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Re: NIF: the power company



On Wed, 1 May 1996, Rauber, Joel Phys wrote:
...
I don't understand Marlow's power company comments. I assume they are
charging me for whatever it is that Marlow is worried about.
...

If you are dealing with an honest energy company, YES, they will only
charge you for the energy I concern myself with, and they will not
include any charge for pesudowork done by pseudoforces.

Lets' sharpen the discussion here and compare what a power company on earth
would charge to a power company on a planet indentical to the earth, except
that it rotates much faster (say such that its centrifugal acceleration is 8
m/s^2)
...

If we lived on such a planet we probably would not be having this discussion,
since everyone all the time would have to cope with the very noticeable
effects, and a clear understanding of them would be part of every curriculum
from the earliest grades. For example, plumb lines would very noticeably
deviate from the vertical (= right angle to planet's surface), and to make
them hang vertically a significant force (as measured by a spring scale)
would have to be applied. No one would be tempted to invent any mysterious
forces to explain the deviation, though, since the rapid motion of the stars
would give the game away to even the most casually unobservant
inhabitant. In other words, inhabitants of such a planet would have as
easy a time figuring out what was happening as people on Earth who just
happened to live on an open rotating turntable would have. In both cases
everyone would have to tie things down to keep them from accelerating, but
no one would be puzzled as to the origin of these accelerations -- inertia
would be the obvious explanation, and no one would have to postulate extra
forces or look for sources of such forces.
And yes, I suspect energy would be much cheaper on such a planet, since
it would be so easy to extract it from the obvious acceleration of their
planet's surface relative to inertial axes. But again no one would be
deceived as to the source of such energy -- they would clearly be
extracting it from the rotational energy of their planet. (Wind mills,
of course, would be a very easy way of harnessing their planet.)
For the turntable people, however, I suspect they would have to pay
whatever energy company was maintaining the rotational energy they were
extracting.

...I would say the two power companies are going to charge different
amounts of money since the centrifugal effects on the mechanical
components of the turbines will be significant and will alter
significantly the efficiency of the turbines.


This last, however, I simply don't understand. Do you see the affects
as increasing the efficiency, thereby lowering the cost of energy by
making it more plentiful, or decreasing the efficiency, which would
tend to drive the cost of energy up because of scarcity? But don't
bother answering this unless you see some relevance to the the
thread of the discussion.


A. R. Marlow E-MAIL: marlow@beta.loyno.edu
Department of Physics PHONE: (504) 865 3647 (Office)
Loyola University 865 2245 (Home)
New Orleans, LA 70118 FAX: (504) 865 2453