Your recollection is wrong. You’re out by a factor of 10. This reminds me of Mary Yugo making irrelevant comments on papers he couldn’t be bothered to read.
Zeuss: again, this comment is not helpful.
You could helpfully give a direct reference to notes showing measurement of 10l. Of you could note that notes said the water loss was 10l and that this was presumably eyeballed and therefore subject to errors, or you could state what in my calculation needs to be changed.
And the personal reference is doubly unhelpful: the whole point is that this is not a paper but a set of anecdotal notes that (AFAIK) have not been posted here.
I (and I guess Kirk) do not expect informal recollections to be accurate. Why should they be? People get things wrong. In this case a 10l loss looks pretty high for this case: it would need a big bucket and a small reactor. Not impossible though.
You see, the onus is on those like you claiming this as strong evidence of something highly unexpected to do the error analysis and put in bounds for all of these estimated quantities, with justification. Anecdotes are difficult to evaluate because there tends to be a lot estimated. However, if the water loss was positively measured that would be a different matter. Was it? With notes, and without protocol, a figure of 10l written could be an eyeballed estimate, for example.
The bigger issue here is one of attitude. You seem to think that careful checking of evidence is somehow unnecessary. Why?
In this case if we have clearly recorded evidence that all the water evaporated I'd accept that as evidence of at least 5l (and more if the reactor volume is otherwise known and small).
It would be good to have this more definitive information. I'd like to move on to other mechanisms...
And it would also be good to understand why my exploring this issue quantitatively attracts what seems to be hostility? I don't find that helpful, nor does it convince me that those emotionally engaged are thinking about the matter clearly.
Display MoreFFS, the onus is on you to first find, and then read, the things you chose to pontificate on.
Sorry but where on earth do you get this from? You’ve spent your time here today making up imaginary numbers.
And you had do that because you didn’t check the damn evidence! How idiotic.
On the contrary: you are claiming that Shanahan is 100% wrong, so wrong his thought processes must not be engaged. to do that you need to demonstrate it, not expect everyone to remember all the details. Referencing details previously posted would be fine.
Also, you (I think) are claiming this anecdotal evidence, which I never took seriously, is significant. If so, then all the details matter and reprising them here (they were certainly not all revealed on one page here) would be helpful.
In any case: I truly cannot easily find this damn evidence. Where is it documented? Not the start of this thread...
Also, it is a bit rich calling my post here pontification when i'm accusing no-one here of anything, whereas you are casting slurs at all and sundry on the basis of assertion. How would you like me to respond, one line: "you are wrong"? Till I did the above analysis I truly did not know whether Kirk was arguing something beyond the bounds of possibility or not...
if my doing him and you the courtesy of investigating this, transparently, so that anyone can see and check my assumptions, is pontification, then hey, I must convert immediately to RC faith...
Now: you claim, unsubstantiated, that my numbers are imaginary. On the contrary: it is your estimates that are missing, and I don't claim my estimate particularly good. OK, which of these estimates do you challenge and on what precise evidence? As I've pointed out, even the eyeballed figure of 10 litres, in this case, in a notebook, is not good evidence if recorded informally because it is easy to put down the volume of a bucket forgetting that an actual water loss much than that can come from a 3/4 full bucket at start, 1/4 full at end, with a large object placed in the bucket reducing volume. But, I'm very willing to be corrected by evidence.
I recall reading that Mizuno took some notes on the incident. I'm curious whether those notes are or might be made available to take a closer look at. (Perhaps they've already been linked to earlier in this thread; I remember only the description in Mizuno's book.)
And I'm curious as to what anyone checking this fascinating (esp because of the rats, I just can't get the image out of my mind) anecdote and doing a necessary sanity check of "could it be evaporation" can do other than make up figures as I have done. Maybe some of my limits can be tightened up: i was sort of expecting this to happen but would like it to be on basis of clear evidence.
As a ballpark: in an unheated cold lab sunlight => could be evap, no sunlight => could not be evap. More precise info could tighten this.
If you’re going to make up very large numbers (or small in your case), and repeatedly ignore basic principles of science (as in Kirk’s case), you should expect a hostile response.
| PATHO-MAX VERSION | SANE VERSION | |||||
| total loss | 2.9037035 | total loss | 0.32615879 | |||
| evap rate | 0.70103648 | evap rate | 0.0861623 | |||
| pool area | 1.35242196 | pool area | 0.76073735 | |||
| indoor windspeed | 5 | indoor windspeed | 1 | |||
| h2o vap press | 19.8735526 | h2o vap press | 14.9952897 | |||
| temperature | 71.6 | temperature | 63.14 | |||
| drank by cat | 0.25 | drank by cat | 0 | |||
| windspeed | 2.2352 | windspeed | 0.44704 | |||
| temperature | 295 | temperature | 290.3 | |||
| temperature | 22 | temperature | 17.3 | |||
| diameter | 0.4 | diameter | 0.3 | |||
| area | 0.12564 | area | 0.0706725 | |||
| * Misuno claims 3.8 litres/day loss on average, or 10 litres/day Max. * | ||||||
| “error margin” | 0.30867356 | “error margin” | 10.6507669 | |||
So that is Zeuss's spreadsheet. Thanks for that.
I'd like the precise context for "Mizuno claims 3.8l/day" in order to evaluate the error bounds in this claim. By that I mean, for example, I might nmake an OOM estimate of the number of grains of rice in a teacup as 1000 meaning 300 - 3000. And, in doing that, i might still be wrong. So I'd like to understand what were the observations M made in order to reach this figure, and also how it was communicated, therefore how exact should we reckon it is.
Otherwise my imaginary figures above seem broadly in line with the Zeuss's sane ones. Which just goes to show that the distinction between sanity and fantasy is narrower than anyone might imagine (sic)?
The substantive difference is that if sun is shining on the bucket a much higher temperature would be expected; with cooling predominately from evaporation and hence the argument from heat added works. Zeuss's sane figures do not take into account the fact that evaporation at that rate will significantly cool the bucket so without some external source of heat will not be sustained. You'd need a significant temp difference between ambient and bucket to push the required heat of vaporisation in. Thus I've a considerably lower (and IMHO more plausible) bound than Zeus. My numbers are also roughly in line with the (sane) quora link that I quoted, which uses the same method.
the Patho-max version needs some more work (below when I feel motivated) to include: swimming rats, window cleaners, leaky buckets, etc. You have to be careful with these additional putative loss sources. For example, cats and rats can both be relevant. in fact you could argue that rats would attract cats and the exigencies of chasing the vermin would make the cats thirsty. However, its seems implausible that the rats could be engaged in recreational swimming exercise when cats are around, so the numbers might need adjusting.
Display MoreAnd I'm curious as to what anyone checking this fascinating (esp because of the rats, I just can't get the image out of my mind) anecdote and doing a necessary sanity check "could it be evaporation" can do other than make up figures as I have done.
Some numbers need guessing; water temp, bucket diameter, air velocity. Keep these guesses logical and realistic, (or even just remotely possible, Kirk) and you’ll have no complaints from me. Humidity isn’t really a big factor, as Kirk will no doubt attest, seeing as how he loves to explain the theory of ‘propagation of errors’ to all and sundry.
And some numbers don’t need guessing... The amount of water evaporated, for example. We can get this figure from Jed’s translation of Mizuno*. To come along and say “oh I don’t know, but let’s just assume 1L evaporated” isn’t anywhere close to checking anything Mizuno, Shanahan or I have written.
* i.e. technically a first-hand source
Again, You view my estimates as slapdash when I'm just being careful in absence of precise information. Jed's translation of Mizuno's book would be helpful except that i do not have access to this (maybe it is open and could be linked). How to evaluate the numbers therein depends on context as I've pointed out. I expect to differ with Jed as to this, who will probably accept numbers as given without error bounds, but we will see.
Where I agree with Shanahan is that when looking at apparent contradictions, as here, all assumptions must be checked and specifically all figures given without error bounds must be examined and safe error bounds established.
As Eric points out, if there are notes they are likely to be of more use than a non-contemporaneous summary in a book.
Anyway, ignoring cooling tends to overestimate the degree of natural evaporation possible
Indeed: but considering cooling gives a realistic answer not otherwise possible. For this problem: how much water evaporates over days - by far the most reliable indicator is total energy absorbed by the bucket, not the dynamics of evaporation at given temperature since the bucket temperature is affected by evaporation and will adjust to give the rate determined by the energy absorbed.
> Mizuno had a cold fusion
> electrolysis cell running and it got very hot, and even when he cut the
> current it stayed hot. To cool it (and here I start using your own text,
> abbreviated):
>
> <Mizuno>
> I filled a large plastic bucket with water and partially submerged the
> cell in it [the cell temp drops from 100C to 60C and stays there]
>
> The next morning [...] The water, which had been around eight-tenths
> full [sic], was nearly all evaporated, [...] (nearly 9 liters).
Okay, that's ~9 l
> At that point I decided to get a big 20-liter bucket. I filled it with
> 15 liters of water [...] Three days later, the water had again
> evaporated.
> The waterline was below the cell.
~10 l evaporated. There was still about 5 liters below the waterline. (His
estimate and mine, looking at the bucket later.)
> For the second time I filled the bucket with 15 liters of water.[...]
> I added 5 liters on May 1, and again on May 2.
> Then on May 7 when the
> holiday ended, the water was about half gone [...].
To determine the total volume of the last three additions, start with 15
(full bucket), add 5, add 5, subtract the 7.5 that remained in the bucket
when the cell finally cooled (it was "half full").
15+5+5-7.5=17.5
So that's 9+10+17.5=36.5. In my introduction I made the first and second
additions ~10 liters each. (Note the tilde in my text.)
> </Mizuno>
OK - so These figures are OK except that they ignore the volume of the reactor (and whatever it sits on). How heavy was it? What volume was it? How do we know this?
That question is highly relevant to another completely different explanation of these observations that we might call the hot core hypothesis.
Still, on basis of these figures (without clarification), I'll suppose:
reactor + stand volume is 10 litres
The estimated 15l filled comes from a 3/4 full 20l bucket and therefore is actually 15-10 = 5l.
The estimated 5l comes from 1/4 of bucket filled and therefore is actually 1.5l
The water half gone is 2.5l
We have: 13l -2.5l = 10.5l in ? days? I count 6 + 3 + ?
Also we have: 3l in 3 days (subject to clarification) again a factor 1/3 because of the volume taken by the reactor.
So that is 1l/day and I agree evaporation does not look possible based on solar + ambient power absorption alone.
The info here about the reactor being higher than the bucket makes it seem possible that the total reactor mass is quite large? In which case we cannot neglect a hot core solution. The noted
temperatures also seem quite consistent with this.
Interestingly this was the missing idea needed to understand Rossi's "samovar" test which at the time Jed did not consider and therefore gave a positive judgement of the test HAD characteristics.
Kirk is (perhaps foolishly) defending his position as logically correct (which it is) and then being attacked by many here on the grounds that, for the specifics in this case, which BTW were not all established when he made the original comment, the thing he originally suggested does not look possible.
As soon as this claim was made, many years ago, I supplied all of the details about temperature, wind flow and so on. I have give these details many times after that, including in this thread. Shahanan has ignored them.
So let us do it. We have as variables (some given rough values) at the time when Kirk made his original claim:
Water temperature
Air temperature
Air speed
Solar irradiance (is the sun shining directly on the bucket through a window).
Water evaporation rate.
Okay, let me go over this again:
Water temperature. Tap water in Sapporo in March is cold. Not hard to estimate. (For that matter, even if he had started with boiling water, it would cool rapidly and not much would evaporate, so the starting temperature is irrelevant. You don't think so? Try it!)
Air temperature, not far about 5 deg C, as I said.
Air speed. Close to zero. There was no fan.
Solar irradiance. As noted, this happened overnight, so there was no solar irradiance. It was ~8 hours, not 24. Mizuno came in every day.
Water evaporation rate. Put a bucket into a cold room without a fan and see for yourself. You will not be able to measure any evaporation using an ordinary household weight scale. Try it!
I'm going to leave the additional claimed evidence (the bucket was too hot to touch) for another post.
No one said the bucket was too hot to touch. The cell was too hot to touch.
Evaporation rate. A bucket holds approx 10l. So for say half of the water to evaporate we have 5l. But, the bucket contains a submerged reactor (not sure how big). Also we do not (if I recollect clearly) have a clear statement of how much the water level went down, nor what was the bucket size etc. So I'm going to be conservative here and rate the water loss as 1 litre.
That is completely wrong. Please do not make up such incorrect details. Stick to the description here:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MizunoTnucleartra.pdf
As stated in the text, the first bucket capacity was 15 L, not 10 L. The cell was transferred to a 20 L bucket after all of the water in the first bucket evaporated overnight. The amounts of water evaporated were in the log book. It was not 1 L. There was plenty of room for 10 L of water in both buckets. You can estimate the volume of the cell from the book and photo I posted here. It would not fill the whole bucket. If it had, Mizuno would have used a bigger bucket.
I (and I guess Kirk) do not expect informal recollections to be accurate. Why should they be? People get things wrong. In this case a 10l loss looks pretty high for this case: it would need a big bucket and a small reactor. Not impossible though.
"People" do not get things wrong. You and Shanahan got things wrong, because you did not read the source material. I am 100% certain the buckets were 15 and 20 L because I saw them, photographed them, and they have the number of liters marked in the plastic inside (as all buckets do), and with a magic marker on the outside.
It would be good to have this more definitive information. I'd like to move on to other mechanisms...
It would be good if you would read the source material, which has been available at LENR-CANR.org for many years. All of your statements here were wrong. You have been careless.
Zeus46, weight of the reactor was 7.45kg
Density 316 ss ~8 kg/l
with some all0wance for reaction space inside
Volume =~! 1litre.
Quote from THHuxleynewStill, on basis of these figures (without clarification), I'll suppose:
reactor + stand volume is 10 litres
For your reading enjoyment, some selections from a Mizuno Bucket Anecdote discussion
on sci.physics.fusion - this link begins 9/10/2001 but the discussion could have started earlier
More enjoyment if you read the whole thread on Google groups.
Have fun!
Dieter Britz writes: 9/11/01
[minor snips by KLS]
I note a few inaccuracies in what Rothwell writes here. This is
strange because all this is described in Mizuno's book, and the
English edition was translated by none other than Rothwell himself.
On the whole, his story is OK, but some aspects are distorted. For
example, he states that Mizumo (and Akimoto) found tritium but no
neutrons, unless I remember incorrectly. This gives the impression
that tritium was found in that famous hot cell that evaporated 37.5 L
of water (a figure that in fact does not appear, neither does the 17.5 L
figure, in the book). They did find some tritium, but that was in another
experiment, before this one. At that time they also found some neutrons
but at 4 OOM below the tritium. They also dutyfully record that the
electrolyte in which they looked for tritium contained ppm levels of
Pd and Pt, both of which produce chemiluminescence, which is the way
tritium is measured... They then go on to separate this from the tritium
signal, quite convincingly. They seem to be good scientists, as I have
noted before. The point is, they themselves point to the lack of
agreement between the low neutron signal and the tritium they found,
and hint at a possible error in the tritium measurement. Rothwell
simplifies all this.
Rothwell also writes that, when the cell got hot, they wrapped it in
towels and put it into a bucket of water. In fact, they first simply
moved it onto a steel platform in another lab and only a day later
into the bucket. Rothwell could also more accurately have answered
Schultz's question about letting off the pressure: Mizuno was confident
that his steel cell could hold up to 200 atm at 500C, and it had a
safety valve that would vent at 100 atm, so he didn't see the need to
let off any pressure. They wanted to see what would happen. The book
(Rothwell's own English words) does not mention anything about wanting
to preserve the evidence, this being an interpolation by Rothwell.
I am not going to argue about where all that energy came from, and
Mizuno himself did not try to explain it. This story is in fact the
part of the book that rings bells with me and made me all the more
agnostic on CNF, rather than skeptical. But I wish Rothwell would
report more accurately when arguing here.
-- Dieter Britz http://www.chem.au.dk/~db
Tom Kunich wrote on 9/11/01 (quoting JR who was quoting Tom K.):
"Jed Rothwell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:9nj3db$vkc$[email protected]...
> Tom Kunich writes:
>
> > Apparently you are having a hard time following Richard's logic. Over a
> > couple of days HOW MUCH of the water was "evaporated" by the hot cell
> > and how much from the environment which in some cases might very well
> > account for the lion's share of it.
>
> It could not possibly account for it. You can test this easily yourself, and
> I recommend you do so before making any more comments. Place a 20 liter
> bucket of water in a room for ten days, replenish as needed, and measure how
> much water evaporates from it. You will never find that 37.5 liters
> evaporate, even in a very warm room. Or if you do, and you publish this fact
> and convince people it is true, you will win the Nobel prize.
Jed, sometimes your statements are breath-takingly stupid. The idea I
was trying to convey is that YOU don't have any idea of what transpired
in that experiment. You have confessed as much. If you DON'T know what
happened then why do you suppose that anything having to do with it is
either possible or impossible?
> > Your suggesting that really interesting data were obtained from this
> > experiment shows how little you respect science.
>
> This is first principle experiment. Neither you nor Schultz can come up with
> a plausible explanation for these results other than a nuclear process.
Why is anyone expected to come up with an explanation for an undocumented experiment?
> If you think that 37.5 liters of water can evaporate from a bucket ina room in
> 10 days, you have no knowledge of everyday grade-school level science.
And if you can suggest that 37.5 litres of water were really evaporated
AND THIS DIDN'T SHAKE the foundations of their sponsors, then perhaps
you are missing something important in what you are saying. You said
that this experiment wasn't repeated. This is like the Wright brothers
taking wing for a 15 minute flight over the White House and then packing
it all up and never flying again. A preposterous statement. My
suggestion is that they HAD an explanation for evaporation of all that
water and it had nothing to do with cold fusion.
> > And the weather during that time period was?
>
> You could look it up, couldn't you?
Jed, you are the one suggesting extraordinary science. You are the one
that has to field the questions. Not me.
Dieter Britz wrote on 9/11/01 (quoting Jed):
Jed Rothwell wrote:
[...]
> At one level, I know exactly what happened. The cell stayed hot for 10 days
> and evaporated 37.4 liters of water. No other information is needed to
Spurious accuracy, methinks. Reading the book, one does not get the
idea that they measured the evaporated water volume with any kind of
accuracy - they slopped it in as needed, and initially they didn't
expect a lot to evaporate anyway (it came as a surprise, remember?),
so they would not have started keeping track carefully. Or will you
state, Rothwell, that they did in fact keep account of the water to
that sort of precision, and do you think Mizuno would back you up if
I asked him? Where in fact does that figure of 37.5 L come from? It
is not in the book, and neither are the figures 20 and 17.5, which you
have added to produce that sum. I don't believe they would have stated
17.5, implying a precision of 0.1 L. Explain, please.
> I said it was not repeated on this scale, with this kind of material,
> because Mizuno et al. feared it might blow someone's head off with a steam
> explosion. Heat after death experiments have been repeated many times,
That seems untrue as well, since the book shows that he was
confident that his cell could hold 200 atm at 500C, and in any case
had a safety vent set at 100 atm.
Why are you making all this stuff up? Why not report it as reported
by Mizuno himself? He impresses me as a scientist, but I am afraid
you do not.
-- Dieter Britz http://www.chem.au.dk/~db
Lynn Kurtz wrote on 9/18/01 (quoting JR):
On Tue, 18 Sep 2001 17:21:59 -0400, "Jed Rothwell"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Lynn Kurtz writes:
[snipped by KLS]
As I said above, I can read. What he actually wrote in your first
quote above IS NOT what you attributed to him in this latter quote.
You are attributing to him things he did not say. Standing on your
head shouting "read the chemistry books" does not change that.
--Lynn
Jed Rothwell wrote on 9/10/01:
[snip by KLS]
The cell temperature was not constant. Placed in the water, the electrolyte
temperature fell to 60 deg C within a few days, then rose back to 80, and
then gradually cooled down. All cathodes in heat-after-death gradually cool
down. 10 liters evaporated in the first 24 hours. In the last days, 1 or 2
liters per day were replaced. The steel cell was 20 cm long, OD 7 cm, ID 6
cm. The inner sleeve was Teflon, 1 cm thick (ID 5 cm).
- Jed
Quoting Dieter Britz:
Spurious accuracy, methinks. Reading the book, one does not get the idea that they measured the evaporated water volume with any kind of accuracy - they slopped it in as needed, and initially they didn't expect a lot to evaporate anyway (it came as a surprise, remember?), so they would not have started keeping track carefully. Or will you state, Rothwell, that they did in fact keep account of the water to that sort of precision, and do you think Mizuno would back you up if I asked him?
This is typical disingenuous skeptical nonsense. It would make no difference whether there accuracy was to the nearest milliliter or to the nearest liter. The conclusion would be the same. There can be no significant chemical heat from this system. If there were no anomalous nuclear effect there would not have been any measurable water evaporated from the cell. Not 1 liter would have evaporated, never mind 17 liters.
No one claimed there was great accuracy, spurious or otherwise. Accuracy makes no difference to the conclusion.
Note also that he uses loaded words such as "slopped."
If Britz wished to communicate with Mizuno he could have done at any time without making rude comments to me. Was that supposed to be some sort of threat?
