"everything is dangerous" is an unscientific and fallacious argument.
Because "it is safe" is the null hypothesis. You don't prove things safe. You prove the degree to which they are more dangerous as a probability function against the baseline.
And why do you need a baseline? Because. . . wait for it, wait for it - everything is dangerous.
On the other hand, though, if this is a small tribe and they only teach the language to other tribe members, and Microsoft intends to make a profit off using this language, then maybe it is some sort of "human rights" issue.
Is the language less than 150 years old?
Free speech is a human right. Copyright is a government grant that infringes on human rights.
We're not talking about heating your tea, or baking your potato on an exhaust header that you might notice gets a little hotter than your laptop.
I have blisters on my fingers.
Might this company be on to a revolutionary new way to generate electricity?
No, because the principles which they are using are not only already well known, devices are already available. All they are claiming is an engineering advance that reduces cost of manufacture, just as the engineering of batteries has advanced without any revolution. Their claimed efficiency is about that of a good battery as well. Nothing that innately makes my mind boggle. You put energy into it, you get about 20% of that back in another form. Not exactly an Earth shattering claim.
Those were all examples you raised to argue with me, and I don't really understand why.
I don't really understand why you don't understand that heating water is generating electricity. It's one of the conventional methods.
I would be very, very surprised if you get longer battery runtime by running your cooling fans off of the trivial amount of electricity generated by these types of devices.
I would certainly be surprised if it's all really worth the expense, yes. They'd have to be damned cheap. That has nothing to do with violating any laws of physics. I feel much the same way about solar cells and they don't violate any laws of physics either. One of these would just be a solar cell (although not a photovoltaic one) if you put it out in the Sun. Do you have a problem with the idea of a photovoltaic solar cell driving a cooling fan? I've got a stupid hat over there that does that (hey, don't blame me, my mother bought it on a cruise ship. Got my Canadian flag umbrella hat the same way, although that one was a promotional give away. Mom comes home with some weird shit).
I do not believe they are doing anything other than trying to drum up money from investors who understand physics poorly.
I do believe the suggestion that these things could be used to drive computer fans from CPU/battery waste heat is an attempt to drum up money , but that is not the real use for these things in the first place and occurs down on their own list.
The real use is to convert propane/firewood/kerosene/what have you into electricity without moving parts. The revolution is in the cost per unit, not the physics. I'd love to get ahold of some of these things and see what I can do with them. I could probably spend days finding all sorts of nifty little things to do.
Apparently you would call it that, yes. I would call it provoking thought toward self realization of the answer. Therein lies learning. I am not authority.
If you boil a pot of water, you dump a bunch of waste heat into the room, raising the air temperature.
Of course. It was the person to whom I was responding who claimed I would cool the room.
You can't cool a room by opening the door to your refrigerator.
Nor with my air conditioner if I don't vent heat outside. That heat can be used to do work, however.
There is no such thing as free energy. "waste" heat is called "waste" because it cannot be used to do useful work.
Therefore I cannot bake a potato on my exhaust manifold and If I hold a pinwheel over it it will not spin.
The Second Law does not say you cannot use heat to do work. It says that you cannot use the heat of a closed system in equilibrium to do work. A system cannot be improved to %100 efficiency. You are certainly allowed to improve the efficiency from 10% to 20%. You will get more work for same amount of energy.
Wasting heat is called waste heat because you are wasting it. Not because it cannot be used.
I can use the waste heat from my car exhaust to fill a tissue paper hot air ballon; and it will rise. It will not cost me an extra iota of fuel. I am not getting something for nothing. I am burning fuel. I am, however, raising the efficieny of my fuel use from 25% to 25.000001%. This is still considerably less than %100, so I am not trying to power my car with a fan on the front bumper.
Plants do not suck energy out of the Sun. They do not, however, violate the Second Law either.
And I am free to concentrate the heat from my CPU into a cup of tea rather then dispersing that heat into that air. It doesn't cost me any increased motion in as much as a single electron to do so. There is no violation of the Second Law. The CPU radiates into the tea, the tea radiates into the air, the air radiates into space, warming the entire universe slightly and becoming unavailable to do work.
The better function for this kind of technology, should it ever be refined to the point of being useful, is to do away with alternators.
That is at least barking up the right tree. I think the computer stuff is just fishing for a way to move a lot of units for profit, whether it makes any real sense to do so or not.
But imagine using the heat produced by a car's engine to power the electrical system of that car.
Imagine a flame tuned for optimum efficiency powering an electric motor. Cost, efficiency and power are questions. I'll play with this in 1/10th scale (and on my boat) if they ever become real. Nothing like getting your hands on shit and seeing what it really does and costs.
They're saying they can get useful amounts of work out of battery waste heat. I am skeptical.
If you allow me to change the boundry conditions you will find that I have made many, many posts not simply being skeptical that overall efficiency of the system is not increased, but actually decreases.
As a matter of fact, header temperatures typically increase when you add a turbocharger.
Certainly. You're burning more fuel per stroke. That's what you installed the turbocharger to do.
If you take Engine A, and optimize its fuel delivery for a given requirement (say, max peak power), and then add a turbocharger and tune it again for max peak power, you will consume more fuel to produce max power in the turbocharged engine.
Certainly. You're burning more fuel per stroke.
You will probably burn slightly more fuel (very, very slightly more fuel) to produce the normally aspirated engine's max peak power with the turbocharged engine. ..
Exactly. Whereas with a gear driven supercharger you will have to burn an extra 5 hp worth of fuel to stay even. That's why people put up with the viscisitudes of turbochargers in the first place. They're "free." Compared to superchargers.
That is indeed their claim. I am skeptical.
At this point I haven't a clue why. I heat my home with an open flame. When my heat is on and I hand wash clothes, I dry them over that flame. My gas bill does not go up when I do so. Is there something here you would dispute?
I hate to sound like a dick, but do you really think any of us are unaware that motors generate heat?
I'm afraid I have to answer that with a "Yes, I thought it was at least possible."
I guess to be fair you did get forced into replying to a person that apparently doubts that some amount of use can be gained from waste heat because it sounded like perpetual motion or something. ..
I do not always succeed, but at least I always try to answer at the same level I am given. This can often make me look like a dumbass; sometimes because I am the one actually not up to the level of the OP and I'm trying to exceed my grasp without realizing it for some reason or other (i.e. I am a dumbass), but often because I'm doing the "Golden Book" version (but it isn't polite to call the OP a dumbass).
And experience has taught me that there are any number of people here whose experience of technology extends only to software. A few of those don't even believe that electric motors are technology.
Well sure you do. The stoichiometry of the combustion doesn't change. You don't get more motive power out of a given volume of fuel.
I don't think you caught that in the above post I was comparing energy taken from the flow of exhaust gases to energy taken from the turning of the crankshaft.
I can bake potatoes on my exhaust header. When I do so the potato becomes part of the system. It does not decrease my fuel milage or require an increase in engine efficiency. It is the inefficiency of the engine that does the job. If, however, I drove a generator from the output shaft and used that to power a heating element in an electric oven it would require the burning of more fuel.
In the former it is not "free" energy. It came from the burning of my fuel, but it is energy that I would have otherwise thrown away without doing anything with it.
And that is what these people are talking about when they say their device could be used to turn a computer's cooling fans. It isn't something for nothing, but it is more something without anything more. It doesn't increase the efficiency of the CPU, but it does increase the efficiency of the system.
Yes, but with batteries you have to carry spares, while with instant charge devices you only have to . ..carry a fuel tank.
I distinctly said "magic" bullet. I was not disagreeing with OP, simply pointing out the particular illusion being sold. Nasty habit of mine explaining how the trick is done.
This is not to say that illusion cannot be without value, however, in the right context.
Sure, that's what the compressor is for. But turning the compressor is "magic" in the sense that it does not require the burning of any additional fuel to accomplish it. That which we simply call a "supercharger" (a turbocharger is just a turbine driven supercharger) is gear/belt driven by the engine and does require the burning of extra fuel to turn the compressor.
The problem with the car analogy in this case is that although gasoline can be burned to create heat you are not going to run that equation backwards in your car, so you cannot directly use the "waste" heat of the exhaust directly as engine fuel. If it were an electric car, however (yes, electric cars exhaust heat, just as your computer does. Enough heat to burn your fingers. Yes, I've determined this empirically. No, I don't want to talk about it). . .
The problem is that converting heat energy directly into electricity violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. ..What this device does is convert heat differentials into electricity. ..It makes electricity while heat flows through it.
You are confusing heat with temperature. Temperature is the energy content. Heat is its flow. This device converts temperature differentials into electricity; with heat.
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No! Noooo! Aaaugh! No! I'll get you the damned shrubbery, just make it stop!
KFG
My job is to keep the devs from having to go to ad-naseum meetings.
You should have some meetings with them about that.
KFG
"everything is dangerous" is an unscientific and fallacious argument.
Because "it is safe" is the null hypothesis. You don't prove things safe. You prove the degree to which they are more dangerous as a probability function against the baseline.
And why do you need a baseline? Because. . . wait for it, wait for it - everything is dangerous.
KFG
Usage:
"Hey, ja see the rupert about Spears in the Post the other day?"
And the mind implodes into a psychic black hole of noninformation about nothing from nowhere.
Welcome to the future. Here's your drool cup.
KFG
The Age of Information Dark Ages. We live at the dawn of an oxymoron. Yay us!
I can just see 'em sittin' around saying "We don't know WTF they were thinking, because we don't know WTF they were thinking"
You take F451, I'll take Time Enough For Love. We can pool camping gear.
KFG
No one knows. Driver issues. Blame the manufacturer.
KFG
On the other hand, though, if this is a small tribe and they only teach the language to other tribe members, and Microsoft intends to make a profit off using this language, then maybe it is some sort of "human rights" issue.
Is the language less than 150 years old?
Free speech is a human right. Copyright is a government grant that infringes on human rights.
KFG
The entire story in a nutshell:
"No comment."
Film next week.
Really, we need a new word, for news which isn't functional information, but just amusing/entertaining.
"Rupert."
KFG
We're not talking about heating your tea, or baking your potato on an exhaust header that you might notice gets a little hotter than your laptop.
I have blisters on my fingers.
Might this company be on to a revolutionary new way to generate electricity?
No, because the principles which they are using are not only already well known, devices are already available. All they are claiming is an engineering advance that reduces cost of manufacture, just as the engineering of batteries has advanced without any revolution. Their claimed efficiency is about that of a good battery as well. Nothing that innately makes my mind boggle. You put energy into it, you get about 20% of that back in another form. Not exactly an Earth shattering claim.
Those were all examples you raised to argue with me, and I don't really understand why.
I don't really understand why you don't understand that heating water is generating electricity. It's one of the conventional methods.
I would be very, very surprised if you get longer battery runtime by running your cooling fans off of the trivial amount of electricity generated by these types of devices.
I would certainly be surprised if it's all really worth the expense, yes. They'd have to be damned cheap. That has nothing to do with violating any laws of physics. I feel much the same way about solar cells and they don't violate any laws of physics either. One of these would just be a solar cell (although not a photovoltaic one) if you put it out in the Sun. Do you have a problem with the idea of a photovoltaic solar cell driving a cooling fan? I've got a stupid hat over there that does that (hey, don't blame me, my mother bought it on a cruise ship. Got my Canadian flag umbrella hat the same way, although that one was a promotional give away. Mom comes home with some weird shit).
I do not believe they are doing anything other than trying to drum up money from investors who understand physics poorly.
I do believe the suggestion that these things could be used to drive computer fans from CPU/battery waste heat is an attempt to drum up money , but that is not the real use for these things in the first place and occurs down on their own list.
The real use is to convert propane/firewood/kerosene/what have you into electricity without moving parts. The revolution is in the cost per unit, not the physics. I'd love to get ahold of some of these things and see what I can do with them. I could probably spend days finding all sorts of nifty little things to do.
But I ain't buyin' any until they're cheap.
KFG
Are you being intentionally dense?
Apparently you would call it that, yes. I would call it provoking thought toward self realization of the answer. Therein lies learning. I am not authority.
If you boil a pot of water, you dump a bunch of waste heat into the room, raising the air temperature.
Of course. It was the person to whom I was responding who claimed I would cool the room.
You can't cool a room by opening the door to your refrigerator.
Nor with my air conditioner if I don't vent heat outside. That heat can be used to do work, however.
There is no such thing as free energy. "waste" heat is called "waste" because it cannot be used to do useful work.
Therefore I cannot bake a potato on my exhaust manifold and If I hold a pinwheel over it it will not spin.
The Second Law does not say you cannot use heat to do work. It says that you cannot use the heat of a closed system in equilibrium to do work. A system cannot be improved to %100 efficiency. You are certainly allowed to improve the efficiency from 10% to 20%. You will get more work for same amount of energy.
Wasting heat is called waste heat because you are wasting it. Not because it cannot be used.
I can use the waste heat from my car exhaust to fill a tissue paper hot air ballon; and it will rise. It will not cost me an extra iota of fuel. I am not getting something for nothing. I am burning fuel. I am, however, raising the efficieny of my fuel use from 25% to 25.000001%. This is still considerably less than %100, so I am not trying to power my car with a fan on the front bumper.
Plants do not suck energy out of the Sun. They do not, however, violate the Second Law either.
And I am free to concentrate the heat from my CPU into a cup of tea rather then dispersing that heat into that air. It doesn't cost me any increased motion in as much as a single electron to do so. There is no violation of the Second Law. The CPU radiates into the tea, the tea radiates into the air, the air radiates into space, warming the entire universe slightly and becoming unavailable to do work.
But in the meantime I have a hot cup of tea.
KFG
I shall now dispose of my air condtitioner and cool the room by putting a pot up to boil.
Why is the temperature of the water in the pot not 200C? Why do I scald my hand if I hold it a foot above the pot?
KFG
No, I am not. In fact I've written here before about using evaporative cooling to chill water jugs in the desert.
Where does the heat from the cooled object go?
KFG
The better function for this kind of technology, should it ever be refined to the point of being useful, is to do away with alternators.
That is at least barking up the right tree. I think the computer stuff is just fishing for a way to move a lot of units for profit, whether it makes any real sense to do so or not.
But imagine using the heat produced by a car's engine to power the electrical system of that car.
Imagine a flame tuned for optimum efficiency powering an electric motor. Cost, efficiency and power are questions. I'll play with this in 1/10th scale (and on my boat) if they ever become real. Nothing like getting your hands on shit and seeing what it really does and costs.
KFG
They're saying they can get useful amounts of work out of battery waste heat. I am skeptical.
If you allow me to change the boundry conditions you will find that I have made many, many posts not simply being skeptical that overall efficiency of the system is not increased, but actually decreases.
But that's another story.
KFG
Also, constant temperature doesn't mean there's no heat flow, it means flow in = flow out (to put it simply).
Ya ever notice that space is a very effective heat sink?
KFG
As a matter of fact, header temperatures typically increase when you add a turbocharger.
.
Certainly. You're burning more fuel per stroke. That's what you installed the turbocharger to do.
If you take Engine A, and optimize its fuel delivery for a given requirement (say, max peak power), and then add a turbocharger and tune it again for max peak power, you will consume more fuel to produce max power in the turbocharged engine.
Certainly. You're burning more fuel per stroke.
You will probably burn slightly more fuel (very, very slightly more fuel) to produce the normally aspirated engine's max peak power with the turbocharged engine. .
Exactly. Whereas with a gear driven supercharger you will have to burn an extra 5 hp worth of fuel to stay even. That's why people put up with the viscisitudes of turbochargers in the first place. They're "free." Compared to superchargers.
That is indeed their claim. I am skeptical.
At this point I haven't a clue why. I heat my home with an open flame. When my heat is on and I hand wash clothes, I dry them over that flame. My gas bill does not go up when I do so. Is there something here you would dispute?
KFG
I hate to sound like a dick, but do you really think any of us are unaware that motors generate heat?
.
I'm afraid I have to answer that with a "Yes, I thought it was at least possible."
I guess to be fair you did get forced into replying to a person that apparently doubts that some amount of use can be gained from waste heat because it sounded like perpetual motion or something. .
I do not always succeed, but at least I always try to answer at the same level I am given. This can often make me look like a dumbass; sometimes because I am the one actually not up to the level of the OP and I'm trying to exceed my grasp without realizing it for some reason or other (i.e. I am a dumbass), but often because I'm doing the "Golden Book" version (but it isn't polite to call the OP a dumbass).
And experience has taught me that there are any number of people here whose experience of technology extends only to software. A few of those don't even believe that electric motors are technology.
KFG
Well sure you do. The stoichiometry of the combustion doesn't change. You don't get more motive power out of a given volume of fuel.
I don't think you caught that in the above post I was comparing energy taken from the flow of exhaust gases to energy taken from the turning of the crankshaft.
I can bake potatoes on my exhaust header. When I do so the potato becomes part of the system. It does not decrease my fuel milage or require an increase in engine efficiency. It is the inefficiency of the engine that does the job. If, however, I drove a generator from the output shaft and used that to power a heating element in an electric oven it would require the burning of more fuel.
In the former it is not "free" energy. It came from the burning of my fuel, but it is energy that I would have otherwise thrown away without doing anything with it.
And that is what these people are talking about when they say their device could be used to turn a computer's cooling fans. It isn't something for nothing, but it is more something without anything more. It doesn't increase the efficiency of the CPU, but it does increase the efficiency of the system.
KFG
Yeah, I thought of bringing that up in my above reply, but I'm not exactly a huge fan of the increased mechancial complexity of systems like that.
I've posted a number of times before that one of the chief advantages of the combustion/electric hybrid is the elimination of mechanical complexity.
KFG
Yes, but with batteries you have to carry spares, while with instant charge devices you only have to . . .carry a fuel tank.
I distinctly said "magic" bullet. I was not disagreeing with OP, simply pointing out the particular illusion being sold. Nasty habit of mine explaining how the trick is done.
This is not to say that illusion cannot be without value, however, in the right context.
KFG
Mea Culpa. Forty whacks to the back of the head with Sears & Salinger for me; an "I corrected KFG on something basic" button for you.
KFG
I'm sure you knew that. . .
Sure, that's what the compressor is for. But turning the compressor is "magic" in the sense that it does not require the burning of any additional fuel to accomplish it. That which we simply call a "supercharger" (a turbocharger is just a turbine driven supercharger) is gear/belt driven by the engine and does require the burning of extra fuel to turn the compressor.
The problem with the car analogy in this case is that although gasoline can be burned to create heat you are not going to run that equation backwards in your car, so you cannot directly use the "waste" heat of the exhaust directly as engine fuel. If it were an electric car, however (yes, electric cars exhaust heat, just as your computer does. Enough heat to burn your fingers. Yes, I've determined this empirically. No, I don't want to talk about it). . .
KFG
Ten karma points to whoever replies to this with the name of the song and the artist.
+ or - ?
KFG
The magic bullet for portable devices is the instant recharge.
KFG
The problem is that converting heat energy directly into electricity violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. . .What this device does is convert heat differentials into electricity. . .It makes electricity while heat flows through it.
You are confusing heat with temperature. Temperature is the energy content. Heat is its flow. This device converts temperature differentials into electricity; with heat.
KFG