In reply to David Roberson's message of Sun, 24 Feb 2013 17:06:28 -0500 (EST): Hi, [snip] >The big question is whether or not a single fusion event is capable of doing >this degree of damage and creating the relatively large heating associated >with hot spots. It is well established that temperature does effect the LENR >systems in a positive manner. Elevated metal temperature is required to >obtain any significant LENR and it is apparent that the higher the temperature >of a device such as the ECAT, the more heat is produced. > Assuming a fairly typical crater is a cone with a radius of 1 micron, and a depth of 2 microns, and a face centered cubic lattice (I used Ni), then such a cone would contain about 2E11 Ni atoms. For a metal to melt, the kinetic energy of the atoms needs to exceed the bond energy of the metal, so by calculating the average kinetic energy associated with the melting point of the metal, we can get a rough idea of the energy required to melt the material in the crater. That works out to be 2E11 atoms x 0.233 eV / atom ~= 43000 MeV, or roughly 10 thousand fusion reactions. Regards,
Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
