rembar

Member Profile

Channel: Science
A little about me...
Champion for all things scientific and sworn enemy of stupidity.

Member Since: September 28, 2006
Email: rembar at gmail dot com
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Comments to rembar

schmawy says...

In reply to this comment by rembar:
>> ^schmawy:
I accept that you know a lot about this, that's why I'm dogging you about it.
So who do you think done it?


...I've already voiced my opinion in a more public manner and I would rather not connect that with my online persona. I like my anonymity."

I hope that this doesn't mean that if there's ever a VS meet-up, you wouldn't be able to attend so I could buy you a drink.

sorted says...

http://www.videosift.com/video/Biodefense-and-Bioweapons-Research

In reply to this comment by rembar:
7 hours? You'll have to excuse me if I don't have the time to respond to every single sifter in a jiffy, I have a non-online life and work that take priority.

As to venturing my opinion on "whodunnit", you'll also excuse me if I don't. You can ask me other things if you want about the topic and I'll answer as best I can, but I've already voiced my opinion in a more public manner and I would rather not connect that with my online persona. I like my anonymity.

schmawy says...

Can we add this to *Mystery then?

E: (Doh!, it is! I Stoopid.)

In reply to this comment by rembar:
This doesn't belong in Science, because it only briefly covers anthrax biologically and even then does it poorly.

And I downvoted because, from a personal standpoint, this is a horrible mistreatment of a subject that requires a much greater in-depth analysis and a much stronger knowledge of the actual events and the nature of anthrax than the History Channel has, can or likely ever will put forth. Whether the conclusions are likely correct or not, this clip is still bad.

snoozedoctor says...

Thanks,
I appreciate having a really good science guy to back me up when some of this IV chelation, touch therapy, paranormal mumbo-jumbo starts floating around.
I pass gas most of the day and when I'm not, I'm usually sticking needles in things. As they told us in med school, there's not a body cavity that can't be reached with a strong arm and a 14 gauge needle.

sorted says...

after 7 hours no response, silence is golden, heh.

so if you're in this field of research or have experience which you indicate,
can you share your opinion on this topic, what' yer take?
Who was sending out spores that killed some peeps terrorist stylee.
I myself am just a mere sheep-person with no research background and am
curious what an experienced learned person such as yerself makes of all this...

In reply to this comment by rembar:
>> ^sorted:
mmm 'k... knee jerk much, jst jking...


If by knee-jerk you mean I have years of personal experience with anthrax research, then yes, my knee is suddenly spasming and making me downvote bad videos in which people talk about subjects they know next to nothing about. Oh, wait, that's not my knee. It's my brain.

dag says...

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Was the quote too obscure?

In reply to this comment by rembar:
Haha, I hadn't thought of that song in a while, but I'm listening to it now. Thanks for the reminder.

Also, nice avatar.

In reply to this comment by dag:
I've been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins' presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility.

Arsenault185 says...

Haha, no I'm tracking with what your saying. I don't plan on investing anytime to soon.

In reply to this comment by rembar:
Herein lies the rub. A system in which energy is not being used will only lose energy through friction or other small imperfections in real-world creation, as in flywheels. Such machines, in fact, can be used to store energy through kinetic motion. In essence, it's the physical-motion brother to the chemical battery. But once you start actually using the machine, the energy is drawn out of the system and you need to start adding in more energy (as in, burning more wood or turning more cranks or spinning the wheel by hand). Magnets alone can't do this, we need to move the magnets or use some other process to move them for us, and the energy from the machine isn't enough to power more than that process's cost in energy (thus the law of conservation). You can't have your cake and eat it too.

This is why this magnet machine isn't a breakthrough. It's been invented before, and used before, many times, and it works, but it's not a crazy power-for-cheap machine. Every now and then some high-school dropout will come up with this idea on his own, then build it, and think he's discovered the answer to humanity's energy problems for all eternity, and then convince some sap of an unsuspecting journalist looking for that big break to cover his "amazing invention". And then engineers and physicists look at the thing, snort, and go back to work. It's such a common occurrence that I'm pretty sure I've read a sociology paper on the effect (and if not, I'm going to write one).

Anyways, hope this all makes sense. My advice: don't invest in any magnet machines you see advertised on Youtube.

In reply to this comment by arsenault185:
The rig itself might run for 5 years, but once you add on the resistance of powering an alternator, will it really work? I don't know.

Arsenault185 says...

You sir, just owned my ass. When efficiency is defined as such you are totally correct. But then again we run into a fuel issue. Now as it was pointed out to me, permanent magnets are not permanent. So if we label that device as 100-500% efficient, then yes we are saying it is indeed breaking the laws of physics. But when taking into account that it will eventually stop due to the fact the polarization of the magnets will no longer be sufficient to run it, then it is no longer perpetual, or 100 percent efficient. Keep in mind i never once said that it will run my house as good as they described it to. The rig itself might run for 5 years, but once you add on the resistance of powering an alternator, will it really work? I don't know.

In reply to this comment by rembar:
The first clip I removed from the Science channel because the news story is scientifically inaccurate and flies in the face of basic concepts of physics and engineering, and I downvoted it because it was scientifically inaccurate and also a piss-poor example of journalistic fact-checking. The second I removed because it was not scientifically interesting enough to belong in the Science channel. Magnetic repulsion, as pointed out and briefly explained by Flavio and Fission, is neither new nor renewable. (Check out the renewable energy article on Wikipedia to get a clearer idea of what the term entails.)

Since I don't have time to go point for point, I will instead provide an analysis of two sentences from a comment you made in conjunction with well-accepted concepts from physics and then allow you to view your sift and beliefs through this lens. Please read through it, because I think you might get something from it, as you seem like a reasonable guy. Let's begin:

In physics terms, energy efficiency is defined such that:
Efficiency = Output / Input

Now, let's think about the machine you sifted about. We'll assign the output of this magnet repulsion machine to variable a, and assign the input of the machine to b. From this, we can write:
Efficiency of the machine = Output of the machine / Input of the machine = a / b

You said: "They clearly point out that it [the machine] produces 5 times more energy than it consumes." This means the output of the machine (a) is five times that of the input (b). Using our variables in an equation, this mathematically is:
a = 5b

Thus, we can calculate the efficiency of the machine:
Efficiency of the machine = a / b

and since a = 5b, we can say by substitution:
Efficiency of the machine = a / b = 5b / b = 5

To get this efficiency in percent, we multiply by 100:
Efficiency of the machine = 5 x 100% = 500%

So we have just calculated the efficiency of the machine to be 500%.

Now, remember that you said: "No energy production method is 100 percent efficient." This is correct, and in keeping with the law of conservation of energy. It is impossible for any real-world machine to have an efficiency above 100%.

Thus it follows that the only conclusion we can logically draw is that the machine does not, in fact, create 5 times more energy than it consumes, QED.

You've been taken for a ride, and I sincerely hope the above will help you accept this.

flavioribeiro says...

I'm glad to be of service.

Does the science channel get perpetual motion sifts often?

I'd like to see someone claim to extract zero point energy on TV. Magnets and resonance get boring after a while

In reply to this comment by rembar:
Thanks for taking the time to jump up on this sift, I haven't been on VS enough to catch this in time. Feel free to message me whenever you see another perpetual motion sift, or anything of the sort, that needs booting from the channel.

In reply to this comment by flavioribeiro:
This is a textbook case of a bogus free energy claim.

It has the inventor without a scientific background, the engineer with no credentials, zero technical information and a clueless reporter talking about magnets.

I glanced at this guy's patent application, and all he describes is a crude, specific way of controlling a motor in order to alternately operate it as a motor and a generator.

The Australian Skeptics is a group dedicated to investigating claims such as this, and they've investigated Lutec (this inventor's company) in 2001. Here's the executive summary: the people at Lutec don't even know what the physical definition of work is, they didn't properly calculate this device's efficiency and are most likely trying to con small investors into wiring money to an account in Singapore: http://www.skeptics.com.au/journal/2001/3_lutec1.pdf

cybrbeast says...

I don't really feel like wading through your channel at the moment. But if I find any, I'll let you know.

In reply to this comment by rembar:
Please do. I'll remove them as you can point them out. The Braniac one I think I removed when you pointed it out. I simply don't have enough time in the day to find all the bad videos, so I just kick out the worst ones when I find them.

In reply to this comment by cybrbeast:
Rembar, please answer my question and explain why you have such a hard time with this video and not with Brainiac or the water car inventor? I could scour your channel and probably find many more examples of pseudoscience.

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