Odds and ends

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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:00 pm

Thoughts on volcanoes as jam jars or exhibiting jam-jar-like activity? (Best posted here rather than cluttering other topics)

"There are many wonderful experiences I can think of, it is very hard to choose. Each volcano I have visited has its own set of special memories. I suppose the winner has to be my very first visit to an eruption at Kilauea. It was my first week on the job as a very green young kid at HVO (Hawaiian Volcano Observatory). The East Rift eruption was still in the single digit episodes, and Pu`u `O`o was only 20 m tall, barely a blip on the rift zone. Low, intermittent lava fountains huffing and chuffing above us, I followed Ed Wolfe out over pahoehoe from Pu`u `O`o, still glowing in the cracks below my feet. I could not believe I was there, honored to have the opportunity, and in awe of everything I saw."
"What was the strangest experience you ever had on a volcano? Has anything weird ever happen to you?"
"Working on the west flank of Kilauea, I used to spend nights camping alone at a place called Pepeiau at the edge of the Hilina grasslands overlooking the south flank. On still evenings, just after sunset, the profile of Mauna Loa still visible in the western sky, I would sometimes hear a deep, faint “hum.” The sound would continue for hours and then slowly fade away. I could not explain where it came from – it appeared to have no directionality and it did not vary in pitch as it might if it were related to wind or surf or distant machinery or traffic. I did not hear it while camping on other parts of the volcano’s west or south flank. On two occasions I had company who could verify the hum. I still can’t explain the Pepeiau hum."
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:X4s ... clnk&gl=us

"Then an amazing chuffing noise announced the start of the show. "
http://www.glnow.com/photos/Costa_rica/ ... olcano.htm

"In June 1988 the active vent was higher and larger than in August '86, with small-scale vulcanian activity sending up roiling ashy clouds, and making "chuffing" noises. The cone was approachable, but not with total safety; in this photo, the person descending from the rim of the cone is doing so in haste, fleeing the rain of ash and hot rocks from an unexpectly strong "chuff".
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:rc- ... clnk&gl=us

"Back in 1959, Kilauea Iki was filled with a lake of undulating molten lava more than 400 feet deep; eventually it drained away into the vent called Pu'u Pua'i, leaving a "bathtub ring" of lava around the crater walls. In the late 1960s, I found the crater floor still a scene from Hades -- dark, hot underfoot, ominous, filled with steam chuffing out of a latticework of cracks."
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:-0M ... clnk&gl=us
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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Sat Jul 18, 2009 12:45 am

STIRLING ENGINE TAKING ONE APART
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP6UH4Vuxsc
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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Sat Jul 18, 2009 1:04 am

Towards a wood fueled pulsejet. ha
"Many years ago when I was a young forester working in Western Montana for
the USFS we would often use hollow trees for our lunch fires, especially on
those days when the temperature was struggling to get above 0 degrees. In most
cases the trees were just hollowed out but sometimes nearly solid pitch
branch stubs filled the center of the tree like nails on a board. Most trees just
burned hot and gave us a nice lunch fire but I can remember a particularly
tall western larch that was broken off at about 120 feet....we didn't know
until the fire was set that the entire length of the tree was hollow and the
black smoke from the pitch was so thick that the ranger station forty miles away
got calls about a plane crash....the flames shot about another 50 feet from
the top of the tree and the roar was louder than any single tree fire I can
ever remember. My crew boss almost got fired for starting the tree because
the location on the mountain on a crystal clear Montana winter day made the
smoke visible for almost 100 miles."
"It was a crystal blue winter day with a high temperature of about 6 degrees
at noon. There wasn't a whisper of wind that day and when the pitch on the
inside of the hollow tree ignited the fire roared like a jet engine shooting a
plume of thick black smoke several hundred feet into the air....that is why
the crew boss got in trouble!!"
http://www.nativetreesociety.org/thread ... imneys.htm
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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Sat Jul 18, 2009 4:16 am

China has 100 million Electric Bikes
"The device is an electric motor with a nano-crystalline core. It is the size of a casserole dish, and more powerful than a 600cc motorcycle engine. Okonsky’s company, KLD Energy, is supplying the motor to the Vietnamese motorbike company Sufat and by the end of the year he expects to startle Hanoi with something it has never seen before — a clean, quiet electric scooter that can accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour in under 10 seconds."
"The main difference, though, is that KLD’s electric motors are simply much stronger than those on traditional electric scooters, because they use a different technology. Electric motors work by alternating the polarity of several magnets back and forth, causing a rotor to spin. Most materials release heat each time their polarity shifts, and if the frequency of alternation goes too high, the motor will overheat."
"But the nano-crystalline material at the core of a KLD motor scarcely heats up when its polarity shifts. That means the motor can alternate much faster, generating more power. The KLD motor is so strong and so small that it doesn’t need a drivetrain, or gears. It is simply built into the motorbike’s rear wheel, which it turns directly, like pedaling a unicycle. Eliminating the drivetrain saves energy and improves reliability — there are fewer parts to break down."
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/07/china- ... bikes.html

Illustrative video if you scroll down the page.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/viet ... -all-texas

"The weakness in any electric powered vehicle inevitably is the energy source, not the motor. I recently read "Energy Victory" which makes a compelling argument for Ethanol as a source of fuel. The reasons why: 1) Most combustion engines can be converted to Ethanol easily 2) Most Biomass can be made into ethanol 3) Uses an already existing liquid based fuel delivery system. While it may not be the holy grail due to the simplicity of an electric motor over a combustion engine, it could provide an easy to adopt next step until battery technology catches up."
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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Sun Jul 19, 2009 12:04 am

[quote="Mark"]Thoughts on volcanoes as jam jars or exhibiting jam-jar-like activity? (Best posted here rather than cluttering other topics)

"There are many wonderful experiences I can think of, it is very hard to choose. Each volcano I have visited has its own set of special memories. I suppose the winner has to be my very first visit to an eruption at Kilauea. It was my first week on the job as a very green young kid at HVO (Hawaiian Volcano Observatory). The East Rift eruption was still in the single digit episodes, and Pu`u `O`o was only 20 m tall, barely a blip on the rift zone. Low, intermittent lava fountains huffing and chuffing above us, I followed Ed Wolfe out over pahoehoe from Pu`u `O`o, still glowing in the cracks below my feet. I could not believe I was there, honored to have the opportunity, and in awe of everything I saw."
"What was the strangest experience you ever had on a volcano? Has anything weird ever happen to you?"
"Working on the west flank of Kilauea, I used to spend nights camping alone at a place called Pepeiau at the edge of the Hilina grasslands overlooking the south flank. On still evenings, just after sunset, the profile of Mauna Loa still visible in the western sky, I would sometimes hear a deep, faint “hum.” The sound would continue for hours and then slowly fade away. I could not explain where it came from – it appeared to have no directionality and it did not vary in pitch as it might if it were related to wind or surf or distant machinery or traffic. I did not hear it while camping on other parts of the volcano’s west or south flank. On two occasions I had company who could verify the hum. I still can’t explain the Pepeiau hum."
http://volcanoworld.wordpress.com/2008/ ... anologist/

"Then an amazing chuffing noise announced the start of the show. "
http://www.glnow.com/photos/Costa_rica/ ... olcano.htm

"In June 1988 the active vent was higher and larger than in August '86, with small-scale vulcanian activity sending up roiling ashy clouds, and making "chuffing" noises. The cone was approachable, but not with total safety; in this photo, the person descending from the rim of the cone is doing so in haste, fleeing the rain of ash and hot rocks from an unexpectly strong "chuff".
http://www.rutahsa.com/pacaya.html

"Back in 1959, Kilauea Iki was filled with a lake of undulating molten lava more than 400 feet deep; eventually it drained away into the vent called Pu'u Pua'i, leaving a "bathtub ring" of lava around the crater walls. In the late 1960s, I found the crater floor still a scene from Hades -- dark, hot underfoot, ominous, filled with steam chuffing out of a latticework of cracks."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 8DP121.DTL

Now with better links. My previous cached links somehow transmogrified into useless links.
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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Thu Jul 23, 2009 2:52 am

Valveless Pulse Combustor & Drying Cone Schematic and friends.
http://www.pulsedrying.com/overview.html
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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Thu Jul 23, 2009 3:02 am

If you have any fruit bark.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_o ... fd946bda3b

http://mtc-m17.sid.inpe.br/rep/lcp.inpe ... tton=pt-BR

"At the moment, fossil fuels provide most of the primary energy for the industrial and emerging industrial nations.
As a consequence, pollutants emissions are increasing. Therefore, research on combustion is, nowadays, concerned to
the development of new technologies and systems that minimize pollutants emissions and increase the overall efficiency
of the process."
"Pulsating combustion, due to its unique feature, has been identified as one of the possible technologies that can
potentially reach these objectives. The most important characteristics of this process are: reduction in pollutants
emissions; high combustion efficiencies, increased in the convective heat transfer. All of these can take place with
lower investments (Ferreira and Carvalho, 1988)."
"In 1859, Rijke noted that strong acoustics oscillations were obtained when one heated wire screen was placed in the
lower half of an open ended vertical pipe. Figure (1) shows an original Rijke tube and its acoustic wave structure. This
type of pulse combustor has been used extensively to study several aspects of oscillatory combustion with different
fuels, for example: wood [Zinn et al, 1982; Carvalho et al, 1989]; coal [Miller et al, 1982; Carvalho et al, 1984 and
Carvalho et al 1987]; charcoal [Ferreira et al, 1992]; agriculture residue [Torres et al., 1992]; and ethyl alcohol [Dubey
et al, 1997, Lacava et al, 1997 and McQuay et al., 2000]. The Rijke oscillations occur in a pipe with both ends open."
http://mtc-m16.sid.inpe.br/col/sid.inpe ... energy.pdf
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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Thu Jul 23, 2009 3:55 am

Wouldn't it be fun to figure out the conditions to make this stuff? Maybe try running a special jam jar or snorkeler during an electrical storm. ha
Some of the comments/stories were intriguing.
http://www.weather.com/blog/weather/8_10323.html

I started to wonder if ball lightning prefers cool weather or not. I could only find this so far.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/f86135n75315h267/

More on the jam jar angle. ha
For many purposes a ring vortex may be approximated as having a vortex-core of small cross-section. However a simple theoretical solution, called Hill's spherical vortex [2], is known in which the vorticity is distributed within a sphere (the internal symmetry of the flow is however still annular). Such a structure or an electromagnetic equivalent has been suggested as an explanation for the internal structure of ball lightning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_ring
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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Wed Jul 29, 2009 2:06 am

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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Wed Jul 29, 2009 2:42 am

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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Wed Jul 29, 2009 2:35 pm

A few dry crumbs.
"Some steady axisymmetric vortex flows past a sphere"
http://amath.colorado.edu/faculty/fornb ... xisym4.pdf
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Thu Jul 30, 2009 1:35 am

Perhaps an entertaining idea for Mike's ping-pong ball jam jar.
http://tesladownunder.com/Bernoulli2Balls.jpg

"The story behind the peacock feathers: There is a dedicated Bernoulli setup at the Gravity Discovery Centre in Western Australia where I have 4 displays. It will blow up two 6-8 inch plastic or polystyrene balls. Peacock feathers are also sold there and one visiting child stuck several into the polystyrene ball. While his father was berating him the Centre attendant noted that it was really stable so they got left stuck in. I picked up a few feathers to experiment myself."
(Scroll ~3/4 of the page down if you want to see this topic)
"Very much more stable even in a significant cross wind which a normal Bernoulli ball will not tolerate."
http://tesladownunder.com/interesting_stuff.htm
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Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Sat Aug 01, 2009 12:37 am

Just a repost of an old link. I noticed a few more objects upon further examination. I like the short stubby bottle with threads though, that's what originally caught my eye. Yawn.
http://www.pmfind.com/products/stainles ... e-tank.asp
http://www.pmfind.com/images9/env1.jpg
http://www.pmfind.com/products/aerospace.asp
http://www.pmfind.com/products/military.asp
http://www.pmfind.com/products/paper_and_pulp.asp
http://www.pmfind.com/process/rotoforming.asp
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pezman
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by pezman » Sun Aug 02, 2009 3:47 am


Mark
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Re: Odds and ends

Post by Mark » Tue Aug 04, 2009 3:02 am

Resonant tidbits/crumbs to nibble on. ha
Physicists trap light in a bottle
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/200 ... bottle.ars
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