Notice I did not say flow calorimetry was needed. Just heating a container of
water - pool, spa, teapot.... You do not need to measure flow rates if the
effect is significant.
It avoids all the % steam questions, the emissivity numbers, the air flow, the
cameras......
It is about the simplest measure of heat.
D2
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 15:21:06 -0400
Subject: Re: [Vo]:A Couple Hundred Bucks Maybe...
From: jedrothw...@gmail.com
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
I wrote:
It is not precise, but it is reliable, and accurate enough to prove the point.
The point is, this is a huge effect. It runs at high temperatures and it is at
least three times input. McKubre needed a high precision flow calorimeter
because he was trying to measure an effect that usually occurs at about a third
of a watt and sometimes at 3 W with maybe 5 W of input. That is difficult. You
need high precision and accuracy to be highly confident of the result. When
there are 300 W going in a 900 W coming out and the cell is so hot it is
sometimes incandescent you do not need flow calorimetry.
Using a method that is more precise or more accurate than the task calls for
does not increase mathematical confidence in the results, or my mental
confidence. On the contrary, it decreases my confidence. It shows that the
person doing the tests does not understand how to do an experiment. You should
always select the simplest and most direct method that will work with adequate
precision and accuracy. Never make things more complicated than they need to be.
When digital thermometers became widely available in the 1970s, I saw some
medical research from a grad student in Japan in which the temperature of lab
rats was measured and reported to four digits of precision. Obviously, the
temperature of the body of a rat is not uniform, and it varies from moment to
moment. A medical researcher who would report that the body temperature was
99.6873°C does not inspire confidence in his ability. He looks like someone who
does not understand biology, instruments, error bars, or gradeschool
arithmetic. Meaningless extra digits of precision prove nothing.
- Jed
