small nor fleeting" (McKubre). That is to say: in some cases, with some cells it is small, for example, with ~5 W in with only 5.05 out (50 mW excess). But in many other cases, input is smaller than output, or there is no input power at all, in heat after death. In some cases output ranges from 10 to 100 W. That is very easy to measure with confidence. Looking at all reports of all experiments in the literature, it is true that null experiments outnumber positive ones, but there are more than enough high powered ones to prove the effect is real and reproducible. Some labs have many more high powered ones and much more reproducibility than others. See this histogram (Fig. 4): http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEstatusofcoa.pdf Figure 3 shows loading, the most important control parameter. As I said, when this and other parameter are met, the effect always appears, and you can see that power is proportional to this control factor. A great deal depends on materials, as shown in Miles Table 10, reproduced here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEwhyibeliev.pdf > What was compelling to me about Rossi's demo was, to start > with, that it *was* a demo, and not a claim that so-and-so and a > lab assistant had seen OU on one occasion. > The effect is always recorded with instruments. It is not "seen" by a lab assistant. Once excess heat begins, is usually persists at a fairly constant power level for days or weeks, giving plenty of time to confirm that it is real by recalibrating on the fly and other methods. It fluctuates slightly but it does not below zero. See, for example, the graph on p. 4, labeled "Excess Power of up to 34 watts; Average ~20 watts for 17 h": http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DardikIprogressin.pdf The graph on the previous page shows high reproducibility at this lab, similar to what Fleischmann et al. achieved in France. >From a strictly scientific point of view, Rossi's demonstration was no more compelling than hundreds of other experiments in the literature. Very high s/n ratios have been achieved. Cells have produced 30 to 50 MJ in reactions lasting for up to 3 months, at power levels exceeding 100 W. Such results were as definitive as Rossi's but they did not persuade as many people because even 100 W does not seem as impressive as 16 kW, and because the people doing these earlier studies did not often demonstrate them to other scientists -- mainly because other scientists expressed no interest in seeing them. When outside experts did see them, such as when Duncan visited Energetics Tech., he was instantly convinced. Rossi is more compelling from an engineering or commercial point of view, because it can be turned on and off quickly, and it runs at much higher temperatures, power and power density. The other experiments could not be controlled as well, so they could not be scaled up. Look at the graph from Dardik, showing the 20 W reaction. If that were scaled up to 20 kW and it fluctuated as much as shown here, the results might be disastrous. - Jed