Making Small Change

dimnet writes "The Quarter Shrinker uses a technique called high velocity electromagnetic metal forming, or "Magneforming". This technique was originally developed by the aerospace industry, and has been popularized by Aerovox, Grumman, and Maxwell. It involves discharging a high energy capacitor bank through a work coil to generate a very powerful, rapidly changing magnetic field which then interacts with and "forms" the metal to be fabricated. It only works with metals of relatively high conductivity, such as copper or aluminum alloys, although it will work to a more limited extent with sheet steel...." The site has some awesome pictures of small metal objects which have been victimized. [Update: 02/22 by michael : Note that the entire original site has been taken down and replaced with banner ads - however, there are working mirror links in the comments below.]

Comments

Re:When can I get this for....

[abischof]

Sure enough, magnets and electromagnets are allowed. However, electricity-based weapons are not. So, actually, I'm not sure where this falls ;).

Alex Bischoff
---

The one I saw...

[Tony Shepps]

The one I saw was...

All Dogs Go To
Pet Sematary

Re:The one I saw...

[mskfisher]

Playing at the same theatre in Lincoln, NE, were:

Woman On Top
What Lies Beneath

/mskf

nice link butt fuckers

[dbryson]

Jesus Christ, can't you check anything?

Re:When can I get this for....

[peter]

I think it violates the no EMP clause. The page mentions that the pulse is strong enough to erase your credit cards if you're standing next to it...
#define X(x,y) x##y

Re:Why this is illegal, and a very bad thing to do

[Malor]

Nah, wreck all you like. They'll print more! :-)

Re:When can I get this for....

[Harik]

Section 11.3
Yes, it will cause radio interference. Besides, I think a 1 ton battlebot is just a bit over the weight requirement.

--Dan

Re:Isn't it illegal to deface US currency?

[dwdyer]

I don't believe it's illegal to deface US coins or currency unless there's intent to defraud.

Cutting cents down to the size of dimes and then trying to pass them as dimes is illegal. Drawing a zero after the numbers on a $10 bill and then trying to pass it as a $100 bill is illegal.

If the currency or coin has collector value, it's illegal to alter it to make it appear more valuable, but that's a different set of laws.

What an advancement

[JTek]

How long until we start seeing this technology enter the amusement-park-souvineer-penny-smasher industry?

Josh Hinman

Re:What an advancement

[Detritus]

I saw one of these at the Smithsonian Institution. It was a coin-operated device that crushed thin metal tubes inside a coil. You inserted a quarter and the machine dropped a tube into the center of the coil. After the capacitors had been charged, the machine connected them to the coil, producing forces that crushed the tube. The crushed tube was then dropped down a chute into an area where it could be removed from the machine. It was very popular with the museum's visitors.

Re:What an advancement

[wirelessdata]

If these guys can crush cans with 3000 joules, think of what ten million joules can do.

I want to see the "after" pictures of a Yugo wrapped with a few turns of copper pipe in a lightning storm.

Re:Effort!

[unitron]

Yeah, *he* typed all that, but the guys with the time machines who've posted the same thing to several other stories on previous days obviously practiced their plagarism by way of cut 'n' paste.

Alternate links

[lrc]

Hickman's page seems to have been slashdotted, I found his old page at: http://people.ce.mediaone.net/bert-hickman/frames/ shrinker.html also: http://users.better.org/roverstreet/projects/Pulse /pulse.htm

Re:What are slashdot's ad rates?

[ewhac]

It's not a phony article.

I'm not really sure what's going on in this instance, but the original link was Slashdotted in a big way ('connection refused' errors galore). One of the following must have happened:

• The site owner tried mirroring their content, and Chose Poorly;
• The hosting server admin tried mirroring the content, and likewise Chose Poorly;
• The hosting server admin is in cahoots with the evil banner ad site, and decided to take advantage of the situation.

Other possibilities no doubt exist. The point is that, yes, there is a real site; it's just hard to get to at the moment. There was a link to a mirror in an earlier post, which works fine.

Schwab

Russian Particle Beam Weapons

[szyzyg]

I vaguely remember the method used to power an experimental particle beam weapon developed by the sobviet union. This thing was massive, but the power supply system for firing was amazing - They would build up current on a load of *huge* coils and when the time was ready to fire they would switch circuits ans the collapsing magnetic fields would produce a huge power output.

They didn't stop there though, the coils were designed to be compressed rapidly by shaped explosives, so the shrunk coils in the same filed would generate even larger power surges. Basically a load of the energy of the explosives went into a huge electrical blast.

Re:Isn't it illegal to deface US currency?

[ch-chuck]

in fact, the more money you burn or destroy, the more real wealth you leave for everyone else, and it helps fight inflation.

Now printing your own money - that's illegal, big time.

Interesting response to the /. effect

[ch-chuck]

switch to banner ads! Slash-bait-and-switch. How ingenious. In fact you could automate the process - whenever you web site is getting over a certain number of hits/unit time, switch the content to paid-for ads, sort of like building up to a dramatic climax during a tv program and then pausing for a few commercial messages.

These guys obviously like to play...

[kzinti]

...with cool fun electric toys. Look at the first "Can crusher" image... there in the background is a classic "Jacob's Ladder" device. So that's what they do with their neon-sign transformer when it's not charging high-energy capacitors!

--Jim

Re:These guys obviously like to play...

[freq]

A Christmas Story for Coilers
by Fr. Tom McGahee
(Originally written Christmas of 1998)
(Slightly Modified for Christmas, 1999)

The story begins innocently enough... Meanwhile, out in the garage, Bill the Frankfurter was busily lashing together his latest concoction: In keeping with the Christmas Spirit, Bill was building a rather large Christmas Decoration for the front yard. To the uninitiated it looked simply like a large aluminum Christmas tree mounted on a pedestal of some sort. In reality, the aluminum Christmas tree was merely the Topload on Bill's latest Tesla Coil. Bill knew full well that the geometry of the tree did not really lend itself well to being an EFFICICIENT topload. But that was all-right. Bill was more interested in shock value than he was in efficiency. Actually, the pedestal was the "extra" coil of Bill's experimental Magnifier Tesla Coil. According to his calculations the "extra" coil should be capable of throwing arcs at least 6 feet long. One of these days, if he could manage to scrape up the necessary cash, he would try building one of those as yet untried polymorphic toroid structures designed by that guy who was advertising plans for them on the Tesla List. But not today.

He chuckled to himself as he struggled to move the "extra" coil and Christmas tree topload out of the garage and onto the front lawn. His wife was currently curled up in front of the fireplace with a romance book and two cats. Bill hated cats, but for the sake of his wife he tolerated their presence in his home. Bill strapped the coil/tree assembly to the top of the little American Flyer sled, and wrestled it into position on the front lawn. The final position was about 7 feet away from the shoveled walkway that led from the street to his front door. Bill always used the side door, but he had In-Laws coming over tonight, and *they* always used the Front Door. He figured the 6 foot arcs would be hurled mostly upward, and there would be no chance of the arcs actually coming any where near the In-Laws as they came down the little shoveled path that he had prepared.

He carefully positioned a couple of dozen old polyethylene buckets to hold the transmission line, which was several lengths of 1/2 inch copper tubing that he had brazed together. He giggled to himself deliriously as he fastened the transmission line in place and attached it to the base of the "extra" coil. Then he attached the other end of the transmission line to the anti-corona ring of his secondary coil.

The secondary coil consisted of a single layer of high voltage test prod wire wrapped in a solenoid fashion around a fair-sized plastic garbage can. The test prod wire was "on loan" from Bill's employer. The employer was unaware of this fact, but Bill appreciated his generosity all the same. The garbage can was a slightly used Rubber-Maid garbage can that Bill had swiped from the kitchen earlier in the day. The garage was permeated with the odor of aging tuna fish. The plastic garbage can was nestled inside a piece of slightly damp cardboard sonotube that was several inches larger in diameter than the garbage can. Bill had "borrowed" the sonotube from a construction site a few blocks away that was not very heavily guarded. One of these days he would return it. If he managed to remember, of course... The primary consisted of several turns of heavy battery cable that Bill had found laying around in the back of one of his buddies' trucks. (All of Bill's buddies drive trucks...)

Most of the high voltage capacitors were homebrew poly caps in sections of PVC pipe and under mineral oil (actually an off-brand of cattle laxative that he had seen mentioned by Gary Weaver on the Tesla List.) Not being able to find any decent clear poly, Bill had managed to scrape up a mixture of "construction" grade poly (that had lots of interesting things imbedded in it), and some smooth and shiny BLACK poly that he thought might work well, despite his fleeting concern that it might contain large quantities of carbon in the form of lampblack. What the heck, what did he have to lose by trying???

Dozens of these capacitors were wired in series - parallel to achieve the required voltage and capacitance rating. Just a few days before, he had discovered a mistake in his calculations and had realized that he still needed more capacitance. Remembering a series of posts on the Tesla List about MMC and EMMC caps, Bill had decided to try his hand at making EDEMMCB caps. (Extremely Dangerous Extended Monolithic Modular Capacitor Banks) Let's see, now, he was sure that Terry Fritz or one of those guys had posted something about being able to run them at something like 3 times their rated DC voltage. So with his 14.4KV One Eared Pole Pig he would need about a 4.8KV rating on the caps. Being a somewhat conservative kind of a guy (at least when it comes to things electrical), he decided to round that up to a 5KV DC rating. He smiled broadly at the thought of all the extra margin of safety he had engineered into this EDEMMCB capacitor.

He had purchased one hundred .1 microfarad 500 volt DC off-brand snubber caps at the local Radio Shack for a buck a piece. What the heck. It was Christmas. He could afford to splurge a little. He didn't have any of that printed circuit board stuff to mount the capacitors onto, so he just spot soldered strings of ten capacitors together. He kept the leads the full length and just spot soldered the very ends of the capacitors together. That way if a capacitor were to accidentally fail he could just snip off the very end and turn them back into Radio Shack for a full refund. The only problem with leaving the leads so long was that the strings of capacitors were quite long. Fifty inches to be exact. He wasn't about to waste any precious money on high megohm resistors, so there were no bleeder resistors across any of the caps. The ten strings of capacitors were laid out side by side on the concrete floor. As was his custom, Bill lashed all the capacitor strings together using Radio Shack clip leads.

Imagine Bill's consternation when he measured the total capacitance of his poly caps and EDEMMCB capacitor only to discover that he was still off by .01001 microfarad from the magic capacitor value that TESLAC had spit out.

Not wanting to spend any more money and time on poly caps or more strings of EDEMMCB caps, he decided to revert to making the tried and true Beer Bottle Caps. He had tried making Soda Bottle Caps once, but they were not nearly so much *fun* to make as Beer Bottle Caps.

Bill had invited a couple dozen of his closest friends over for a Bring Your Own Booze - Beer Bash. His wife finally busted up the party at 4 AM Sunday morning. Bill emptied out whatever beer still remained in the bottles (I leave it to your own imagination to figure out just how he did this). After many many trips to the bathroom he finally had all the empty beer bottles he needed. There were a fair number of aluminum cans as well. These he put in the plastic garbage bag in the kitchen. While his wife wasn't looking he stole all the aluminum foil and corn oil and salt that he could find and proceeded to build a couple of tub-fulls of beer bottle caps, which he then wired into the existing capacitor grid using his few remaining Radio Shack clip leads.

The spark gap was an old circular saw blade that was missing a couple of teeth. Why bother to pay big bucks to that Wingate guy for a precision built and properly balanced tungsten gapped rotary spark gap with G-10 fiberglass wheel when you could make your own for next to nothing? Bill's own rotary spark gap was powered by an ancient single phase AC motor that Bill had scrounged from the local dump for a few bucks. The motor and circular saw blade were connected via a belt and pulley arrangement, since the shaft of the AC motor was somewhat bent, and could not reliably direct-drive the saw blade. As it was, when the spark gap motor was powered on, the wooden base to which the entire Spark Gap assembly was bolted would shake all over the place and make an awful racket. Bill had jerry-rigged a device that allowed him to vary the phasing on the spark gap by rotating the motor by pulling on a four foot long two-by-four. Bill had wanted to use a ten-foot-pole, but Malcolm Watts told him that nobody would want to come near it with a ten-foot pole. That seems to have convinced him.

Looking through the archives, Bill had found a posting by John Freau on how to convert small AC motors into fully synchronous motors. Oblivious to the fact that the conversion pertained only to SMALL AC motors, Bill modified his motor anyhow, and found that after filing away large chunks of his rotor that the modification only made his motor lopsided. Now it REALLY jumped around when he turned on the power. So he held the rotary spark gap assembly wooden base plate as still as he could by temporarily holding it down with a couple of old lawn mower engines that he had hanging around. He made a mental note to drop John a nasty note telling him how useless his modification had been.

Back a few feet from the spark gap was the one eared pole pig. Thick high voltage cables snaked across the floor from the Pig to the Spark Gap and the rest of the Tesla Coil. Not wanting to cut the cables, (which he had borrowed from work without asking) Bill had left each cable its original length of fifty feet.

The pig was fed a diet of 220 VAC from a 100 amp service line. Now, the pole piggie was only rated at 10KVA, but Bill had read somewhere on the List that you could actually push a pig to two or three times its rated power capacity if you kept the run short, (so that you didn't boil off all the oil). Bill planned to test out this theory tonight.

Now, Bill SHOULD have had a number of things that he didn't. Such as common sense, an ON/OFF switch, and adequate fuses. Bill just couldn't bring himself to pay good money for something that was designed to self-destruct. Instead of fuses he had placed large metal bolts in the fuse holders. Much more robust, don't you think??

Being something of a cheapskate, Bill had decided not to bother with installing a silly little thing like an ON/OFF switch, because the guy at the dump wanted more than two bucks for the ones he had in the big box marked "Electrical Stuff". He knew that he needed something to limit the current to the pole pig, so he decided to wire a couple of defective toaster ovens and a couple of strings of Christmas tree bulbs in *parallel* with the primary of the pole pig. He could have SWORN that he had read a post somewhere (maybe on the Tesla-2 List) about putting some sort of a load in series or parallel or something or other with the transformer primary.

Bill knew that a variac was really a "must", but he didn't have one. He was originally going to use a 5 amp Triac that was on sale at Radio Shack, but when he got there they were all out. But then he remembered having read a post that seemed to imply that you could modify a three phase AC motor to act as some kind of a variable transformer. Sneaking into the dump under cover of darkness, he liberated a 400 pound three phase AC motor that had once seen service in an office building as the elevator motor. Luckily for him he owned a truck with a crane attached. Heh heh. A few whacks with an axe in just the right places and he had de-commisioned one set of windings. He knew he only needed two. But which two? He hoped it was the two that still remained. He welded two metal stubs to the casing and then welded a three foot length of one inch diameter solid steel rod to the rotor shaft. Now the motor shaft could only turn 90 degrees.

It was still a minute or two before the In-Laws were scheduled to arrive. One last check and Bill was ready for an operational test. He turned on the rotary spark gap motor. Whump! Whump! Whump! Whump! Whump WhumpWHUMPwhumpawhumpawumpawupa... Yes, the spark gap assembly was a bit, uh, vibrational, but seemed to be holding together OK. Bill lined the plug up with the socket (remember, he had no ON/OFF switch), and rammed the plug into the socket. BZZZZSHHHT! The spark gap lit up with bright actinic light and would have fried Bill's eyeballs in no time at all if not for the fact that Bill (always safety conscious) had quickly put on a pair of welding goggles. Now he could look at the spark gap arc with impunity. Which he did. Unfortunately, the goggles were so dark that that was ALL that Bill could see.

Carefully shielding his eyes with his left hand, he used his right hand to gingerly lift the goggles and look at the Christmas tree on the front lawn.

Outside, the Christmas tree came to life with a pale glow of pink and blue corona that fuzzed out for about two feet. But no arcs. No streamers. What a bummer! He stuffed another wad of cotton in each ear so that he could think again, and taking a deep breath of the ozone-soaked air, he groped his way over towards the modified three phase motor. Grabbing a hold of the metal rod, he strained to change the angle of the rotor. Suddenly a forest of fierce white arcs as thick as his arm broke out between the primary and the secondary. DARN!

He released the control rod. TWANG!!!! The rod slammed itself into the short stub that acted as a stop. Bill yanked the plug out of the socket. This was not an easy task, as the plug was sort of welded into the socket. But a few good whacks with a monkey wrench and the plug came loose. The only sound was the whappawhappawhapa of the rotary gap assembly, and the insistent buzzing that was only in Bill's ears. DARN! The secondary was arcing to the primary. Maybe if he added a capacitive load to the secondary he could get this sucker to stop arcing. He looked around for something... anything... to use as a capacitive load. His eyes came to rest on the leering sharp-toothed smile of his butane tank work of art, the Halloween Tank-O-Lantern. To amuse the neighbors and anyone else foolish enough to approach his house at Halloween, he had fashioned a gruesome Tank-O-Lantern by using a cutting torch to fashion leering eyes and drooling teeth from the once-smooth surface of the butane tank. The various burn marks from the cutting torch operations made the tank look even more sinister when the light played on it just right.

Grabbing the Tank-O-Lantern, he managed to get it to sit on top of the existing anti-corona ring. It wobbled a bit, but what the heck.

For the second time that evening, Bill rammed the plug into the socket. Again the spark gap burst into life. The horrendous roar of the spark gap beat against his ears as he grabbed the control rod and pulled. A fierce blue corona outlined the eyes and teeth of the leering Tank-O-Lantern, and as he gleefully peeked out from under the welding goggles, Bill could plainly see that beautiful two to three foot arcs were issuing forth from the branches of the aluminum Christmas tree. Not bad. The system was obviously a little out of tune, and he didn't have much more time before the In-Laws would arrive, so he would just have to run it the way it was. But he wanted the tree to look a bit more Christmas-sy so he whacked the plug with the monkey wrench again and turned off the high voltage. Then he made a quick surreptitious trip to the attic and got some really awful Christmas ornaments, (the ones that his In-Laws had given him and his wife years ago), and used them to decorate the tree.

Unknown to Bill, while he was out decorating the tree, his wife came out to the garage with a bag full of garbage that she didn't want in her kitchen for her parents to see. Looking around in the garage she spied what she knew was a plastic garbage can sitting inside what looked like a cardboard container of some kind. Seeing no other garbage container around, she decided to dump the load of trash into the plastic garbage can. So she did. And with interesting results.

Bill was totally unaware that the coupling and inductance of his coil had been changed slightly by the addition of various beer cans and tuna fish containers that had been dumped into the core of his beloved experimental Magnifier Coil.

The addition of the gaudy glass Christmas tree ornaments had little effect on the capacitance of the Christmas Tree Topload, but Bill's last-minute addition of a large copper toilet ball to the very *top* of the tree had changed the isotropic capacitance of the total topload just enough that the "extra" coil and topload were in perfect tune.

When Bill saw his In-Laws exit their car and begin their trip down the shoveled walkway that led within a few feet of the Christmas Coil, he stationed himself next to the power outlet and waited until they were at just the right spot.

His face twitched nervously, and he made a strange gurgling sound as he waited anxiously for his In-Laws to reach the perfect spot. And then they were there.

Gleefully he jammed the plug into the socket and then ran excitedly over to the control rod. Little beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he grasped the rod firmly with both hands and pulled madly back on the control rod.

Meanwhile, inside the garbage can secondary, RF induction heating was taking place on the cat food tin cans. The heat caused the garbage to shift suddenly, and in that instant a wonderful serendipity took place. For a few fleeting cycles, PERFECT resonance was achieved! Megawatts of energy happily surged back and forth in the slipshod tank circuit of the amazing Christmas Coil. Phase angles slipped past one another invisibly and fell in-synch. Due to a couple of missing teeth on the makeshift rotary spark gap's circular saw blade the caps ceased to fire for a moment, and the capacitor bank experienced an Anomalous Resonant Rise. An instant later the excessive voltage caused a particularly massive dump of energy into the primary circuit at precisely the right phase angle, and the resulting surge in energy passed from the base of the wildly glowing Tank-O- Lantern down the copper tubing transmission line, which looked as though it were ringed with fire. The transmission line was just exactly the right length to allow the electrical wave travelling down it to slam into the base of the "extra" coil precisely at a zero voltage, MAX current node. Richard Hull would have been proud. The "extra" coil and the Christmas Tree Topload with round copper toilet ball were exactly matched to the impedance required, and the massive driving force of megawatts of resonant energy caused the "extra" coil to react like a spring that had been hit hard with a hammer. The resulting jump in energy caused the voltage at the Christmas Tree to exceed the breakdown voltage of the winter air. With a mad, screeching KaBOOOM the air broke down, and a single solitary streamer launched itself into the cold night air. Up, UP, *UP* it surged, sending a seething, writhing, liquid bolt of pure white electricity stabbing through the darkness. Then, seeking the path of least resistance, it arched over and began its lethal descent. Escaping the intense electrostatic forces that existed at the surface of the aluminum tree, the mighty bolt of man-made lightning swerved around and headed straight for the nearest conductive object it could find!!!

The In-Laws would have been toasted alive were it not for the one object that caught the Arc's attention. Beyond the In-Laws, a good twenty feet from where the Lightning Bolt had launched itself from the infamous Copper Toilet Ball, was an old fashioned lamp post. It put out a dim but somewhat cheery quantity of light that seemed to beckon to the Wayward Lightning Bolt. Like a giant white arm, the lightning bolt swerved around from its upward climb and slammed full force into the cheery lamp post.

PHHHHHHHT! KABLAMMMMM! Like a gigantic flash lamp the lightning bolt lit up the night with an instant of blinding whiteness and a deafening BLAM that reverberated in the In-Law's ears long after their knees had stopped shaking. Where the mighty arc hit, the metal of the lamp-post went incandescent and exploded into a shower of hot sparks that rained through the air and burnt their way through the snow.

The momentary surge of primary current was too much for the EDEMMCB capacitor strings. One moment they were as cool as the night air, then the next instant they exploded like 100 Chinese firecrackers. When the EDEMMCB caps exploded this placed too much of an electrical burden on the other capacitors in the system. First the Beer Bottle caps shattered and sent shards of glass whizzing in all directions. Then the once-sturdy home-made rolled caps exploded like a bunch of defective cannon. They all burst at once and spewed hot liquid laxative throughout the garage, and all over poor Bill, who was already feeling pretty sh***y as it was.

A flash of light. A moment of raw, awesome beauty, a might explosion, and then DARKNESS as all the electricity for blocks around ceased to flow.

It is a Christmas that Bill will always remember. It is a Christmas that his wife and In-Laws will never let him forget.

***** This is just a story. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead named Bill is merely coincidental.

As the author of this tale I want to say that the story is not meant to be a plan for how to build your own Arcstarter -er- I mean, Magnifier Coil.
The theory contained herein is only partially believeable, and is not meant to be a factual accounting of what actually happens in a Tesla Coil.
This is not an endorsement of Radio Shack or any of their products.
Cat lovers will please refrain from sending nasty e-mails to either Bill or myself.
Plans for the Christmas Coil may be made available if enough persons are interested. I should mention that the plans are purely experimental, which is why I will only be charging a token $25 for the plans.
I hope that all of you enjoy this little romp in the spirit in which it was written. I hope that none of those mentioned by name or otherwise implicated in the plot take offense at what has been written.
I wrote it especially for my good friend (at least he WAS my good friend), Bill the Arcstarter Pollack. But, as the disclaimer said, it is not actually ABOUT him. Even though he does hate cats and builds Tank-O-Lanterns, and dabbles in Tesla Coils. This story is just about a Bill who happens to be an awful lot LIKE Bill Pollack. The real Bill would *never* borrow anything from work without asking. He is beyond reproach. He is my friend.
Written by Fr. Tom McGahee
(reposted on the TCML in November2000)

Re:These guys obviously like to play...

[Baumann]

Actually, very true. I know Bert from the Tesla and Tesla-2 mailing lists. In addition to building quarter crushers, he builds fairly large tesla coils - if only mine were that big :) Jacobs' ladders? Small 'taters! Quarter crushing is more a sideline of the tesla work.

Re:These guys obviously like to play...

[Baumann]

Not likely, coilers tend to prefer using round electrodes for our safety gaps. The shut down faster. Just 'cause the gap fired, doesn't mean the coil needs to be shut down!

Re:These guys obviously like to play...

[russh347]

In all likelyhood, the jacobs ladder is in place as a safety device. Where I work, we use a jacobs ladder to disapate the energy if a newly constructed discharge lamp fails to light. Its also great for the kids when they come though on tours...

The perfect machine for...

[i22y]

Getting back at those damn old people with pacemakers that drive slow in the fast lane....just mount it on your front bumper, and it'll cause a traffic disturbance ahead.
----

More offtopic fun

[DeadFish]

I saw a marquee said "THE FLY GODS MUST BE CRAZY ALIENS"

And I couldn't really disagree with that

Re:small change?

[stimpy]

The dialog needs work...they've got Bush speaking English much to well.

Re:Isn't it illegal to deface US currency?

[Detritus]

It used to be illegal to deface coins. You can see this in old jewelry where coins were held inside ring mounts to avoid drilling holes through the coins.

Re:And why...

[pivo]

Could this work on the atomic scale?

in what way?

Could this be used on something like a microprocessor?

Yeah, but it'll void the warrenty :)

Re:Isn't it illegal to deface US currency?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

No, it is not.

You can mangle, modify, slice, grind, etc. coins any way you want.

It is illegal to try to use them as money after you do so, however...

---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"

Re:And why...

[kevlar]

Could this work on the atomic scale? Could this be used on something like a microprocessor?

Re:New Record!

[freq]

good point!
thanx!

This is my last slashdot post ever. period. for real! i mean it!

maybe i'll start a support group for recovering slash-o-holics like myself.

Re:slashdoted and replaced with shit pop-up ad

[Skapare]

These guys have arrays of high performance web servers. That's what they claim. It's fraud. Let's get them investigated by the government. Yeah, that should do it.

Re:The /. effect strikes again!

[Skapare]

I originally went to the site when there was ONE comment on /. and it had already been /.'d by then (many non-connects, many connect and hang, many connect and disconnect, what little data showed up was minutes late). This aquila.net CLAIMS to have many high performance servers. But instead, I suggest they are a FRAUD that reveals why many companies are failing on the net.

First Stage Fuel

[aschlemm]

The first stage used Kerosene and LOX.

Saturn V Press Kit

Re:Scientists are often too sceptical.

[Nightpaw]

This place is beginning to annoy me.

Join the club, sister.

Also a time warp!

[wirefarm]

I noticed on the Japanese 5 Yen coin, (the brass one with tghe hole,) that, incredibly, the years also changed!
The one on the left is from the Japanese year Showa 60 and when it was shrunk, it became Heisei 3 nen - Some sort of incredible time shift!

Oh, wait a minute... Um... Never mind...
;-)
Jim

Re:Already been done...

[Ralph Wiggam]

Without the damn HTML formatting, that's:

My Giant
Big and Hairy
Dick

-B

Re:Already been done...

[Ralph Wiggam]

My old roommate worked at Blockbuster and arranged these three movies on the "Coming Next Month" board above the checkout: My Giant Big and Hairy Dick -B

Re:I have an Idea

[Attila]

I don't think your penis can get any smaller.

Re:Why this is illegal, and a very bad thing to do

[The Toad]

Gee...I didn't realize that my coffee can full of pennies could be RUINING SOMEONE'S LIFE!!!

(i.e. gimme a break)

Tell it to the coin collectors buddy.

Re:Scientists are often too sceptical.

[Zarniwoop]

This place is beginning to annoy me.

Heidi, Hobbes said that life in the natural condition is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".

By sheer coincidence, this also perfectly describes about 90% of the users on slashdot. For rational discussion, try K5. It's a very Good Thing (tm).

Hope this helps.


What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?

Don't laugh so hard. I'm not pulling your leg.

[TheDullBlade]

It's really not that funny. Our monetary system is screwed up beyond belief. This is why a country can have a bad year or two and suddenly people are using wheelbarrows to carry enough bills to buy a loaf of break.

Don't think it can't happen here. Incompetent management is only one of the factors that can cause catastrophic inflation. Even if you assume that your government knows better, they can still be beaten by market factors entirely beyond their control.
---

To the moderators: THIS WAS NOT OFFTOPIC!!!

[TheDullBlade]

The initial post of the thread was on-topic, relevant to the story. The above post was on-topic to the thread.

I swear, slashdot moderation gets worse by the hour.
---

You're a couple of centuries behind the times.

[TheDullBlade]

I know it sounds fantastic and insane, but I'm not making this up. Go ask an economics professor, or go to the library and do a little research (I'm assuming that you won't believe any webpage I point you to).

At the root of the modern monetary system is the central bank: privately owned but heavily regulated so it is effectively government run.

The central bank has the power to create money directly, without any assets to back it up, but only in the form of loans (and anybody allowed to borrow money from the central bank is so regulated that they must pay it back). While the government may mint cash, if they wish to keep it they must consider it borrowed from the central bank and pay interest on it.

When somebody has a positive balance in a bank account, they are considered to have that much money. So the total amount of money out there is cash plus account balances. Debts are not subtracted (if they were, there would always be a negative total amount of money). When somebody takes out a loan, their account balance is increased, but nobody's account balance is reduced. If the loan-created money is withdrawn as cash or transferred to another bank, then the bank's holdings are reduced, but another bank's are increased by the same amount. When the loan is "paid off" from the borrower's account, the banker simply strikes off the liability from their record books and only takes the interest as profit that remains spendable "money" (the reason why has to do with the "fractional reserve" rules and regulations that prevent them from just giving themselves a billion dollars whenever they feel like it). The total amount of money is thus reduced.

Banks only need to have a small percentage of their liabilities (the money in accounts at their bank) as cash in their vaults or in their account at the central bank. So they can "lend" money by simply increasing someone's account in their records. There is no "pot" to fund other loans. Unless your bank has recently experienced a run, they have no effective limit on how much money they may lend out (i.e. they don't need to have it to lend it). Though if they need to transfer funds to another bank or hand out cash they may need to take out loans of their own from the central bank, and pay interest on it. They are protected from being unable to pay out what they are owed (in cash or as transfers to another bank) because the central bank always has more and never refuses to loan a bank in good legal standing money they need (which is why it is called the "lender of last resort").

As for burning physical cash when loans are paid off (specifically loans to the central bank, which is the root source of all cash, and is drawing interest on all of it in circulation at all times), that is done quite commonly. This is called "taking it out of circulation", and there isn't always exactly the same amount of new cash minted (in fact, there is no direct connection between cash destroyed and cash printed, other than that they go through the same institution). In anticipation of Y2K panic, the government had extra cash printed up. After the scare was over, the cash supply was reduced by printing less cash than was collected.

The rules and regulations needed to make such an insane system work at all are far, far too complicated to get into here.
---

Re:When can I get this for....

[[Xenocide]]

Thank's *loads* for the mirror. I was dying to read that article and almost gave up hope.


Derek Lewis

Re:Why this is illegal, and a very bad thing to do

[Patrick Lewis]

No. Money does not cease to exist when the loan that created it is paid off. It goes back in the pot to fund other loans. What, there is a guy at the bank burning money as people pay their mortgages?

Re:Error in thinking?

[dickens]

no, same volume. It's thicker !

The real question

[AntiFreeze]

Is can it change pennies into quarters?

---

Re:The real question

[Stephen Samuel]

can it change pennies into quarters?
No, but for 20, we can turn a quarter into a nickel. (would that be inflation or deflation?)
--

Re:The real question

[Rudeboy777]

Sounds like a good deal, but I imagine the electricity needed to perform this little procedure would cost you money even if it turned quarters into gold coins.

Re:related to askslashdot today

[joshamania]

What would you call it if you did this to an IBM Microdrive?

Re:When can I get this for....

[joshamania]

The resulting object is more dense then the previous one, or at least I am assuming so. The Law of Conservation of Matter it is called (or mass/energy or whatever).

When can I get this for....

[joshamania]

When can I get this for my battlebot?!?!

Re:When can I get this for....

[jidar]

This falls within the rules. When they say no electricity based weapons they mean you can't use weapons that shock the opponent (that would be too easy, heh).

However, what kind of power supply would it take to do this just once to a bot? You would definately have to enter the super heavyweight class.

Re:When can I get this for....

[jidar]

I don't know what you remember of physics that says it is impossible to make items more dense. I don't think thats right. Can you clarify?

Re:When can I get this for....

[Stephen Samuel]

You're not likely to actually shrink the coin It might be possible to burn off some of the metal, leaving a smaller coin. What I notice, however, is that some of the features are shifted (e.g. the liberty is moved almost onto the throat in ond picture). It leaves me thinking that the 'shrunk' coins are simply coins re-done slighly smaller.
--

Re:When can I get this for....

[Stephen Samuel]

OK: rereading my mirror of their page, they claim that the resulting shrunk coin is the same density -- so either it probably thickens as it shrinks. In fact, they more formally refer to it as forming.

A shrunken coin weighs exactly the same afterwards, and its density is also unchanged - it's merely the shape that's been altered.

(2/3 of the way through the article)
--

Re:When can I get this for....

[cgifool]

What about physics makes it impossible for the coin to become more dense? If I threw it onto a neutron star you'd better believe it would get a LOT smaller! On the other hand, maybe it just gets a little thicker?

Re:When can I get this for....

[Cogline]

Can someone fill me in on where the matter goes?? i.e., is this 'Honey, I shrunk the kids' or something better??

What I remember of physics implies that it should be impossible to make any of those coins any more dense. Perhaps more brittle, and a little smaller, but not that much...

Re:When can I get this for....

[baldeep]

It can become more dense, but it won't remain that way in normal atmospheric pressure.

Re:Isn't it illegal to deface US currency?

[simong]

If nowhere else, Disneyland has machines in various places around the park that takes pennies and dimes and presses them into long thin ovals. Then again, it's unwise to mess with the mouse.

yet another example

[gimpboy]

of responsible reporting. they should email these people befor they post and ask if it's ok to mirror their site first. /.ing a site and crushing their webserver is about as bad as spam in my book. perhaps the folks at aquila.net should send the /. authors a note of thanks for the advertisement.

use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that

Re:yet another example

[susano_otter]

You're new here, aren't you?

Re:yet another example

[susano_otter]

Okay. So, to play the Devil's advocate: the Web is an open-access medium. If you put a website up, everybody else in the world is free to visit it, and react however they wish. You can't say "here's my site, but don't look at it", or "only look at it if you're not going to flame it", or "don't tell anybody about it, because I can't handle the traffic if it becomes popular".

What should /. do? Fail to report on things of interest to their readers, because the website owner/creator didn't prepare for the possibility that their public-access website might see a lot of public traffic? Or maybe you're one of those that propose /. get embroiled in the legal issues involved in mirroring other people's content?

The fact is websites are public access. If /. happens to like yours, that's really what you get for putting it out there. Besides, a lot of people view /.'ing as a good thing - it's a sign their popularity far exceeds their wildest expectations!

Re:yet another example

[pallex]

"they should email these people befor they post and ask if it's ok to mirror their site first"

Hey, they shouldnt be on the net if they cant take a joke! Making a site popular is bad now?

Re:Isn't it illegal to deface US currency?

[esnible]

The United States Codes under Title 18, Chapter 17, and Section 331, "prohibits the mutilation, diminution and falsification of United States coinage." This law was designed to catch forgers and "clippers" (who used to clip bits of silver off coins and sell them for bullion.)

See http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/ch17.html

But also see http://www.wcmassey.com/lep/geninfo2.htm

There is a small industry devoted to making "elongated" cents as souvenirs at carnivals, etc. There is are also a folk artform where designs are hand carved into coins. Do an eBay search for "love token". The most famous love token is the "hobo nickel", a Buffalo nickel recut to look like a hobo, made during the US Depression of the 1930s.

Re:Scientists are often too sceptical.

[caerwyn]

Of course they do... but we didn't detect them until recently, which is, I believe, the intent of the original poster. The discovery of fullerenes got someone (three people, actually) a nobel prize, so I'd call it a relatively amazing discovery, wouldn't you?

Re:This is not illegal!

[smatthew]

That's funny - i could have sworn that you were unable to turn dollars in for gold - and it had been that way for a long time.....

And yes - coins are notes of tender. Nowdays - the materials in the coins are worth less than the value of the coin itself - sure - you can melt down your quarters, but don't expect to get $.25 for each of em.....

The theory behind this is being used

[caffeineboy]

The idea of using induced electic field repulsion for metal forming is being investigated by one of the professors in my department at the Ohio State University.

He is working on using this same effect to imrove the formability of alloys that are problematic - namely he is interested in Aluminum for use in automobile bodies. You can get more ductility and formability out of some materials if oyu form them at very high strain rates, and the idea here is that you form the rough shape with conventional techniques and then you zap the metal with electromagnetic field in the areas with detail or sharp features in order to "fill out" the mold.

There's a copy of some of the pictures from the quarter shrinker taped up on his door.

For people that have been wondering how the coin gets smaller and retains its features without breaking the laws of physics - it is getting thicker. Look at the site - one of the quarters is balooned into a sphere. It de-laminated at the silver-copper layer!

His grad students are in the room next to ours and ever time they discharge their capacitor bank it makes the monitors on the wall adjacent to their room shudder... and it makes a hell of a bang.

Re:slashdotted already

[darkonc]

I got the main page (no graphics) just before the page appears to have been deleted. my copy is here. Feel free to make your own mirror.
--

Re:slashdotted already

[Velox_SwiftFox]

Thanks... The original link now connects to a freaking advertising page, with freaking popups yet.

Schmucks.

Color of labs

[Asgard]

OK, I've got to ask -- in one of the pictures they show the laboratory where they did this, and there are all sorts of shades of purple and blue and other 'cool' colors shining about. Do people really right their labs with these funny lights, or is it done entirely in Photoshop (or gimp) later?

*sniff sniff*

[cetan]

I know that this technique is possible. I've read about it in at least 1 if not more college physics textbooks, but this site smells. The images, especially that last one, is iffy at best. I have a sinking feeling that our esteemed /. editors got take for a ride on this one.

as for the banner-ad filled page, I've heard of the domain name game going this route. You register a domain name through one of those cut-rate places and then, when your site is popular, they yank the name from you...

just some thoughts.

Re:*sniff sniff*

[BertHickman]

Nope - it's not fake. All pictures are for real as is the phenomenon. The website's now back up on the air at: www.teslamania.com

Effort!

[Wire Tap]

Now, if he actually _typed_ that all as soon as he saw the article was posted, he deserves karma. :-)

Re:Effort!

[Wire Tap]

*grins*

And I thought I typed fast. :-)

Re:fst

[Wire Tap]

Wait a minute... you got KARMA for effort in grade school? Sheesh. Where did you go to school? I got a piece of candy, or maybe even a pat on the back. Karma... wowies. :-)

Re:Error in thinking?

[Chris Brewer]

From what I saw on the photos, it looks as though the coins do indeed get thicker. Check out the 'quarter ball'.

--

Isn't it illegal to deface US currency?

[jerrytcow]

Or render it unfit for circulation?

Or are coins exempt from this?

Re:Isn't it illegal to deface US currency?

[Dyolf Knip]

And as we all know from reading Snowcrash, it's illegal to use billion-dollar bills as toilet paper...

--

Re:Isn't it illegal to deface US currency?

[bjohn]

Yes... this stems from the time when coins were actually made from precious metals. Unscrupulous types would trim the edges off gold coins... Keeping the scrap and passing the original off at face value. This is also the reason why many coins today have "ridges" around their perimeter.

Re:Isn't it illegal to deface US currency?

[Samuel Nitzberg]

If you look at the http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/ch17.html it states "fraudulently".....

Without fraudulent purpose, there is no offense.

Sam Nitzberg

http://www.iamsam.com

sam@iamsam.com

Oh great!

[Jace of Fuse!]

First, we had to deal with vending machines not taking dollars because they were too wrinkled...

...now this...!

"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

Alan Greenspan's secret weapon.

[MostlyHarmless]

Believe it or not, the U.S. Federal reserve already plans on using this tool to counteract the damaging force of inflation on our country's economy. In fact, according to high-level sources that I cannot name for obvious reasons, the first of these new coins will come out in April, for Delaware. Coins will then follow in step in the order the new coins were introduced. Similar plans are in order for the new Sackagawea (sp?) dollar; however, the serrated edge is adding numerous complications to the project. It is hoped that the new, deflated coins will offset inflationary pressures... or something.

--

Re:Alan Greenspan's secret weapon.

[FreeMath]

Is it illegal to shrink liberian money?

Is the site still down?

[PhatKat]

Try this link or this link istead...

Read my diary.

Re:Is the site still down?

[HongPong]

Your first link is no good because it still the /.'ed www.aquila.net. the second one is ok, though.

--

Interesting deformation...

[CaptainPhong]

I find it interesting how the thinnest parts of the coin (the areas closest to the bust or the image of the horse on the reverse, such as under George's chin), seemd to collapse and pile up next to the image... The images and text, being thicker, didn't deform as much and instead flowed closer together, and even flowing underneath eachother.

I would like to see this done with older coins with higher relief (i.e. pennies prior to the 70's).

Re:Interesting deformation...

[Dyolf Knip]

Or on some of the steel 1943 pennies!

--

Re:Error in thinking?

[Speare]

A shrunken coin weighs exactly the same afterwards, and its density is also unchanged - it's merely the shape that's been altered.

Ever hear of Shrinky Dinks? This plastic material goes through a similar transformation when heated in a regular food oven. Two dimensions shrink, while it gets thicker to maintain the same volume and density.

Used on Saturn V rockets

[Chairboy]

This technique was used in the 1960's on parts of the Saturn V rocket. It was ideal for shaping the super thin aluminum pressure vessels at the front of each stage (and, in the case of the first stage) the back pressure vessels (the different in temperature between the kerosene and the LOX was so high that they couldn't use integral tanks).

Engineers used to demonstrate how this worked without touching anything by putting pieces of tissue paper between the former and the surface being formed. After they were done, they would take out the unscarred piece of paper and show it.

The Saturn CII stage needed to get the forward tank pressure vessels into the basic shape to be magnaformed, but it was tricky because they didn't have anything that could create perfect curved pie slices that would be welded together to make the item, so they suspended the pieces of metal in water tanks and set off explosives. This allowed them to shape the metal using the shockwaves.

Sweet.

Re:Used on Saturn V rockets

[Ig0r]

What kerosene?
The saturn V was fueled by liquid hydrogen and licquid oxygen.

--

Re:WOW!

[naasking]

in the USA if you have a pulse and a clue, you can make something of yourself.

And increasingly get your rights trampled on and your privacy invaded because the government has some pretty fucked up ideas of freedom. Every country has their fuck ups, but I would honestly rather live in a country that's worse off economically because of some bonehead government than in a country whose governments' mission is leaning towards Big Brother under the pretense of security and order.

A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will deserve neither and lose both.
~ B. Franklin ~

I'm not a 'yay Canada' type person, but every single time I hear some stupid Corporate or government move to further encroach on peoples' freedoms, you would not believe how glad I am that I live in Canada. I'll trade money and economic success for freedom ANY day.

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Re:WOW!

[naasking]

That's RICH, considering that Canaduh has that big Big Brother database on every Canadian. "We dismantled that!" Yeah sure, this would of course be at the same time they got rid of the GST, right?

Sorry, I think you're a little misinformed. The database you're referring to is simply social security current address. I don't know what big brother information you're referring to(I believe it's the database that was posted to slashdot about 6 months ago). *tsck, tsck* you should know better than to trust Slashdot sensationalism.

Canada has no free speech rights, no property rights, your right to self defense is being taken away as we speak, you're all sliding into eternal debt, and you are trying to tell me that America, which has always valued its Constitutional principles, is going to hell in a handbasket? Thanks for playing "let's boost Chretien". Schmuck.

Hmmm... Let's see... what pile of bullshit do I flush first? SOOO many to choose from. No free speech? Last time I checked, anyone was allowed to gather for protest and print whatever you like unless it's deliberately false or hate propaganda. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of expression(see below for a more thorough treatment). No property rights? Last I checked, people owned the lands they lived on so I really don't know where the hell you got that from. How about you check this out: Canadian Ownership and Control Determination Act. Ignorance, ignorance everywhere. But hey, you're an American, you're always right.

Eternal debt? Last I checked there was surplus numbering in the multi tens of billions of dollars. That's SURPLUS, as in they underestimated the budget and we have more money than we know what to do with. Our debt is probably 1/100th the USA's debt. And this is the 3rd year in a row IIRC. So what the hell are you talking about?

America has always valued it's Constitutional principles? So you're saying that everything we're seeing these days is constitutional? The DMCA? The big oil companies and their lobbying. The total lack of representation or even thought given to groups of lesser influence or means. uhhuh. I'm sure that's in the consitution somewhere. Maybe if you look hard enough you'll see something. Be sure to keep smoking whatever you're on now though.

And perhaps if you reread my post, you'll notice I did not even mention Chretien. Not once. Is Chretien Canada? No. Is George W. Bush the US? No. And I'm sure you're very thankful for that last point. So don't be such a condescending ass and open your eyes.

Where you don't even have the right to own your own computer, let alone a gun to defend yourself against your government?

Oh, I guess the thing I'm typing this with is a figment of my imagination. How silly of me not to notice that. Gun? All you have to do is register. 'Register?' you may say? Ya, not that big a fucking deal is it?

Well, when Canada gets the right to free speech (kiddie porn doesn't count), a decent economy, and respects the right to remain silent, the right to not be subjected to reverse-onus prosecution, etc. let me know, OK? Learn something, THEN post. Leave the Liberal propaganda at home.

Reverse-onus prosecution? I think you are a little misinformed my friend. I'll admit that I didn't know what that was at first. After a little research I came up with this.

Allow me to carefully extract something for you:

Professor William Schabas,Université du Québec à Montreal:The second point that came up in the testimony over the last few weeks dealt with the so-called reverse onus provision, namely, clause 53 of the draft legislation. In effect, paragraph 2 of clause 53 eliminates the notion of reasonable doubt in prosecutions under this bill. That means that in submitting defences at any point in these cases, an accused will not have to raise a reasonable doubt but will have to prove innocence. That is a far-reaching provision. I am not aware of many provisions that strong in our criminal law. To get such a provision past the Supreme Court, you would have to demonstrate that the prosecution absolutely needs it in order to obtain convictions and that it cannot enforce the legislation without it. What the courts have done -- and the Supreme Court did this in a recent case -- is read down this kind of provision by saying that maybe it was all right to impose a burden on an accused to raise a reasonable doubt but it was going too far to impose a burden on an accused to prove innocence. The distinction is an important one. The Supreme Court said that if all you are doing is allowing someone to raise a reasonable doubt, you are not violating the notion of proof of innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, and therefore, you are in accordance with the law. The Charter provisions that are raised by this are sections 11(d) and 7.

...

I do not know of any law in Canada that reverses the burden of proof to the extent that people are guilty until proven innocent. To make someone guilty until proven innocent would mean that the police could lay a charge against someone or the prosecution would present a charge and then, in the absence of any evidence, that person would have to prove his or her innocence. I do not know of any legislation that does that.

We often do allow, on the proof of certain facts, other facts to be presumed. We then require the defendant to reply to those facts and to rebut them. In some cases, the defendant rebuts them by simply raising a doubt; in other cases, the defendant must rebut or refute these presumptions by proving the opposite. For example, the Oakes case concerned possession for purposes of trafficking in narcotics. Upon proof that someone was in possession of a certain quantity of narcotics, he was then presumed to be in possession for the purpose of trafficking and had to get in the witness box to prove the opposite. This provision states that if someone can raise valid defences to these things -- exception, exemption, excuse or qualification then he has to prove them instead of merely raise a reasonable doubt about them.

Normally, the general rule is that if you want to raise a reasonable doubt defence, you raise that doubt by saying you have, for example, an exemption. For example, let us say an 11-year-old child is charged with an offence under the act.

The Chair: He cannot be charged because he is a young offender.

Mr. Schabas: Exactly. Theoretically, he could be charged because the Crown may think that the young person is actually aged 19 years old. That person could then raise that argument. He would have to prove it and not just raise a reasonable doubt. He would have to raise not only a doubt about it, which is the normal principle in criminal law, but also prove it to the satisfaction of the trier of fact.

Just so you don't spread any more misinformation. There are plenty more examples backing up this interpretation if you do a quick search on google. Perhaps you should follow your own advice and do a little research yourself.

Canada doesn't respect the right to remain silent? I'm guessing by that you're referring to people who have been arrested being presumed guilty because they would not talk to the police? If you can provide me with one example of such a case, I'd love to discuss it with you. Really.

Freedom of speech? Here we go again(Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms). See section 2, aptly titled Fundamental Freedoms. I'll copy and paste for you. Just for you though:
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

Well, big talker, let's see if you can back up your grandiose claims. I did my part for the moment. Was that enough? Are you informed now? Please let me know if I can exorcise any more of your ignorance. I'd be happy to oblige. It's my mission in life. Thank you and goodnight.

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Re:WOW!

[naasking]

This is the line which clearly shows you're an idiot.

I couldn't help but laugh when I read your comment. :-)

I'm not so easily satisfied with simply proving to myself he's an idiot though. If someone were to come along and see that I didn't respond to his 'witty rebuttal', they'd think he was right and yet more misinformation would spread. So I set the record quite straight. See here if you're interested. I'm quite proud of it myself. :-)

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Re:WOW!

[naasking]

OOPS!! lol. My bad. This was what I meant to link to. :-P

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Re:WOW!

[naasking]

WRONG. That was why the HDRC was given flack about it, and why they promised to scrap it.

Listen, until you can give me some evidence of this database, you're just spouting crap. Point me to an article of this and then we'll talk.

Ad hominem attacks don't make your points any better.

Nor do they do much for your arguments. Shall we review? "Canaduh... Thanks for playing let's boost Chretien. Shmuck." Once again, perhaps you should follow your own advice before opening your mouth.

Hm, unless you're protesting Suharto showing up. Then the PMO sends in riot squads. No punishments for those people anywhere: apparently the PMO can supercede the Charter.

Please. For every example of police abuse in Canada I could probably come up with 10 in the US. And if not 10, then ones that are ten-fold worse. WTO? Riots in LA? How does this prove anything?

Notwithstanding clause, Supreme Court "adjustments" to laws... Tried posting a sign in English in Quebec lately?

There is no "clause" in Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But as to interpretation, the same is true everywhere you go. Some situations are very complex and require interpretation of the law and so set a precedent. If you bothered to read what I wrote in my previous posting, you'd see an example of just such a situation(and if it's not there, it's at the link I pointed to).

As to the sign in Quebec, I've always thought it a ridiculus situation and I'm sure that the Supreme court would strike down the law saying that the french writing must be larger than the english, or that you cannot have english on a sign. Only english signs however(especially in Quebec), is not permitted since Canada is a bilingual country and so everyone should respect that. If you don't like it, go live somewhere else. I'll admit that they took the situation with the farmer in the middle of nowhere too far though. We'll see what happens.

America is predicted to have everything paid off within 20 years. Canada? About 1000.

Sources? Sorry, but you can't spout off numbers and statistics without citing any proof or even SOME evidence. Last I heard Canada had 15 plan to eliminate the deficit. I have heard no such thing from the US, but I don't claim to know much about their plans. Since I don't shoot my mouth off without any evidence, here's some for you. Note in the first paragraph(and I quote), "Until [1995], [Canada] had been a leader in deficits and rising government debt. Since then, it's been the G7's star example of how to wipe out deficits in a hurry and begin to reap the rewards of fiscal probity."

Next please?

What about either is unconstitutional?

You're right. My apologies. Neither is unconstitutional in the literal sense, but the DMCA does contradict numerous Fair Use precedants that the US courts have settled in the past. That hasn't been settled in court yet though, so we'll see. Lobbying, while not contradicting the letter of the constitution, goes against it's ideals. Favoritism to one groupbecause of influence and money was not the intent of the founding fathers. I'm sure you'll agree. Forgive me for being an idealist.

Western Canada wants a word with you about total lack of representation.

Western Canada does get representation, just not enough for them. That's an entirely different from no representation period.

Then tomorrow, they confiscate. They've already lied about it and been proven liars.

Sorry, how is this any different from the states. Does Kevin Mitnick ring a bell? Ordered not to touch another computer for life? What about Jon Johansen, the young norwegian who was arrested and extradited to the States to face US courts? Where the hell do they get the gall? And your talking about Canada having these problems?

And please, cite references. What lying? Politicians decieve all the time. I don't see how the US is an exception to this rule.

Bill C-68. Try reading it.

I will when I have more time. I've read some commentary and see what many think it is about. Have you read it yourself, or are you just regurgitating what others have said? You do realize that if there is anything in there that contradicts the Charter of Rights that the Supreme Court will strike it down. This will only happen if the law is first abused of course. But we can't say anything until it happens can we? Just like the Revers Onus example I supplied in my previous post, interpretation of the the law is often different than the letter.

As a little food for thought however, I'll leave you with this:

Although four of the five Alberta justices agreed that the law did intrude upon provincial powers, two of these four thought that Ottawa's claims were justified... The dissenting justices argued that the dangers of firearms paled in comparison with the danger of the federal government intruding into provincial jurisdiction. Alberta and three other provinces have already appealed this decision directly to the Canadian Supreme Court.

As you can see from this commentary, it seems that Bill-68 simply grants the Federal government the same powers that the Provincial government already has, those of regulation(of firearms in this case). The article goes on to state that under the constitution, the provinces have regulatory powers over private property. The provinces are not too happy however.

The article also states that everyone must cooperate with police(which they are required to do anyway), and that illustrates some of the consequences of not cooperating with "inpectors". If such a situation arises of remaining silent, entry and confiscation, I will eagerly await the day the bill reaches the Supreme Court. That will be the litmus test. If it survives intact, then you can start bitching.

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

slashdotted already

[tedtimmons]

if someone can send me the page and images (send them to mirror@perljam.net) I'll mirror it..

-ted

Re:slashdotted already

[tedtimmons]

Here's the mirror:

http://www.perljam.net/misc/tesla/people.ce.mediao ne.net/bert-hickman/frames/shrinkergallery.html

-ted

Link to older site (1 pic)

[JessupX]

Here you go. The site is already /.'ed http://people.ce.mediaone.net/bert-hickman/frames/ shrinker.html -Jessupx

Re:Even Better

[tomson]

Here it is

Re:Scientists are often too sceptical.

[JesseL]

Doh, nevermind you responded to the right one. Ignore my previous post.

Re:wow man

[JesseL]

Simple, the enourmous magnetic field produced by the coil induces a secondary current in the object to be crushed. The induced current produces its own magnetic field and this is what the primary field works against.

Re:Scientists are often too sceptical.

[JesseL]

You should note that that isn't the real Heidi Wall that you are responding to, note the spelling (Wall vs. Walll). You've just been trolled by one of those 19 year old boys ;-)

The density is the same

[Fencepost]

What happens is that the force applied is strong enough and even enough to push all the edges of the coin inward. Something has to give, so the rest of the coin starts to bulge.

-- fencepost

And why...

[ericdano]

and why would one want to use such a thing? Perhaps that is why we in California are having an energy shortage. People shrinking metals over at Intel!
--

Re:And why...

[ackthpt]

and why would one want to use such a thing?

To paraphrase some saying related to pricing...

If you have to ask then you shouldn't have one.

Clearly, it's the preferable alternative to going out in the California rain and putting quarters on train tracks.

--

Re:Error in thinking?

[Smitty825]

Yep, you're correct. It appears the the quarter grows thicker to compensate for the smaller diameter. Look at this photo to see for yourself. (note, this is on a mirror, so I don't know how long it will last)

Re:Error in thinking?

[Doctor Fishboy]

An error in their writing. They meant it's shrunk in one dimension, but the volume of the coin is still the same.

If I knew any better, I think I've been trolled...

Industrial-strength version

[Animats]

This sort of thing has been used industrially for decades. However, the industrial machines use a strong enough coil that the coil is unharmed by the process.

I once worked at Sperry Vickers' hydraulics R&D center, which used a magneformer to squeeze metal bearing rings onto steel valve bobbins. The working coil used for this was about 10 turns of half-inch square copper busbar. Worked fine; no sparks, no explosions, just a "thump" and the job was done.

related to askslashdot today

[bluelip]

some "asked slashdot" how to destroy data on a hard drive. I'm guessing this would do it.

Re:WOW!

[RobinH]

Your post really only shows how ignorant you are of economics. The Canadian and US dollars are not equal in value, nor should they be. You wouldn't expect a British Pound to be equal in value to a French Franc, right? There is no rule that says a Canadian Dollar should equal the value of an American Dollar. It's amazing that they are even this close to being equal.

Currencies rise and fall due to international trade and, to some extent, to the monetary policies of the governments involved. Normally if Canada's currency decreases in value next to the US Dollar, then it would be due to increased imports into Canada from the US. However, what really happened was that Canadians, who happen to have a higher rate of savings than Americans, have been investing their money heavily in the US stock markets. To do this, you have to sell Canadian Dollars on the open market, and buy US Dollars. Simple supply and demand tells you that this will make US Dollars more expensive to Canadians.

On the up side, Canadian exports have been looking ever more attractive to US buyers, which has been driving the Canadian economy for the last five or ten years. In essence, Canadians have been trading their goods for stock in US companies. In the future, which of the two items traded will be more apt to appreciate? There is the automobile made in Canada that was sold to the US, or the stock in a US company. I think that the Canadians got the better end of the deal, considering that most of those cars depreciate at around 25% per year, whilst stock prices tend to rise over the long run (economic slowdowns don't last forever).

If you'd like to continue learning about the real world and how it works, I would suggest any first year macroeconomics course, or even a little common sense.

Re:WOW! An even bigger moron than Jon Katz

[RobinH]

I think you are doing some two bit (NZ$) economics course and wanted to show off a little... Prolly from New York too...

I guess the fact that I'm Canadian didn't come across in all that. Besides, some of us realize that life is a bit more complicated than "a box of chocolates".

I think you are angry that you don't understand why things are the way they are, and you're looking for someone to blame. Probably from Kansas too...

Re:Other fabrication methods using EM fields

[Tuzanor]

What kind of voltages were used in these things??

Re:WOW!

[pcb]

Where you don't even have the right to own your own computer, let alone a gun to defend yourself against your government?

This is the line which clearly shows you're an idiot.

Why don't you grease yourself up and crawl right up the ass of some American your trying to impress. You obviously don't have an original idea in your head. All your points have been expressed over and over again ad nausium. It must be a "like father like son" thing. Try think for yourself. Every country is different. Get over it. You voted for Stockwell, I'm sure. You lost. Most people in this country disagree with you. If you don't like, leave. Or stay, it's a free country.

Is this the new scam ...

[Yue]

to make get big banner hits on fake news posted on /. ???

Re:related to ask slashdot today

[_underSCORE]

either that, or that data would be highly compressed.

Finally...

[dane23]

When do I get my SUPERPOWERS!

All alone...
Deserted lab at night...
Flick the switch...

MAGNEBOY!

I wouldn't want to have to tell them...

[lowe0]

Anyone that can crush a quarter using a magnetic field, well... I don't want to be the one who has to walk up to the door of the lab and tell them to stop...

Re:Other fabrication methods using EM fields

[egc4ever]

Where in Dayton was the firm?

Build your own!!!!

[Hyperkinetic]

Plans for this type of stuff can be found in the 'Amazing Devices' catalog at the back of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, and also in the book 'Phasers, Mazers, and Ion Ray Guns'. Their plans are crude but teach the basic principals. If you intend to play with this kind of stuff, KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!!! Or don't do it all all.

New Record!

[zaius]

This has got to be a new record: only 2 comments had been posted and the site was already trashed...

Then again, maybe it wasn't the /. effect... the Quarter Shrinker itself could have concievable trashed their server, since it's mostly made of metal...?

Re:WOW! An even bigger moron than Jon Katz

[SuperCujo]

Learn how to read fuckwit!

From original poster: They've figured out how to turn American money into Canadian money! Just shrink 40%, kill off 40% of its value.

He wasn't saying the Canadian dollar is equal to the US dollar. He was saying they have found a way to reduce the size and monetary value of the coin 40%, therefore making it worth the same as Canadian money. Also it was meant to be funny, which I found it to be.

I think you are doing some two bit (NZ$) economics course and wanted to show off a little... Prolly from New York too...

Re:WOW! An even bigger moron than Jon Katz

[SuperCujo]

Hehehe

I think he just proved that quite well, i do believe :)

wow man

[brad3378]

Sounds pretty cool,
But it got me to thinking...
This thing uses Magnetic fields to form the metal,

But Copper and Aluminum are non-Ferrus Metals!
Could somebody who knows a little bit about metalurgy comment on this!

Re:Ya. don't know the name of it, it exists in spa

[Xepherys2]

Ahm... isn't a gram a measure of mass, as are pounds? is this supposed to be per 100 CC/mL or are you just an idiot?

Error in thinking?

[InfinityWpi]

From the page: . A shrunken coin weighs exactly the same afterwards, and its density is also unchanged - it's merely the shape that's been altered.

Okay... the density and mass stay the same (This assumes gravity hasn't increased to keep weight the same for less mass). But the quarter has 'shrunk'. This implies less volume. Unless the quarter has grown thicker to compensate for the smaller diameter, how the hell can the coin's density not change?

Re:Error in thinking?

[stebalo]

You must read the accompanying text further. Not every dimension is shrinking. This utilizes Lenz's law which is the induction of a current in a conductor by an external magnetic field. Applying the magnetic field induces a 'rotating' or torroidal current in the coin which in turn creates a magnetic field that opposes the applied field.

Using this effect, the applied field is instantaneously so great that there is an inward compressing force on the coin, and an outward compressing force on the coils which blows them apart (there ar pictures to demonstrate this as well).

The coin is perfectly aligned within the working coil so that the compressive force is near perfectly radially symmetric, so the compression occurs bringing the edges of the coins in towards the center. There is only one coin with a side view (http://www.aquila.net/bert.hickman/frames/gallery /qball2.jpg) (sorry, don't know a lick of html. You can see how the thickness of the coin has increased to compensate for the imploding diameter. The coins actually become thicker, therefore volume is indeed the same for equal densities.

It's all quite elementary actually. We covered this in freshman honors physics.

side effects...

[crimsonic]

I wonder hoe this affects, for instance, the grain structure of metals.. does it produce a case-hardening type effect for instance? Because if it doesn't, wouldn't the metal become significantly weaker?

WOW.

[Mike the Mac Geek]

That is really all I have to say. Wow. That quarter into a tauroid is incredible. The level of detail kept is incredible. I am dumbfounded.

Now let's get a home version.

Re:WOW!

[SubtleNuance]

Does it come with a crooked faced puppet screaming on about how it's from the best country on Earth

No, in this case it comes with an ignorant, puritan, intolerant and myopic jackbooted Consumo-Ped(TM). Our records show you have not paid your Corprate tithe this quarter - you are therefore unlicensed to hear our Puppet(TM) talk about how Canada has the highest standard of living in the world... but Ill remind you this time for free. Violations in future will be punishable by lashings from ignorant McArthy-ites.

Re:Related articles (?)

[davejhiggins]

Erm, I don't care about karma or anything (I didn't expect the post to be modded up, and shit, you can mod this down if you like, I've got the stuff to burn, man), but I do worry about the mental state of a moderator who thought that a joke about being able to create arbitrarily small linux boxes by shrinking full-size ones using strong, pulsed magnetic fields was "Offtopic" in a thread about... ooh, strong pulsed magnetic fields.

Fine, you didn't think it was funny, but you actually thought it was so unrelated that you wanted to waste one of your precious 5 mod points criticising it? Wow.

Oh well, takes all sorts to make a slashdot :)

Dave

Re:Other fabrication methods using EM fields

[otter42]

Maybe 40kV. I really don't remember.

It's really not a matter of voltages, so much as resistance and inductance.

Inductance is the major killer as it slows your rise time. Everything was matched as best as possible to make the rapid spike.

In the end, the voltages were quite (relatively) low because the resistance was low.

But, man, you should have seen what we were using for switches. They were these mercury switches, don't remember the name. Sumpin' like "Nitron"

They were about the size of a gallon jug and helf full of mercury. Whenever the switches fired, it would vaporize a lot of mercury. We would have to wait for the mercury to condense and fall back to the bottom before we could fire again.

Re:Other fabrication methods using EM fields

[otter42]

Kettering, I believe.

They were a bunch of screwballs. I hope I'm not offending you, in case they work there, but it's the truth.

I got a little upset one day when a technician told me that "I wasn't qualified to make that sort of decision" when it was my primary focus in college.

Other fabrication methods using EM fields

[otter42]

I used to work at a company in Dayton, OH, that specialized in high current applications. They would drop 1.2 million amps through a coil, inducing a current in a copper ring contained within the coil. The interaction of the moving charges and the magnetic field produced a phenomenal compaction pressure. The whole process took 40 milliseconds.

One use of this metal forming machine was to compact planetary gear rings from powdered metal. Before sintering, the density at the inner surface was 6.76 g/cc. The density for this steel in a "fully solid" state was 6.77 g/cc. Compare this to 6.6 g/cc, about the best that traditional hydraulic press powdered metal forming forges could do. And it only took 40 milliseconds.

Wow.

There was so much force involved, we were constantly breaking coils, with very explosive effects. You could hear a clap of thunder in the other building across the street.

It's amazing how Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering can combine for some very frightening effects.

Oh, yeah, they also used to be a Star Wars research firm. They still have a working rail gun in the lab. :)

Shrinky Dinks

[leighklotz]

When I was at Walgreen's drug store last week I saw Ink Jet paper that does this. You print on it and cut it out and put it in the oven and it shrinks.

Links...

[cormani]

FYI the links on the Slashdot page are bad, they lead to 404's. ~cormani

Related research

[Dukhat]

In a related research lab, they have been grafting adamantium onto human bones to make the person's skeleton super strong.

Re:WOW!

[BluedemonX]

RE: Your post really only shows how ignorant you are of economics. The Canadian and US dollars are not equal in value, nor should they be.

No, you're totally right, I'm sorry. Though the Canadian dollar used to be worth more than the American one, Trudeau put that right, along with instituting law-by-judiciary, ensuring that the charter of Rights and Freedoms never mentions the right to own property, etc etc etc. The NEP was a stroke of economic brilliance.

RE: Currencies rise and fall due to international trade and, to some extent, to the monetary policies of the governments involved.

Well, Canada's just went down and stayed down. The word from the government was "well, deyr goan to go hup, da currency halweys go hup haffter hit go down."

RE: However, what really happened was that Canadians, who happen to have a higher rate of savings than Americans, have been investing their money heavily in the US stock markets.

Could it be because American companies make money, whereas Canadian ones are nepotistic puppets of the government, existing only to pay taxes? Just asking.

RE: On the up side, Canadian exports have been looking ever more attractive to US buyers,

Everyone loves a bankruptcy sale.

RE: which has been driving the Canadian economy for the last five or ten years.

It certainly wouldn't be competitiveness, or anything else. Thanks for pointing that out.

RE: If you'd like to continue learning about the real world and how it works, I would suggest any first year macroeconomics course, or even a little common sense.

Or try actually working and getting a job in that commie paradise. No thanks. You've got Ph.D's slinging coffee, whereas in the USA if you have a pulse and a clue, you can make something of yourself.

Re:WOW! An even bigger moron than Jon Katz

[BluedemonX]

Thanks for the support. I love it when so called "students" waffle on a bunch of gobshite unrelated to the task at hand, just to prove how "clever" they are, not realising that they've just proven that they're functionally illiterate.

Re:WOW!

[BluedemonX]

RE: And increasingly get your rights trampled on and your privacy invaded because the government has some pretty fucked up ideas of freedom.

That's RICH, considering that Canaduh has that big Big Brother database on every Canadian. "We dismantled that!" Yeah sure, this would of course be at the same time they got rid of the GST, right?

RE: Every country has their fuck ups, but I would honestly rather live in a country that's worse off economically because of some bonehead government than in a country whose governments' mission is leaning towards Big Brother under the pretense of security and order.

Canada has no free speech rights, no property rights, your right to self defense is being taken away as we speak, you're all sliding into eternal debt, and you are trying to tell me that America, which has always valued its Constitutional principles, is going to hell in a handbasket? Thanks for playing "let's boost Chretien". Schmuck.

RE: I'm not a 'yay Canada' type person,

Oh no, of course not.

RE: but every single time I hear some stupid Corporate or government move to further encroach on peoples' freedoms, you would not believe how glad I am that I live in Canada.

Where you don't even have the right to own your own computer, let alone a gun to defend yourself against your government?

RE: I'll trade money and economic success for freedom ANY day.

Well, when Canada gets the right to free speech (kiddie porn doesn't count), a decent economy, and respects the right to remain silent, the right to not be subjected to reverse-onus prosecution, etc. let me know, OK? Learn something, THEN post. Leave the Liberal propaganda at home.

Re:WOW!

[BluedemonX]

RE: Sorry, I think you're a little misinformed. The database you're referring to is simply social security current address.

WRONG. That was why the HDRC was given flack about it, and why they promised to scrap it.

RE:Hmmm... Let's see... what pile of bullshit do I flush first?

Ad hominem attacks don't make your points any better.

RE:SOOO many to choose from. No free speech? Last time I checked, anyone was allowed to gather for protest

Hm, unless you're protesting Suharto showing up. Then the PMO sends in riot squads. No punishments for those people anywhere: apparently the PMO can supercede the Charter. RE: Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of expression

Notwithstanding clause, Supreme Court "adjustments" to laws... Tried posting a sign in English in Quebec lately?

RE: Our debt is probably 1/100th the USA's debt. And this is the 3rd year in a row IIRC. So what the hell are you talking about?

America is predicted to have everything paid off within 20 years. Canada? About 1000.

RE:DMCA? The big oil companies and their lobbying.

What about either is unconstitutional?

RE: The total lack of representation or even thought given to groups of lesser influence or means. uhhuh.

Western Canada wants a word with you about total lack of representation.

RE:Oh, I guess the thing I'm typing this with is a figment of my imagination. How silly of me not to notice that. Gun? All you have to do is register.

Then tomorrow, they confiscate. They've already lied about it and been proven liars.

RE:Reverse-onus prosecution? I think you are a little misinformed my friend.

Bill C-68. Try reading it.

WOW!

[BluedemonX]

They've figured out how to turn American money into Canadian money! Just shrink 40%, kill off 40% of its value.

Does it come with a crooked faced puppet screaming on about how it's from the best country on Earth?

Re:related to ask slashdot today

[bluephone]

Oh my god. This is the first time I have TRULY laughed out loud at a comment all year so far. Excellent post.

It's times like this I wish I kept those moderator points an extra day.

--

Re:quarter shrinker

[beowulfshaeffer]

If you had taken a look at the various mirrors, you would know that the soda shrinker coil does not explode.

MODERATORS

[b1nd0x]

MODERATORS: all the AC posts saying it's an goatse.cx link are just AC posts...this is actually a damn useful link...look at the URLs, nothing too bad-looking about them...the first doesn't work actually but the second is a good mirror of the pictures...stop modding this down

What I find amazing...

[B00yah]

is the amount of detail that isn't lost in the process, it actually keeps the form of the object reasonably well..

Re:related to ask slashdot today

[Rudeboy777]

I think this algorithm would qualify as "lossy compression"!

quarter shrinker

[singe_69]

I would like to know if the "work coil" always explodes. If it does then this effect may not be "magnetic" at all but merely compression from the work coil exploding. If so, the same effect could probably be displayed with a SMALL amount of castable/formable explosive (i.e. a round shaped charge) as long as you could detonate on at least two sides simultaneously. If the work coil doesn't explode, or if it is shown not to be an explosive compression effect, then it would be interesting to see this used on steel or aluminum bar stock and then have it dissected to see if the "grain" of the metal has aligned to any extent (i.e. it was forged). If it did, THAT would lead to some intersting manufacturing possibilities.

Re:quarter shrinker

[Myrv]

No, it doesn't.

As mentioned in the article the pop can crusher-- using a slightly larger wire in the coil and lower energies--did not self destruct.

When Physics is Phun

[ackthpt]

Certainly, it becomes more dense. But remember, that's at 1G (give or take some flea-bitten percentage of error for where you are.)

Were it a gas or liquid, it would bounce back to its original density, i.e. Boyle's Law.

But since it retains that density as a solid I'm assuming the quarter isn't at its minimum volume, expanding some amount as the field collapses, to a sustainable volume for 1ATM/1G, assuming this is close to the most greatest density achievable. Repeat attempts would probably change the density very little. Soooo, like a compressed spring, would this quarter, given any amount of time (thousands, millions) in years eventually regain it's original density (under laboratory conditions of course :) ?

In any event, this is going on the list of toys I need from Santa Claus this year. Better get crackin on that list...

--

very cool, but

[lupa]

i can't help looking at those pictures and thinking of how much easier it would be to make jewelry using that tool ;)

seriously, the possible applications are pretty broad, and i like that aspect of this post.

Offtopic.

[Xuther]

I agree that there are a lot of childish people here, but you cannot prove that the majority of them are 19 year old idiots. I've seen people in their thirties still act like children on message boards. I would think that you could at least be civil in your post and not sink to the level of the people who bother you. I've defended posts from more that one woman on this forum. And I think the best recourse at this time is to mail the admins about moderation abuse. (0, Troll)? Please... She has a couple valid points.

Already been done...

[Exedore]

This is old school tech. I mean, c'mon, haven't you seen "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids"?

Speaking of that awful movie, does anyone remember the sequel, "Honey, I Blew Up the Kids"? Heh. I was driving by the local theatre a few years ago, when I saw a most unfortunate gaffe on their billboard. It seems they were showing the equally awful "3 Ninjas" at the same time, advertised on the line below, but they didn't have enough room to complete the title of HIBUTK... So the sign actually displayed the following:

HONEY I BLEW
3 NINJAS

I laughed so hard I almost wrecked the car

Yeah, Yeah... -1 offtopic... I know.

GATES: MOVE 'ALCHIN'.

Re:Already been done...

[will_code_for_beer]

That's classic.. When is a camera when you need one..

Re:This is not illegal!

[Microsift]

Actually, we are no longer on the gold-standard, and I doubt the metals in most coins is worth the face value of the coin(if it did the weight of coins would have to fluctuate with the fluctuations in the price of the metals(I'm not sure even Wonkavision could fix this)).

Finally an explanation

[Microsift]

So that's how Yuri Geller did that bending spoons trick...

Interesting side effect

[OlympicSponsor]

Not only can it shrink quarters, but it changes the "United States of America" to "Liberty".
--

Honey, I shrunk our money supply.

[Nick Driver]

Didn't even need any fancy-schmancy scientific gizmo to do it either! .... just blew it all on all this prematurely-obsolete computer hardware.

Cryptonomicon doorway

[Nick Driver]

Just have a big repetative pulse generator's output hooked up to the coils around your doorway like in Cryptonomicon so when the disks are carried thru the doorway, zzzzzzzzaaappppppp!!!

Felony.

[Irvu]

The beautiful irony of this is that science aside it is a federal offence to tamper with money. Under section 331 of the U.S. Criminal code which is availible at Cornell University here. the authors can be fined and/or sent to jail for up to 5 years. Anyone know how to conduct a citizen's arrst over the internet?

Trust in God, Tie your camel, and lie on your taxes. -- American Proverb

Irvu

Re:Scientists are often too sceptical.

[tewwetruggur]

well, really, the buckyballs themselves were not the really blazingly important bit - the fullerene tubes were the real profound part. Buckyballs are cool, but limited in what they can really do. Fullerene tubes can have a profound effect if we can figure out how to utilize them. I've honestly not done a fullerene research in about 5 years, so I don't know if anything has come about from the research.

I just felt that it was obvious from the quote that buckyballs were picked because it sounded cool. Perhaps I'm mistaken, in which, I apologise.

Re:Scientists are often too sceptical.

[tewwetruggur]

Publicity does not mean anything. It simply means that the media caught wind and thought it was cool.

The real dirt here wasn't buckyballs, as they have very limited usage. Fullerene tubes were the amazing part - the prospect they hold is impressive. Also, how much have we heard about buckyballs/fullerenes lately? Very little. Yeah, the research is still on going, but I've not seen anything profound come out of quite yet.

I apologize for posting too hastiliy - I'm in the middle of an experiment and only have a few minutes before running in and out of the lab.

Re:Scientists are often too sceptical.

[tewwetruggur]

I'll look for it. There had been some really wild predictions that the fullerenes might be able to superconduct, due to the way the carbon's are connected, but no one had been able to get it to happen. If it is still just a prediction, then there's still nothing new. I still like the fullerene tube transport concept - the ability to move really small things around with almost no friction. I've gotta find that article, it was cool.

Re:Scientists are often too sceptical.

[tewwetruggur]

what?? Buckyballs occur in nature. They've been readily available in fulgurites formed when lightning strikes the ground. C60 and C70 buckyballs are naturally occuring. We then figured out how to manufacture them. There was no amazing discovery there, just understanding what happens to carbon when it is temporarily turned to plasma.

If you're gonna troll, at least try to have a better grasp on what your rambling about. Don't give bad examples when there are chemists lurking about.

Re:fst

[ceesco]

Yeah, we were all levitating little Buddhas by the time junior high rolled around...

Corrected Link

[vossman77]

I don't know if anyone noticed or cared, but the link was wrong off the main page. http://people.ce.mediaone.net/bert-hickman/frames/ shrinker.html it should be a bert-hickman NOT bert.hickman

Would This Work on URANIUM ????

[justanyone]

I hate to bring this up, but compressing a metal object (like this device does to coinage) is exactly what the explosives in an ATOMIC BOMB do. What is the conductivity of Uranium? Likewise, what is conductivity of Plutonium??!?! EGADS. Testing this with a small sample of a transuranic element (and maybe a neutron source to boot) might be an exceedingly powerful (read: dangerous!) idea.

Also, what about compressing a uranium pellet target in a deliberately weak container surrounded by water? Heavy water would further reduce thermal neutron emissions if desired. Regardless, the weak container walls would collapse, the plasma would heat the water, make steam = power generation.

The pellet would fission and explode, what percentage of the uranium would be fizzled (split)? If this is a high percentage (versus moderated reactions using Boron), Can we have small nuclear reactors with NO MELTDOWN CAPABILITY since the reaction depends user input in the form of an electric charge to implode the target pellet... Makes you think. Of course, I'm a programmer not a nuclear engineer. Ideas anyone?

-- Kevin Rice
http://www.JustAnyone.com
kevin@ no.spam. Justanyone.com

Duh!

[AX.25]

I new I should have bought that neon sign transformer when I was at Fair Radio Sales in Lima, OH this week. They had some nice caps. too!

Out with the old, in with the new

[screwballicus]

This emerging technology could pose a threat to the current dominance of the "Put small metal items on the track in front of an oncoming train" technique of domestic metal-forming.

Re:Scientists are often too sceptical.

[Kara B.]

Heidi,
Here's the deal. Most slashdot users are 19 year old boys. They've learned how to use man, cat and ls, and they think it makes them an expert on everything. They can't help it. The only cure is age, and as boys don't mature as fast a we do, it'll take considerable time.
They also have issues with women. Don't expect to get treated like a human being here. These boys will greet you with hostility or desperate pleas for attention. They don't know how to do anything else.

--Kara

Re:fst

[BigASCIIFirstPostGuy]

Hey, thanks for the inspiration!!!!!

Who needs DoS attacks when we have the /. affect

[orionpi]

We really should notify people before we make posts about their websites, so they can get an extra T1 line for the next 4 hours.

Re:Error in thinking: FEELS heavier

[amasci]

I still have some shrunken quarters from Dale Travous "quartershrinker" from 1991. They do feel heavier. But they weigh the same, so it's psychological.

Yes, they're MUCH thicker than a normal quarter.

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

The ORIGINAL quartershrinker: D. Travous, 1991

[amasci]

I wonder if these guys came up with the device independantly? Or did they hear about Dale Travous device in Seattle back in 1991? It's mentioned here:

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

Dale Travous, a professional artist in Seattle, was messing with Boeing Surplus discharge caps around 1990/1991. I told him about an old article in Rev. Phy. Inst. where the authors were crushing soupcans with a 1-turn copper coil. Dale came up with a device which he called... um... "the quartershrinker." He used it for several months to shrink pennies, then found that quarters were slightly more impressive, and the name "quartershrinker" was the one that stuck.

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">

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Re:This is not illegal!

[Qender]

The reason distruction of dollar bills is illegal is because the government OWES you the money and wrote a note (minted dollar bills) saying that you owned that much of the money, they keep the actual gold. However coins arn't "notes of tender". They are the actual, valuable, material. You completly own them and are free to do what you want with them.

Re:The ORIGINAL quartershrinker: D. Travous, 1991

[BertHickman]

Bill, I actually heard about the technique from Tesla Coiler Richard Hull, who related the coin crusing work of Jim Goss, a EE at a university (don't remember which one). I lucked into a batch of the big GE caps some years later, and decided to build one myself. After building the unit, I also heard about the work done by Gary Hawkins, and subsequently discussed a number of aspects with him. So I'm at least the 3rd monkey if not the 100th... :^) In the final analysis, there are very few things that are truly new. BTW, the web site is back up on the air.