Cold Heat from Canada, a documentary.

[SteveThackery]

My favorite was Faraday on some weird flight of fancy in his lectures supposing gravity was electrodynamic, would soon be solved and we would be flying around like the jetsons. Of course, almost 200 years later I remain disappointed and you will not find his musings in any textbook.

Just a point of order, here. The reason those musings are not in any textbook is because they failed the test of the scientific method. Thank goodness only the current scientific consensus finds its way into our textbooks!

[TimFox]

There is a huge literature about the biography of important scientists, which is very interesting for the history not only of science but society in general.
For example, late in life, Schrödinger, having been unhappy with the evolution of quantum mechanics (mainly the probabilistic interpretation, now canonical, in the "Copenhagen Interpretation"), moved to Ireland and shifted to philosophical questions such as mind vs. matter, while living in sin in a conservative Catholic country.
Similarly, Einstein had amazing productivity in his youth, but failed to develop a useful Unified Field Theory, and did not qualify for sainthood either.
Theoretical questions are evaluated by experimental results, not hagiography.

[paul cotter]

Erwin Schrodinger living in sin, here in the land of saints and scholars! I am horrified, Tim.

[Xena E]

All that science can do is to explain the behaviour of the physical universe. A field has no real existence, it is merely a mathematical construct that tells the force on a susceptible object within a region of space. Models are used in science to help explain various phenomena but it is a mistake to assume the models and reality are identical.

People, (even some that seem quite intelligent), set great store by mental models to the point that they will argue that they are reality.

The point that is missed in this instance is that once again a false analogy is being made between  the cause, the unseen force or field, and the effect, and the incomplete claims of the overunity/energy from the vacuum cranks.

My analogy is the gravitational¹ effect between the moon, the spinning earth, and the daily tides.

There's no argument of cause and effect, only the unseen force or field itself.

The cranks are only describing a claimed effect with no correlation with a cause, just "..it is from the vacuum..." or some such tripe. In the event an A>B>C causality is stated in their claims, the scaling is unrealistic or no provable connection.

Note¹ we need not on this occasion discuss the merits of space/time distortions, discreet fields, or, angels pushing planets or tiny particles.

The constant A = B, (actually A ≠ B) analogy argument are getting old.

It's debatable and important to include our history as context imo.

In the past there were many "cranks" who supposed all material stuff was made of even smaller stuff which the experts at the time considered heresy. I mean literal heresy and many were imprisoned or burned at the stake or hanged, drawn, quartered and such. The most common theme was that everyone was describing a claimed effect with no correlation to a cause because the cause was always limited by the technology at the time. They had some intuition as to how things could play out but no demonstrable proof ie. technology.

For example, "several prominent physicists, including Erwin Schrödinger and Niels Bohr, have drawn inspiration from Vedic texts (4000 years old). Schrödinger, for instance, noted the unity of consciousness in Vedanta, which reflects the interconnectedness found in quantum mechanics". Not some "cranks" but people on the cutting edge of physics at the time.

My favorite was Faraday on some weird flight of fancy in his lectures supposing gravity was electrodynamic, would soon be solved and we would be flying around like the jetsons. Of course, almost 200 years later I remain disappointed and you will not find his musings in any textbook. Weird though, how countless people in the early 1900 were making scientific breakthroughs and claimed some part of the idea was from the writings of what many claim were goat herders from 4000 years ago.

I would submit there are many cranks, some just hide their sources better than others.

So. Hypothetical question:
Do you think that, having read the output of our illustrious friend Chet that some day he will make a scientific discovery of the calibre of Faraday's output?

Also, please help me understand, if Faraday's musings in his lectures are not found in any text book, can you explain how it is that you know of them as he died a full decade before the invention of the phonograph? If the source cannot be validated then it should be disregarded...

[Electrodynamic]

There is a huge literature about the biography of important scientists, which is very interesting for the history not only of science but society in general.
For example, late in life, Schrödinger, having been unhappy with the evolution of quantum mechanics (mainly the probabilistic interpretation, now canonical, in the "Copenhagen Interpretation"), moved to Ireland and shifted to philosophical questions such as mind vs. matter, while living in sin in a conservative Catholic country.
Similarly, Einstein had amazing productivity in his youth, but failed to develop a useful Unified Field Theory, and did not qualify for sainthood either.
Theoretical questions are evaluated by experimental results, not hagiography.

Indeed, I'm not the man I used to be 20 years ago and many problems which used to take days now take weeks or longer. We can pretend nothing has changed but in fact everything has. I have seen too many people slowly lose their mind pretending eventually we will not suffer the same fate. Thus demonstrable facts must be always be the light which guides us. So while I may claim some idea or concept seems more sensible than others it remains unconvincing until it is demonstrable.

In my opinion a unified theory is everything and without it we are incomplete always asking questions without coherent answers. Always wondering but never knowing.

It also begs the question, have you done experiments, have you done experiments you agree with, have you done experiments you disagree with?. You see most do experiments relating to their own confirmation bias where the result is expected. Where I only tend to do experiments where the result is uncertain and disagreeable. I mean I have no idea what could happen nor why yet I feel compelled to prove the matter one way or another.

You see the real innovators in science were always the outliers. Einstein was young and cocky and wrote a series of papers which were a proverbial slap in the face to most of the time. 200 years prior he would have been drawn and quartered as a heretic. Yet the idea stuck, this notion that something within a region we conceive as time and space has changed in some way. We do not know for certain how it has changed but for the first time in history we had some idea of how it could.

What I disagree with is that this theory must be the "be all end all" of theories which is absurd. It supposes that no one person thousands of years in the future could know more than we do which is beyond absurd and is literally insanity.

[Electrodynamic]

Xena E

So. Hypothetical question:
Do you think that, having read the output of our illustrious friend Chet that some day he will make a scientific discovery of the calibre of Faraday's output?

Also, please help me understand, if Faraday's musings in his lectures are not found in any text book, can you explain how it is that you know of them as he died a full decade before the invention of the phonograph? If the source cannot be validated then it should be disregarded...

I have an alternate theory and I can accept anything in the context given as a matter of how it could be applied to something useful. Thus your ideas are no different than Chet's and anything I can take away from it and be applied is all good. In this context the impetus is change, if we cannot change what we do then we cannot evolve and our demise is all but certain. This is what we deem evolution, ergo evo/change and lution/solution. Ergo... the solution is change. If by some, or in effect any bs reason, you cannot evolve and change then you are extinct at some point in the future.

I have one criteria which I apply to every conversation. Either you have some facts or information which moves my understanding forward or you are in effect useless. In this respect you seem to excel at being useless because your posts seem to be much ado about nothing. Do you have the comprehension to understand this?. Read your posts, you are critical of everything but add nothing of value to the conversation. What we add is what defines us not what we take away imo.

[Xena E]

Xena E

So. Hypothetical question:
Do you think that, having read the output of our illustrious friend Chet that some day he will make a scientific discovery of the calibre of Faraday's output?

Also, please help me understand, if Faraday's musings in his lectures are not found in any text book, can you explain how it is that you know of them as he died a full decade before the invention of the phonograph? If the source cannot be validated then it should be disregarded...

I have an alternate theory and I can accept anything in the context given as a matter of how it could be applied to something useful. Thus your ideas are no different than Chet's and anything I can take away from it and be applied is all good. In this context the impetus is change, if we cannot change what we do then we cannot evolve and our demise is all but certain. This is what we deem evolution, ergo evo/change and lution/solution. Ergo... the solution is change. If by some, or in effect any bs reason, you cannot evolve and change then you are extinct at some point in the future.

I have one criteria which I apply to every conversation. Either you have some facts or information which moves my understanding forward or you are in effect useless. In this respect you seem to excel at being useless because your posts seem to be much ado about nothing. Do you have the comprehension to understand this?. Read your posts, you are critical of everything but add nothing of value to the conversation. What we add is what defines us not what we take away imo.

Ah, so you are a politician , unable to directly answer any question.

I can add nothing of value to Chets musings because they are just nonsensical word salad, your defence of his right to promote his ill formed non theories by continuing to use straw man arguments and reductio ad absurdum has destroyed any credibility for you to use your defence of those who think out of the box.

Chet promotes psydoscience, cites proven lunatics, posts nothing but non functional diagrams, and garbage mathematics... the only positive that can be offered is prove the theory or find something else to troll about.

As for my input, I defended your position on the faster downwind topic because it is provable and correct, so your claiming I am negative is only correct when there is no iota of value to this shit.

Answer the questions or stop your trolling.

[TimFox]

Unified Field Theory.
This is a useful quest, and progress continues.  Physics is by no means complete at the frontiers.
That does not mean that physics in the realm of discourse closer to normal technology is useless or misunderstood or icky.
At the end of my formal education, ca. 1979, the “weak” and “electromagnetic” forces were linked and found to merge into a single force at extremely high energy.  Predictions of this unification were confirmed by subsequent high-energy physics experiments.  Google for further details.
You may be disappointed if you hope that unification results in a theory that is easier to understand than what is now taught.

[Chet]

Those  22 quadrillion watts live on the complex plane, ie TOTALLY IMAGINARY! With a few sprigs of willow that doohickey could be made into a fine basket.

Except for the heat dissipated by resistances is very real.

Toning down the explosive capability of too much capacitive reactance in my replication of Bill Fogal's Charge-Barrier Transistor by introducing more instances of inductive reactances.

Oh, for goodness' sake, Chet!

Well, ...

If reactive power can be dissipated out of an electrical system as wasted heat, to boil water to preserve the lifespan of the resistor, then that is definitely a good use to put this wasted heat to for the sake of that resistor.

[Xena E]

If reactive power can be dissipated out of an electrical system as wasted heat, to boil water to preserve the lifespan of the resistor, then that is definitely a good use to put this wasted heat to for the sake of that resistor.

[sarcasm] Wow Chet, that is interesting! Can you, for the enlightenment of the less intelligent of us describe exactly what "reactive power" actually is, and how it can be made to do useful work?[/sarcasm]

Actually here's my explanation which hopefully even a fucking moron will grasp as they seem to like making shitty analogies.

Reactive power is where system inductance and/or capacitance causes the voltage and current of an AC supply to become out of step with each other .

Reactive power can do no useful work, it's like the revenue service overcharging you for your annual taxation, and you having to reclaim the amount you overpaid. It's a back and forth process that can only create financial loss.

 Reactive power flows back and forth between the source and load. In power generation and supply this means that it is an extra burden on supply cabling and switchgear which your utility supplier doesn't like at his end because heating of the switchgear is a real power loss, and his having to provide infrastructure to accommodate it.

If you could arrange to use reactive power, it then becomes real power useage, power that's removed from the system, you have removed energy from the system, this is not free energy, or overunity, it's energy theft if you can recover it, it has to be generated and can't be extracted from the "vacuum".

I'll repeat that... any heating in a system caused by reactive power, whether a power utility system or some home built "free energy generator" is a real energy useage, it is not using the reactive power, it has to be introduced into the system in the first place.

Please go back, take classes and graduate high school. This isn't your/Electrodynamic's cutting edge energy harvesting research, its electricity class 101 and was understood long before the midwife slapped your arse.

There, I've contributed! What will it change in Chets understanding? Fuck all.

[paul cotter]

Very good Xena, I have been trying too, to no avail. I guess it is a case of willful ignorance. I too will try once again but I am not hopeful. In a resistor/resistive load the voltage and current waveforms are ALWAYS in phase and hence real power is dissipated. It is not possible to have the voltage and current to be out of phase across a resistor. It is possible to have a current that is not in phase with the voltage(>0,<90 degrees) flow through a resistor with the real part only being dissipated.

[Xena E]

Very good Xena, I have been trying too, to no avail. I guess it is a case of willful ignorance. I too will try once again but I am not hopeful. In a resistor/resistive load the voltage and current waveforms are ALWAYS in phase and hence real power is dissipated.

Thank you Paul, I find it demeaning to have to explain these principles to people when you know they have had them beaten into them many times before... willful ignorance = trolling.

It is not possible to have the voltage and current to be out of phase across a resistor. It is possible to have a current that is not in phase with the voltage(>0,<90 degrees) flow through a resistor with the real part only being dissipated.

For anyone wanting to prove this to themselves, a practical circuit that demonstrates it is the "capacitive dropper" that uses the reactive property of a capacitor to losslessly drop the voltage, (actually, effectively creates a constant current from a given supply frequency for specific capacitor value).



https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive_power_supply&ved=2ahUKEwjOsdvmra6UAxVBZ0EAHTk5B8UQFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw05KR5H2JbN8dAqW0pYoa-

This circuit is well known, practical, can be calculated mathematically, has no fairy magic component, and demonstrates the point that is being made here unequivocally.

[paul cotter]

That's all fine and dandy, Xena, and would be adequate in 99.99999999% of cases of tuition but alas will not cut the cake. You yourself admitted that it "has no fairy magic component" and without such will be of no use to Chet. Auf Wiederhoren

[Xena E]

Vielen Danke! Mach's gut.
Tschüss!

[paul cotter]

Danke schon. No umlaut available on this computer- sorry.

[TimFox]

A related feature of current in a capacitor.
Circa 1990, we were using Ceramite (formerly Sprague, now Vishay) NP0 disc ceramic capacitors between 5 and 25 MHz, and I asked the factory (then in Wisconsin) about the RF current rating.
They told me to calculate the ESR based on Q, C, and frequency, compute the power dissipated in that resistance, and compare with safe power level based on the disc diameter (unfortunately no longer in my records).

[paul cotter]

Yep, rf current rating in addition to voltage rating can be important. I have often seen large mica capacitors heat up and begin to melt when excessive rf amps were being passed(aerial/antenna matching networks).

[Electrodynamic]

Chet

Well, ...

If reactive power can be dissipated out of an electrical system as wasted heat, to boil water to preserve the lifespan of the resistor, then that is definitely a good use to put this wasted heat to for the sake of that resistor.

The textbook definition for reactive power is, "the imaginary component of the power of an alternating current circuit; the product of the voltage and that part of the current that is out of phase with the voltage". I disagree and found reactive power is not imaginary but real volts and amps subject to dissipation in a resistance which doesn't perform any useful work. We could think of it like dumping some power into an LC circuit and it just moves back and forth doing no useful work. As you eluded, reactive power is not imaginary and generates heat in any resistance.

What generally happens with the overunity crowd is they see something they cannot explain and then pick a random effect they think applies. In effect, grasping at straws or seeing what sticks. Over time this can tend to take on a life on it's own. For example, Bedini and Bearden often talked about reactive power but seemed to have little idea how it actually applied. Some weird shit happened so... reactive power, lol.

I would also point out reactive power has little to do with AC as most think of it. We can have a series circuit with parallel L and C components which do the same thing. Steinmetz and Kron did a lot of work in this area.


 

[Xena E]

The textbook definition for reactive power is, "the imaginary component of the power of an alternating current circuit; the product of the voltage and that part of the current that is out of phase with the voltage". I disagree and found reactive power is not imaginary but real volts and amps subject to dissipation in a resistance[...]

Try this:

For a utility supply example, reactive power, is the extra generating capacity that is needed to maintain the voltage level in the "grid", whether that is sinking capacitive reactive ("returned"), or driving inductive reactive ("supplied"), overcapacity.

Utility suppliers want their equipment (to your meter), to be loaded with a unity power factor. In industry, users are penalised for power factors of ≠ unity, and therefore are obliged to have power factor correction equipment to counteract any non unity loading.

Reactive power is only present in a reactive circuit as a notional concept, it can't be "used" in a resistive load as the voltage and current will be in phase and therefore not reactive, any losses in the system will only be "real" power that was generated at cost, the cost to the utility supplier that they don't like, are losses due to having to provide over-generation and infrastructure to maintain the voltage within specified limits to their customers.

To recap:- Reactive power itself will do no useful work and can't be dissipated in a resistive load, resistive losses caused by reactive power are real losses and inefficiencies so caused... if "harvested" are removal of some of the applied power, not some free shit that the overunity crowd have discovered... the principles apply to whatever AC circuit example you wish to consider.

Edit: typo and extended quote.

[paul cotter]

I find it shocking that such a simple concept as reactive "power" leads to so much confusion and error when it is as simple as the oscillations of a child's swing. In the resistive component of any load the current and voltage are ALWAYS in phase and hence ONLY real power can dissipated. If this cannot be understood there has to be serious comprehension problems.

[Xena E]

I find it shocking that such a simple concept as reactive "power" leads to so much confusion and error when it is as simple as the oscillations of a child's swing. In the resistive component of any load the current and voltage are ALWAYS in phase and hence ONLY real power can dissipated. If this cannot be understood there has to be serious comprehension problems.

Quite so. Worrying when people claim it their professional field to infer authority on the subject.

[SteveThackery]

The textbook definition for reactive power is, "the imaginary component of the power of an alternating current circuit; the product of the voltage and that part of the current that is out of phase with the voltage". I disagree and found reactive power is not imaginary but real volts and amps subject to dissipation in a resistance which doesn't perform any useful work.

Wow, you're a power engineer? "Imaginary" in this context refers to the so-called imaginary part of a complex number. It does not mean "exists only in the mind".

[TimFox]

Absolutely.  “Imaginary part” and “imaginary component” are the normal terms in the mathematics of complex variables.
Some consider these standard terms to be misnomers, but they are well-established.
As an owner of three lock-in amplifiers, I also use “in-phase” and “quadrature” for real and imaginary components, but then some may be confused by I and Q, respectively, vs. “i” for imaginary or I for current.
I have posted this anecdote before:
The late Prof Ugo Fano at Chicago liked to demonstrate calculations of macroscopic quantities as expectation values of quantum variables.  In a lecture on dielectric properties (polarization) by quantum perturbation calculation, he started with the Hamiltonian of harmonically bound charges in an external electric field.
He then Fourier-decomposed the field into an integral over terms  E(w) exp(iwt) .
A theory-weenie in the front row objected “Prof Fano, that Hamiltonian is not Hermitian”, by which he meant that the energy was not real-valued. 
Fano then went back to the board, erased “i”, and replaced it with “j”, announcing that it was now Hermitian.

[paul cotter]

In electrical engineering "i" is never used for the square root of -1, it is always designated by "j".

[TimFox]

That was the point of the anecdote.
Using “j” turned the calculation into engineering.