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nothing could possibly go faster than an electron zipping through silicon at absolute zero...

Nonsense. Lots of things in microwaves can get above 100C; the only reason the oil in your experiment didn't is that it's nonpolar, and thus unaffected by the waves.

Pizza oil contains some suspended polar molecules, so it gets heated; that's why plastic containers used to heat pizza develops nicks. The HOT oil melts the plastic.

Check out this page for more info, and goo dlinks to even more.

-Billy

I've heard this before (the claim that microwaves heat the O-H bond in water), but that doesn't make it true. If the O-H bond were the only source of heat, then why can MWs heat things up beyond 100C?

The simple fact that this person is melting metals proves that there's some other mechanism at work, and further, it's almost certain that this other mechanism is more powerful than the hypothetical water resonance.

Here is a page which discusses many "myths" about microwaves, including this one. It also contains some _facinating_ experiments, lots of fun. My favorite is microwaving a light bulb (not listed on that page, but a surprising color light show you can look up elsewhere -- caution, don't try it without the safety precautions).

-Billy

Some guy has done it by hand using just scratches in plastic... could a similar system engrave a simple hologram in a CD? Maybe you could have 3d diagrams showing how to insert the thing into a CDROM drive.

There are allot of interesting and quite visually stunning experiments done by Nikola Tesla or based on his work

...and a complete scam. It was about an alleged anti-gravity disc, made from a 12" superconducting ring that looked not unlike a brake pad.

This is far from being consigned to the scam basket (although it may end up there). The easiest way to demonstrate this is to note that NASA has invested in research to try to replicate Podkletnov's results.

The interesting thing about gravity is that it isn't well understood by modern physics. We know how it behaves (we think) but we don't know what causes it really. This makes it equally ripe for psuedo-science as for breakthrough science. In any case, an April Fool's day scam it isn't.

There are a bunch of other links here and a good overview here.

...and a complete scam. It was about an alleged anti-gravity disc, made from a 12" superconducting ring that looked not unlike a brake pad.

This is far from being consigned to the scam basket (although it may end up there). The easiest way to demonstrate this is to note that NASA has invested in research to try to replicate Podkletnov's results.

The interesting thing about gravity is that it isn't well understood by modern physics. We know how it behaves (we think) but we don't know what causes it really. This makes it equally ripe for psuedo-science as for breakthrough science. In any case, an April Fool's day scam it isn't.

There are a bunch of other links here and a good overview here.

Evidently, the something-for-everyone model epitomized by Heathkit and the Amateur Scientist column can't compete anymore. Specialized sources and Internet newsgroups cater to each skill level. But much of the mentoring and serendipity that the diverse community of amateurs offered has been lost. It is hard not to regret its passing.

What an idiot. We have just largely stopped using magazines in light of the Internet.

I've learned almost everything I know about electronics from the Internet.

Look at these books! Look at them! All Free, as in Liberty AND No-Cost. These are some of the very best books I have found on electronics, on-line or off. Forest Mims the Third, eat your heart out.

Do we want to talk about mentoring and serendipity?

It was out of frustration that I compiled Lessons in Electric Circuits from notes and ideas I had been collecting for years. My primary goal was to put readable, high-quality information into the hands of my students, but a secondary goal was to make the book as affordable as possible. Over the years, I had experienced the benefit of receiving free instruction and encouragement in my pursuit of learning electronics from many people, including several teachers of mine in elementary and high school. Their selfless assistance played a key role in my own studies, paving the way for a rewarding career and fascinating hobby. If only I could extend the gift of their help by giving to other people what they gave to me . . .

There you go.

If anything, I'd say that amateur science and learning and construction is more popular now, because it is more accessible.

It just doesn't take the form of magazine articles.

The chamber is known as a vortex tube the German name is the WhirbelRohr.

Basically, you have a cylinder with both ends sealed off, on each end you attach a narrow length of pipe, one tube has a large hole goin through into the cylinder, the other has a smaller hole, slightly smaller. Both of these holes are axially placed. Now you add another tube to the side of cylinder, but placed so that it enters at a tangent, this also has a hole into the cylinder.
Now force air into the tube on the side, as the air is injected tangentally to the cylinder, the air will swirl around around it eventually gets to the center. Pressure variations inside the cylinder will seperate the air into hot and cold, hot will come out of one pipe and cold the other.
This device will also produce a strange noise, any attempt to cancel this noise will stop the device from functioning.

Further details can be found Here
I have been considering using this in a cooling mod but as my parents complain enough about the current noise, I don't think I'll push my luck any further. Besides, steps need to be taken to handle condensation on the cold tube.

Building the device to ideal measurements will get you some very cold air:

>compressed air at room temperature (20 C) could
>in principle be cooled to about -258 C, a mere
>15 degrees above absolute zero! (The
>corresponding temperature of the hot side would
>have been 80
>C.)

I think there's actually something to both the Biefield-Brown Effect, and to the Podelklenov effect as well. However, there is a lot of fringe "research" in this field, and that just makes it harder for people like Marc Millis to be taken seriously.

All the same, I am really tempted to try and build stuff like this and this!

I think there's actually something to both the Biefield-Brown Effect, and to the Podelklenov effect as well. However, there is a lot of fringe "research" in this field, and that just makes it harder for people like Marc Millis to be taken seriously.

All the same, I am really tempted to try and build stuff like this and this!

Draw them by hand using a compass and plexiglass.

Actually, many collection companies exist which will (for example) go after the fax-abuser, get the $500, then get a $300 "take" and give you $200.

At $200 per fax, you could make $16,800. Maybe you should look into that.

There's some cool electricity experiments on amasci

Lots of other cool stuff too, lots of build-it-yourself things that actually work (and lots that probably don't, like electrical rockets, but they're in a separate category )

A solar furnace might do nicely on the beach, provided you didn't leave it too late to start the bonfire...

You can make a very cheap one using a few hundred small mirrors and lots of patience. See amasci for this and lots of other fun projects....

But Morton used no superconductor, and this was in 1966.

Apparantly any hobbyist with a VDG machine can reproduce this effect. (Mine is dead right now, guess it's time to go fix it.)

Also, some of Morton's observations were verified at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, by Klaus Schlecht in 1985. For info, see the hobbyist mag for electric propulsion experiments, ESJ (below.)

I guess Podkletnov will have to change his theory if this phenomenon can be produced without any macro quantum electron coherence.

See:

SPACE WARP 1
http://amasci.com/freenrg/morton1.html

ESJ back issues list (issues with 'morton')
http://www.electricspacecraft.com/bissues.htm

With OS Z now running apache the possibilities for perl and appletalk interactions is my biggest interest. I'm not sure if IBm will liken to the idea of moving DB2 in this direction, but it would be a simple port (i'm still not totally happy with Postgres). The biggest thing that i'm still waiting on is a performance test on the data serving capabilities of OS X vs. linux/BSD solutions. anyone with a good source please reply


-shpoffo

It's pretty obvious from this simple test that the angle of attack is far more important than the Bernoulli effect in creating lift. It's also been pointed out a number of times,(Try this for example) but somehow hasn't found its way into the science textbooks yet.

Sorry, it's really not big news.

On one of the pages of William Beaty's Science Misconceptions site, there is a discussion of this issue with diagrams and further links.

Propagation was my term, I use it to refer to the transfer of energy.

Here, read this.

Link

My original point was just that electrical energy already travels about at the speed of light. Various things can affect this speed, just as light passing through various materials will change speed. "Electricity" is an abused term, used to refer to lots of things.
-

http://www.amasci.com/weird/microexp.html#plasm

Hey, the previous link mentions that they drilled a 3/4" hole in the top of the uWave oven and inserted a vid cam. I wonder if a "ball lightning" can exit through such a hole and fly around the room? However, these do seem to vanish instantly when you cut power to the oven. I guess the hole needs to be LARGER... and then make an external chamber from metal screening!

I see where an Igor would be useful in performing such experiments. Have HIM work with the equipment while the mad doctor stays way over here and turns on the big switch.

((((((((((((( ( ( ( (o) ) ) ) )))))))))))))

No, no, no... don't use those silly, old mechanical vibrators. You have to go solid state. Jeeze... Check out Bill Beaty's page. http://www.amasci.com/ for some circuits. I had good luck with a 555 switching a 2N3055 power transistor to drive 16v through an auto ignition coil. I used a VW Beetle coil. Pretty simple circuit and cheap parts.

From the article:
"Our embedded group...want to be able to put the Python VM on anything that has metal and electricity."
How about a Van de Graaff generator?

The programmers combined the initials in the phrase "Python in Palm" (PIP) with the suffix that ends Python file names (.py) and dubbed the port "Pippy."
Gag me.

--
Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.-- Cool Hand Luke

FANTASTICALLY DANGEROUS CAPACITOR EXPERIMENTS
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/capexpt.html

It was written up by Gary Hawkins in the old "Extraordinary Science" magazine published by the now-defunct Int'l Tesla Society. His technique was identical to the one used by Bert Hickman.

So is this a case of "100th monkey syndrome?" More likely the "quartershrinker" idea was spread by word of mouth.

Another venerable website for electrodynamic shennanigans:

RPI "Can Crusher"
http://hibp.ecse.rpi.edu/Can_Crusher/home.html">

((((((((((((( ( ( ( (o) ) ) ) )))))))))))))

I am backing up my post with information I found online from an elctrical engineer. Turns out I was right though (not that I had any doubt :) I thank the person who emailed me and made me back my comment up.

• and I quote: Re:The internet is the next generation of cockroac (Score:1) by fossa (pat7@gmx.net) on 9 514709 EST (#390) (User #212602 Info) http://www.crosswinds.net/~sideways/
  
  Actually, electrons themselves don't travel very fast. It's what they pass between themselves that travels at the speed of light. Nothing with mass can reach the speed of light according to the General Theory of Relativity.
  
  Okay, so what is it that they pass between each other??? Einstein was not entirely right...
  
  Damn, I'm not an electrical engineer... I do remember reading that somewhere however. Hang on while I search for some info... Searched Google for "electricity." I am now reading http://www.amasci.com/ele-edu.html... Aha! Click on "Barriers to Understanding Electricity," and then "ELECTONS FLOW AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT," to come to http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/eleca.html#lig ht. Read this paragraph, from that website:
  
  
  • THE "ELECTRICITY" INSIDE OF WIRES MOVES AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT? Wrong. In metals, electric current is a flow of electrons. Many books claim that these electrons flow at the speed of light. This is incorrect. Electrons actually flow quite slowly, at speeds on the order of centimeters per minute. It's the energy in the circuit which flows fast, not the electrons. When the electrons at one point in the circuit are pumped, electrons in the entire loop of the circuit are forced to flow, and energy spreads almost instantly throughout the entire circuit. This happens even though the electrons move very slowly.
  
  
  Thank you for calling my semi-bluff and making me actually prove what I said. I actually enjoyed looking this up and learned a couple things :)

I found a web page, "ELECTRICITY" MISCONCEPTIONS IN TEXTBOOKS, that does a good job of explaining the difference between electric current and electric energy.

The reason microwave radiation heats up food and liquids isn't the power output,

Try again. My experiments with microwave attenuation, S band 2.4GHz and X band 10GHz, show otherwise. I found most organic things absorb high frequencies into heat. Here's a quote from this link that looks into microwave behavior:

It's a common misconception that the microwaves in a microwave oven excite a natural resonance in water. The frequency of a microwave oven is well below any natural resonance in an isolated water molecule, and in liquid water those resonances are so smeared out that they're barely noticeable anyway.

Here are some more unwise things to do with microwave ovens and a link to microwave myths.

More interesting stuff:

Here are some more ways to destroy your microwave oven (not recommended!)

Funny thing about those traffic jams. Turns out that if everyone knows what is in their best interest and acts accordingly, the traffic jams will readily clear up.

It should be, but often isn't, painfully obvious that one should keep a good distance between oneself and the cars in front. Besides this being safer, it is also legally advisable (IANAL) because a) it is the law, and b) the liability in a collision rarely falls upon the lead car (IIRC).

When this rule is followed it is safer, traffic moves faster because of less 'resistance' (like in electrical conductors), and the ability of oncoming traffic to easily merge relieves the congestion on those same surface streets that feed the it.

For more information see Bill Beaty's Amateur Science site. Traffic simulations may be found there.

Funny thing about those traffic jams. Turns out that if everyone knows what is in their best interest and acts accordingly, the traffic jams will readily clear up.

It should be, but often isn't, painfully obvious that one should keep a good distance between oneself and the cars in front. Besides this being safer, it is also legally advisable (IANAL) because a) it is the law, and b) the liability in a collision rarely falls upon the lead car (IIRC).

When this rule is followed it is safer, traffic moves faster because of less 'resistance' (like in electrical conductors), and the ability of oncoming traffic to easily merge relieves the congestion on those same surface streets that feed the it.

For more information see Bill Beaty's Amateur Science site. Traffic simulations may be found there.

Wow ! That's simply amazing. I'd never even heard of G-Lines before, but what they seem to involve is a surface plasma wave on the wire ! In the light of this, even the stupid patent makes sense, i.e. the wave really is "acoustic" in that it's partially an electron-density wave.

And now, I'm off to piss myself laughing at everyone whose "superior" physics knowledge made them dismiss this idea (myself included). The basic idea has already been tried, it's already known to RF engineers, it already works.

I think Bill Beaty put it best on his page on the subject of Columbine. It's only a matter of time; and these morons are insuring it's going to happen with all this profiling BS- all we need right now is a witchhunt.



Hey, let's "profile" the problem people so we can single them out for "help". We all know what kinds of "help" they're going to get- and it's liable to help things right along to the holocaust and the poor bastards won't know what caused it or what hit them.



It's about time that we, the country as a whole, pull our collective heads out of the sand (or is that out of our rectums??) before it's too late and we experience something far, far more horrific than Columbine.

I think Bill Beaty put it best on his page on the subject of Columbine. It's only a matter of time; and these morons are insuring it's going to happen with all this profiling BS- all we need right now is a witchhunt.

Hey, let's "profile" the problem people so we can single them out for "help". We all know what kinds of "help" they're going to get- and it's liable to help things right along to the holocaust and the poor bastards won't know what caused it or what hit them.

It's about time that we, the country as a whole, pull our collective heads out of the sand (or is that out of our rectums??) before it's too late and we experience something far, far more horrific than Columbine.

I point you to a link to an article written by one of the more prominent people in the Ameteur Science community, Bill Beaty.

In it, he describes the very real dangers perpetuating the status quo. At the Columbine tragedy, they found a couple of devices that the boys had made up- but failed to effectively use (namely they malfunctioned). These devices should send shudders up your spine- they were fuel-air explosives. Had the boys been a little less inept at the manufacture of their bombs, there would have been a worse tragedy, there'd been just about nobody to survive the resultant holocaust .

It's time that we as a country and as a people quit deluding ourselves about everything being "okay" and that profiling the "problem" children will fix everything. It's a damned cop-out band-aid, that. There's something fundamentally dead-wrong with the whole system; it needs fixing now before something even more horrific that Columbine happens. And believe me when I say that it will if something else doesn't change soon. The social barriers to erasing yourself and taking a lot if not all the school with you in the process just got effectively removed by what transpired at Columbine; it's only a matter of time before someone clever comes up with a reliable device such as the ones used at Columbine. How many do they think they'll find with this "profiling"- and how many will slip by them? What will the ones that slip by them do?

Fix the damn problem, not the symptoms!

I find Jon's writings informative and insightful, but I wonder about one thing. Why is there always an implied correspondance of "geek" with "goth" in his writings? I know a few goths who are very intellegent and antisocial, in other words, stereotype geeks. The vast, vast majority are as dumb as toast. they usually aren't even non-conformist, they've just imprinted differently than "normal" people. they're "Daring to be different" just like everyone else, and they are doing it by finding the largest group of people who all 1) look similar, and 2) look nothing like the other large quasi-coherent group of people.

P.S. check this website.

To give you an idea of the scale of the modelling problem itself, there are commercial companies selling software in the $500-1500 range (and up, no doubt) for analyzing these problems. Here's an example: http://www.trafficware.com. In addition to demos (sadly, only for Windoze) it also contains many links and information on the mathematics behind traffic modelling.

All I can say is that I modified my driving habits after reading these sites, not out of any altruistic desire to improve traffic flow, but because it was fascinating to experiment with the theory that even a single car in a large traffic jam can act as an "antiparticle" and singlehandedly improve flow in two or three lanes. The improvement in traffic flow behind me (and my reduced blood pressure as a driver) was just a happy side effect.

You can read more about traffic physics and "traffic waves" as well as experiments to try here.

-freeknw