The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

Hmm. Schrodinger may be mad if he is alive to see that. >_>

IIRC, he actually proposed that Cat scenario as an opposition to how Heisenberg uncertainty principle led some to believe in the existence of "overlapping quantum wave functions"--i.e. multiple realities, and how under the Copenhagen Interpretation the multiple realities exist until a "wave function collapse" due to observation.

(Notice words like "believe" and "interpretation" popping up? That means we've left the world of science, and entered into the funny realm of "philosophy of science".)

[Amele]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

funny perhaps, but no less critical to our understanding of how the universe works.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

Should have been more diplomatic; my apologies.

It just so frustrating not able to convey some relatively simple ideas because many people lack basic science knowledge, and misunderstand science to the point of using words like hope/wish/believe/don't believe in discussing the concepts involved... /sigh

Its not that I don't understand what this is about, but when numbers/equations start taking the place of actual words and good explanation, that's when I stop listening. Some people need a good analogy or interesting example to keep it going.

[Murphie]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

Its not that I don't understand what this is about, but when numbers/equations start taking the place of actual words and good explanation, that's when I stop listening. Some people need a good analogy or interesting example to keep it going.

For reals.

[Taskmage]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

Hmm. Schrodinger may be mad if he is alive to see that. >_>
IIRC, he actually proposed that Cat scenario as an opposition to how Heisenberg uncertainty principle led some to believe in the existence of "overlapping quantum wave functions"--i.e. multiple realities, and how under the Copenhagen Interpretation the multiple realities exist until a "wave function collapse" due to observation.
(Notice words like "believe" and "interpretation" popping up? That means we've left the world of science, and entered into the funny realm of "philosophy of science".)

hehe ^^ The actual principle has nothing to do with the topic at hand, somebody just mentioned it in another thread and I thought it'd be fun if the cat in the box was a giant mecha. :3

[eticket109]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

Hmm. Schrodinger may be mad if he is alive to see that. >_>

[Feba]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

giant mecha. :3

And now for something completely different.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

[DieselBoy09]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

Its still interesting to find a new chemical property/ reaction that we didn't know happened before.

[Raydeus]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

What kinda funny is that dismissing something potentially promising without having all the data and just slam your opinion on others based solely on what you think it's going on (rather than actually looking at the experiment itself) is as stupid as believing everything you see on TV.


But, even more amazing is the fact that not only BBQ got the thread back on the right track, but he actually used humor to do so.


PS > lolRDM

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

What kinda funny is that dismissing something potentially promising without having all the data and just slam your opinion on others based solely on what you think it's going on (rather than actually looking at the experiment itself) is as stupid as believing everything you see on TV.

We know the inputs to the system, the claimed output, and we know what the system is composed of; tracking the energy involved in this case is easy enough even without math. Making educated conjunctures is reasonable.

If someone came along and state they have a computer program which can simulate the entire earth down to the last atom, and compute in 10 hours an accurate prediction what the world would be like in 10 years, I'd call him a lier to his face. No need to know what kind of computer he has or how he'd written that program. Just understand a little bit about the computation his claim implies already rule out the possibility of his idea can actually work.

You don't need a PhD in Computer Science to know such a simulation isn't remotely possible given the computing technology we have. And, you don't need PhD in thermodynamics and whatever to figure out you can't get energy out of salt water like that.

* * *

What is really stupid is an education system which make mice out of men, and indoctrinate them to claim total ignorance than apply some of the simplest and most well known principles of science to get a better understanding of what's true and what's false.

Want to know what's "promising" in energy? Check out Amele's post on electric cars.

[Raydeus]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

There's a difference between healthy skepticism and being so tightly close minded that you can't even imagine something happening unless you approve it. In your example there could be a chance of it happening even if it's so infinitely unlikely. You can never be 100% certain unless you look at it yourself.

But the problem here isn't that you are close minded, the problem is that you try to push your view onto others as if you really had all the information in the world about it, which you don't.

Wanna learn how to be skeptical about something while respecting others people's points of view and the posibilities you might have not considered? Just go back and read Taskmage's posts, and stop preaching to others as if you really knew everything that happens in this world.

[Amele]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

ifritnoitazura is basically correct about this. (is there a better way to abbrev. that?)

it's a failing of our science education in this country that news reports were run like this (now that I've actually seen it).

this isn't going to be useful in a standard ICE because you can't use it to drive compression explosion (it's not pressurized and the ignition isn't point-contained) if you had a leak in your radio emitter you'd light off your reservoir. so you'd need a new model.

that new model (unlike electric dynamos) hasn't been developed yet; the development costs are unnecessary because better systems already work.

on top of -all- of that, all he's demonstrated here is a way to turn electrical grid power into thermal energy and radiation (mostly in the visible spectrum) via a slightly modified electrolysis. - and a fuel cell economy (either hydrogen or electric) would preclude the need for this sort of contraption to be mobile; since you can do classical hydrogen electrolysis in your home using solar energy (or electric grid power when it's cloudy) and store that in a fuel cell in your garage, to be pumped into the fuel cell in your car.

an electric economy takes out even that step, you simply plug your car in for 3 hours to refill your "tank".

it's like someone just showed all of us a steam driven locomotive, and the majority of us want to know why we don't immediately replace our diesel train system with it, when high-speed maglev already exists.

[Feba]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

You know what, fuck seawater. Let's all power our cars on urine.

[Malacite]

Re: The possibility of running your car on water. Well, saltwater.

8-bit ftw