Re: Proposal: How to deal with Spaceman

From: sal (believer_at_nospam.org)
Date: 07/14/04 

Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 14:54:03 -0400

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 11:17:21 -0700, Myxococcus xanthus wrote:

> sal <believer@nospam.org> wrote in message
> news:<pan.2004.07.14.01.46.07.380787@nospam.org>...
>> On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 21:55:18 +0000, Spaceman wrote:
>
>> > If you take a propeller,
>> > no matter what side (north/south/east/west) (not front or back) (same
>> > face) you force liquid upon it it will always only spin one way.
>>
>> Oh, like an anemometer, right?
>>
>> Not sure what blade shapes will actually work -- obviously
>> cups-on-sticks will do it, since it's demonstrated every time the wind
>> blows. You're saying a regular turbine does it, too -- that's less
>> obvious, at least to me.
>
> Again, you are writing about REDESIGNS to James's engine design as
> presented on his web page.

Oh, changing the rotor blade shape requires a total redesign?

I didn't realize that.

> I, on the other hand, am discussing James's design AS PRESENTED ON JAMES'S
> WEB PAGE.

Well, excuse me for stepping outside your debating parameters and
speculating about how the design might actually work.

The exact images on the website, yes indeed. The photograph of the rotor,
yes, of course.

Oh, but I seem to be mistaken -- it's not a photograph, is it?

But I'm sure the blades as shown are exactly as they would appear in a
final working model, though. And that's really your point, it seems.
After all, it's so easy for an amateur to draw things _exactly_ as they
should be built, isn't it? So I'm sure James did that here.

Right?

Or perhaps not....

James says he's building one. Perhaps he'd be willing to post a photo of
the rotor someplace. Then we could see whether the flat-bladed totally
symmetric thing on his website is dead-on precisely accurate (as it does
NOT state on the web page, as far as I can see) or is just an
approximation.

> The turbine on James's web page is specifically NOT an anemometer
> design. (Elsewhere in this thread I discuss anemometers and the problem
> of blowby.)

Yes, of course, once he'd explained how it was supposed to work, you
dropped your claim that it couldn't work at all and talked about
anemometers.

Of course, I saw that.

> James's turbine, viewed from the SIDE, exhibits twofold rotational
> symmetry. What does that imply to you?

That the drawing isn't very accurate.

What's it imply to you?

> A great deal has been written on anemometers, and more generally, on
> vertical axis turbines. Google "vertical axis wind turbine." Vertical
> axis turbines are quite inefficient, but nevertheless useful when
> efficiency is not a primary concern.

I believe your original claim was that it couldn't work at all.

In any case, I thought the design was interesting, whether or not it could
be made efficient enough to be of any use. Heck, most of the actual
"physics time" in sci.physics.relativity is spent discussing gedanken
experiments that will never be carried out, and which are often just
flat-out impossible. Since when does something have to be _practical_
to be interesting?

> James's turbine design doesn't work. Other turbine designs may work
> (very inefficiently), but other turbine designs are NOT James's design.

Ah, yes, his "turbine design" -- the single picture, which may or may not
be to scale (website doesn't say) and may or may not properly represent
the blade shapes (website doesn't say).

Again, excuse me for failing to simply dismiss it out of hand, as you
apparently wished.

> Myxococcus xanthus

Interesting bacterium. 

-- 
I can be contacted through http://www.physicsinsights.org

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