Might be of interest...
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/cosmic/
"Apparent Diurnal Variation in Background Radiation"
If I'm not mistaken his daily cycle about half way down the page ("Radaition by local solar time") is similar to yours in that levels are higher AM, falling around mid day (actually just before mid day) and lower PM.
Not sure if this link works but it's to a paper ("Diurnal variation of radon progeny") and the abstract describes a similar cycle (high AM, low PM)...
https://www.google.co.uk/url?s…-XlQ-&cshid=1542333222747
Sorry I'm on a tablet that's making it hard to copy and paste.
Thanks for the interesting references (other ones are also linked in the second paper but I haven't checked them out yet).
The first researcher is located in Switzerland and is measuring these variations from his building in a low background radiation area, the group from the other paper is in located Greece, apparently in an area where Radon emissions could be a problem. It's not clear (to me at least) if in the latter case they're performing measurements on a outdoor location or inside a building.
My measurements are performed indoors on a corner of a room which has relatively stable temperature and humidity level. Opening or closing the window does not appear to affect appreciably the readings. Also, the testing location is not in a basement, but on the first/upper floor of a single-detached home. So I was not led to believe this is due to Radon in the environment, unless other processes are involved (possibly traveling from the soil to the inside of the the walls?).
The variation in gamma radiation in the first case is small (roughly 15.7-16.4 uR/Hr in one of the averaged graphs presented. The maximum value is about 4.5% higher than the minimum), and a bit more than this (1.14-1.25 x1E3 CPM, less than 10% increase) in the second case.
In the current location in my case 30-minute average gamma radiation values can swing in a day from 70 to 95 CPM, for roughly a 35% daily increase. I'm not sure how sensitive my counter is to Alpha radiation, but a test I did several days ago seemed to show that most of this daily variation is not due to Alpha radiation.
On the same subject bocjin linked in another thread this paper where they link heightened emission with low humidity and high temperature conditions: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.astropartphys.2017.10.011 (the original authors - from Israel - apparently linked them with solar neutrino emissions).
I will try to pay attention to environmental conditions over the coming weeks, but if there is any suggestion for minimizing any variation from them, short of moving into a climate-controlled area, I will also try to follow that.
On a slightly related note, it seems that today I had the highest peak values over the past days, but it's neither a particularly warm nor dry day. However to be fair the difference is not very large.
After trying to replicate the previous experiment (photo posted above) with a very similar procedure, I could kind of reproduce the porous appearance of the anode on the exposed (top) area, but I'm starting to suspect it's mostly a result that etching of the oxides in acid bath (10% HCl) is magnifying.
Photos below show the anode before and after etching.
Besides this, there's no particularly noteworthy oddity to report. I'd like to think that the odd jumpy behavior of Geiger counter readings today were due to the electrolysis testing, but there's no strong evidence of that. The red dashed line in the image in the zoomed up view (first graph) is when AM radio noise started appearing and kept varying up and down throughout the rest of the test. I had began applying power to the electrode assembly about 12 minutes earlier.
EDIT: added notes
Those steel clips are fairly well known to corrode. There are, or were, stainless steel clips, similar to the ones pictured.
I bet there are plastic clips that won't complicate your chemistry at all.
In what is now becoming the standard occurrence, I will now proceed to report the null (or apparently null) tests for the day. As for Geiger readings, after weeks of steady periodic activity I'm apparently getting the opposite effects of what I was expecting despite having performed almost all the "best" tests I could do in the past couple days: the highest readings are getting lower while the lowest readings are (maybe) getting marginally higher.
Maybe it is truly just due to ambiental variations? Of course that would be the most likely explanation.
Yesterday's sharp spike occurred when for a test I moved the Geiger logging "cart" closer to the testing area.
Below are personal notes from today's testing, directly replicating the idea/device of the opening post of this thread. I keep repeating that these writings are from my personal notes because I want to stress that I've not specifically written them for LENR-Forum.
Trying to replicate the first experiments I reported, which caused crackling noise emission from the cathode. They did not use electrodes immersed in water, but just water at the interface and an almost nonexisting electrode gap. They used to get very hot.
The basic procedure starts with the top electrode getting "dropped" on the anode. This allows for conduction to somehow ramp up gradually until a cushion composed of cavitating water, hydrogen and oxygen gases and steam prevents it from making direct contact with the bottom electrode and shorting out.
Since I need both hands to operate the device and that it needs constant adjusting, writing notes as the experiment proceeds will not be as easy as with other experiment types.
Figure 1: Ferritic steel washers as electrodes; top cathode, bottom anode. No electrolyte used.
Figure 2: The electrode interface. When it was first disassembled about 90 minutes earlier, the cathode did not look oxidized like this, but more gray-black looking.
I plan to add electrolyte powder to the coin, then water and start with 12V, then eventually switch to 5V. This would better replicate what I used to do prior to acquiring the Geiger counter with this experiment type.
Figure 3: Electrodes after using a Na2CO3 electrolyte solution. After a while of operation, the anode got partially cleaned from its surface red iron oxide layer and the cathode became dark black from presumably partially oxidized iron (for the most part).
Figure 4: Electrodes after a longer period of operation using an electrolyte solution instead of just tap water.
Figure 5: New electrode arrangement using a 100 Lire coin (SS430) as the anode.
Figure 6: Conditions of electrodes at the interface after a period of operation. All red iron oxides got removed, cathode became dark black. This arrangement did not prove to be reliable due to the ruined anode surface from previous testing.
Figure 7: New arrangement with flipped coin after a while of operation. Rust production was intense and bubbling caused the top part to also become partially covered with it. Electrolyte was only minimally initially added.
Figure 8: Both electrodes at the interface. The anode has been cleaned and eroded by the presumably intense cavitating action and gas formation. Red iron oxide is not sticking to the cathode, but the previously formed black oxide (?) layer has remained.
Figure 9: Electrodes after cleaning in tap water. It's clear that the anode got eroded during the previous process. The cathode got an impression of the anode marking on its surface, and the red iron oxide did not stick.
A different construction where the electrodes could be bolted onto some sort of tunable structure rather than held together with pressure would be better, but I initially simply used what I could readily find at home to test the concept. Besides the Geiger counter I haven't specifically acquired anything yet for the sole purpose of these tests.
Have a look at the work of William McCarthy on similar semi-solid electrolytic cells. There's a schematic drawing of his cell at around 4:00 in this video from ICCF21:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v95P1JvNsg
An abstract appeared in the ICCF21 documents, but the full paper has not (yet) been posted.
He's been working on this concept for many years, and previously published another report on it:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BiberianJPjcondensedn.pdf (on pg. 263 of the pdf or pg. 256 of the indexed document)
I see, interesting. Here's a screenshot from the video showing the schematic.
In my case I am trying to use water on purpose to do something slightly different: to recombine oxygen and hydrogen ions almost as soon as they form and to take advantage of any effect from water cavitation occurring in such tight environment. So I thought that minimizing the electrode gap would be useful, but water would still need to be present in some form.
Besides more complex hypotheses of how this might be useful (e.g. Cardone-Carpinteri's piezonuclear reactions, LeClair's theories, etc), or bonus side-effects such as the formation of catalytic metal-oxides structures which could also help splitting water and/or hydrogen, A few days ago I came across a few papers and presentations by Moray B. King where he suggests that electrolyzers where electrode gap is minimal tend to be those where "overunity" effects occur, mainly due to cavitation (he has a hypothesis where the ZPE is involved):
So, many possible phenomena could be occurring in this experiment type, even if it looks rather crude.
A possible point of concern is that if Cardone and/or LeClair are right, neutron production might also be occurring. This would cause activation of nearby materials, which is also why I wondered if the oddly elevated signal I'm getting is something that I caused with earlier testing.
If you are looking for recombination/cavitation effects you might consider using AC.
Depends on your budget really. But look at the driver units (called ESC's) intended for brushless motors as used in drones etc, these produce variable frequency AC at low voltage and quite high currents You could use your existing DC power supply as a 'battery' but will need a controller for the ESC. We probably have a member who knows more about Radio Control models than me- but a lot of this stuff is pretty cheap now.
You can buy buy astable switch units on ebay that will drive an H-Bridge giving you variable frequency and mark/space ratio for modest sums. I have some details of this in the lab- will hope to send you some links tomorrow.
That would be useful, although I'm not making any strong commitment yet on purchasing equipment dedicated to LENR experimentation.
As for the actual experiments (if so they can be defined), they continue with what I already have, which might possibly be sufficient to test the concepts and hypotheses presented. Earlier on I've written that I have a slight suspicion that certain testing might be increasing base-level background readings in my environment. Over the past two days of testing the "unconventional electrolysis" of this thread (rather than other experiments or other variations) I think I am seeing some changes overall; if they're actually due to the tests, they could imply the presence of something that is "decaying" after formation and not the direct emission of radiation from them.
However I acknowledge that these changes could still be coincidental and/or due to environmental (e.g. weather) variations.
For the sake of completeness in documenting what I'm doing, even if it's quite crude, below are notes related to the tests performed earlier this morning.
Figure 15: Newly set up experiment, similar to that performed the day before.
Figure 16: Electrodes after inspection. At this point there are still relatively large amounts of hematite being produced.
Figure 17: The cathode quickly turned red after disassembling inspection. Sodium ferrite (NaFeO2) production suspected.
Figure 18: Red iron oxide (hematite) production decreasing, electrodes kind of getting cleaned after increasing amount of electrolyte in the water solution. It still appears as if upon exposure the cathode turns more reddish.
Figure 19: Electrodes after the experiment. Red iron oxide almost disappeared after adding progressively increasing amounts of electrolyte in the water solution.
Figure 20: Situation at the electrode interface. Similar observations as above.
My suggestion (after a quick read of your very comprehensive notes) is to try potassium hydroxide. Just a hunch.
I don't think low concentrations of KOH pose much risk in normal careful usage. It has a rather high heat of solution though, so add to water carefully. I should thing a concentration of 0.5M would be plenty.
