npts2020

offmason; If your spring is strong enough to pull the ball back up, it will require input of energy to make the ball go down to begin with. Keep in mind that any rewind spring will take away energy during the downward motion which will never allow your ball to bounce (overcome gravity) back as high as it started. If your spring is perfect, i.e. pulls back with the same energy as required to stretch it, you have essentially a bouncing ball and it will act in a similar manner.

Personally, I like the most socialist systems of todays Europe more than the most capitalist system of America from the turn of the 20th century. If somebody is making decisions about my life, I would far prefer it to be someone who ought to have my best interest at heart than someone who openly admits their only concern is making money for themselves.

My favorites are wind and solar but unless you have a nationwide grid for wind, they both need some sort of storage scheme. Tidal, geothermal, and hydro power may be used in places that have them available for a source.

I recently read this article that terrorists are twice as likely to be engineers by training as anything else. The next closest training is Islamic studies at about half the rate. The writer conjectures that it may be because of lack of employment for engineers but there are lots of unemployed people. In my opinion, it has at least as much to do with the fact that an engineer is more likely to be able to act on a terrorist plan than some other random person. Could there also just be greater numbers of engineers?

I am proud to agree with you.

I disagree with the statement highlighted. It is either ok to kill people or it is not. If it is ok, then the state should be given the power to do it with clearly delineated instructions for when it may do so. If it is not ok to kill people then the state should never be given that power. Magnitude of risk to innocents is irrelevant, you either have risk it or you do not. I guess you could argue that some small enough percentage would be essentially no risk, but we are nowhere near that point now.

This is not correct. What happens when you go twice or three times the speed of sound? Is the air compacted to two or three times infinity? Infinity, other than as a mathematical representation, has never been conclusively been shown to exist, only very, very large numbers.

Two things to add to what Sayonara said about the drinking bird. 1) As soon as you take away the water (heat sink) the bird will stop working. 2) It is doubtful that you can extract the extremely miniscule amount of energy the bird requires for operation to do any useful work. Using the same source for heat and sink will not give you more energy than that required to be able to do so. Somewhere you have to add energy to give a differential in pressure/temperature. This addition of energy will always make efficiency >100%.

Jackson33; Even if you are unable to draw the same conclusions as the thousands of climate scientists who have worked on this topic over the past 30+ years, doesn't mean that there is not solid scientific basis for what groups like the IPCC and others say. I have yet to see a climate model from any denialists that even comes close to predicting past, present or future behavior of the climate. You may claim that there is widespread disagreement among climatologists (how was this determined?) about the causes and likely effects of climate change but I want to see the work of those who disagree go through the same review process as current widely accepted theories have.

Jackson33; We will just have to agree to disagree. From where I stand it seems like there is far more innovation coming from places like DARPA, NASA, and state funded universities than is coming from "private enterprise". I just don't have the faith in "free" markets that you have. People usually do not have enough information to make good choices.

Even if they are only operating at 50% capacity as claimed, it seems to me that production will need to be scaled up somewhere to meet expected demand. I say more power to our future Chinese overlords and apparently those who control the manufacturing agree. It is not like we are going to have anywhere close to the amount of wind power we should have within the next two years, anyway, even if we max out their production.

The narrower the pipe the more collisions on the inside surface of the pipe of molecules per volume of fluid therefore more friction according to that Reynolds Number Bob was talking about. You have higher volume per surface area the larger the diameter of the pipe and less friction because of it.

benedictusk; The two biggest things I have found in doing something like this are you need to explain why it is better than what exists and is it economically feasible. There are a few maglev trains like the ones at Disney World but they are pretty expensive to build, maintain, and operate. Putting a price on whatever one is looking to do for this I have found to be an interesting exercise.

From my frame of reference it has generally meant; Observer/Narrator Point of View=Frame of Reference

TomBooth; I will second what InsaneAlien said. From what you just said it is obvious to me that you do not have a thorough understanding of how turbines work. Every multistaged turbine in the world has tapered disks. The thing is that they are tapered from small to big, opposite of the way you describe. The reason for this is to allow the gas to expand while passing through. That is how a turbine works. It is this expansion that work is extracted from. The whole idea of greater temperature differences (like in say superheated steam) is to allow even more expansion and thereby greater ability to do work. It is not possible to use the same source (atmosphere in your case) as both a heat source and heat sink with no other inputs. It is those other inputs that prevent any engine from being 100% or greater in efficiency.

That's the point. If it is deemed necessary, industrial production in America can be stepped up relatively quickly. Those who run the world, have just decided that it is not desirable (for whatever reason) to do this. I was unaware that there was any windmill producers that had that much extra unused capacity, anyway, so wherever they are going to be produced is going to require major investment in expanding operations. Are the Chinese really that much more adept than we are at getting the manufacturing process going? Rapid deployment of alternative energy sources is a great idea, IMO, but how is that going to help our economy if we just import everything?

In a perfect system flow rate is not reduced, thus the increase in speed of flow to maintain the same rate. However, in a real system you have reduction in flow rate due to greater friction and turbulence.

Pangloss; The two articles in those references are authors that are supporting what I have been saying, the others are tables or graphs showing relative rankings for whatever they are measuring. If I failed to say worst (or close to) health care in the industrialized world I apologize but will say that for the money we probably do have some of the worst health care in the world, especially by the measures stated previously. Jackson33; If we are paying twice as much as most other systems that are state run, how can you claim that the private sector is going to be more efficient? As it stands now the lowest prices paid for health care is by those covered by the government i.e. Medicare/Medicaid. With out this to hold down the total overall cost the average we pay per capita would go even higher. In addition, there is 40-50 million who pay nothing but get figured into the per capita total. In other words, the most privatized system in the industrial world is by far the most expensive as well. I fail to see how you think that the military or NASA would be run better by private entities. Right now we hire companies like Blackwater and Haliburton to do some of the same things the military used to do, I would like to see a direct cost comparison but can state with certainty that no American private contractor makes less than I did when I was in the military. Additionally, do you think private companies would have put a man on the moon yet? They have yet to achieve useful orbit even after collecting several million dollars in prize money.

Not to mention that anyone who understands the science behind climate change knows that more weather extremes are, in fact, predicted.

How many years did it take to build up industrial capacity for WW II? The Sept. 30, 2011 deadline is artificial and can be changed by an act of law at any time, especially if it will not take much longer. There won't be that much production till close to the deadline anyway IMO.

Well, for myself, I can't think of anything that I would do if it wasn't going to land me in jail. However, I have a few of friends who have told me that is the reason they don't do drugs, particularly marijuana. Of course many of them do it, anyway, so the deterrent is obviously not universal. To say that it has no effect, I think is incorrect, though

I don't think that is entirely true. While there are probably better reasons for not committing many crimes, threat of punishment does have some deterrent effect. The reason I don't drive much over the speed limit on the interstate when there are no other cars is mostly because I don't want to get a citation and fine for it and/or possibly lose my license to drive. While this is a far cry from anything "deserving" of the death penalty and I generally am a law abiding citizen, I think the same is at least a little bit true of more serious crimes.

Pangloss; Try here, here, here, here, here, here or here

That is what happens when you give money to mutinational corporations instead of small businesses. I don't see why anyone should be surprised by this.

TomBooth; As the coils running through the outlet (vacuum or not) of your turbine heat the exhaust up, it has to increase the pressure as well. At some point the pressure will become such that there is no longer enough pressure differential across the turbine to enable it to work. Exhaust from a turbine is always cooled and not heated for good reason. I wish you luck in building this since it will be a great learning exercise and who knows, you may even come up with a more efficient engine. I do believe that it is impossible for it to work in the manner you describe, however, and would caution against raising your expectations too highly.