I had an interesting thought that I wanted to share with the gang. What would happen if you ring a bell that is totally engulfed within a vacuum? Since there is no way for the energy to escape the bell by being radiated through air one would think that the sound waves contained within the bell would keep bouncing around and around until all the energy is turned into heat of the metal. How quickly does this occur?
An example that would be interesting to consider is a bell with a relatively pure sinewave tone. One normally can calculate the real portion of the decaying exponential signal by measuring the loss of peak motion of the bell material on a cycle by cycle basis. The "Q" of a system of this type would be calculated by taking the tone center frequency in radians per second and dividing it by the real decay radian frequency determined by the rate of energy loss per cycle. Would you expect the "Q" of a bell in a vacuum to be much higher than one ringing in air? I am thinking along this line as I consider the behavior of a small sphere of nickel containing protons which has been subjected to a large energy burst caused by an LENR event within. The rate at which this energy escapes must be important since nearby atoms are subjected to the relatively large detonation wave and could be triggered into reaction as a consequence. In my thoughts, the sonic wave should behave a lot like an instantaneous large temperature excursion as it propagates throughout the sphere. Since temperature has been shown to increase the reaction rate for nickel-hydrogen systems, it seems plausible to expect this traveling wave to initiate a chain reaction of sorts. I have speculated about this type of behavior before and suspect that it will eventually be found to be an important piece of the LENR puzzle. Most of the LENR theory developed so far has concentrated upon the individual NAE which is occurring within the nano scale. I have strong suspicions that the influence of larger scale collections of material is crucial to the final understanding. My thoughts about this situation are reminiscent of the critical mass concept of fission reactor designs. You could study the behavior of individual uranium atoms forever and measure the energy released by them one at a time and not obtain useful nuclear energy. And, you can come up with a good theory as to what happens when a neutron hits the right isotope, but the real interesting things begin to happen when enough of the right atoms are coupled together. Only then do you obtain a sustained reaction that generates useful energy and that might be where we are with LENR today. Rossi may have found the correct geometry that allows for the coupling that results in useful amounts of energy. For these reasons I am considering the larger scale processes. Dave
