Re: Proposal: How to deal with Spaceman

From: Androcles (androc1es_at_nospamblueyonder.co.uk)
Date: 07/14/04 

Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 20:28:46 GMT

"sal" <believer@nospam.org> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.07.14.18.53.59.486436@nospam.org...
| 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

Interesting comment. By that I mean the entire post, not just the reference
to the encephalicity of bacteria, although it did prompt me into researching
a little biology.
http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/bto/microbes/myxococc.htm
"The myxobacteria are an interesting family of gliding bacteria that produce
fruiting bodies in starvation conditions. They are common in animal dung..."

Androcles

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