Cold fusion gets cold shoulder from many scientists

S.F. Chronicle/WSJ ^ | 9/5/2003 | Sharon Begley

[Old Professer]

Your idea would only hold water if the weight of the anchor was sufficient to sink the boat.

[justlurking]

Your idea would only hold water if the weight of the anchor was sufficient to sink the boat.

You are going to have to explain your position better than that.

Consider three separate situations:

1. The boat is in the water, with the anchor sitting aside on the ground. We mark the water level on the boat, and the water level on the structure containing the water. For discussion, let's say the boat weighs 200 lbs. That means it would displace 3.2037466 cubic feet of water. (Water weighs 62.4269107 lbs/cubic foot)

2. We put the anchor in the boat. The anchor weighs 50 lbs, so the boat effectively weighs 250 lbs, and now displaces 4.0046832 cubic feet of water.

3. We throw the anchor into the water. The boat returns to its original state, displacing 3.2037466 cubic feet of water. If we presume the anchor is made of lead, it would displace 0.0706215 cubic feet of water (lead weighs 708 lbs per cubic foot). Therefore, the total displacement of water would be 3.2037466 + 0.0706215 = 3.2743681 cubic feet.

The 3.2743681 cubic feet displacement in #3 is less than the 4.0046832 cubic feet displacement in #2. Therefore, the water level would be lower in #3.

This would occur for any anchor with a specific gravity greater than 1, which is a necessary quality for an anchor -- otherwise it would float.

[Old Professer]

Let's say we have a boat made of lead which displaces enough water with its hull to float while carrying an anchor also made of lead; now throw the anchor overboard.

[justlurking]

Let's say we have a boat made of lead which displaces enough water with its hull to float while carrying an anchor also made of lead; now throw the anchor overboard.

The answer is still the same. As long as the boat is floating, it displaces an amount of water that equals the weight of the boat.

Now, forget the anchor. Cut a hole in the bottom of the boat and sink it. Does the water level in the pool rise or lower?

It lowers, because the sunken boat now displaces its volume, presuming there are no trapped air bubbles -- for the same reason that it lowered if an anchor was thrown overboard.

Since the specific gravity of lead is 11.35, it will displace 1/11.35th the volume that the boat originally displaced while it was floating.

Still don't believe me? Ask a mechanical engineer. I did, and he agreed with me.

[dennisw]

I am always in favor of a better funded and more honest appraisal of cold fusion. I think there's something to it and always have. Though my sneaking suspicion is that it takes a mass of expensive equipment to generate a small amount of cold fusion energy. IOW $100,000 dollars to generate $5.00 worth of energy that modern science cannot account for.

[dljordan]

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Ridicule is a great tool to get people to dimiss something out of hand. I don't know if cold fusion is possible but I won't close my mind to it.

[Waldozer]

Physics Nobelist Julian Schwinger in a lecture on cold fusion shortly before his death invoked a mechanism along the lines of the Mossbauer Effect, which refers to the resonant and recoil free emission and absorption of gamma radiation by atoms bound in a solid. The energy transfer is into phonons. Schwinger pleaded that before rejecting the evidence on theoretical grounds, his colleagues should consider that the Rutherford ratio, which you used to reach your neutron flux calculation, is known to be valid in plasma, but may not be valid in solid state nuclear reactions. Ask Peter Hegelstein or one of the Chubbs.

As I said, this is not a forum for deciding experimental validity. It is a forum for pointing out that our government officials are responsible for correcting their mistakes.

Ridicule does serve some useful social functions, but only if based in knowledge.