Some Points Regarding a Recent Presentation at ICCF20 on the ‘Lugano Report’ (Rainer Rander)

For what it is worth, even though the device was divided into sections, the sections are close enough to each other in reported heat that the main device can be simply modeled as a two cylinders, one 4 cm in diameter and 8 cm long, and the other 20 cm long by 2.3 cm in diameter.*

The rods are a pain, due to the heat gradient and there really isn't a good cheat for that except just calling them whatever heat the report claims they are and accepting that part is possibly a source of error. But the rods are not a major source of error, overall, due to their low average temperature and therefore heat in comparison to the rest of the device. (Maybe 4 out of 20 segments might contribute 80% of the heat attributed to the rods.)

*Two days are lumped together for each file anyways, so a little more uncertainty in simplifying the model can't hurt. For that matter, it would be interesting to see what the variance of a typical two day long file is for the various measurements.

Quote from Alan Smith

Instead of optical thing of radio

Yes, putting that in even simpler terms:

Think of an old-fashioned radio transmitter, with a big glass tube (a.k.a. "valve") in it. You can estimate the radio signal strength by looking at how bright the metal piece inside the tube (the "plate") is glowing. It's possible to get a (very) rough estimate this way even if you don't know how the device works.

For most people, this estimate is based on incomplete understanding of the system. if you want real accuracy you have to understand the relationship between the glow and the radio signal strength, which depends on better knowledge of how the thing works. The more accurate you want the answer, the more thorough the analysis needs to be and thus the harder it becomes to explain it in simple terms.

Quote from Mary Yugo

LENR people have difficulty grasping that single (or few) point temperature measurements are not calorimetry.

Mary, I'm not sure what you are referring to. The Optris IR camera, which we are mostly discussing, measures 19200 points twice a second. The Lugano device was using a portion of that number compared to the background, so maybe 'only' 3000-4000 points twice a second.

Ironically, considering your statement, what needed to be done was to add only a couple more measurement spots, by a different method, to confirm the information gathered by the several thousand measurements per second.

Quote from Alan Smith

Instead of optical thing of radio. A transmitter broadcasting the same signal on different frequencies, but you have a receiver that only picks up one.

I like this line of thought. In this analogy, the (sharply) variable strength of the radio signal across the radio spectrum is analogous to the variable spectral emissivity of alumina. Knowing this, you would estimate the power driving the selective radio transmitter differently than one that you know to be broadcasting across the entire radio spectrum. But here my simple explanation has jumped straight to power, whereas in the thermometry problem, temperature is an intermediate step, which is a function of the frequency and intensity of the light coming off the hot object, as dictated by the blackbody/graybody/non-graybody spectrum that applies to the material.

I generally feel like I follow the explanations for why the Optris camera must be configured with the spectral emissivity for a specific material and range of IR, rather than the total emissivity. Where I get tripped up in is trying to follow randombit0's rebuttals, which are a little inscrutable to me. Perhaps someone will be willing to restate Randombit0's argument in clear terms, even if they disagree with it?

Quote from Paradigmnoia

LENR people have difficulty grasping that single (or few) point temperature measurements are not calorimetry.

Mary, I'm not sure what you are referring to.

I think she means you have to calibrate across a range of temperatures above and below the target temperature. That is what McKubre said. Mary has the notion that cold fusion researchers are unaware of this, but most of them know it well, and they always do it.

@JedRothwell,
Well that makes sense.
In that case there are 3 measurements.
On a sequential scale from 1 (lowest) to 10 (full power): 5, 30 and 37

Quote from Paradigmnoia

In that case there are 3 measurements.
On a sequential scale from 1 (lowest) to 10 (full power): 5, 30 and 37

I would go for more than 3, to make a nice calibration curve. If full power is 10, I might do: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15. You want to bracket the likely range of output.

I do not know where you got 37 but if full power is 10 your power supplies might not go that high, or the cell might get too hot.

If you calibrate up to 15 and then anomalous power exceeds that, you need to calibrate again.

It would not hurt to re-calibrate after the test, to make sure you get the same response and the same calibration curve.

@JedRothwell,
My last comment was tongue-in-cheek.

It was calibrated to make Mary spit her coffee out when she read it.

Attempts to communicate this issue have finally prompted me to register (just a curious onlooker, no connection to any interested party!)

Does this help?

Please forgive the very 'quick and dirty' illustration.

@Grafiker,
That is a quite good attempt at visualizing the Optris temperature detection method.Thanks for giving it a try.

However, what you are showing is exactly what confuses most people, and randombit0.

Where it will be hard to deal with is the emissivity factor. This is because the camera does not deal with the area under the spectrum curve like that. In your version, the camera reads too high and needs a fractional factor to lower the temperature reported.

What actually happens is that the Optris window allows the camera to see the correct temperature with the curve, in the third image. The area under the curve is not examined, only the line, which is a section of a Planck curve. From the section of Planck curve, the temperature can be determined using the Planck radiation formula.

Edit: In your diagram number 3, all that area is compressed into the thin channel, and the temperature actually is 1400 degrees. But the total power is the same as in diagram 1.
It matters a lot what that area under the curve actually represents, and what the bounding curve (or line) actually represents.

Let me try to make this simpler.
What the IR camera does, is look through its window, and says, "If that were a blackbody, it would be this hot". Then it looks at its user emissivity setting and says "According to the user, this thing I'm looking at is x% of a blackbody, so I will reduce increase the temperature accordingly, using this bunch of century old math, because a blackbody is so good at getting rid of heat compared to anything less than a blackbody, a blackbody cannot get as hot. Or this object is reflective and I cannot see all the heat through my window because I see some of the cooler background in the reflection".
Camera displays temperature.

Edit: Thanks Andrea S for the correction. (Now I'm getting mixed up...)

@Paradigmnoia
Damn, and i thought I understood it, at least in outline...

Quote

However, what you are showing is exactly what confuses most people, and randombit0.

I thought his explanations were (basically) ignoring the effect of a distorted emission spectrum (like that of alumina at high temp) on what the camera can see and report on correctly given its narrow window, when the camera 'expects' a standard grey body. So I was sort of trying to contradict this - i.e. show how the camera can over-report the temperature (as appears to have happend at Lugano). His argument is (as I understand it) that somehow the shape of the curve doesn't matter... which it wouldn't if you could look at the whole spectrum, but the Optris can't.

Quote

Where it will be hard to deal with is the emissivity factor. This is because the camera does not deal with the area under the spectrum curve like that. In your version, the camera reads too high and needs a fractional factor to lower the temperature reported.
What actually happens is that the Optris window allows the camera to see the correct temperature with the curve, in the third image. The area under the curve is not examined, only the line, which is a section of a Planck curve.

I'm not sure I really follow that... . I wasn't saying the camera looks at the area under the curve - my point is that it can't! It just sees the heavy red lines i.e. the sections of the curve within its window. Then it needs to somehow derive a temperature from that limited info.

So are you saying it looks at the _shape_ of the curve and derives temperature from that? Or is the 'curve' I'm using in the illustration misleading in itself?

I do think a graphical approach (as simplified as possible) to explaining this is more likely to help those of us who 'don't get it' than more pure text. If you can prompt me with changes to the above graphic, or suggest another approach, I'll be happy to draw it up if that would help.

(oops, written before your second message and edits. Will look at those now)

Hmm.. now I'm completly lost ((
I had in mind exactly the scenario illustrated by Grafiker which seems to be logical and could be applied to radio waves with a narrow or broadband receiver.
I guess more study is needed.

@Grafiker,
(I added a few edits maybe before your post).

The confusion is very understandable. The same sorts of things messed me up for weeks, before it all made sense.
In principle, only one wavelength is enough to determine temperature. You are very close, but some of the analogies don't quite work.

The camera determines temperature by reformulating the Planck radiation formula to give temperature based on filling in all the other variables. The camera is calibrated to a blackbody at as many conditions of temperature as possible, which are stored in a look-up table. So all it has to do is figure out what temperature of blackbody looks like the one in the window.

The emissivity only comes in after the camera does all the comparing, because it only compares to a blackbody for its reference. This is where your plots start to not work quite as expected. What perhaps there needs to be is a blackbody line, which cannot be greater than the highest point of your curves or lines. Trying to incorporate this may be trickier than expected, because it will move on each diagram. (Keeping the blackbody line constant from diagram to diagram, and moving the rest might actually make the plots work.Or maybe not. Perhaps the area is actually a volume, and that is why it doesn't quite hold together.)

I agree that pictures are often better where possible. I use pictures whenever possible. And you are close.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Then it looks at its user emissivity setting and says "According to the user, this thing I'm looking at is x% of a blackbody, so I will reduce the temperature accordingly, using this bunch of century old math".

..should read "so I will increase the temperature accordingly (since I still sense the same power but I am told it is not as well irradiated away as a blackbody would do)"...

That is why when MFMP tested the replica dog bone the temperature went sky-high when inserting the (wrong) Lugano total emissivity instead of the spectral emissivity (well estimated by the pyrometer) that matched the thermocouple reading.

@Malcolm Lear,
This is exactly what hung me up, almost a couple of years ago now. It makes almost perfect sense, because it is mostly right.

But then lowering the emissivity seems to make sense for diagram 3 to fix the temperature, counter to experiments and a hundred plus years of math.
In fact the diagrams do make sense if you are considering total power.
But power does not mean temperature, and that is the measurement we are trying to make. And temperature does not follow in the diagrams, even though power does.