6 ms·

If you want it to be taken seriously, why do you - and Popular Mechanics - describe it in such woowoo terms? "using radio wave resonance to burn saltwater." ;

If you want it to be taken seriously, why do you - and Popular Mechanics - describe it in such woowoo terms? "using radio wave resonance to burn saltwater." ; "had discovered a seemingly impossible phenomenon: a way to burn salt water by exposing it to radio waves." - The salt water isn't burning, burning Hydrogen isn't seemingly impossible, separating Hydrogen from water isn't seemingly impossible. The description is nothing like what's actually happening. the effect can be achieved with a much lower energy catalyst: radio waves are present in everything from microwaves to televisions. - ??? is this trying to imply you can mine radio waves from a television and use them for this? What a bizarre sentence. "Nobody is claiming that you get more energy out than you put in," he says.; They even envision a future in which a vehicle can run off its radio's frequency waves. .. is that not getting more out than you put in? A vehicle which generates radio waves, uses them to split seawater, burns the gas, uses that power to generate the radio waves, and also motion? Then the burnt H and O turn into ash (H2O) and drip back into the "fuel" tank to be burned again? That's not water as a "fuel", that's an overunity machine, perpetual motion. If they're not claiming you get more energy out than you put in, stop claiming that. In the video the inventor is talking about how their Sterling Engine "could be a car engine if you wanted" but if you're putting in mains electric power to this, you'd be better off connecting that to an electric motor and saying "that could be a car engine" - it couldn't, it's mains electric powered. This is a neat electrolysis without electrodes idea, but why(??) is it being presented as the woowoo idea "water powered car"?

dr_dshiv 7y ago
I presented it in woo woo terms to make my point. Popular Mechanics put it in woo woo terms to sell copies. The point here is: holy crap, radio waves can provide electrodeless water splitting and physicists don't care because it sounds like woo. Of course the public and the press will see salt water burning and freak out -- but that excitement shouldn't be a reason for physicists to ignore the phenomena.
- yetihehe 7y ago
  > radio waves can provide electrodeless water splitting and physicists don't care Probably they don't care, because as soon as that water is split, it is ignited and burned again, so you can't have any hydrogen, you have just changed some rf energy into heat, losing some energy into heat in rf setup... It's easier to just heat something directly with elecrticity. Now if someone invented a way for oxygen and hydrogen split that way to remain split for more than milliseconds, physicists would be more interested.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    Sounds like a good research question for physicists :)
    - ChrisLomont 7y ago
      I suspect physicists look at it for a moment and realize: Converting electricity into radio waves with energy losses, sent through the air with energy losses, to bombard molecules, which then resonate with the waves to use electromagnetic forces to split molecules, will always be less efficient than simply using that original electric current to do the same thing directly with less energy loss. This will always be energy inferior to simple electrolysis.
      - dr_dshiv 7y ago
        That may be; I don't know the proof. There may be combined approaches, too, with potential for lowest system cost. Here is a patent from an Israeli company on this topic, granted just this year: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2911976A4/it https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2911976A4/it
        ChrisLomont 7y ago
        >There may be combined approaches, too, with potential for lowest system cost. This simply violates basic physics. Turning electricity into radio waves only to turn them back into electricity is always going to lose energy. This is fundamental. In a simplistic undergrad setting the absolute best you could hope for is zero loss, but there is no gain. In the real world with real materials there will be loss. >Here is a patent from an Israeli company on this topic, Patents are granted on all sorts of nonsense. Having a patent is not proof of usefulness, or efficiency, or marketability, or even if it is better than any other competitor. A patent means the material seemed novel enough to the patent inspector that after repeated rounds of claim modifications and paperwork he wan convinced the claimed item is new. Usually patents are on a small piece of a technology, since it, like this one, builds on a lot of pieces coming before it (hence all the other patents cited).

dr_dshiv 7y ago

I presented it in woo woo terms to make my point. Popular Mechanics put it in woo woo terms to sell copies. The point here is: holy crap, radio waves can provide electrodeless water splitting and physicists don't care because it sounds like woo. Of course the public and the press will see salt water burning and freak out -- but that excitement shouldn't be a reason for physicists to ignore the phenomena.

yetihehe 7y ago
> radio waves can provide electrodeless water splitting and physicists don't care Probably they don't care, because as soon as that water is split, it is ignited and burned again, so you can't have any hydrogen, you have just changed some rf energy into heat, losing some energy into heat in rf setup... It's easier to just heat something directly with elecrticity. Now if someone invented a way for oxygen and hydrogen split that way to remain split for more than milliseconds, physicists would be more interested.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  Sounds like a good research question for physicists :)
  - ChrisLomont 7y ago
    I suspect physicists look at it for a moment and realize: Converting electricity into radio waves with energy losses, sent through the air with energy losses, to bombard molecules, which then resonate with the waves to use electromagnetic forces to split molecules, will always be less efficient than simply using that original electric current to do the same thing directly with less energy loss. This will always be energy inferior to simple electrolysis.
    - dr_dshiv 7y ago
      That may be; I don't know the proof. There may be combined approaches, too, with potential for lowest system cost. Here is a patent from an Israeli company on this topic, granted just this year: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2911976A4/it https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2911976A4/it
      - ChrisLomont 7y ago
        >There may be combined approaches, too, with potential for lowest system cost. This simply violates basic physics. Turning electricity into radio waves only to turn them back into electricity is always going to lose energy. This is fundamental. In a simplistic undergrad setting the absolute best you could hope for is zero loss, but there is no gain. In the real world with real materials there will be loss. >Here is a patent from an Israeli company on this topic, Patents are granted on all sorts of nonsense. Having a patent is not proof of usefulness, or efficiency, or marketability, or even if it is better than any other competitor. A patent means the material seemed novel enough to the patent inspector that after repeated rounds of claim modifications and paperwork he wan convinced the claimed item is new. Usually patents are on a small piece of a technology, since it, like this one, builds on a lot of pieces coming before it (hence all the other patents cited).