Fusion Power, the future, building it
16 Jan 2022, 11:07 am
Sorry for being late to the topic, I have been on “vacation” the past few weeks. My family back in Kansas had so many chores for me to do that I had very little screen time during my trip. I was thankful for cold weather or I would have had to clean a storage unit out for someone too.
Back to the topic at hand:
While fission and fusion can generate huge amounts of energy, they are not very efficient in the big scheme of things. Current nuclear reactors use water to both cool the reactor core and to convert the heat into a semi-usable form as steam. Still much of the thermal energy cannot be completely converted over to electrical energy. It would be nice if more of the waste heat energy could be converted into a usable form. That is a whole different challenge to do. It will require combinational technology processes to be developed further than it is.
10 Feb 2022, 7:13 pm
Theyve been saying "cold fusion is just around the corner" all of those eighty years.
But you're saying that they really are going to make the dream come true soon any day now?
Why do you think that? What has changed?
around the time of Reagan/Bush there was a witch hunt attitude toward cold fusion, and I may be wrong, but I think it lasted till quite recently. Here is my source, havent watched it for years.
11 Feb 2022, 7:47 pm
E = m C^2
E is energy
m is mass
C is the speed of light ( which is very fast - a very large number)
C^2 is C squared - which is a very vert big number - squaring a big number like the speed of light you double the number of zeros
So the mass of one gallon of water contains a WHOLE LOT of energy - the only trick is how to convert the mass to energy
In Back To The Future they used “Mr. Fusion”
… still working on that
_________________
ADHD-I(diagnosed) ASD-HF(diagnosed)
RDOS scores - Aspie score 131/200 - neurotypical score 69/200 - very likely Aspie
11 Feb 2022, 8:31 pm
E is energy
m is mass
C is the speed of light ( which is very fast - a very large number)
C^2 is C squared - which is a very vert big number - squaring a big number like the speed of light you double the number of zeros
So the mass of one gallon of water contains a WHOLE LOT of energy - the only trick is how to convert the mass to energy
In Back To The Future they used “Mr. Fusion”
… still working on that
Yep.
I went up to my Astronomy professor after class to ask him to explain to me... "this E = MC squared thing".
He asked me my body weight. And then pulled out a piece of chalk and began writing some equations on the black board, plugged my body weight into some equations, and said "and the total energy consumed by the world right now - all of the cars- all of the electricity etc is this amount...". And plugged that number into the equation. He then announced that "so you can see now that if they turned the matter in your body into pure energy...it would power all of the earth's energy needs -at current consumption rates- for the next six hundred thousand years!"
Wow!
The actual mass of the matter that was converted into energy by the Hiroshima bomb was less than that of a dollar bill. But it flatten a whole city.
12 Feb 2022, 11:26 am
I like short stories written by Issac Asimov - he has one written after Hiroshima which hinges on a new type of explosive called TC for “total conversion” - the idea is a very small TC explosive can make a very big boom. This would be consistent with E = m C^2. (When I write ^2 I mean “little 2 raised above the baseline half the height of a capital letter M” - does anyone know how to do superscript 2 on Wrongplanet?)
There are a number of ways to understand Einstein’s equation - some people make a career out of it - I am reading a book now called “The Perfect Theory” by Pedro G. Ferreira - it is a non technical history of Einstein’s “general theory of relativity”. It talks about the theory in terms of people history debate and scientific prediction, experimental verification (or experimental contradiction) and other things in history like wars and personal meetings and big conferences.
It is complicated.
One thing I want to mention is a personal insight - most physics equations like this require a good understanding of Units - for example speed of a car can be measured in miles per hour or in kilometres per hour. That is what Units is about - the speed of a bullet might be measured in feet per second or in meters per second. The speed of light can also be described in different Units such as miles per hour or meters per second. It can even be converted from one set of Units to another - you can convert the speed of light from miles per hour to some odd units like furlongs per fortnight - you just have to be careful about the other Units to keep things consistent - often a physicist (or student) will choose Units to make the math easy.
One way to choose Units for the speed of light is “lightyears (distance) per year (time)” if you choose the Units then the numerical value for the speed of light is 1.
1 squared is 1.
If you choose the other units for mass and energy accordingly to keep the math and physics consistent then the equation says “energy = mass times 1” or “energy = mass”.
And I think that is an important way to look at it.
_________________
ADHD-I(diagnosed) ASD-HF(diagnosed)
RDOS scores - Aspie score 131/200 - neurotypical score 69/200 - very likely Aspie
12 Feb 2022, 11:50 am
E is energy
m is mass
C is the speed of light ( which is very fast - a very large number)
C^2 is C squared - which is a very vert big number - squaring a big number like the speed of light you double the number of zeros
So the mass of one gallon of water contains a WHOLE LOT of energy - the only trick is how to convert the mass to energy
In Back To The Future they used “Mr. Fusion”
… still working on that
Yep.
I went up to my Astronomy professor after class to ask him to explain to me... "this E = MC squared thing".
He asked me my body weight. And then pulled out a piece of chalk and began writing some equations on the black board, plugged my body weight into some equations, and said "and the total energy consumed by the world right now - all of the cars- all of the electricity etc is this amount...". And plugged that number into the equation. He then announced that "so you can see now that if they turned the matter in your body into pure energy...it would power all of the earth's energy needs -at current consumption rates- for the next six hundred thousand years!"
Wow!
The actual mass of the matter that was converted into energy by the Hiroshima bomb was less than that of a dollar bill. But it flatten a whole city.
Here is another way to think of it: The total energy released in each of the first generation atomic bomb blasts (from 1945) was equivalent to a nickel (5 cent piece US coin) piece of matter being converted. They were powerful enough to vaporize human bodies (called shadow people from their forms left on items) from quite a distance away. The rest of the critical mass in the bombs were spread by the explosion. Those type of weapons were only about 0.01% efficient in my estimation in conversion of matter to electromagnetic energy. Now imagine if you could have converted the entire ten or so pounds of critical mass into that energy. The blast power for each one would have been exponentially more powerful. Thankfully we did not have that ability at that time, or even now.
12 Feb 2022, 12:20 pm
There are a number of ways to understand Einstein’s equation - some people make a career out of it - I am reading a book now called “The Perfect Theory” by Pedro G. Ferreira - it is a non technical history of Einstein’s “general theory of relativity”. It talks about the theory in terms of people history debate and scientific prediction, experimental verification (or experimental contradiction) and other things in history like wars and personal meetings and big conferences.
It is complicated.
One thing I want to mention is a personal insight - most physics equations like this require a good understanding of Units - for example speed of a car can be measured in miles per hour or in kilometres per hour. That is what Units is about - the speed of a bullet might be measured in feet per second or in meters per second. The speed of light can also be described in different Units such as miles per hour or meters per second. It can even be converted from one set of Units to another - you can convert the speed of light from miles per hour to some odd units like furlongs per fortnight - you just have to be careful about the other Units to keep things consistent - often a physicist (or student) will choose Units to make the math easy.
One way to choose Units for the speed of light is “lightyears (distance) per year (time)” if you choose the Units then the numerical value for the speed of light is 1.
1 squared is 1.
If you choose the other units for mass and energy accordingly to keep the math and physics consistent then the equation says “energy = mass times 1” or “energy = mass”.
And I think that is an important way to look at it.
I see E = mc^2 in a different way than most people do. If you replace the = sign with a dual arrow equilibrium sign (<=>), it can be seen as a conversion process between the two sides. The conversion equation is useful in understanding String Theory and nuclear transformations of isotopes. It may not seem like much, but it is an important distinction. I think that the actual equation is missing a part to be complete. The missing piece is what the electromagnetic energy is converted into.
Yes, most would point directly to m in the equation. However, that is only part of the answer. The better answer is that the energy that makes up the matter (or anti-matter) particle is actually converted into the properties of said matter (or anti-matter). In other words, E =mc^2 becomes = to the sums of delta G + delta M + delta S + delta W. Each delta is the change of each force between the particle and the starting electromagnetic energy it was formed from. G is gravity force, M is magnetic force, S is strong nuclear force and W is weak nuclear force. The c^2 part in the original equation is due to the bending of the electromagnetic vectors to make up the particles. They are always there, just bent (and linked) into different shapes that we translate into particles. How they are bent leads into variations of String Theory.
Albert Einstein did not have String Theory to help him relate magnetism with gravity or he would have likely found that answer. I would love to test that equation, but current instrumentation is far from being sensitive enough to do so. Maybe it can be done before I pass on, but I am not holding my breath.
16 Feb 2022, 5:53 pm
FYI
By JTBarnabas - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%8 ... quivalence
_________________
ADHD-I(diagnosed) ASD-HF(diagnosed)
RDOS scores - Aspie score 131/200 - neurotypical score 69/200 - very likely Aspie
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