Moulton Lava

Moultonic Musings

My Photo
Name:
Location: New England, United States

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Wallucinations

If you look at the copious comments on the last half dozen blog posts here, you will note a curious phenomenon.

Almost all the comments come from just one person — Abd ul-Rahman Lomax — who is illustrating his favorite mode of conversational dialogue.

Abd employs an idiosyncratic style of communication which I frankly had never encountered before.

Since his communication style is one for which I don't have a name, I'll venture to coin a name for it.

Abd's style of communication — which is to bury his dialogue partner under a blizzard of words in which he endlessly presents his fabulous vision — is what I shall henceforth call a textual wallucination.

A wallucination is defined as a wall of text in which someone presents a fantastic hallucinatory pipe dream.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.




The Phantom Tollbooth

92 Comments:

Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Moulton is famous for tenacious, tendentious argument, that allows others no room, that uses ridicule and parody, that expands over many pages and web sites, all with the goal of "studying" those who dare to disagree with him, and he's been banned from many communities as a result.

Yeah, to some, my style of carefully examining topics, in detail, is irritating, especially if it exposes their blatant hypocrisy, but even sometimes, if not, if they imagine that they must read every word immediately.

This set here has been useful, because it exposes both the scientific and sociological issues. Cold fusion is fertile ground for the sociological study of science, it wasn't called the "scientific fiasco of the century" (Huizenga, 1993) for nothing.

Barry is firmly entrenched on one side of this, simply believing that cold fusion doesn't exist, in spite of what is now well-known, covered by ample experiment, now being published in mainstream journals, etc. He claimed to want to know what was behind the apparent impass. His questions were answered.

Really, he wants something else. He wants, badly, to be right, and to be able to condemn and satirize others.

10:55 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Has your daughter ever seen the wonderful animation of "The Phantom Tollbooth"?

If not, go with her to the local library or video store and find the book and/or the video of that children's story.

I reckon you will find that it's exactly what the doctor ordered.

12:52 PM  
Blogger James Salsman said...

I'm familiar with Abd's tendency to be verbose, and the comments on the last half dozen posts here are fairly reasonable and succinct compared to what I remember from just a few years ago.

Moulton, regarding your email to Miles, if vapor condenses to mist or fog above the water line, then it's still removing the same amount of heat from the water as if it had stayed in gaseous form, isn't it?

10:36 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

If vapor condenses to mist or fog above the water line, then it's still removing the same amount of heat from the water as if it had stayed in gaseous form, isn't it?

Nope.

Try thinking of the problem this way...

Which removes more heat from your body:

1) Evaporating a gram of sweat off your skin, or

2) Peeing away a gram of pee.

12:07 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

James, perhaps the difference is that then you disagreed with me, and now you are in general agreement.

But, yeah, I probably am more succinct now. A little.

Moulton is about mist, because the issue is not "below or above the water line," but whether it is within the calorimeter boundary or not. If mist escapes from the calorimeter as such, but is accounted for as water vapor, an error will be introduced when the correction for water vapor is made, that will appear to be excess heat.

That doesn't mean that this possibility is responsible for CF "excess heat," merely that if there were such misting, with some kinds of calorimetry, it would be a real problem. Most cells, under most conditions, don't likely eject mist, the gas flow rate is probably too low, the mist will evaporate inside the cell, thus absorbing the heat. With the Seebeck enclosure calorimeter of Zhang, which is where Barry first asserted this misting thing, even though they were operating near boiling, it's not a problem, because mist would not escape the calorimeter, only the cell (if that, it would have to make it past the recombiner catalyst). In McKubre's closed cells, not a problem at all.

Barry has likewise correctly identified another possible problem, power supply noise. However, there is no sign that the noise levels are remotely close enough to a level that could result in the excess heat measured, and the calorimetry is independently verified with control and dead cells. The bubble noise error would have created visible excess heat there.

The only real problem here quite likely is that authors did not describe problems that, from personal experience, they knew did not exist. We can actually fix this, i.e., we can ask them or others with the knowledge.

9:40 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

It's probably too late to recover the data for the open cells where some of the moisture escaped in the form of mist entrained in the gases.

However, it might still be possible for the AC power to be computed from past experiments if the voltage measurements were saved. The models for AC power as a function of the linear slew characteristic of the power supply should be able to be added back into the energy budget model.

These models indicate that the AC power should be proportional the amount of bubbling, which is in turn proportional to the drive current after the cathode is fully charged.

1:19 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Moulton, there is plenty of evidence that there was neither significant error from misting, nor from power supply noise. I've started a Wikiversity course based on Beaudette, linked from the Cold fusion resource. In brief, however, I'll note that the control experiments done with hydrogen and "dead cells" suffice to show that misting and power supply noise are not major issues. Your criticism would apply to calculated power, not to power that is excess over control cells. The control cells would be subject to misting error (with some protocols) and to bubble noise, just like what you speculate takes place in experimental (deuterium and active palladium) cells.

11:05 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

In an e-mail message to me from three days ago, Dieter Britz wrote, "I must however admit that I had not taken slew rate into account in my previous work, assuming it to be very high - as it should be."

Yes, slew rate should be very high. In McKubre's work with his Kepco BOP 20-20M 400-watt power supply, the slew rate is 1.25 A/μsec. However, as we have found, the AC noise power (from the quadratic term in the model) is not a function of the slew rate; it's a function of the magnitude of the perturbation in the ohmic resistance of the cell from the bubbling action.

I am now waiting for Dieter and four other technical experts to review the model for estimating AC noise power.

11:36 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

I write walls of text, Barry calls them "wallucinations," but Barry writes variations on the same comment, over and over, even when the comment has been shown to be misleading. He fills pages with these comments.

Dialogorhea.

Scattersnot.

Contorsive Ploof.

8:48 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Is there any way to lead you to an accurate insight?

If so, the method has eluded me.

8:50 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Sure there is a way. Demonstrate an ability to listen, show listening by example.

If I make what you think is an error, first show that you understand my claim. Then show the error(s). Instead, what you've done is to simply allege new alleged errors, complaining about the thorough answers as "wallucinations." Not exactly a way to model good communication. Is this how you talk with students?

Of course, you are assuming that I don't have accurate insight already. Remember, Barry, the point of view I'm expressing has been the default in peer-reviewed publication for about five years now. You have your head stuck in the sand, wondering why I'm not agreeing with you that there is nothing to see.

I'm aware that it would be painful to open your eyes, and you probably aren't ready yet. Pull your head out of the sand or whatever other dark place it's stuck, wash your face off, and take a fresh look.

Let me ask you: do my responses to your "noise power" and "misting" objections show that I understand the issues you are raising? Serious question! I've been summarizing your objections in various places. Are those summaries incorrect?

10:49 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

You are not my student. A student is someone who studies, with or without a teacher or peers in a study group.

Where are your studies of AC noise power going into a fluctuating load resistance?

You don't have to learn AC power calculations from me. It's sophomore mathematics. You can do the math yourself, or ask someone who has learned sophomore mathematics to do the mathematics with your or for you.

11:21 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

You think I'm not studying? I assure you that I'm not only studying, I'm learning. Including from you.

You did not answer my question, which was asked to "lead you" to look at your assumption that I'm not "being led to accurate insight."

I asked if my summaries of your theories were accurate. If they were accurate, then I must be following your "lead," but disagree with you on the implications. Now, are you understanding my leading? I'm not seeing it summarized by you, I'm not seeing reflections that show understanding, the contrary. You could fix this, it's standard social communication theory and practice.

But start by answering the question, okay? Am I summarizing your theories, say about mist and power supply noise, accurately? Have I mist something?

3:24 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

I vote for "contorsive ploof." What do you think?

As in "Kort presented a contorsive ploof that over 3000 cold fusion research papers are unredeemable because some of them forgot to cross a t or dot an i somewhere."

3:27 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Did you independently derive the model for AC noise power?

Did you correctly apply the model for it to two independent resistors in series, each with its own distinct value of average resistance and percentage fluctuations?

Did you give the model for AC power in your summary and explain why the quadratic term in the Taylor series is there and why (unlike the liner term) it doesn't cancel out?

3:41 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Yes, contorsive ploof, definitely.

3:47 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

I'll go out on a limb and predict the drama will turn out to be an instance of Greek Tragedy.

3:56 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

That's no prediction, at least not to me, it's not "out on a limb," except as to what you have not stated, it's an observation. Classic.

5:59 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

If it's an observation, then it's already happened.

Did the Greek Tragedy already happen?

If so, who sang the dithyramb?

11:52 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Okay, okay, then it's all over except for the dithyramb.

1:58 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Do you feel invisible? Unseen and unheard?

If so, that would be a propitious time to sing the dithyramb.

2:43 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

No, I only feel that way when I'm trying to tell my kids something they don't want to hear, they are too busy watching the TV or playing some game.

3:53 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Then color me perplexed.

For the life of me, I cannot identify your affective emotional state.

4:04 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Good thing, then, that your life does not depend on figuring out my affective state. How about responding to what I *write*?

4:10 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

What you write tends to put me to sleep.

Since I don't really care to be in a trance state, I keep coming back to reality.

Have you watched "The Phantom Tollbooth" yet?

4:17 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

I watched the first segment. I'll see if the girls want to watch it. Barry, I don't have tons-o-time, like you might think.

4:18 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

You'll get a lot more out of an hour watching "The Phantom Tollbooth" than spending an hour boring me to tears with yet another mind-numbing wall of text.

4:23 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Aw, Barry, it's easy to not be bored by my comments. Don't read them!

4:34 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Mostly I skim them looking for increments in your mental models and perturbations in your affective emotional state, to the extent that either can be discerned by reading between the lines.

5:03 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Right. I've sometimes labored under the illusion that content mattered. Instead, you are searching for clues to confirm your imaginations.

Since content doesn't matter, I'll be briefer.

5:27 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

I said up front, way at the beginning, that I was interested in studying this case to see if it jibed with the model of emotions and learning that I've been working on for 25 years.

And I learned that in my laundry list of emotions that arise in Quadrant II, there were some interesting ones that I hadn't paid very much attention to before, because they hadn't show up so dramatically before.

5:54 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

so, Barry, you enrolled Dr. Storms in your research project. Was he informed what he was signing up for?

seems to me you "test" people with your parodies and ridicule, studying their reactions, following your bizarre psychological theories. And in your I Have a Scream speech, you wish for "control freaks" to "eat crow." Gee, that could be called "trolling."

9:57 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Yes, I informed him. You were copied on every piece of E-Mail between Ed Storms and myself.

Here is an exemplary fragment (one of many) in which I carefully explained my objectives:

Ed Storms: "I report only about 1% of what I have measured. The rest is background and support for why I took the path I later describe. That is why suggestions by skeptics are so pointless."

Barry Kort: "Most skeptics are suggesting things that could be done to dispel their skepticism. But you no longer seem to care about dispelling skepticism. It looks like you are going for the brass ring, to build a working system that yields enough energy to brew me a cup of coffee and otherwise go off the grid."

Ed Storms: "Of course, I would like to dispel skepticism. Why do you think I write the papers, the books, and take time for this discussion?"

Barry Kort: "If I can be of any service at all, I suppose it's to clarify why my skepticism has not yet been dispelled. I don't have a stake in CF. It doesn't really matter to me if CF turns out to be real or not. What matters to me is if I can figure out why your beliefs (and your associated emotions) turn out one way, while the beliefs (and the associated emotions) of the skeptics turn out another way.

"In the Emotions and Learning Phase Space Diagram, we are probably in different quadrants. But I'm not quite sure where either of us are. I still have a lot of gaps in my understanding, mainly because I keep looking for something that's important to me -- namely how specific plausible mundane explanations are conclusively falsified, and how confounding variables are reckoned."

Ed Storms: "Unfortunately, it is a very unrewarding effort because no matter what is said or what evidence is provided, the attitude does not change."

Barry Kort: "I can give you a short list of criteria and evidence that would resolve my uncertainty. By now, you can probably recite that short list back to me (along with a sermon about why you believe none of it matters)."

Ed Storms: "It is obvious that the only way to dispel skepticism is to produce the effect at such a high level and in such an obvious way even an idiot would be impressed. That is the goal of my research."

Barry Kort: "I imagine a breakthrough in the theory frontier would be of interest, too."

Recall, as well, that I asked Ed Storms for permission to quote such excerpts either for the purpose of completing the review of his paper, or to help explain how scientists go about their work. As you know, he granted blanket, unrestricted permission.

So he was fully informed of my own research interests and objectives, and he gave me express permission to proceed to engage in the meta-cognitive dialogue analysis that is the advertised hallmark of my own research.

Does that anger, annoy, grieve, or perplex you?

If so, feel free to contemplate, analyze, review, criticize, or ridicule it as much as you like.

4:15 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Wall of text. Barry, you're unqualified,

7:14 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

You have the right to remain oblivious.

7:17 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Barry, it's become crystal clear that you don't engage in real dialog. You don't make efforts to understand what your respondent is saying, what your respondent means and thinks, but only to try to suss out their "emotion." In the end, it's cold and unfeeling. You end up perplexed.

Your perplexity, with this repeated situation, is a result of your own attachments. The attachments make it impossible for you to actually understand others, you are trying to match their "emotions" with the situation that you imagine they are in, such as cold fusion researchers.

I.e., "How do they feel, being so stupidly obsessed by a fantasy that has no relation to reality?"

And your assumption about reality, then, makes it impossible for you to understand. The real question, that you might answer if you actually ask it, is:

"How do I feel, being so stupidly obsessed by a fantasy?"

You mentioned on the international discussion list that you dumped all this cold fusion junk on, Arthur C. Clarke, as having rejected cold fusion. Apparently, you were unable to read what he wrote, that the question of cold fusion was quite open. That was a common *skeptical* position a decade ago. It isn't tenable any more. But what I'm saying to you now does not depend on that conclusion of mine.

You consider the question closed. CF is impossible. Anyone who looks at the evidence and concludes otherwise is deluded. Yet you are utterly unqualified to judge, you simply don't know enough.

You become thoroughly attached to your own speculations and present them as fact, this power supply noise thing is characteristic. You ignore all evidence that contradicts your hypothesis, and simply re-assert, ad nauseum, your hypothesis as if it were a proven fact. That is precisely what Feynman was talking about when he talked about fooling yourself.

How does it feel?

Hence your "research" is doomed, torpedoed by your own attachments. Ancient story, actually. Tragic.

12:14 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

I didn't end up perplexed.

I started out perplexed and remained perplexed.

What differs is that I'm perplexed over an evolving set of curious issues.

At this point, I'm curious to learn how the Greek Tragedy will play out.

12:33 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

You don't get good experimental data if you don't vary the conditions. How about trying to falsify your own hypotheses, like you've been claiming that others should do?

1:23 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

The hypothesis of no mist cannot be falsified, because mist was clearly seen.

The hypothesis of no AC noise cannot be falsified, because AC noise was clearly seen.

Given that these effects can be clearly seen, they must be carefully measured and included in the energy budget.

12:53 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Moulton is making up experimental observations.

mist was clearly seen.

Mist has not been seen in CF experiments of the class being discussed. Mist would leave behind a tell-tale sign. Consider a Pons-Fleischmann cell, typical, which has a small vent in the cap that generated gases can escape from. If droplets of electrolyte, with a certain salt content to make them conductive, are entrained in the (slow) movement of gas out the vent, they will be deposited on the surface of the cell cap, and a deposit would become visible from these salts. No such deposit is observed.

In much of the CF work, misting would be irrelevant; for example, it could not be an effect with closed cells, but closed cells show the same CF effects as open ones.

At this point, I have to conclude that you are, through reckless disregard of the truth, lying. Or can you show the basis for your statement, which was unequivocal?

2:57 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Didn't you mean that these hypotheses are falsified by the alleged observations? Not "cannot be falsified." Be that as it may, taking what would seem to be your intention instead of your clumsy expression....

The hypothesis of no AC noise cannot be falsified, because AC noise was clearly seen.

There is AC noise. Barry, that's a straw man argument. Nobody is proposing that there is no AC noise. That's how you present this, though. What is being proposed is that the AC noise is entirely voltage noise, as to any significant levels. And if it is entirely voltage noise, then estimation of input power by using average voltage is correct.

By assuming square wave resistance change, you *assumed* the condition that would cause current regulation to fail. But the resulting high-frequency noise would be very visible by any high-bandwidth observation of the current.

I now have confirmation from the researchers. There is no significant current noise, based on actual observation. This was already a dead-end, because the calorimetry with SRI P13/P14, which Moulton knows because he's pointed to the chart, demonstrates that power supply noise due to bubbling cannot be the source of the excess heat, and that, even with high bubbling, the calculated input power and the actually measured input power match, unless the anomaly appears, which is less often than not.

As well, calibrations, in general, are often done with platinum cathodes, which will bubble just as much, but which still show no excess heat.

With constant current supplies, bubble noise does not appear in the current, the resistance change is obviously too slow to defeat the power supply current regulation.

Again, Barry, you are blowing smoke. I responded to you previously about the oscilloscope display, from CBS 60 Minutes, that you seem to think showed "AC noise." (It does! But that's voltage noise.) I pointed out that the display certainly was not of current, and that the time base was clearly long, probably hours per division. You are simply ignoring everything said to you that contradicts your conclusions, which you persist in stating as if they were irrefutable, proven facts. That's the behavior of a fanatic.

3:14 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Publish the data, not your unreliable interpretations of the data.

Let's have the actual data for those experiments P12-P16 from McKubre.

3:25 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

I have no "data" from P12-P16 beyond what is in the EPRI report, which you have cited yourself. What made you think I did? I mentioned P13/P14, and to what is apparent from the chart you published from them, and from the text. If you are too lazy to read what you yourself cite, what can I say? I think I even gave page numbers on the other forum.

I do have statements from McKubre, Storms, and Letts, and maybe some others, which I will review, and I'll check with them before publishing. I've requested permission to publish LabView data. But I've summarized it, and you can believe me or not.

A quick reprise is that, between the discussions on Wikiversity, here, and on http://wc5.worldcrossing.com/webx?14@@.1de5262a/0, you have all the evidence you'd need to refute your own stupidity. I'll be summarizing this, but not here.

5:12 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

If McKubre refuses to release the data, then his interpretations cannot be relied upon, because he has clearly made a sophomoric mistake in reckoning AC noise power.

5:37 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

If McKubre refuses to release the data, then his interpretations cannot be relied upon, because he has clearly made a sophomoric mistake in reckoning AC noise power.

Barry, perhaps you are talking about a huge volume of raw data. He released it, years ago, to his client, EPRI, and they published it, you could have bought it for something like $200. On microfiche. Maybe you still can.

What data are you looking for? Seems to me you are on a fishing expedition.

There is more data in the EPRI report than is common for almost all peer-reviewed publications.

There has been no refusal. What in the world are you talking about?

The LabView data I have is not from McKubre, it's from another researcher. I don't think you are reading carefully at all, you are jumping to conclusions, flying off half-cocked, or fully cocked, as the case may be.

8:51 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

How do you multiply and sum 25 trillion pairs of measurements recorded on microfiche?

9:30 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

An abacus. That ought to keep you out of trouble for a while.

11:13 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

You may also need a magnifying glass.

11:35 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

I'll see your abacus and raise you a dithyramb.

1:53 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

You are aware that a dithyramb is about me, right? At least, about me at birth, I moved on a bit, through some scenes and stages.

11:58 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

I don't know the story of your birth or how you were raised, but into every life a dithyramb or two must pay a visit.

Especially when one is on a Quixotic Quest.

12:46 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Barry, do you know my birth name? Come on, you are usually quicker than this.

1:16 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

It's either Dennis or Daniel.

If you were named after Daniel of the Old Testament, then I daresay the handwriting is on the wall.

Mini, mini, tekel uparsin means "money, money, token, and portion."

1:40 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

And if the name is Dennis?

Geez, Barry. Come on.

On the overall matters, I can highly recommend a single dose of "Ooops!" No matter how deeply you have inserted your foot, it can be removed. However, the more you wriggle, the deeper it goes, at some point it may rip out your guts if you yank on it too hard.

How about stopping to assess the situation, get a second opinion from someone who won't think you're simply a crank, like, don't you have friends at MIT?

Have you done the simple experiment you are trying to get me to ask McKubre to do? (Why McKubre? After all, I have a DSO and am soldering together some constant current supplies! Now, they aren't going to be Kepco, just a single IC and control resistors, and maybe a little capacitance, but .... where can I get a carbon microphone.... Got one laying around?)

But how in the world do you think I could induce McKubre to run an experiment to demonstrate how a constant current power supply works. He's been using them for many decades, he is an electrochemist, after all?

Besides, I already have answers. People have indeed looked at the current with a high-speed oscilloscope. No surprises, Barry.

3:30 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Dunno the etymology of Dennis.

I don't have a constant current power supply.

You can find a carbon microphone in the handset of a desk telephone such as the Model 500. You should probably be able to find some these still in service in Springfield.

Almost all the phones in my house are that style. Two of them are even rotary dial.

What's important for Mike McKubre to understand is how one of Thomas Edison's Carbon Button Microphones work, when driven with a constant current power supply.

6:08 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Barry, you combine arrogance with ignorance. I guess it isn't that uncommon.

McKubre doesn't need to learn anything about carbon microphones. I know how such a mike works, and I know what this experiment would show. What is your expectation? You have not proposed anything that's being tested.

And a carbon mike is not bubble noise. Your point?

Barry, your point is that even when you've been shown that you were utterly wrong, you keep talking, you make up more BS, you never say "Oops!"

You raked Storms over the coals because he rejected your radon hypothesis. Then quietly dropped it when it became truly obvious how preposterous it was.

Now you don't believe that a constant current power supply is a constant current power supply, when faced with audio frequency noise, which it's designed to handle easily.

You've dropped Dieter Britz' name, misrepresenting what he wrote. He acknowledged that they didn't consider what you have raised.

Barry, they didn't consider it because it was preposterous. Lots of people have looked at the current signal with a DSO. No noise, Barry.

You imagine that you can impeach the work of hundreds of researchers, published in peer-reviewed journals, over twenty years, by making up some speculation?

There is no evidence for misting in P-F class experiments, and misting is irrelevant in closed cells, like the work of McKubre.

There is no evidence for significant power supply noise, and plenty of data indicating the exact opposite, confirming the estimated power input, through actual calorimetry, which would detect any significant power supply noise.

You are bankrupt on this, over and over, yet you continue.

I think you are trolling, it's all for the lulz. Either that or you are senile. I don't like either conclusion.

What's it like to be you?

10:48 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

My expectation is that Mike McKubre will depart from the protocols of the scientific method by failing to explain how he justifies his peculiar assumption that there is no AC noise power, and by refusing to present the actual data on his electrical input power.

11:00 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

My expectation is that Mike McKubre will depart from the protocols of the scientific method

Barry, you are totally unqualified to judge the application of the scientific method, because you absolutely don't follow it in your own analysis. You clearly are only searching for confirmation of your speculations, not for refutation of them, because you miss the most obvious evidence. And ignore it when it's pointed out.

by failing to explain how he justifies his peculiar assumption that there is no AC noise power,

He does not make that assumption, you lie. There is AC noise power, but it is measured and included with quite sufficient accuracy by the procedure he uses, under the experimental conditions. You keep repeating this "no AC power" misrepresentation in spite of I don't know how many times I've denied it. That's trolling, Barry.

The input power measurements are confirmed by all expert analysis that actually looked at the data. You seized on an off-hand comment by Garwin, who has had ample opportunity to make specific criticisms, and he hasn't done it.

and by refusing to present the actual data on his electrical input power.

McKubre has presented far more data than is normal in scientific papers, he's not refusing anything.

You went to ask about my "churlishness"? Look in the mirror Barry, you might learn something.

10:57 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Exactly how does McKubre include the AC transient power by multiplying the average DC voltage by the average DC current to get the DC power?

Where is McKubre's data on the AC power, arising from the bubbling effect, which was first noticed in 1892 by Jules Louis Gabriel Violle, investigated by Elihu Thompson, Henri Armagnat, and André Blondel (among others) and thoroughly analyzed by Karl Taylor Compton in 1909, who published his results in Physical Review 30 in 1910?

5:28 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Exactly how does McKubre include the AC transient power by multiplying the average DC voltage by the average DC current to get the DC power?

The way he says he does. You imply by "average DC current" that it's not constant. It's a constant. If it's constant, then the average AC power is the product of the average AC voltage and the constant current.

That is, the AC power is captured as part of the "average." The AC power alternately reduces the input power and increases it. If the variation is random, as McKubre explicitly assumes, then the AC power component addition to DC power averages to zero, since "above the line" of "DC power -- which means average power! -- is just as common as "below the line."

A VU meter, however, reading only AC power, excluding DC power, would measure substantial power. If you added that power to McKubre's power, you would get a sum that was more than the actual power going into the cell.

An audio system would make lots-o-noise. There is noise power, but it is entirely voltage noise, current is constant, except for *very small* deviations.

Do you need an example, with exact calculation? I've done it before, you ignored it. Wall of text, you complained.

10:54 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

The way he computes input power is to compute the DC power and leave the AC power out of his energy budget model.

He erroneously assumes there is no AC noise power, and he doesn't measure it.

Then the AC power he injected but pretended doesn't exist shows up as unexplained excess heat.

If he bothered to measure the AC noise power, he'd discover it explains his excess heat.

11:02 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

The way he computes input power is to compute the DC power and leave the AC power out of his energy budget model.

That's because the AC power, under constant current conditions, does not add to the DC power, the AC power averages out. Moulton, you have a strong belief in your theory. You have forgotten to check it against actual experimental results. In effect, for you, your theory is not falsifiable, and you don't care if experiment shows you to be out to lunch.

He erroneously assumes there is no AC noise power, and he doesn't measure it.

You've said this again and again. It's false. He makes no such assumption, and, indeed, as you have reported, he states that there is noise. He has, in fact, "measured" this noise, but only as an observation that current noise was insignificant, he didn't record, as far as I know, an actual figure. He'd have had to take special steps to do that, and what he could quickly see was that the current was constant, even when examined with a high-bandwidth oscilloscope. Did he then look for AC with very sensitive equipment? Why would he do that? He could see that the AC voltage on the shunt was so low that current noise simply was not important. And every other researcher working with constant current power supplies came up with the same conclusion.

The bubbling doesn't produce fast enough noise to cause the power supply to significantly fail to maintain constant current. That's very solid, an experimental consensus, and it's easily disproven if anyone cares to do it.

Originally, the researchers did all kinds of things to find input energy errors. They used high-bandwidth data acquisition and made the most accurate possible noise-immune measurements. And they found that there was no practical effect from bubble noise with a constant-current supply, so they stopped, very early on, even trying to use all these different and more cumbersome methods.

You have raised an issue that had some possible theoretical interest, but that has no practical consequence whatever, and the experimental evidence, easily available to you, proves it.

He didn't need to know more than that negative finding (no current noise), and he's certainly not going to run these experiments again just to satisfy a lone lunatic skeptic. Britz has promised to consider the issue in detail, but he also gave an ad hoc opinion that this problem simply was not significant.

Then the AC power he injected but pretended doesn't exist shows up as unexplained excess heat.

Basically, at this point, given how many times it's been pointed out to you the error in the above statement, I conclude you are in willful disregard of the truth.

He does not "pretend" that AC power does not exist. Period. He acknowledges it and considers it and then uses a method that handles it.

You are alone, isolated, Barry. I rather doubt that Joshua Schroeder would intervene here, not on this point, where he'd make himself look totally foolish, and he does have a reputation to defend!

If he bothered to measure the AC noise power, he'd discover it explains his excess heat.

Wow! Such confidence!

Barry, if you were right, you would have made a very significant discovery. You couldn't publish this as-is, because the peer reviewers would slice and dice your paper. But, hey, all it would take is experimental confirmation of your theory, and you'd be truly famous. The Man Who Finally Debunked Cold Fusion.

Unfortunately, you have not looked at the experimental evidence, the controls used, and they already falsify your theory, conclusively. You are being told that by experts, not just by me.

2:05 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Thought experiment: Assume there is 10 V DC, and riding on top of that, there is 1 volt (RMS, sinusoidal) AC, then the voltage would vary from 8.6 volts to 11.4 volts. Understood?

Assume that current is constant, at 1 amp.

(This requires that resistance be varying as the AC voltage varies).

What is the power?

Is it 10 watts or is it 11 watts? Or what?

2:13 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

This requires that resistance be varying as the AC voltage varies.

Wrong. It requires that the load be a fixed resistor in series with an AC voltage of 1 Volt that is exactly 180° out phase with the first AC power supply.

If you try to do this with a sinusoidally varying resistor, then you have to model the traveling waves.

To see this, assume the power supply is located at some distance from the resistive load so that the propagation delay cannot be ignored.

For any distance, there will be frequencies at which the sinusoidally varying power wave will arrive 180° out phase with the sinusoidally varying resistor. At those frequencies the AC power output will be maximized. The AC power is only zero at selected frequencies which are an exact integer multiple of the wavelength.

It would be nice to be able to assume that the speed of propagation of a signal down a wire is infinitely fast, but it's not. The speed of propagation of a signal is always a fraction of the speed of light.

For every frequency, the sinusoidally varying voltage signal will arrive at the resistor at a corresponding phase shift that depends on how many wavelengths the signal has to travel.

3:59 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Okay, strike the comment about the resistance varying. (It was dicta, not necessary, so I'm not going to pursue it.)

If figuring the power in practical circuits were as complex as Barry proposes, engineers would still be scratching their heads over every little problem.

I didn't see an answer to the question. 10W or 11W or what?

"Current is constant" is obviously an approximation. Look at any current closely enough, there is some variation, but if it is limited in amplitude, its effect on power is likewise limited.

How much power would be dissipated in that circuit?

You measure DC voltage as the average voltage across the DUT. You measure AC voltage with an AC voltage meter.

You measure the current by measuring the voltage across an 0.1 ohm shunt, being 100 mV, and, say, you verify with an oscilloscope that the noise in that voltage is below 1 mV, peak to peak, all the way up to 50 MHz. (that would be higher than I'd expect).

You may, if you wish, calculate the total power with a correction for the maximum effect of current noise as a percentage of the current.

(In the real circuit, the resistance changes and the voltage is adjusted by the power supply to keep the current constant. Necessarily there is a delay, and that delay results in a certain error in maintaining current, and under the conditions of a constant current supply faced with slow resistance noise, well within the response capacity of the supply, the error is very small. I examined boundary conditions (infinite slew or zero error, and zero slew, maximum error -- i.e., constant voltage, no response to resistance change -- , Barry ignored that work.)

And Barry still has found, in no place, any support from someone who understands power circuits, and plenty of response otherwise.

This is an isolated crank insisting on his own errors, claiming that what has been published under peer review, or academically published, or prepared for formal report to a major research organization, by a professional, is bogus, a sophomoric mistake, and denying not only experimental evidence but sound theory.

Cold fusion has been closely examined by hosts of skeptics, and they don't push this theory. "Some mistake" has indeed be the subject of a casual comment to a reporter by Garwin, but that is entirely different from alleging a specific error, not to mention actually demonstrating such an error.

Electrochemists, including the skeptic Britz, who surely know bubble noise, for the reasons Barry has explained (prior work), do not support his claims. Britz, like other open-minded skeptics, such as Nate Hoffman, has considered the question of cold fusion open, a mystery, not closed like Barry seems to assert.

If input noise were the problem, Britz would have seen it long ago. He mentions that he has routinely examined current with an oscilloscope.

Yet Barry seems unwilling to budge. I think he's testing response, in a word, trolling. He's been known to do that. Or he's insane.

Captcha: undef. How do you get such cool captchas, Barry? It's like consulting the I Ching with each post.

11:29 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Britz told me he had never considered AC noise power from fluctuating resistance due to the bubbles. As near as I can tell, no one working in CF ever took a look at it. Rather McKubre thought about it, and decided to leave it out of his energy budget model.

You measure the current by measuring the voltage across an 0.1 ohm shunt, being 100 mV, and, say, you verify with an oscilloscope that the noise in that voltage is below 1 mV.

First of all, the 0.1 ohm resistor used to measure the current is not a shunt. It's in series with the cell.

For your example, if there were 100 mV across a 0.1 ohm series resistor, then your DC current is 1 A. If the AC component is just 1% of that, then you have α = r/R = 0.01 in the model I gave you a few weeks ago.

If your cell is drawing about 1.5 W of DC power, then it will be dissipating about 0.15 mW of AC noise power. If you inject 0.15 mW for 100 hours, that's 54 joules.

Now go back and find the actual AC voltage on that series resistor, when the cell is being driven with 4 A of DC current, so that there is a lot more bubbling going on. What you'll find is that the AC noise power rises quadratically with the DC level of the over-charging current. In other words, if your DC current is cranked up from 1 A to 4 A, your AC noise power will go up by a factor of 16.

And if the bubbling ever gets to the level where the entire cathode is encased in a thin layer of gas, you'll have your 21st Century replication of Wehnelt's Electrolytic Interrupter. If that happens, you'll hear a resounding "thump."

12:51 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Sigh.

Strategy of a troll: ask irrelevant questions and see if your target jumps. Avoid the basic issues, and avoid answering questions. Avoid addressing opposing arguments.

Ask new questions, raise new arguments, keep them off balance.

Repeat bankrupt arguments in other fora, causing the target to waste time in multiple locations. Why waste an effective argument (i.e., causing response) by only asserting it once. Force the target to refute it over and over.

If the target is sane, the target will eventually give up or push a block button or something like that, and thus victory is obtained.

Sanity cannot win in a one-to-one battle with insanity. It takes a community.

1:33 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

so, one at a time:

Britz told me he had never considered AC noise power from fluctuating resistance due to the bubbles. As near as I can tell, no one working in CF ever took a look at it. Rather McKubre thought about it, and decided to leave it out of his energy budget model.

You've contradicted yourself on this many times. McKubre didn't just think about it. McKubre knew the nature of the signals involved, the nature of the noise, and explained exactly what he was doing. He asserted that the current was constant, and you have simply rejected that, assuming that it was not based on knowledge, claiming that he simply assumed it. I know that to be incorrect.

You have claimed that McKubre did not consider AC noise, and that's blatantly false from what you have, yourself, reported from him. He considered it, and handled it, by a method that works, and that has been confirmed to work, and you have, so far, refused to look at the confirmation.

Britz stated the truth. But he's said more about this. He did not "consider it" because the objection was preposterous, contrary to routine experience that he and others had. He has promised to come up with actual figures, when he has time. He does not believe that this will change anything, nor does anyone familiar with bubble noise and its effects on a constant current power supply.

First of all, the 0.1 ohm resistor used to measure the current is not a shunt. It's in series with the cell.

The series resistor used to measure current is routinely called a "shunt." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunt_%28electrical%29#Use_in_current_measuring

This is a debate tactic: try to fault the language of the other, even when the meaning is clear. I thought you were an electronics engineer, but something is fishy here. I want to buy a precision 0.1 ohm resistor, I'll look under "current shunt." That's the major use.

1:42 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Has it ever occurred to you that I'm a science educator who has been teaching and tutoring science ever since I was in 5th Grade?

When we came to a lesson on electricity in 5 Grade, the teacher asked me to teach it.

I have a BSEE from the University of Nebraska, awarded with High Distinction, since I graduated #1 out of 400 students in the School of Engineering.

I have an MSEE from Stanford University.

I spent 20 years at Bell Telephone Laboratories doing Network Planning. I was awarded the Distinguished Technical Staff Award for pioneering work, a great deal of it involving signals and noise on telephone circuits.

I've been teaching science to the public at the Boston Museum of Science for 23 years.

If you wish to pretend you know what you're talking about when you try to solve sophomore level problems in electrical circuits, feel free to be as self-deluded as you like.

I am not here to humor you. If you have no interest in understanding how to measure and model AC noise, then go snow somebody else with your idiotic blizzard of words.

1:49 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

You did not answer the question, Barry, I asked what the power would be under the stated conditions.

For extra credit, in a second comment, I suggested 1% current noise (a figure I expect to be quite high.) But start without current noise, only AC power showing up as AC voltage.

Please answer the original question, I'll repeat it here:

Thought experiment: Assume there is 10 V DC, and riding on top of that, there is 1 volt (RMS, sinusoidal) AC, then the voltage would vary from 8.6 volts to 11.4 volts. Understood?

Assume that current is constant, at 1 amp.

What is the power?

Is it 10 watts or is it 11 watts? Or what?

1:51 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Did I not give you the formula, a couple of weeks ago, to compute AC power as a fraction of DC power for any given r/R?

Is there some reason you are incapable of taking a simple ratio, r/R, squaring it, and multiplying it by the DC power?

1:56 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

I'm not going to answer a more complex question when a simpler question is unanswered. If we can't agree on simple questions, how could we hope to agree on complex ones? Answer the simple question, then we can move on to the more complex one.

Unless you are trolling, in which case you will continue to avoid simple answers that might lead to agreement, since, for a troll, agreement is not the goal; rather, irritating effect on others is the goal, and "winning" is another goal. A troll wins by exhausting others, under conditions where the troll can imagine that they retire because "they could not answer the questions." And that is then fuel for years of writing and parody.

What is the power in the circuit described, with stated conditions?

You may then, later, modify the stated conditions to incorporate finer points. However, the stated conditions, and the answer, will establish a point, a true one. A troll would therefore not answer the question, unless it were forced in some way. Someone interested in the scientific method would, in fact, answer, and trust that if the answer makes their theory "look bad," they will be able to explain the problems with the assumed conditions later.

2:10 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

The conditions you specified are mutually inconsistent.

I told you that if the current is constant, then it cannot be that the resistance is merely varying. If the resistance were varying, the current would not be constant. There would be traveling waves (signals) on the line.

To get a constant current, the resistance must be constant and there must be no net signal voltage on the line.

If you insist on postulating conditions that violate the fundamental laws of physics, then you're living in a fantasy world that is disconnected from reality.

3:26 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Barry, smokescreen.

I gave you measurements in a hypothetical situation. You have previously stated that the speed with which a constant current supply adjusts the voltage is irrelevant, and you allowed the adjustment to take zero time. If the adjustment takes zero time, then the current is constant.

You are now claiming that the current cannot be constant, and, technically, you are correct. But the problem is that you are denying the reality of constant current power supplies! The reality is that the necessary deviation in current is so small that it's not relevant to our problem.

You were given information adequate to calculate the power. It's you who are refusing to do the math.

Once again:

Assume there is 10 V DC, and riding on top of that, there is 1 volt (RMS, sinusoidal) AC, then the voltage would vary from 8.6 volts to 11.4 volts. Understood?

Assume that current is constant, at 1 amp.

In all physical problems, the numbers given are necessarily approximations. Obviously current is not a true constant, i.e., one exact precise value, because no physical quantities of this kind are exact, period. But you have an oscilloscope and you look at the current, and it's solid. Let's limit the current noise to 1 milliamp RMS. So you get to do some slightly more complex math.

Neglecting the current noise, what is the DC power, and what is the AC power, and what is the total power?

Then, assuming maximum effect from the current noise, what is the maximum power? (i.e., maximum average, not peak).

1:24 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

The speed is irrelevant because, if you do the math, the energy from the formation and release of a single bubble doesn't depend on the speed of response of the constant current power supply.

Constant current power supplies, as you know, have a characteristic response time. But for the purposes of this analysis, having a power supply with a faster response time doesn't buy you anything.

It amounts to having a Van de Graaff generator as your constant current power supply. And as you know, they will throw a hefty spark through a dielectric gap.

The more tightly you regulate the current, the more unbridled will be the voltage fluctations, and when you multiply them together, you get a noise pulse. In a Van de Graaff generator, you can see that noise pulse. It's visible spark.

10:34 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Barry, you bring up more irrelevant arguments per square inch than I've ever seen. This is not at all about science, it's about argument and winning by exhausting the other side. It's worked for you for years, so why should you stop now?

The speed is irrelevant because, if you do the math, the energy from the formation and release of a single bubble doesn't depend on the speed of response of the constant current power supply.

Irrelevant to what, Barry? The speed is relevant to the distribution of noise between the voltage and the current. You acknowledge this below.

Constant current power supplies, as you know, have a characteristic response time. But for the purposes of this analysis, having a power supply with a faster response time doesn't buy you anything.

This is contradictory to what you state below. Faster response time means less current noise and more voltage noise, right? With zero response time, the voltage noise is maximized, the current noise is zero.

It amounts to having a Van de Graaff generator as your constant current power supply. And as you know, they will throw a hefty spark through a dielectric gap.

But the low parallel resistance does not allow such a voltage buildup. I'll admit, though, that I don't get the analogy to a Van de Graaff generator here. That's a constant current supply, to the bell, but it's certainly not constant current when the bell is abruptly discharged. If a Van de Graff generator were connected to a CF cell, you'd get a low and constant current. You might not get enough voltage, unless the generator were large, to dissociate water.

The more tightly you regulate the current, the more unbridled will be the voltage fluctations, and when you multiply them together, you get a noise pulse.Bingo. You've not defined noise pulse, by the way.

You somewhat imply, with "unbridled," major voltage fluctuation. But, in fact, the voltage for R = R +/- dR is just E = I*R +/- I*dR, if current is completely constant. A constant current power supply can keep the variation in current very low, that's the whole point, unless maximum slew is approached, due to fast resistance variations (which is not the case with bubbles under CF conditions).

Yes, there must be *some* current variation, that's a necessity. However, it's very low.

You still did not answer the question about power.

Assume there is 10 V DC, and riding on top of that, there is 1.00 volt (RMS, sinusoidal) AC, i.e., the instantaneous voltage varies from about 8.6 volts to 11.4 volts.

Assume that current is constant, at 1 amp, DC.

With zero current noise, what is the DC power, and what is the AC power, and what is the total power?

Then, assume 1 mV RMS current noise. What is the maximum effect from this on total power?

12:31 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

If you multiply t by 1/t, you get 1. If you multiply t by 1/t for any value of t, no matter how small, their product remains unity, even as t goes to zero.

Having a faster slew rate just means you have a smaller value of t. But as the fluctuation in the current goes down, the fluctuation in the voltage goes up, such that their product remains the same.

You cannot use a blizzard of words to repeal the Calculus.

Do you understand that the current cannot be completely constant? If it were, telephony wouldn't have worked. Bell's microphone wouldn't have worked and Edison's carbon microphone wouldn't have worked. Telephony works because a fluctuating resistance generates an AC signal (be it voice or noise), and it works whether the power supply is a battery, a constant current power supply, or anything in between, with inductive loading coils and/or shunt capacitors added to the circuit.

All McKubre has to do is pretend his cell is a microphone in a telephone circuit, and then notice that he can literally hear the fizzing in the water, if he taps the telephone line and listens in.

9:22 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

For you, conversation is a one-way street, where you control the questions, eh?

Assume there is 10 V DC, and riding on top of that, there is 1.00 volt (RMS, sinusoidal) AC, i.e., the instantaneous voltage varies from about 8.6 volts to 11.4 volts.

Assume that current is constant, at 1 amp, DC.

With zero current noise, what is the DC power, and what is the AC power, and what is the total power?

Then, assume 1 mV RMS current noise. What is the maximum effect from this on total power?

I don't think we can move on until you answer these questions. I'll answer yours separately, but I will continue repeating this one until you respond to it, because your questions and other responses then bury this one.

3:57 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

If you multiply t by 1/t, you get 1. If you multiply t by 1/t for any value of t, no matter how small, their product remains unity, even as t goes to zero.

Duh!

Having a faster slew rate just means you have a smaller value of t. But as the fluctuation in the current goes down, the fluctuation in the voltage goes up, such that their product remains the same.

No. As the current noise approaches zero, the voltage noise does not approach infinity, which is what your approach assumes, to keep the product constant, rather it approaches a fixed value, which is determined by the resistance noise and constant current (the constant value that is being approached as current noise goes to zero).

Let the set current be K.

If R = R +/- dR, as I -> K,
E -> K*(R +/- dR)

The noise in the voltage is, maximum, dR times the set current, peak-to-peak. It does not go to infinity, as you imply.

You cannot use a blizzard of words to repeal the Calculus.

Fortunately! That's why I don't try. But you do try to repeal the laws of nature, and experimental results and observations, to support your idiosyncratic theories, pretending that they are accepted and sound science, and this really makes me worry about your young students.

Do you understand that the current cannot be completely constant?

Of course! Do you think I'm a blithering idiot, or, say, an MIT undergrad? :-)

If it were, telephony wouldn't have worked. Bell's microphone wouldn't have worked and Edison's carbon microphone wouldn't have worked.

Oh, bosh! You mean that if a highly regulated constant current supply were used, these devices wouldn't have generated a signal? You are contradicting yourself, you are too attached to outcome to realize it.

Telephony works because a fluctuating resistance generates an AC signal (be it voice or noise).

Yes, an AC signal. With constant current, that would still be there, as AC voltage. My question is about a 1 V RMS AC signal, Barry.

All McKubre has to do is pretend his cell is a microphone in a telephone circuit, and then notice that he can literally hear the fizzing in the water, if he taps the telephone line and listens in.

Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.

So? Suppose the speaker is across the current shunt resistor. You will hear *nothing*.

Suppose the speaker is across the power supply terminals. You will hear the voltage noise. I suppose you could put a resistor in series with it. Better, you'd have a high-impedance preamp there.

I don't want to say that a speaker is in series with the cell, because that could induce significant inductance, and I don't want that complication.

(A phone tap generally is not inserted in the circuit, unless it is by a process that inserts a small value shunt or a transformer winding. Usually adequate, I'd think, to wrap the phone wire with a pickup wire.... If the pickup depends on current, though, it won't hear anything. It's like the shunt.)

Telephones use current signaling, though, I think. Constant current in a phone system would be downright weird. From the length of the lines, current would vary all over the place, you couldn't control it from the power supply.

This telephone stuff is pure hornswoggle. It has nothing to do with the behavior of constant current power supplies and CF cells.

5:18 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

By the way, I'll literally be listening to my cells, with a piezo microphone, and I could also listen to the voltage or current noise, and probably will. So? I'm looking for associated phenomena and, in particular, differences between a deuterium cell and the hydrogen control. This is investigative, not designed to prove anything. Yes, I know that hydrogen bubbling could be significantly different than deuterium bubbling. But I'm looking for high-speed transients, very high frequency, probably way above the bubble noise, and thus distinguishable; otherwise there would be way too much noise to see anything.

The work is not designed to prove anything except for the neutrons. Barry, neutrons! Do you get it yet?

5:19 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

So? Suppose the speaker is across the current shunt resistor. You will hear *nothing*.

Oh really? When did they repeal Ohm's Law?

And by the way, the way, the precision resistor used to measure current may be in shunt across the scope or voltmeter, but it's in series with the cell. The fact that you see a trace on that current-measuring resistor is your evidence that the audio frequency noise signal propagates through it.

But you already knew that a traveling wave propagates through the medium that it propagates through.

You really are going to have to take a semester course in Traveling Waves, Abd.

You'll be amazed to discover how audio circuits work.

Did you know that if you suck an egg, there is a barometric pressure wave through the egg that propagates just like a sound pressure wave?

Telephones work into a 600 ohm impedance. There is both a current wave and a voltage wave. On a VU Meter, 0 VU is 1 mW into a 600 ohm load.

Impedance matching is the art of transferring the maximum possible power from the source to the load. When the load impedance matches the source impedance, power transfer is maximized.

In telephony, that's what you want.

When two dissimilar cells are connected in series — one D2O, one H2O — what is the fraction of AC noise power generated in one cell that is dissipated in the other? (If you like, assume the two cells have nominally equal impedance for the purpose of this exercise.)

As to neutrons, I predict you won't get anything more than the background level of neutrons.

But you might get an education in AC Circuit Theory, Traveling Waves, and Noise Models.

8:16 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

"So? Suppose the speaker is across the current shunt resistor. You will hear *nothing*."

Oh really? When did they repeal Ohm's Law?


Last lame duck session. Didn't you notice? Really, the cruelty to ducks is terrible.

Barry, you're nuts. In case you hadn't noticed. Let's look at this:

And by the way, the way, the precision resistor used to measure current may be in shunt across the scope or voltmeter, but it's in series with the cell.

Duh! They actually don't normally put a scope across this, because the trace will be b o r i n g. But the point on which I've agreed is that they should look, and report the actual noise level. They have agreed as well.

I do know that they have looked, but the figure simply wasn't reported, and it may simply have been that they looked and saw what appeared to be a flat trace, so they might possibly have missed, say, 1% noise?

The fact that you see a trace on that current-measuring resistor is your evidence that the audio frequency noise signal propagates through it.

It is no evidence about audio noise at all. The voltage noise does *not* "propagate through" the current shunt, it appears entirely as voltage noise across the cell. Except for the *very low* noise caused by the power supply adjustment of voltage to maintain constant current. As you have noted, there *must* be some level of current noise. But that is not at all the same as current noise that would make a difference in these experiments, nor that you would hear with a speaker.

But you already knew that a traveling wave propagates through the medium that it propagates through..

Isn't that a tautology?

You really are going to have to take a semester course in Traveling Waves, Abd.

Female sailors? That sounds interesting.

You'll be amazed to discover how audio circuits work.

Yeah, I could have used the information when I was designing them.

Did you know that if you suck an egg, there is a barometric pressure wave through the egg that propagates just like a sound pressure wave?

Wow! I guess you can teach a grandfather how to suck eggs, too.

2:45 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Telephones work into a 600 ohm impedance. There is both a current wave and a voltage wave. On a VU Meter, 0 VU is 1 mW into a 600 ohm load.

By loading this with irrelevant facts, you make the response longer. Apparently you like that.

Telephone lines don't work with a constant current supply. Long lines, Barry. Bad Idea.

Impedance matching is the art of transferring the maximum possible power from the source to the load. When the load impedance matches the source impedance, power transfer is maximized.

Zzzzzz. Zzzzzz. Zzzzzz.

In telephony, that's what you want.

Chorus, "That's what you want!"

When two dissimilar cells are connected in series — one D2O, one H2O — what is the fraction of AC noise power generated in one cell that is dissipated in the other? (If you like, assume the two cells have nominally equal impedance for the purpose of this exercise.)

Naw, I don't want to waste time looking up the electrochemical voltages, and the resistances are so wildly variable under different conditions that an estimate could be way off. Like, LiOH concentration? That affects conductance more than anything!

Barry, you're out to lunch with no lunchbag.

As to neutrons, I predict you won't get anything more than the background level of neutrons.

Great Null Hypothesis, Barry, maybe you do understand the Scientific Method. Let's see, how do I test this? Calculate the impedance of the cell? Argue for months on the internet? Ask Barry? What?

Surely, whatever level I find, Barry will claim that it was only background. Those pesky cosmic rays, you know. Sometimes there is just a boatload of neutrons falling all about.

Barry, what do you think I'm doing to exclude background?

Hint. I'm not just using a single SSNTD. You do know what an SSNTD is, right? After all, you've certainly read the literature published under peer review about neutrons from a codeposition CF cell, right? Surely you would read prior work before making a confident prediction about what results I'll see! Or would that be beneath your August Power of Math Dignity?

But you might get an education in AC Circuit Theory, Traveling Waves, and Noise Models.

Nah. I don't need that theory to do the work I'm doing. Barry, you haven't a clue, have you?

2:47 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Codswallop.

7:15 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

"Codswallop."

Yup. What I've been telling you for two months now. Naturwissenschaften. You know, that biology journal, (can you pronounce "biology" with a sneer, I know you can!), with the clueless reviewers from the Max Plank Institute, those clods.

Clodswallop. Pollawsdolc spelled backwards.

11:36 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Horse Dookie.

7:22 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Whatsa matta, cat gotcha tongue?

Can't imagine how I'd rule out background? I've probably told you, but, hey, you've said you don't read what I write, anyway. Why should you read it? You already know everything, right?

SPAWAR found neutrons, published it under peer review. Not background. Now, their specific technique hasn't been confirmed, but low-level neutrons have been found for years with electronic detectors, significantly above background. But so low in level that everyone thought it had little to do with the main reaction.

And everyone was probably right. It's about a side reaction, but, I'm sure, you do realize the implications of finding "just a few" neutrons, right? With their technique, it's obviously way above background, that's what you can do with SSNTDs that couldn't be done with general electronic detectors.

If I don't see neutrons, the *probable* explanation will be that I didn't set up the reaction. There are lots of ways to get it wrong. This is cold fusion, after all. Famous for being difficult to get going. I'll report my results either way, but I certainly won't give up with a single negative result. The negative result, in fact, will demonstrate some important things....

I'm thirsty for actual experimental results, not for "proof" of anything in particular.

Horse Dookie? Barry, you are pitiful. If you only knew how obvious it is, for those who can see.

7:47 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

Rubbish.

8:23 PM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Crapola

9:42 PM  
Blogger Moulton said...

I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.

5:20 AM  
Blogger Abd ulRahman Lomax said...

Your incapacity proves ... what?

Just remember, as I do. Future generations are watching. We are not alone.

8:28 AM  
Blogger Moulton said...

See: "A Conversation in the Garden."

8:32 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home