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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Water power
  • Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 11:04:13 EST




> Okay, well, sorry...didn't mean to start anything.

That wasn't meant as a discouragement and heaven forbid a suggestion of
censoring, only a warning of storm clouds.

People want desperately to believe that there is a magic bullet to cure all
the energy problems (besides not using it). I find they will suspend all
reason and knowledge to reach for it.

If we found an article that a scientist had bred a special type of wheat that
all you had to do was eat two slices of the bread from it a week and you'd
have all the nourishment and nutrition you'd need, someone would be very
quick
to point out that breed as his might, a scientist can't put more energy into
four ounces of starch and protein than is there. If he did, he would not be
viewed as a clever plant breeder, he'd win the Nobel prize in physics for
proving
that all previously existing knowledge about the energy contained in
foodstuffs had been wrong.

Likewise our erstwhile Scottish inventors would not be getting a 15,000 pound
grant to develop their generator, they'd be Nobel prize winners of all time
for changing our understanding of physics forever. Now, in our imperfect
knowledge, the weight and force of falling water has so much energy. Period.
If
existing generators are operating at 33% efficiency and you come up with a
way
(again defying physics) and get the generator to operate at 100% efficiency,
you still ONLY get three times the energy out. There's a wall there, and
until
our understaning of physics changes, the wall remains.

The inventors' work is at best only a slight improvement over existing
technology, not the revolutionary breakthrough that the article implies.
That can
be determined by simply running the inventors' figures through the formulas
which even they don't claim to have debunked.






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