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Re: a "cold fusion" experiment for the brave



On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, brian whatcott wrote:

Don't expect to get good calorimetric energy balances by computing
electrical power input using an AC source, a bridge rectifier, and a
digital voltmeter. The error could be as high as 1.4/1.0
Oh! isn't that the over unity gain figure some folks are getting from
the suggested setup? What a coincidence!

Very good point. Power Factor errors are a 'religious' issue of
numberless genuine crackpots (as in, "how dare you take issue with my
measurments, I've never heard of 'power factor', you must be out to
suppress me!") We must stay on guard against fooling ourselves, and should
always be fearful of AC electrical energy measurements, even when using
high frequency wattmeters. (In one infamous case, the inventor was
confident that since the DVM had a 1mhz frequency counter, the RMS voltage
setting must also be good all the way up to 1mhz.)

The REAL crackpots damage the reputation of the anomaly investigators,
just as the ridiculing/bookburning types hurt the reputations of
levelheaded skeptics.


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William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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