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Another Free Energy craft project

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erikg:
Here's another "free energy from XXX" youtube video.  This one is apparently for people who don't know that semiconductors generate a small current when exposed to light.  Semi annoying music, but otherwise good for short term amusement and face palming.



On the plus side, this does give people something to do with old CDs and lots of spare time, and frankly a rooftop covered with CD/magnet wire "flowers" would be kind of pretty (for a while, anyway).

Maybe Dave should do a video on how photovoltaics work, and demonstrate other semiconductors as solar cells?

bd139:
Joy. You could take the magnet wire and the CD away and it'd still generate a few tens of mV.

Source impedance? HUUUUUGE.

Now you wait until I introduce my top secret project, LSD's (Light Sucking Diodes)  :-DD

schmitt trigger:
Thanks for posting.

Some times when I'm bored and don't know exactly what to watch, I also look for outlandish YouTube videos.

Between "free energy", "flat earth" and "moon landing hoaxes", there is an almost limitless amount of entertainment.

WARNING: watching too many of these videos is hazardous for your health, permanent brain loss and erectile dysfunction may occur. Youngsters younger than 18 years old must be accompanied by an adult. Pregnant women should talk to their doctors before watching these videos. NSFW content.

IanMacdonald:
Moat of these scams rely on the fact that the public mostly have no idea how to measure the quantities involved. Thus, the scammer takes a tiny (but real) quantity and makes impossible claims for what it can do.

I would include most of the climate change 'science' in that category. Carbon dioxide is indeed a greenhouse gas, that much is true, but when you see how little effect it actually has compared to other factors, you see that the alarmist claims are nonsense. It's not as if the equations which determine its action were in any way obscure either. They are well established and easy to apply. The alarmists rely on the fact that most people have not the slightest clue how to do so, and therefore have to take their word for it that the planet is about to explode.

The IPCC counter this by claiming that 'positive feedbacks' increase its effect, but anyone who's worked in electronics knows that it is hard to achieve stable amplification by positive feedback. That's in a circuit with a regulated PSU. Imagine doing so in the Earth's weather systems. Plausible? Nope.

The same thing applies to peripheral claims like sea level rise and ocean acidification. Sea level is indeed rising. However, the amount is something like 3mm  per year, whereas twice daily tides are up to a thousand times larger. Moreover, it's been going on for longer than human industrialization anyway.

Meanwhile the oceans are not acid but alkaliine, and the reduction in alkalinity is about 0.11 of a pH unit. pH works to a log10 scale, and anyone who's tried doing a titration in a chem lab knows how incredibly small a change that is, when near to neutral.

In the land of the numerically challenged, the man with the nixie-tube calculator is king.
The rest just have to believe what they are told to believe.

donotdespisethesnake:

--- Quote from: IanMacdonald on October 22, 2017, 10:32:14 am ---In the land of the numerically challenged, the man with the nixie-tube calculator is king.

--- End quote ---

And the Irony of Year Award goes to ... climate change denier   :-DD

I think I am going to frame that one!

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