Posts by JedRothwell

Quote from Cydonia

In order to know where you want to go you must make an uncompromising analysis of Lenr situation, first.

Why we are here ?

Because 1989's Pons&Fleischman great results.

By their results they were happily financed by Toyota, yet despite their experience, they found nothing more with this investment.

That's incorrect. They made tremendous progress. The program was shut down for political reasons. Before that, it culminated with these results, which are as dramatic and undeniable as Mizuno's recent results, only far more difficult to replicate:

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RouletteTresultsofi.pdf

Quote from THHuxleynew

One additional possible artifact characteristic of Mizuno-style air calorimeters (if constructed according to his geometry) and easily avoided by replicators.

That is an imaginary possible artifact, that -- if it were real -- would be ~7 orders of magnitude too small to cause the effect, and about 5 orders of magnitude too small to measure. It is not possible to construct a calorimeter that avoids all of the imaginary problems THH comes up with, because he can come up with as many more as he wants. Most are physically impossible. How can you avoid invisible drops of water that defy gravity and magically erase the energy need to vaporize water? That's like trying to protect against poltergeists.

I recommend people read a good textbook on calorimetry and learn to avoid actual problems, not imaginary ones.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

JedRothwellGeez Louise, he doesn't have to do that! With the power ratio he claims, all he has to do is stick a heat flow transducer on the exterior of his large reactor.

How many of these experiments have you done?

Do you know the saying about teaching grandma how to suck eggs?

Quote from Shane D.

You yourself should know that, from when you and gerold.sdrew up that experiment, and we got the complaint it was going to make hydrino's if you operated it, and violate their patent.

That's ridiculous. Anyone is free to replicate from a patent. You do not violate anything unless you sell goods or services using the patented technology.

I am not saying they didn't complain, but if they did, they are idiots.

Quote from anonymous

The patent provides information that was not in the papers. Good find.

The text in that patent will be in an upcoming paper. I have no idea when it will up-come. It takes anywhere from six months, to six years, to never.

Quote from anonymous

Note: the mathematical formula using exp(-Wb/w) _may_ be approximated with the linear function that I got from regression over a relatively small move (the 49 points range) in power -- I will have to work on that to prove it. My point is the exponential function is not _necessarily_ inconsistent.

Well, it gives the wrong answer. Aside from that, it is pretty good.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I don't understand the X60 adjustment? Could you possibly explain it?

I don't understand that either. Maybe it is some limitation of the HP gadget? In other cases, there is an adjustment I understand, such as for a 3 ohm resister.

I think those are the raw voltage number coming into the HP unit. I used to have one like that. You can program it to convert voltage to various common units such as degrees Celsius. You can use a conversion factor or a lookup table. It has all kinds of great features. 1980s technology at its best. Most HP instruments are wonderful.

Quote from Dr Richard

Unwise to delay replication, some trials may not replicate R20 accurately enough generating negative results.

I hope that the people at Google are skilled in the art (PHOSITA), and they can look at failed attempts to replicate and see they were invalid. They could only do that if the person who tries to replicate reports the results in enough detail. For example, if someone says, "I tried a nickel-copper screen and it did not work" a PHOSITA would say, "ah, you probably should have used Ni-200."

If someone reports a failed attempt, but does not describe it in detail, that should be ignored.

Quote from Shane D.

I thought the only person at JM who knew how to make it died?

I don't know if he died, but Martin said he retired.

Quote from Shane D.

I do not know how this is all going to work it's way to a consensus, where the veterans in the field come together behind *ONE* experiment, as Google wants...Any ideas?

Why *ONE* experiment? I don't understand why they should be so limited. I can see why 10 would be too many, but surely they can afford 2 or 3. I would suggest, in this order:

1. Mizuno's latest.
2. Takahashi with Ames reverse engineered material, which I hope they can make more of.
3. Classic F-P with the methods described by Storms and Cravens. They may have tried this. I have no idea what they did, but they did not achieve high loading, so if they were following the Storms protocols, they did it wrong.

Quote from AlainCo

Another research could be to replicate the [Takahashi et al.] results of the U-Kobe/U-Osaka/Nissan/Toyota-Technova/U-Tohoku/Nissan/U-Nagoya, again, eventually with their samples.

That's a good idea. Unfortunately, that is much harder to do. And unfortunately, as far as I know, they are unwilling to share samples. Brian Ahern and the people at a National Laboratory produced similar material that worked about as well. Ames NL, I think it was. They might be able to produce more, which Google could then test. Making it from scratch is very difficult. The authors have not shared the methods and materials. In their recent paper they said they will reveal these things sometime in the future. This experiment was pioneered by Arata, who also kept the details secret, according to Japanese researchers I have heard from. I never saw a detailed description from him, in English or Japanese.

Arata's earlier Pd-black material with double-structured cathodes was simpler, and I think this was described comprehensively. I would not recommend trying to replicate this experiment.

If Mizuno is correct, his material is much easier to replicate. It is astounding to me that such crudely made material works, but it seems to. Assuming his calorimetry is right, it must be working, and I do not know of any reason to doubt the calorimetry.

Of course it would be good to try to replicate several different experiments. Just because Mizuno is promising, you should not ignore Takahashi et al. If you have the resources, by all means try them all. Google has the resources.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Jed, I am asking for this for the R20 result because of what Mizuno says. It has a different heater geometry, it is a different reactor, the result is very much larger, there is only one result.

How can the heater geometry affect the way the HP data logger measures amperage and voltage??? Seriously, that's the strangest thing I have heard in a long time. Do you think putting a heater in a hot place somehow reaches out and changes the instruments outside the cell? How would it do that? Why would it have this effect only during excess heat production and not during calibrations?

But okay, assume for the sake of argument that it could. In that case, you should throw away all data from R20 and look only at R19 data.

This result it not much larger. 250 W is not much larger than 100 W. Probably the s/n ratio is about the same. There are hundreds of results from previous reactors, all with the same heater geometry, so I suggest you ignore this one result and think about the others instead. If you are so convinced that moving a heater inside a reactor can make the HP instruments outside the reactor malfunction, go with that hypothesis and ignore that data set. Do not dismiss the other data sets based on this (whacky) hypothesis.

Also, I suggest you try measuring the power consumed by sheath heater at different temperatures. See if you can get the wrong power measurements by confining the heater in a hot place. Try testing your own hypotheses instead of just throwing them out without thinking. I suppose if this could happen, both the instrument maker (HP) and the people who make the sheath heaters would tell us about the problem in their specifications. I have never heard of such a thing. I'll bet you have never heard of such a thing either.

Quote from THHuxleynew

If Mizuno assumed everything was the same as in previous reactors he might use voltage measurement only and the known voltage power relationship. Just as he did for the airspeed values.

No, he did not do that. The values in the spreadsheet come from the anemometer. Some people here think that he did that, but anyone capable of doing grade school arithmetic can see that he did not. There is no equation that converts one number to the other, except with a random number generator. Look at the spreadsheet I posted above. It is proof that he did not do this.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Excellent Jed, so if we had the R20 raw data we could check this and confirm the possibility that Mizuno used measured V and I on heater to get 50W, rather than an assumption that the same voltage would generate the same power and a previously determined voltage / poer relationship?

I have it, and I confirm it. Why would I tell you that if I did not have this, and dozens of other spreadsheets from the past 10 years? Look at the spreadsheets I uploaded previously. They all show amps and volts recorded every 5 seconds.

What do you mean "assumption that the same voltage would generate the same power"? Why would he not measure amperage? Who wouldn't measure that??? Does it say anywhere, in any report of schematic that he only measures voltage and not amperage? Do you think he assumes a constant amperage power supply always works? Or that he wouldn't set up the data collection to work just a well with a constant voltage setting? In fact, they both change in when input power increases in Fig. 6.

Have you ever heard of an experimentalist who does not measure both amperage and voltage? That is such a weird thing to say!

Here is some sample data from the R20 spreadsheet shown in Fig. 6. This data is Minute 1 (38 W) and Minute 20 (50 W). Multiply the raw data numbers by 60 to compute watts.

Quote from THHuxleynew

The difference between R20 and R19 was the active reactor heater element. I have suggested above a mechanism which (via a mistake) could underestimate the R20 active reactor input power by any (possibly varying) amount and not affect R19, nor the calibration data.

It is the same kind of heater, heated with the same power supply, monitored with the same HP data logger. Why would it not work with this reactor when it has worked for years with other reactors, in dozens of calibrations? Why would putting it inside make the power measurements wrong. But okay -- suppose that is true. In that case you should ignore the R20 results and look only at Table 1 R19 results. I remind you that these also show massive excess heat. Do you think that only 250 W can be measured with this calorimeter, and 40 to 100 W are not significant? The s/n ratio must be almost the same.

Quote from THHuxleynew

If we had a large quantity of active reactor R20 data, at different powers, we could test this.

We have hundreds of calibrations from other reactors. Over 100 are summarized in Figs. 1, 2 and 3. We don't need the R20 data. If you think there is something unique about the R20 data that makes the previous calibrations not applicable, I suggest you ignore it and look only at the Table 1 results. The graphs from the R19 individual runs look very similar to Figs. 5 and 6. Just use your imagination and pretend the lines are little lower.

Quote from THHuxleynew

More specifically, if we have the raw data for the R20 active runs, with V and I in to heater, we could easily rule this out or confirm it.

We can rule it with the raw data from other calibrations with other reactors. We can rule it with just as much certainty, because the calibrations from several different reactors produce identical results in the calorimeter. It cannot tell them apart (except for the reactor body temperature). If if you do not agree, you should ignore the R20 and look only at the R19 in Table 1, as I said. You are trying to find a reason to reject all results from all reactors because I have only posted data in this report from one particular reactor. I could post graphs from the R19, or the R16, or some other, but frankly, you will only come up with some other spurious reason to reject it, so I don't feel like bothering.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Perhaps something to ask Mizuno about the preliminary R20 measurement in particular. For the active reactor, how was the 50W input determined?

What do you mean "determined"? It was measured. What the hell do you mean the "R20 measurement in particular." All measurements for all cells all done the same way, with the same instruments, in the same calorimeter. Why would he do it any differently for this reactor?

Quote from THHuxleynew

Was the given result power (as we would hope) measured from real V and I measurements made contemporaneously through the experiment?

Of course it was! How else could it be done? Where do you think the graphs came from? They show perturbations and spikes in the input power. (See Fig. 6, for example.) Do you think he or I added that with a random number generator? What a weird question! Look here:

1. The configuration with data logger is shown in several papers, including this one from ICCF21, p. 4: https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MizunoTexcessheat.pdf
2. I uploaded spreadsheets from his previous experiments. They clearly show every parameter being measured every 5 seconds. They show that input power fluctuated slightly from one 5-s segment to the next.
3. Who in God's green earth would do it any other way??? This is the 21st century. We use computers and data loggers. Do you think he would measure volts and amps once a day and write them down?

Why do you even ask such things? The answers are obvious from the data! You can see from the graphs that the input power is measured.

Quote from THHuxleynew

But to answer your challenge. The R20 result was a single sample. One option would be:

M infers I measurements from V and R, or indeed infers P from V and prior measurements

Yes, it is one sample. But there are 55 other samples shown in Table 1, and hundreds of other samples and calibrations from other data, and -- here is the point: It was the same calorimeter. It works the same way every time. If there was a problem, it would show up in all the other measurements of other samples. So why are you pretending the R20 result was sui generis? The other tests produced 40 to 100 W, which is in the same range as 250 W. If there was a problem with 250 W, it would also be seen at 40 to 100 W.

If you find a significant error in the graphs for R20, I will find that same error in the calibrations for 10 W, 50 W, 100 W, and the excess heat runs in Table 1. It will be readily apparent. So you can use this data to search for a problem. But you are saying there is one run from that reactor, at that power level, in this report, so you cannot draw conclusions. As if it were somehow unique. That's incorrect. The calorimeter works the same way not matter what reactor you put in it. I have a table summarizing calibration data from 4 different reactors, of different sizes. The calorimeter response is identical. You cannot tell which one is in it. (The reactor surface temperatures are somewhat different at the same power level, because they have different surface areas.)

Quote from anonymous

There is NO RANDOM number added to the Mizuno numbers. (If this was Ascoli's hypothesis this is wrong.) It is the straight formula that I show:

Airspeed = 0.583436 * BlowerPwr + 2.010436

That does not work. It happens to be close to the numbers I posted with 4 digit accuracy, but it does not fit with more digits, or with another section of the spreadsheet chosen at random. Besides, why would anyone come up with those numbers? What physical constants do they represent? Here are the numbers I posted before, plus another section of the spreadsheet, and the computed value minus the measured value. Your formula comes up with different numbers. Mizuno's spreadsheet would give the same numbers shown here, if he had used that formula. Spreadsheets don't make rounding errors with this many digits. No formula with three terms will give the actual air speed numbers. You might come up with something if you keep piling on terms, but why would anyone do that? If Mizuno was trying to fool you, he would just use a random number generator. He would not go to the trouble to make a multi-term equation that hides the transformation. If he (or I) wanted to use the motor power instead of the anemometer reading, we would do that, and say that is what we did. We would not make an elaborate equation to do that. Multiplying by one constant (0.583) comes close enough for any practical purpose.

Quote from anonymous

Ascoli could have it correct, i.e. that the air speeds are derived by the formula I have shown from blower power.

Okay, what is the conversion factor? Is there a random number inserted? He said power is multiplied by some factor. In that case, when I divide the air speed by power, why do I get hundreds of different random numbers? This is a spreadsheet. If one is column is multiplied by constant to generate another column, you can find the constant by division. I don't find it.

Ascoli is wrong. This is grade-school arithmetic.

Quote from JedRothwell

He thinks the gas may be is going into cracks and voids in the sandwich between the Ni and Pd, which is not the same as being absorbed.

If that is what is happening, it fits in well with Ed Storms' theory.

Mizuno believes that high loading of the Ni interferes with adsorption of deuterium at the surface, reducing the strength of the reaction. He thinks that is what you see in Fig. 10. He says with other forms of Ni cold fusion, high loading enhances the reaction, but not with this physical sandwich configuration. That also fits in with Ed's theory, I think.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

THHuxleynewIn the machine that makes 250W out with 50W in, don't you think it would be very difficult for Mizuno to have made a large enough error to account for that power ratio at that level of power? Yet you postulate some errors due to various routes of heat transfer that may not have been fully accounted for? Not to mention the apparently accurate calibrations with simple Joule heating? Seems if the result is not real and valid, this is either some colossal mistake which somehow escaped notice (how does that happen?) or it's Mizuno's fabrication or delusion. That would seem more probable than that large an error but it's improbable as well. I wish someone capable would go to Mizuno's lab and step by step would verify the work and the results.

I agree. I cannot think of any plausible error. Whereas at ICCF21 in my presentation I said there were plausible errors and the results were close to the margin. (https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MizunoTexcessheat.pdf) I feel much more confident about the latest results.

But as I said, if you can think of an error, you don't make it. It's the ones you don't think of that get you.

I think you are right that it has to be a colossal mistake.

The thing that bothers me about THH's attitude was his statement that he expects this is an error. "Expect" is the wrong word. I fear this is an error. I wonder if it might be. I look diligently to discover whether it is. But I do not "expect" that and neither should he. An expectation in a scientific context is based on facts, laws and an analysis. You have to point to a coherent set of reasons for an expectation. What he has is a gut feeling, or a prediction based on previous failures and mistakes. It may be a valid prediction, but that is different from an expectation, in my opinion.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

So THHuxleynewdo you really think errors in accounting for the full thermal budget of the experiment could explain the result? And if so, how do you account for the calibration result being essentially dead on?

Calibrations give me confidence. And a sense of relief. The only thing more convincing would be an independent replication. I sure hope there will be one.

I spend more time noodling with calibration spreadsheets than excess heat ones.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

And if you don't think that about the results and don't think calibration is wildly invalid, then while it may be fun to perseverate about small mistakes in method and precision, would it really change anything if your concerns were valid? Like anonymouswrote, is this worth tying you up and JedRothwellas well?

"Perservate" is the right word. It is a good idea to bring up these issues, but when they are resolved you should put them aside. Don't beat a dead horse. But this is not tying me up. It is challenging me, in a good way. If I am going to present these results, I need to look at them with a magnifying glass for weeks. Because I am not Mizuno. He can answer these things off the top of his head. I often have to back to him with stupid questions, which he answers patiently.

Fortunately, I have lots of experience looking at data and with a magnifying glass. I have programmed in several languages including assembly language, which is a nightmare of small details. (For the interrupt handler, with an in-line Pascal function, thank goodness.) It gives you a lifelong twitch. You can make a colossal error by leaving out a punctuation mark. The way NASA crashed a rocket into Mars with a trivial error: mixing up U.S. and SI units.