Uploaded Letters from Martin Fleischmann to Melvin Miles

Quote from kirkshanahan

[However, I am sure you do not believe any of these reports either. That's okay. You can always say "personally I lean toward no." That is a "gut feeling" with no rational or scientific basis. ]

No Jed, you 'misrepresent' again. I have repeatedly said several things in relation to your misrepresentaions above:

1) F&P, and all other CFers using calorimetry, to my knowledge don't do it right. . . .

I did not misrepresent anything. You and I disagree about this. You say that "to your knowledge" they don't do it right, but as Marwan et al. showed, your knowledge is faulty. You are wrong. Your hypotheses violate elementary laws of physics and common sense. Therefore your "knowledge" is nothing more than an irrational "gut feeling" or "leaning to." It is a conclusion you reached before you read anything. In the case of the Mizuno experiment, you never even read it, since you thought that Mizuno and Akimoto put their hands in boiling water, which is ridiculous, and you thought they measured a high temperature immediately after turning off the cell, when it was 3 days later. If you had even once read the account (which is available at LENR-CANR.org) you would have known these things.

Obviously, you have no idea what you are talking about with regard to this experiment or any of the others.

Quote from kirkshanahan

"2. Mizuno said the cell was too hot to touch for several days."

(See the last post in the google groups ref to the old spf newsgroup I gave earlier in this thread for the source of the above quote.)

So, how did Mizuno know if it was too hot to touch for several days if he didn't touch it? Did he read the malfunctioning thermocouple to get those tidbits?

You can tell that something is too hot to touch without touching it. Just hold your hand over it. Try this with a 100 W incandescent light, which is about the same size and power level as the cell. Mizuno picked up the cell by wrapping towels around it (like a potholder). He later moved it to another bucket. Both actions were described in the account. So obviously he touched it indirectly through the cloth, and he could tell it was hot.

Why do you make such weird comments? You seem disconnected from everyday reality and common sense. Anyone who thinks that an electrochemical cell is hot, when the thermocouple registers 100 deg C, will stop to check that by sense of touch. But not by actually touching it! After frying some eggs, you might wonder if an iron frying pan on the stove is still be too hot to pick up and wash. You will hold your hand near it, or touch the handle for a moment. You don't hold your hand on it. This is how people have dealt with hot objects for millions of years. Why do you challenge me on this, or imagine that you are scoring points in a lunatic debate over whether people can tell whether a steel object is hot or cold?

Also, the thermocouple was not malfunctioning. You made that up. And there were no vermin. You made that up too.

Quote from kirkshanahan

I can't figure out which supposed error you're referring to.

There are several, but the first one is a humdinger. Do you still not understand why you were wrong about this? You said:

“[quoting F&P] It is a Pyrex Dewar with the upper part sliver [silver] coated to prevent heat radiation losses in this area, and to make the heat losses by radiation insensitive to the water level.” – radiative heat losses are prevented, then made insensitive to water level? Say what? Not very clear here. Do they know what they are doing?

It was very clear, and there is a schematic. As Abd explained, the top part is silvered; the bottom part, which stays below the waterline at all times, is not silvered. So nearly all the radiative heat losses are from the bottom. As Abd explained:

Quote

If Shanahan’s question is sincere, it shows his unfamiliarity with the Fleischmann-Pons apparatus. . . .

You are not familiar with it. You did not look at the schematic, or stop and think.

Quote

There are two clauses there, and both refer to the function of the silvered area. In parsing this, Shanahan ignored “in this area.” The silvered area confines radiative losses to the non-slivered area, below, creating conditions where water level, if it remains up in the silvered area, does not vary heat flow through the main heat loss path (to the tightly-controlled-temperature bath). Yes, they knew what they were doing. We also know what Shanahan is doing: looking for anything to criticize. In fact, this was Shanahan’s error in parsing the text: he made the second clause refer to the same area as the first, in effect, which would, indeed, be nonsense. He’s looking for nonsense, so he didn’t question his own interpretation.

Again and again, you look for nonsense, but instead of finding it you yourself invent nonsense such as:

Claiming that I said Mizuno and Akimoto put their hands in boiling water. Who would do that? Why? What boiling water? Read the account. Look at the photo, and you will see there was no water in Akimoto's particle detection experiment.

You thought they measured the cell was hot the moment they turned off electrolysis. In all these years, you never noticed it was three days later? The description is at LENR-CANR.org and you never even read it?

It is impossible to confirm that an object is very hot by sense of touch without grasping it -- something no one would do. Have you ever cooked food in a kitchen? Ever used a pot a frying pan? Have you ever drank a hot cup of coffee? What the hell is the matter with you?

The thermocouple was malfunctioning.

And on, and on, and on. An endless stream of nonsense and baseless assertions, that you could easily see are baseless if you would take a moment to read the papers and look at the schematics, graphs, and photos, and use some common sense.

Quote from kirkshanahan

"... Pyrex Dewar with the upper part silver coated to make the heat losses by radiation insensitive to the water level.”

That is apparently not the case.

Not the case? Okay, then why do you think they made the cell this way? Can you think of another reason for a half-silvered cell design? It says:

"The cell we use is identical to the one used by M. Fleischmann and S. Pons [2]. It is described in figure 1. It is a Pyrex Dewar with the upper part sliver coated to prevent heat radiation losses in this area, and to make the heat
losses by radiation insensitive to the water level."

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LonchamptGreproducti.pdf

Do you still say they meant the heat did and did not pass through the silvered portion of the cell? Fleischmann and Pons explained the reason for the half-silvered cells many times, including in Ref. [2] listed right there, which is:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

Did you try reading this?

The first paper was by Lonchampt and Bonnetain, who are French. This may be why that sentence was a little unclear at first glance. It was only unclear to someone who is determined to make it unclear. Someone who refuses to look at the schematic below it, or the paper by Fleischmann and Pons it refers to.

This is a very simple technical point. It is explained in this paper, in Ref. [2] and in both schematics. Are you seriously confused by this, or are you making excuses for your own stupid misinterpretation of it in the first place?

Quote from kirkshanahan

My questions exactly. (Especially the fact that if the cell and water were at >100C, why wasn't it boiling?)

God almighty! Have you never even GLANCED at the paper?!? After all these years? Or the photos? You do not seem to have the slightest idea what we are talking about! What an incredibly ignorant, off-the-wall, weird question!

This is a closed cell, made of steel, pressurized up to 150 atm. As I have said about a hundred times. Do I need to explain to you that pressurized liquid boils at a higher temperature than liquid at 1 atm? Probably I do, since you do not even understand that person can tell if an object is hot by sense of touch without burning himself.

And even if the electrolyte in the cell were boiling, how would Mizuno and Akimoto put their hands inside the cell into the boiling electrolyte? There are dozens of photos and schematics of electrochemical cells at LENR-CANR.org, and a video and a photo of ones that are boiling:

http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress…uploads/Lonchamptcell.jpg

You cannot put your hands inside them. Because they are too small. Do I need to explain that to you as well? Especially, you cannot put your hands inside of one made of 2 cm thick steel, bolted shut.

For other readers, here is a photo of the cell from the book, that I have uploaded here and elsewhere many times. I should perhaps add it to the website. Not for Shahanhan, who cannot even be bothered to look at the photos and schematics there already.

Quote from kirkshanahan

That means they inferred the temperature by close proximity. The point is, which you should know, that utilizing subjective human sensory input as 'scientific data' is a good way to get in trouble.

Again, you failed to read the description. They read the temperature off the pen recorder, which was still connected to the thermocouple. They did not infer it. They held their hands near the cell to confirm that the thermocouple was functioning correctly. Then they disconnected the TC from the pen recorder, wrapped the cell in towels and moved it to the other lab. When you wrap something in towels, you can tell it is hot. That's not "close proximity." You have apparently never done this, but people who have used pots and pans will know how a potholder works.

Describing a potholder as "close proximity" is yet another crackpot assertion, defying common sense and what any 5-year-old child who has helped cook in the last million years would know. It is like saying we can't be sure it is raining when we go outside and get soaking wet; we can only "infer" from "close proximity" to precipitation that it might be raining.

Also, you are dancing around the fact that the electrolysis power was turned off three days before this event, so obviously if there had been no source of heat in the cell, the cell would have been stone cold. However subjective a sense touch may be, anyone can tell the difference between a stone cold object and a 100 W incandescent light. The cell was sitting in a temperature controlled underground laboratory, behind two lead doors each 1 m thick. An object left in such circumstances will cool down in three days. You probably do not understand that either. Trust me, it will not start to cool and then heat up again, as the pen recorder trace showed it did, without a source of energy. That would violate the Laws of Thermodynamics. (Don't ask.)

Quote from kirkshanahan

[And even if the electrolyte in the cell were boiling, how would Mizuno and Akimoto put their hands inside the cell into the boiling electrolyte?]

And of course this comment is nonsensical since I wasn't talking about the cell innards.

Akimoto felt the heat from the cell when it was in his lab, not in the bucket of water. It was in air, in the particle detector setup shown here:

http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress…ent/uploads/image1012.jpg

You asked whether Akimoto put his hand in boiling water. The only water in his lab was the electrolyte inside the cell. It should have been clear to you he did not observe the water in the bucket. As described in the account I wrote, only Mizuno checked the cell when it was later in the bucket, in his lab.

Here is a photo of his lab some years later, taken by me. There is no high powered hood. The cell was placed on the floor behind the equipment cabinet shown on the left (behind Ms. Kawasaki):

Fig. 2.4 from http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusiona.pdf

I do not know the temperature of the water in the bucket, but I doubt it was boiling. The heat from the cell evaporated ~10 L of water per day. The heat of vaporization of water is 2257 J/g, so that's ~23 MJ. Divide by 86,400 s/day gives power of ~261 W. I do not think a ~261 W heater in an open bucket of water would make the water boil.

261 W is a rough estimate. I do not know if Mizuno checked the bucket exactly 24 hours later, so the number of seconds might have been lower. However, as I wrote in my account, the amount of water was somewhat less than 10 L. I think Mizuno told me he placed the cell on a brick or something like that to keep it from touching the bottom of the bucket, so there was some water left below the cell, plus there was the volume displaced by the cell itself. On the other hand, he did not know how many hours it took for the water to leave the bucket, so it might have been more than 261 W, leaving the cell to heat the air. I suppose it was somewhere between 200 and 400 W. I doubt that would cause boiling, but the water would be quite hot.

Quote from kirkshanahan

Anomalous events are usually tracked down to mundane problems, not radical new physics and chemistry.

No mundane problem could possibly cause this event, or the hundreds of boil off and heat after death events observed in other labs. You have been trying to come up with a plausible mundane problem for years. You have failed to do this, and the problems you list are far out in the land of crackpot impossibilities that violate many fundamental laws of physics. For example, you claim that the sense of touch in two people is so unreliable they cannot tell the difference between a steel cell at room temperature and one that is too hot to touch. If you believe this you have no common sense and no experience working with ordinary objects such as frying pans.