Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

1) Quit being pussies and switch to nuclear power plants.
2) Electric cars.
3) Cleaner air and cheaper fuel.

Edit: I don't much about this stuff, so please explain why this plan sucks.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

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Of course, the Air Car will likely never hit American shores, especially considering its all-glue construction.

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Teehee.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

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[But this was posted a long time ago. My first search on youtube found something posted in May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

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The funny thing is that you can even see in the video that the small test tube is in between some huge radio frequency producing machine. Anyone with a half a brain would look at that and realize that the machine is requiring much more energy to run then the little flame in the test tube is producing.

It's like the people that think ethanol from corn is "free energy" because corn grows from the sun.

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Yup, takes more energy to grow, harvest, transport and refine corn than you get out of it at the pump.
Sugarcane is the cheapest to produce and is far more efficient, but the aggricultural (corn)lobby make inporting sugar so expensive that it becomes cost prohibitve for the US to use it.

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Has it been actually proved that it takes more energy to produce than it can provide? I've read a lot of stories saying that there are studies going both ways and it varies wildly on how and what the researchers include. I remember reading about one study counting what the workers on the farm and factory ate for lunch each day as energy to produce and such things.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

Also, you have to figure the theft of corn kernels into the cost.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

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Has it been actually proved that it takes more energy to produce than it can provide? I've read a lot of stories saying that there are studies going both ways and it varies wildly on how and what the researchers include. I remember reading about one study counting what the workers on the farm and factory ate for lunch each day as energy to produce and such things.

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It's probably slightly positive in energy terms, maybe 1.3x or so, from the synopses I've seen. For tropical crops like the Oil Palm that numbers is much higher. If the growers are not using mechanised farming then it's yet higher.

Practically speaking there just isn't enough arable land to supply the amount of biofuel we would need to replace diesel and petrol.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

First law of thermodynamics: Conservation of energy (You can't get something for nothing).

Second law of thermodynamics: Entropy always increases (You can't even break even).

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

It should be noted that hydrogen could be of some use in an energy economy based on renewable or nuclear energy, not as a source of energy, but as a means of storing and transporting energy. Whether this RF thing is more or less efficient than electrolysis (passing a current through water with an electrolyte added) is an important consideration. The other interesting aspect of this is that when you pass a current through salt water, you get more chlorine than oxygen. I can't say for sure this isn't happening here, but I tend to think not, because no one is coughing their lungs out from the chlorine, or the hydrogen chloride that would be produced if the hydrogen reacted back with the chlorine. Both are pretty nasty, even at a few parts per million.

The other thing that's kind of depressing is how many people are getting excited about this. It seems that knowledge of basic science is getting rarer and rarer.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

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The other thing that's kind of depressing is how many people are getting excited about this. It seems that knowledge of basic science is getting rarer and rarer.

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No [censored]. New Scientist, the UK's top science magazine, had a special on space last issue and talked about antimatter propulsion. According to them the antimatter annihilates to produce gamma rays, which are magnetically channeled out the back of the space craft. And they travel at almost the speed of light! [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

Things are only set to get worse here though. They're changing the physics GCSE to remove all mathematics - now it will be a bunch of group hugs discussing how the students feel about nuclear power stations and crap.

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

How can you even have physics without math?

Re: Scientist Burns water--Nobody Cares?
 

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Well they're saying it's salt water * RF -> hydrogen -> fresh water. The loss of salt make any difference to perpetual motion?

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If anything, going from sea water to concentrated brine or solid salts + pure water will consume energy, but it would be a small percentage compared to the energy consumed and released by splitting water and recombining.