Off-topic posts from The "Ice Bomb" thermal engine

[Tom Booth]

33 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Just don't imagine you can run a heat engine with only a heat source and no heat sink. That is wacko - like poor Tesla.  

That's the problem really.

I think I must genuinely believe Tesla made a valid point in his 1900 article about his "Self Acting Engine".

I've gone too far down that rabbit hole to turn back.

Every experiment I've tried so far to prove his contention wrong has only proven him right, as far as I'm able to assertion.

Running my Stirling heat engine without a heat sink, for example. It just ran faster, better and longer.

[DeepSeaBase]

1 minute ago, Tom Booth said:

Running my Stirling heat engine without a heat sink, for example. It just ran faster, better and longer.

The heatsink is the load, I'd imagine. Otherwise it just never hit a threshold where it burned up.

[Tom Booth]

1 minute ago, DeepSeaBase said:

The heatsink is the load, I'd imagine. Otherwise it just never hit a threshold where it burned up.

That's the point Tesla tried to make exactly, if I understand your meaning. The heat sink is the load.

[DeepSeaBase]

6 minutes ago, Tom Booth said:

That's the point Tesla tried to make exactly, if I understand your meaning. The heat sink is the load.

If that were the case then the question must be, how much power is in the system to put a load on? The heat sink being the load, to me, just sounds like a roundabout way of converting heat to energy, transmitting that energy somewhere.

Thermodynamically that energy must be lost from the system eventually because no system is a perfectly closed system to our universe.

This leads me to think that a superconducting heat sink is what we would think of as a "battery."

The superconductor is the "load" or between a load and a power source, and is able to hold onto that potential at lengths of time that to us would seem like a battery. Really all it is is that energy waiting for a load to exhaust it into the universe through something like mechanical force and some frictional heat.

[sethoflagos]

23 minutes ago, Tom Booth said:

Running my Stirling heat engine without a heat sink, for example. It just ran faster, better and longer.

Stirling Engines don't run without a heat sink. Whatever you did to it, you improved the heat sink. 

[Tom Booth]

1 minute ago, sethoflagos said:

Stirling Engines don't run without a heat sink. Whatever you did to it, you improved the heat sink. 

That seems unlikely 

If true, it makes no sense to insulate the attic. It just makes heat go up through the roof that much faster.

[sethoflagos]

3 minutes ago, Tom Booth said:

That seems unlikely 

If true, it makes no sense to insulate the attic. It just makes heat go up through the roof that much faster.

What seems unlikely is you managing to break the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

You are missing something. Improved air circulation around the chamber baseplate, for example?

[Tom Booth]

No.

In the first experiment I performed, running the engine on a cup of hot water. The entire engine was covered with insulation, so only the mouth of the cup containing the hot water contacted the bottom of the engine.

Someone suggested that partially insulating the bottom plate (hot side) might have effectively increased the temperature difference by retaining more heat at the bottom.

So I tried again with the bottom mostly exposed and just the top (cold sink side) insulated. It made no difference. In both instances the engine ran at higher RPM and more energetically than with the "sink" (top cold plate) exposed to ambient air.

More interesting in some ways was that with the engine running on ice, and the ice kept well insulated. The partly melted ice re-froze repeatedly after the engine ran for about five minutes.

But last time I tried posting the video of the experiments, the discussion was locked, and the moderator said not to start another topic on that subject.

 

[Tom Booth]

8 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Of course it can.

Mother Nature has been using ice jacking to turn mountains into sand ever since mountains became a thing.

I see.

Natural ice engine. Clever. I didn't miss the post, but I didn't make the connection.

I was imagining some Tibetan monks in the himalayas working some kind of primitive literal engine of some sort.

51 minutes ago, exchemist said:

That's because videos are a crap way of communicating experiments. To analyse what you did, we need to see a precise description of the exact set up, with a diagram.  

Whatever you did, you did NOT run it without a heat sink. That I guarantee.  

I can't quite imagine how a diagram beats out a video, demonstrating the actual experiment exactly as it happened in photo-real detail along with my description and availability to answer any questions.

These model engines only cost about $30. I would love for anyone to repeat the experiments, and I'd even foot the bill. Send them the engines.

If I'm somehow doing something wrong or overlooking something, someone else might figure it out.

I was actually just testing a new piston I had made out of JB weld epoxy, to try to eliminate heat transfer through the piston, with the engine running on ice.

At the start of that experiment, the surface of the ice was wet and slippery. I put the engine on and ran it for a while. Came back and tried to pick it up and it was stuck to the ice. I had to forcefully break the engine loose from the ice.

Completely flabbergasted, I then started "experimenting". Put the engine back in place on the now wet again and slippery ice. Came back in about 5 minutes and the engine was stuck again. The ice re-froze to the bottom of the engine.

I broke the engine loose from the ice and replaced it four times, then the fifth time I decided I should record this on video. I was afraid this time it wouldn't happen. But after another five minutes the engine was "stuck" to the ice again, and I got that on video.

I took another cup of ice out of the freezer to show what the engine was running on to start with.

This is not the kind of result I'd expect if the engine was actively transferring heat to the sink.

The room temperature was normal. Approximately 70°F

The cup of ice was simply insulated with as much insulation as I could find laying around the house and shop, including some towels and blankets.

A video may be "a crap way of communicating experiments" but how exactly does it hurt?

I read the rules about posting videos. I didn't post and run leaving just a video. And I don't see how a video of an experiment is not relevant to an experiment. But OK.

I came across this video, where the same sort of thing appears to happen. Don't know this guy, never met him. A slightly different model of engine, and not insulated at all.

But watch carefully. At first the engine is slipping around on the wet, partly melted ice. He keeps needing to reposition the engine to keep it centered.

After a while he picks up the engine and the block of ice comes up with it, no longer sliding around apparently.

Adhesion? Like a suction cup, because the ice was wet?

Possibly.

But in my experiment I checked for this. The engine was frozen to the ice. Frozen hard. And when I finally got it broken loose, the bottom was dry-cold not wet and slippery.

The video I took was after this happened repeatedly.

This guy's video cannot be embedded, but this is the link.

https://youtu.be/L6Jmdve1JK8

 

Edited May 10, 2021 by Tom Booth

[Phi for All]

2 hours ago, Tom Booth said:

Running my Stirling heat engine without a heat sink, for example. It just ran faster, better and longer.

!

Moderator Note

That's a speculation you were unable to support, from a thread that was closed. You can't use it as evidence in a mainstream section.

 

[Tom Booth]

3 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

!

Moderator Note

That's a speculation you were unable to support, from a thread that was closed. You can't use it as evidence in a mainstream section.

 

It was not a "speculation". It was an observation. A conclusion based on experimental evidence.

The conclusion could be supported by additional evidence if not for the discussion being closed.

My opinion or interpretation of an experimental observation is not "speculation" IMO. And all are welcome to disagree and prove my conclusion wrong or sadly mistaken. Or just ignore the evidence.

Somehow, with my limited understanding, I see a sheet of 1/2 inch thick styrofoam insulation and think, probably that is not going to serve as a heat sink. It's an insulator. It prevents heat flow, or it's supposed to.

[DeepSeaBase]

I agree with Tom Booth. It's fine to present observation, in order to understand what went wrong versus our understanding of 2nd law of Thermodynamics, the problem isn't Tom Booth's observation being "speculation" the problem is the thread failed to achieve discovery of the parameters of the experiment.

For instance, I'm not sure what the parameters were.

So if the thread were to remain open I'd suggest Tom Booth start from the beginning an enumerate the parameters better so we can all review it in a more meaningful way and get to the bottom of it?

It's a curiosity and the question can be better asked: "why is Tom Booth's observation wrong?"

We know it has to be because none of us are going to stumble on a jackpot world changing discovery in our garage these days. Too many corporate science/engineer stooges already would have found it on their payrolls.

[Tom Booth]

"It just ran faster, better and longer."

I counted the revolutions per minute. Timed the length of the run compared with other runs without insulation, "better" is subjective opinion about an observation, but not what I'd call speculation.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Tom Booth

[Tom Booth]

36 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Post deleted

 

 

I haven't lost interest, I just had to make a trip out to the store. I'm interested in what you may have written, but never saw it.

Anyway, thanks for the support.

I'm honestly not trying to prove anything.

But, even if I was "speculating" about some phenomenon. Isn't speculation just a synonym for theorizing?

Isn't formulating a theory -> speculation, supposed to be part of scientific inquiry.

Last time I checked it was.

Observe, form a theory, make a prediction about the outcome of an experiment, do the experiment, modify the theory based on the results, etc. etc.

Without speculation, where is the science?

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

Staff gets to decide what is speculation, and one should pay attention to the explanations as to why that decision was made, and why threads are closed. 

Ignoring modnotes telling to not open a new thread on a topic, or to stop posting on that topic, is a poor tactic to implement

 

One thing we’re not going to do is litigate these decisions in a science thread. Rule 2.5 says stay on-topic, and this is decidedly off topic.

 

[Tom Booth]

1 hour ago, DeepSeaBase said:

I agree with Tom Booth. It's fine to present observation, in order to understand what went wrong versus our understanding of 2nd law of Thermodynamics, the problem isn't Tom Booth's observation being "speculation" the problem is the thread failed to achieve discovery of the parameters of the experiment.

For instance, I'm not sure what the parameters were.

So if the thread were to remain open I'd suggest Tom Booth start from the beginning an enumerate the parameters better so we can all review it in a more meaningful way and get to the bottom of it?

It's a curiosity and the question can be better asked: "why is Tom Booth's observation wrong?"

We know it has to be because none of us are going to stumble on a jackpot world changing discovery in our garage these days. Too many corporate science/engineer stooges already would have found it on their payrolls.

Thanks for sticking your neck out.

I realize full well this is controversial, though some just say "It's not an open system, so the 2nd law doesn't apply."

I'm not a Tesla junky either, mostly the only thing I ever read of his was the one article I happened across while researching how Stirling engines work and whatnot.

I'm not a scientist, just an engine mechanic. Small gasoline engines mostly, worked in a lot of shops tearing down and rebuilding and repairing plain old ordinary engines. Lawn mowers, chain saws, rototillers, that sort of thing.

I got interested in Stirling engines mostly just as a hobby, but also in a practical way.

Anyway, what you suggest above seems like too much to hope for at this point. But thanks anyway.