Sensei

Hmm. Does this mean this cannot be utilized outside of a vacuum

Vacuum would definitely increase distance plasma is traveling

Electron gun requires vacuum.

or inert atmosphere?

It will be ionized.

After all it's helium, neon, argon, xenon, etc. gas.

That's how these elements were discovered - by spectral lines present in air spectrum.

Scientists compared air spectrum (from discharge tube) with pure nitrogen and pure oxygen spectrum (from electrolysis or chemical reactions producing them) and noticed difference between them.

Is there risk of electrocution?

Yes, of course.

One mine colleague touched it when it was loaded 3 kV and since that moment he doesn't touch anything in lab anymore without asking..

You could smell of burning flesh (literally)..

I touched CW generator electrodes with 6 kV accidentally once too.

Somebody called me, in the middle of experiment, and I forgot to discharge capacitors entirely. When I returned, touched it and fall it..

Mine hand shake after several hours after that.

What is the container for those two wires in your pictures?

I had to use something that is not metal.

It's 1mm thick cardboard.

If we will place it between two electrodes with 25 kV, and wait couple seconds (double or triple as long as without cardboard between them) electric arc will be very powerful and will cut cardboard making pretty big hole in it.

It might be a trick of the light, but the second photo appears as if the wires are encased in a glass spheroid.

There is no glass, there is nothing surrounding it.

When you will take glass tube/pipe, attach electrodes from both sides and seal ends, and fill by some gas (hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, I have created from electrolysis, CO₂ from dry ice, air), optionally lower pressure, you will have self made discharge tube.

Also, the wires weirdly remind me of those jumper wires I find in my Arduino kits.

Pretty close.

They are standard wires for connecting breadboards.

Mine cascade generators are on breadboards, so I can freely connect/disconnect them together.

Although I saw on the net people are taking transparent kitchen plastic boxes like this one

making 4 holes, attaching banana connectors to it from both sides, and putting capacitor bank inside, filling by mineral oil, and sealing them permanently.

But if some capacitor will blow up, you have problem how to fix it.

Also, this is such a silly question, but is there any way to change the color of the plasma without resorting to pumping in gases like neon or krypton?

Free nucleus is attracting free (or not) electron.

Electron is emitting photon, or multiple photons with various frequencies, and is attracted more and more by nucleus.

And these photons is what we see as color of plasma.

With graphite electrodes I had red sparks.

We long since reached the limit of what you can dop with a single core, which is why new pcs in the last years don't come with simply more powerful single core cpus but multicore cpus, the transistors can't get any smaller and you can't pack more onto a single core or they start to interfere with each other (iirc it's actually quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which is the reason for the interference).

Increasing core quantity is cheap and easy way to increase power of processor without bothering with smaller scale elements etc.

We certainly (and thankfully) didn't hit the limit of how small transistors and elements can be, yet.

Graphics cards are now coming with 2880 cores btw.

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/graphics_cards_buy_now_uk.html

CPU can go GFX card route too. But it should be done by changing architecture permanently, and limiting instruction set (which is quite obsolete, basing on Intel 8086 from 1978), which will simplify making core. So there will be possible to pack them together in larger quantity tightly.

This would make all currently Intel compiled software obsolete, so industry is trying to avoid it as long as they can.

-The voltage would have to be very high - typical Jacob's Ladders take about 6 kV from a transformer to ionize air.

6 kV is not very high.

I have Cockcroft-Walton generator producing ~40 kV (and expanding its capabilities with time).

It's used in experiments with x-rays in cloud chambers.

To fully load you need couple seconds (by 240 VAC @ 50 Hz). At least with electrolytic capacitors (which have pretty high capacitance).

These are screen-shots from video with ~25 kV setup.

I have videos showing difference between 6 kV, 10 kV, 25 kV, 40 kV setups.

I can send you videos privately if you're interested.

(whole "explosion" takes less than 1 frame of recording it camera, so sometimes there are misses, recorded just voice without actually picture. I will need to get high speed camera some day..)

Why do I not see these being attempted more often? A plasma railgun works the same as a regular railgun, except the armature (and projectile) is ionized gas instead of anything physical.

That sounds to me that you want to accelerate plasma using quickly changing magnetic field in barrel. Is that right?

Plasma is highly reactive. It will steal electrons from surrounding it matter, and unpredicted chemical reactions will happen.

Production of ozone is very high with mine above setup (especially with continuous coronal discharge when we will prevent "explosion").

You feel like after summer thunderstorm in seconds.

But I still have the shape.

Shape of physical object changes depending who is watching it, and distance to object.

Distant galaxy seen by naked eye or cheap telescope looks like spherical blob.

Metal plate, or wall, looks flat to us, but after large zooming by microscope they will reveal to be mountain-like irregular.

So, observed shape is or might be just an illusion, depending on capabilities of observer or device and/or distance.

Just a thought irrelevant to whole discussion.

ps. I have no idea why it was moved to Philosophy..

So please tell me the most accurate and the most energy efficient way of calculating the distance between two variable objects wirelessly. It does not have to consist of a method of waves.

For Earth's scale objects typical method is sending photons to object and after reflection, detecting returning signal delay (t=2*d/c)

It's used in radars, using radio waves.

But if you attach mirror to object, or retroreflector (like on Moon), you can use normal visible range photons.

For our solar system and galaxy scale distant objects we can use knowledge about position of Earth around Sun and Pythagoras triangle.

At one day of year Earth is closer to some star or planet, at other day of year Earth is farthest from it.

You can deduct that tangent alpha is equal to ~1 au (=~150 mln km) divided by distance to measured object (from Sun).

I have made picture for you to visualize:

The issue was that the energy required to remove the water from the tanks required more energy than is produced.

That's not an issue. That's normal.

They try to compensate by using solar energy and wind energy but those require certain conditions that arent always present.

You misunderstood idea described in article.

It's meant to be storage facility, not regular power station.

Energy is produced elsewhere, and solar panels and windmills are example power stations that are periodically working.

Once they lost energy source (at night, or when there is no wind), energy is restored from storage and customer continuously receive energy.

My idea incorporates a device that can be used 24/7 with an efficiency of up to 95%.

I stay doubtful.

How did you calculate that your idea will be 95% efficient?

Each light year is approximately
299792.458 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365.25 = 9.46*10^12 km

53.0 million light years * 9.46*10^12 = 5*10^20 km distance between us.

3.2 mln km/h = 888.9 km/s

5*10^20 km / 888.9 km/s = 5.641*10^17 seconds

That's 1.78*10^10 years.

17.8 billion years.
Not millions.
Article is wrong by factor 1000. Not first and not last time journalist shows his inability to calculate.

"First of all, even at its current speed, it will take more than 17.5 million years to get here."

We have protons at rest. Accelerating part of them to v > 0.99c and hitting them to other protons at rest.

Result is production of protons and anti-protons:

p+ + p+ -> p+ + p+ + p+ + p-

Like this has been showed in this article at the bottom:

http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/particle_creation.html

And from frame-dependent kinetic energy of particle, two new real particles appeared..

I think you made a good point with this post. I've been trying to get my program to run nonstop but it keeps getting an error and it stops after that. I'm working it out today.

Start > Run.. regedit

Then search for HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

And add new key. With value path to executable. Or rundll32.exe [dll name] [function name] if it's linkable library (or Windows service - this one can be controlled by administration service panel).

The most of mine Windows applications have option to run them with Windows, minimized, and in tray icon. I like to have them at hand.

According to article, wind turbines or solar panels are producing energy first and using it to pump water out from tanks on the ground of ocean, when there is windy weather or sunny hot day. Tanks are now empty.

Then water pass through turbines and fill tanks back. producing energy (according to article 80% of that produced in 1st stage, so 20% is lost).

That's smart idea. Currently power stations have to lower their production when there is not enough power consumers on the other end of wire.

On the other hand, instead of building it at ocean ground, we can simply make large artificial lake.

Wind turbines and solar panels will be all the time used to pump water from ocean to lake, no matter if consumers need it or not.

And then energy will be just produced in normal dam.

I was wondering if anyone knew of any obstacles that researchers or scientists ran into when designing machines to manipulate the pressure at the bed of the ocean into energy. I though of a design and then did a search of the internet for any designs similar to see other obstacles that may have been discovered and ran into this site http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Using-Water-Pressure-at-the-Bottom-of-the-Ocean-to-Store-Energy.html which uses the same concept as mine but mine integrates other machinery which already compensates for their issue.

Which "their issue"? In article I don't see they mention any issue.

Do you mean you have created 5 times stronger concrete?

Here's 8 liquid ounces of gasoline. Admittedly, the energy is in a somewhat compressed form, but the application of an appropriate catalyst can take care of that.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

You can't beat protons & antiprotons in magnetic traps..

Today I read economic article that in the next 25-50 years there will appear the first trillionaire (10^12).

And the first thought was that it could be somebody who will find a cheap & fast way to produce antiprotons.

One aspect of this is the question if electrons are real.

IMHO they are real.

And energy is real.

It flows from one particle, or body, to other during interaction between them.

Hot-fast particle shares energy with colder ones until they're all in equilibrium.

That's why it's always conserved. At least in classic & high energy physics.

What about photons?

The problem with photons, as with the most neutral particles, is that until they're absorbed, or decay (pion0, neutron etc), we have no idea about their existence.

Once we know about it, photon is gone from the system, making illusion it was not real.

Instead we have increased energy in our eye or detector.

Which raised the question: maybe a photon isn't, either — it's just a vibrational mode of the universe's electromagnetic field. Electrons are a vibrational mode of another field.

Such splitting fields is kinda artificial.

After all electron and positron can be made of photon(s) in pair production. And reverse in annihilation.

Muon will have it's own field, and tau yet another?

Is there a way to falsify these ideas?

IMHO the key is f.e. answering why exactly photons in pair production must have frequency equal Compton frequency 1.23559*10^20 Hz

Why it's not any other value?

What is so special in this frequency.. ?

(Yes, I know that m_e=9.11*10^-31 kg, or m_e=510999 eV/c^2 and E_e=510999 eV, 6.62607*10^-34*1.23559*10^20/299792458^2=~9.11*10^-31 etc)

String theory author Leonard Susskind, tries to answer why physical constant have value we know by introducing infinite number of universes, each one with different properties.

But again IMHO it's road to nowhere. Answer without answering question.

There are plenty of constructs in physics that aren't fundamental, and aren't physical objects. We speak of electric and magnetic fields, for example, but these do not physically exist.

How to visualize magnetic field? Use array of compasses. And each of them will be pointing in direction defined by magnetic field. But what was first, egg or chicken? To have some effect we need magnet, electromagnet or other magnetized source. Which are all made of particles. Particles in compasses will show us where are other particles and their attributes.

XIX century authors introducing electric and magnetic fields had no idea about particles.

No particles in the first place, no electric or magnetic field around them. No attraction or repelling between them.

Do you mean how to show sample source code?

<code>A piece of computer code</code>

W3Schools is good resource about HTML/CSS

http://www.w3schools.com

...so maybe it is designed to be a "self feeding" jet engine, rather than just a producer of jet engine fuel, for future consumption.

There is "just" 0.035% of CO₂ in the air.

To create just 1 cm^3 of Kerosene there would be needed to process (with 100% efficiency) 3656 Liters of air.

You can't do it during flight.

Boeing 747 burns ~4000 cm^3 (4 L) of fuel per second.

That's job for somebody who has a few years everyday experience in writing software..

Figuring out device models and checking manufacturers websites for SDK, if not found maybe writing e-mail to them is the first thing you need to do.

Such devices often comes with software to install, so maybe SDK is already on CD/DVD or installed?

Did I mention this is really slow? Not only due to the initial near-lack of conductivity of the tap water I used, because I did use saltwater in both beakers in one try.

What voltage you used?

Try high voltage at beginning, and then lower it with time.

This can be done automatically by stabilizer.

If you ever produced f.e. iron oxides, aluminum oxides, copper oxides (or hydroxides) in higher amounts using electrolysis, you probably noticed how current increases over time (and very fast). (couple times I had 15-17 A while iron oxides production after >20-30 minutes)

Stabilizer is the only feasible way to have good rate of production, and you won't have to control it all the time..

It is not the number of photons per second I am concerned about it is how they spread out across space.

See animation that I made for other thread

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/82391-how-on-earth-can-light-rays-reflect-a-person-from-a-mirror/#entry798307

(it's too uniform I know, add randomness in your imagination)

Do you want someone to read the title of the thread for you?

At least I tried to answer "how to make NaOH at home".

Your answer was "go to shop and buy"..

In post #3 I just described "home version" of Chloralkali process in easy to understand words

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloralkali_process

You can read in the article that positive electrode should be made of titanium.

Another remarkable bit of evidence of a lack of clear thinking is where you say "If gaseous Cl2 dissolved in solution (which is undesired), there will be also HCl present."

Well, if the system generates any NaOH (and I accept it will produce a bit of the stuff with a lot of impurities) then the concentration of HCl is going to damn all isn't it?

Rethink once again what was initial quantity of salt and water.

59-60 g of NaCl and

18 g of H₂O

That's exactly the same number of molecules = 6.022141*10^23 of both. Each NaCl has corresponding it H₂O. They are in pairs.

Now, negative electrode is producing H₂ which is instantly escaping our system and never comes back.

There is 2x -OH and 2NaCl left.

-OH joins with Na+ and we have NaOH + Cl-

2 Cl- on positive electrode are joining together and neutral gaseous Cl₂ is produced (are you now inspired how important is shape of titanium positive electrode in this process to get rid of Chlorine in gaseous state?)

If I see 1 Liter volume of Hydrogen produced in one container, and 1 Liter of Chlorine volume in another container, then I am pretty sure that quantity of impurities is pretty low.

If some Cl will not escape it, but joins with water, equivalent it molecule of NaCl won't be able to change (there is equal number of pairs of NaCl and H₂O after all).

So we will have: NaCl, NaCl, HCl, HClO.

That's why so important to produce gaseous Cl₂ ,which I said:

"But whole point of this setup is to produce Chlorine gas.

We want to Cl₂ bubbles to escape it as soon as they're formed on positive electrode."

If both gases escaped setup at the same rate, the same volume, remain should be NaOH mostly.

Impurities produced by this method are quite meaningless (especially if it's just boomstickbob's home experiment) in comparison to business production using Chloralkali process, which can even leave traces of mercury in NaOH.

Quote from the nearly beginning of article:

"Additionally, the chlorine and sodium hydroxide produced via the mercury-cell chloralkali process are themselves contaminated with trace amounts of mercury. The membrane and diaphragm method use no mercury, but the sodium hydroxide contains chlorine, which must be removed."

Did you performed it ever in your life?

I was doing it dozen of times (last time week ago).

Usually with current I between 2A to 5 A. And high voltage.

It is normal procedure of production of NaOH and HCl (indirectly - from gaseous Cl)

No oxygen is produced this way- because it cannot be produced - because there is so little water.

You can't breath after 5-10 seconds since start up with I=5 A, because of Chlorine gas.

If water would be in significant amount, right, oxygen would be produced, but it would be no longer Hydrogen+Chlorine production but regular electrolysis with Hydrogen+Oxygen produced.

ps. I didn't say a word about copper. It would be indeed bad idea to use it. I have tried it with bad results.

Cu immediately reacts with -OH and we will have at least bluish Cu(OH)₂.

(Regular electrolysis with a lot of water with copper electrodes is instantly producing Cu(OH)₂ . I had it plenty in containers. After week or two it all disintegrated to CuO and H₂O. Easily visible because it changed color from bluish to dark)

Add to that the fact that, once there's any NaOH present, it will tend to react with chlorine to produce things like NaClO and NaClO3.

 

Right. But whole point of this setup is to produce Chlorine gas.

We want to Cl₂ bubbles to escape it as soon as they're formed on positive electrode.

And then (usually) collect it in another container with fresh water, so HCl and HOCl will be produced in it.

I wouldn't care much about NaClO. If gaseous Cl₂ dissolved in solution (which is undesired), there will be also HCl present. Which will react with NaClO.

NaClO + 2 HCl → Cl₂ + H₂O + NaCl

Take 59-60 grams of salt NaCl, 18 grams of water, mix,

plug some electrodes that don't react with neither HCl nor NaOH, and pass direct current through it,

you will smell Chlorine gas (it always reminds me primary school swimming pool) on positive electrode,

and there will be Hydrogen gas on negative electrode.

With steady current I=1 A you will need 26 hours 45 minutes to change all above to NaOH (in theory).

Really easier is to buy it (but less fun).

viscosity, drag, non elastic stress and friction etc are non conservative ( path dependent) forces

They are conserved but at level you can't see - energy.

Friction causes heating of material. Kinetic energy of one body is changed to temperature of other body. And first body stops moving, and second body has higher temperature.

There was even such experiment - scientists were shooting to water with thermometer and measured change of temperature of water caused by hundred or thousands objects hitting water.

All charges in the system will interact with each other. The correct expression would therefore be

 

[math]V = \frac{1}{4\pi \varepsilon} \sum\limits_{i < j} \frac{q_i q_j}{r_{ij}}[/math]

 

where [math]r_{ij}[/math] is the distance between charge i and charge j. The sum is over all pairs of charges.

Analyze units..

V, electric potential, is in Volts, or Coulombs/Farads

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_potential

If you have Q * Q in numerator, you will have Coulombs ^2 in units.

[math]\frac{C^2}{F} \neq \frac{C}{F}[/math]

When I just say "potential" I mean potential energy.

Electric potential energy has symbol U_E (not V).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_potential_energy

Thankas all, How to find U?

See above link.

The world's most famous physicist is warning about the risks posed by machine superintelligence, saying that it could be the most significant thing to ever happen in human history — and possibly the last.

Didn't Cameron do the same in Terminator 30 years ago?

Software doesn't evolute over time. It doesn't write its own (better) code by itself.

If it would, it would have to shut down first version after starting self made new one.

Isn't a risk by itself? If new code would have some issue, overlooked by 1st version of code, starting it up, and shutting down itself, could destroy it by itself (destroy = not execute anymore).

If two versions would work parallel (no shutting down of old version), wouldn't they start competing with each other.. ?

Shutting down old version is often used by currently existing software during updating after downloading new version from the net.

I am using it by myself.

Sometimes because of errors in .NET Framework, restart of application doesn't happen. New version is downloaded right, old one is shutdown, and new version quits during restart, and application is gone from the system (it will resurrect after f.e. restart of computer because it's added to Windows registry Run key)..

Adding probabilities gives total > 100% which is a fallacy.

You didn't give probabilities.

You gave skill level.

I guess so 1.0 means God-like know-everything.

Without actually knowing everything and having 1.0 skill, you can't even measure skills of current living people.

My tacit assumption is that if a task is assigned to 3 individuals it will be at least 3 times more complex and hence the minimum level of success is the product of their weighted averages.

You are oversimplifying.

They don't have to do the same task at the same time.

They can split job.

When one is f.e. figuring out spectral lines of Hydrogen, other one can work on Helium spectral lines, and yet another on Oxygen.

If all 3 would be trying to figure out spectral lines of one atom, their potential would be wasted, right. But on other hand, working on something doesn't necessarily means that there will be success.

Other person can inspire, encourage, motive to work even harder.

Give a new angle to look at problem when we stuck in it.

Show where has been made mistake or error.

If the task is simple enough for 1 individual then the scenario is different and there is no need to add another person as you rightly mention.

Your thread sounds to me a lot like discussion about making code multi-threaded.

There are tasks that are easy to split to multiple threads, multiple cpus,

and there are tasks that are hard,

and there are tasks that are impossible (the most likely they're serial dependent on previous calcs *).

Task easily splittable (scalable), can benefit nearly linearly from adding new resources.

Lost is only in merging/exchanging data.

*)

( a * b ) + c - impossible to split, adding c requires waiting for completion of a * b

( a * b ) + ( c * d ) - possible to split, a*b goes to 1st unit, c*d goes to 2nd unit, then final operation by one of them.

Understood, but if Electromagnetism is a separate phenomenon. why do they refer to this as Electromagnetism,

I think really its the grammar in the books and the online information, because it does seem to be totally separated...

Perhaps maybe because of electromagnetic induction.. ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction

Flowing electrons create magnetic field surrounding wire.

If wire is entwining iron, it's becoming electromagnet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnet

Direction of flow of electrons is defining where will be N and S (simplifying for you).

XIX century ampermeter was simply magnet and electromagnet with attached arrow.

Once we pass current through electromagnet wire, electromagnet is attracting or repelling from magnet, and arrow is showing on scale how much current we had.

Scale had both positive and negative range (so could show direction of flow).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanometer