Slashdot Mirror
Sandia's Smart Heat Pipe
An anonymous reader writes "Science Blog is reporting a story from Sandia National Laboratory, best known for its nuclear weapons research. "Evacuating heat is one of the great problems facing engineers as they design faster laptops by downsizing circuit sizes and stacking chips one above the other. The heat from more circuits and chips increase the likelihood of circuit failures as well as overly heated laps. "Space, military, and consumer applications, are all bumping up against a thermal barrier," says Sandia researcher Mike Rightley, whose newly patented "smart" heat pipe seems to solve the problem. The simple, self-powered mechanism transfers heat to the side edge of the computer, where air fins or a tiny fan can dissipate the unwanted energy into air."
The heating was gradual. There's a pretty well known fact that if you put a frog in cool water, then gradually heat it, it will never jump out but be boiled alive. To a lesser extent our own sensory systems work the same; they react to differentials rather than absolute values.
In this case, the machine probably got warm, but not so quickly nor so much that it ever became really uncomfortable (and if your attention is fixed on your work, the threshold is even higher). Also, to some extent you can exchange temperature for time in getting an equivalent burn; ie. while something needs to be scalding hot to burn you with just a touch, it can be considerably cooler if it's in contact for a long period.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I wonder what else designers could do with that extra heat energy. If these heat pipes turn methanol into vapor, carry it to heat fans, then recondense it (due to heat loss) back into liquid.... isn't this process quite similar to how turbines work with steam? I wonder how much power could be gleaned from the extra heat. Maybe someone could design a tiny electrical generator. I doubt you could run anything significant off the power output, but I'm sure there could be some use for it, rather than simply letting that extra energy go to waste.