On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 4:02 PM, David Roberson <[email protected]> wrote:
It is obvious that this reading remained stuck at 100 C during a lot of > time as the power output was being ramped up. I expected this to occur. At first I thought the demonstration was completely copacetic from the limited amount of video that I watched. But one detail struck me as odd upon further reflection. The total input reported in LabView (HV+heaters) was off by kilowatts from what Mats Lewan measured with the ammeter at the wall, if I remember correctly. (I am not sure whether the ammeter was his -- it might have been his, or it might have been provided by Defkalion.) That presents an awkward situation: 1. Defkalion do not know how to measure input power, 2. Mats Lewan does not know how to use an ammeter, 3. the ammeter is defective, 4. or something else. This discrepancy got me thinking, and as a working hypothesis I'm going with (4), above, for now. Here is why. In absolute terms, the difference in input power (whichever way you go) does not invalidate the potential amazingness of the demo, for the reported output was many kilowatts above even the adjusted input, so, prima facie, there is something potentially very promising that was demoed. But there could be secondary reasons to get the input wrong (HV, specifically). One reason could be related to the temperature of the substrate. Early on I suspected that spark plugs were being used in order to get an ion channel. But now I wonder whether they might not be used instead to obtain rapid and substantial control over the temperature of the substrate -- to make it very hot, but to be able to decrease the temperature quickly if necessary. Perhaps spark plugs could achieve this more easily than Joule heating. If this is the case, there would be pressure not to advertise to the world that high substrate temperatures are important to achieving an effect, something that would be possible to infer from the HV input measurement. Eric
