Well NIMF has once again released it yearly report card on the gaming industry. This marks a full decade of crying about kids playing violent video games with dire warnings about increases in agressive behavior among kids that kill pixels.
There are some good things in this report. They do reffernce more than one research project. However it there is still only one significant study that has been done and it has long since been questioned. Far from the universal scientific condemnation touted in their report card. However they at least do admit the flaws of the various studies refferenced. Yet even so they then proceed to draw very serious conclusions from them. This is not a good way to make an arguement. Point out all your evidence is flawed with regards to actually measuring the impacts caused by violent games and ONLY violent games then say your conclusions about that impact are good anyway. I could quote the relevant material but you would do best to read it all in context through the link above.
What puzzles me most is that in none of their discussions did they mention ANY attempt to deal with the issue of whether or not video game Cause violence. Or attraction to video games is a function of a violent nature. IE is it a symptom or is it a cause. Also there are no hard number beyond things like percentages of kids that own/play video games and the number of kids involved inthe studies. What were the precentage increases ? The margins of error ? When correlation was found were we talking a 90% increase ? Or a 5% with a 2% margian of error ?
Another thing in particular that bugged me was their use of desensitation through exposure. It is talked about like it is a horrible condeming fact. And yet desensitation to stimulus (ANY stimulus) through exposure is a universal response. How would this be damning ? If you took a control group and exposed them to no violent games for a given length of time and then exposed them to REAL violence and measured their sensitivity vrs a group that played violent games and then was exposed the REAL violence. If the game group showed a marked desensitized reaction to actual violence I might start paying a bit more attention.
In the end I think limiting what games kids can and cannot play is not the domain of government and society at large. If violent games where half as important in developing a childs behavior as these groups like to claim we would have a wave of youth violence across the nation that was out of this world as they have gone through greate lengths to proove just how pervasive the practive of young kids playing games with graphic violence is. Instead we have lower incidence of youth violence. Less juvenile deliquents as a percentage of the population. Almost entirely across the board the US is LESS measurably violent today than it was 10 years ago when these report cards started. By the logic used in most of this report card I could then claim that there should be more playing of violent video games.... not less.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Relative Rant
Todays relativity Rant is about the Twins Paradox.
(Updated 3/1/2014, added illustrations and corrected some typos. Updated example years to match illustrations)
If we placed a living organism in a box ... one could arrange that the organism, after any arbitrary lengthy flight, could be returned to its original spot in a scarcely altered condition, while corresponding organisms which had remained in their original positions had already long since given way to new generations. For the moving organism the lengthy time of the journey was a mere instant, provided the motion took place with approximately the speed of light. (in Resnick and Halliday, 1992)
-Einstien
In short one twin gets in a ship and travels at the speed of light returning to find his twin left behind older due to time dilation during the trip. For the sake of simplicity we will say that acceleration and deceleration from light speed took 1 day each and that the trip covered 1 light year, so essentially 365 days. From the perspective of the twin that made the trip the journey would take two days, or the time at which he was not at light speed where time stopped. For the other twin it would be a year before his twin returned. Thus the Twins parradox.
My problem is that from the perspective of the twin making the trip he covered 1 light year in only 2 days. This means according to the standard equation of S = D/T he covered one light year at a speed faster than light. At least according to his clock and earths perspective. He physically covered the distance it takes light to cover in 365.25 days, but from his perspective it only took two days time... or roughly 182 times the speed of light. The equations of relativity explain this fine from one perspective or the other. What they do not do well is mix the perspectives. For example here we have the Distance covered from Earth's point of view, or Relative Frame of Refference (RFR), and time from the space ships RFR.
So from earths RFR. He traveled at the speed of light and took a little over a year to make the trip. From the Ships RFR, to make a long story short, distance between the points he traveled shortend so that D/T works out to the speed of light. My question then boils down to something practical. What did the traveling twin take to eat ? Did he take meals for 365 days of travel ? Or did he take meals for 2 days of travel. If he needs 365 days worth then he becomes a human version of Schrödinger's cat if he only takes enough for 2.
This problem is worse if you don't bother with accelration. Because for something travelling at the speed of light any S = D/T solution would be S = D/0. Division by zero. Infinity. Infinite speed. Thus according to relativity Distance must also go to 0 else speed exceeds that of light. So while you cannot exceed the speed of light, you can get anywhere in no time at all if you can reach that speed. At least according to relativity. And there is much experimentation to back this up. For example, GPS sats work on the principles of time dilation. But no matter how it is explained to me I still cannot get over the question of what you would take with you to eat on a voyage at the speed of light to the nearest star.
For the time being I think the twins parradox is not real. I think if you could travel at the speed of light and you traveled for one year you would return a year older and still be of an age with your twin. Here is my reasoning.
Take two earths, call them alpha and beta. Lets place them one light year apart. Light leaving one earth reaches the other one year later and vice versa. So lets say each receives TV signals from the other. It is presently the year 2014 on each of our identical earths. Yet due to the set limit of the speed of light each would receive signals from the other that are a year old. Thus TV signals received at either end would be from the year 2013.
Now lets take Two space ships, Two pairs of twins, Two TV sets and Two TIVO's split evenly among the two planets. One of the twins from the two pairs leaves their respecitve planet the same day on a ship traveling at the speed of light. Lets follow ship one.
Ship one launches from alpha in the year 2014 with a TV set watching the signals recieved from the second earth 1 ly distant. He accelerates to the speed of light. He is now encountering the TV signals from beta at twice the speed of light. IE they are comming towards alpha at the speed of light and he is headed to beta at the speed of light. Thus by the time he reaches beta he will see two years of programming and land there in 2015. If he then tuned into TV from his origin planet he would see programming from 2014 showing his launch. He then gets back into his ship and goes back. Again he sees two years of programming and lands back home on alpha in 2016 where he is greeted by his twin, and if he tuned back into the other earth he would see programming from 2015 showing his departure.
Ship two has the exact same experience only in reverse.
Now if they actually sat there and watched their TV sets I think it would be hard to argue they did not spend two years traveling. IE they left in 2014, and returned in 2016. I think time dilation is an artifact of observation of something at high speed. IE the clock is ticking by at the same rate on the ship itself, but you simply can't observe it to tick at the same rate. GPS works on the basis of that observation. So breaking the twins parradox according to my reasoning does not break GPS. If you like try and consider how communications with the ships in transit would work. While the signals comming from the destination planet would be encountered at twice the usual speed (including, just for S&G's, a timming pulse) , no signals could be encountered from the planet being traveled away from cause they could not overtake the ship (provided it was traveling at the speed of light).
However when you start to consider the ships communications things get very interesting indeed. Think of it in terms of observation. The ship leaves in 2014. Lands on Beta in 2015. But you can't observe the landing at Beta till 2016 at Alpha. So it would seem accordingly that once the ship went to light speed it would dissapear. In 2015 you would start to see it leaving earth and watch it progress over the course of the year till it landed on Beta in 2016 (observed 2015 from Beta). As you were observing the landing at beta in 2015 the ship would then arrive back at alpha in 2016. Then you would observe the ship leaving Beta and watch its progress back to Alpha and complete your observations in 2017 even though the ship arrived in 2016.
As you can see the observation of the ship is very out of whack with the ships actual location. The actual location is how GPS works thus you must adjust for it as relativity dictates. What relativity does is allow for the prediction of observance of things traveling at high relatively different velocities. However I hold that is as far as it goes. Time does not dilate. Else traveling at the speed of light is traveling at infinte speed and from your perspective you would pass through all points of the universe simultaneously... and that as far as a beam of light is concerned the universe has no deminsion... IE it is still just a point.
If we placed a living organism in a box ... one could arrange that the organism, after any arbitrary lengthy flight, could be returned to its original spot in a scarcely altered condition, while corresponding organisms which had remained in their original positions had already long since given way to new generations. For the moving organism the lengthy time of the journey was a mere instant, provided the motion took place with approximately the speed of light. (in Resnick and Halliday, 1992)
-Einstien
In short one twin gets in a ship and travels at the speed of light returning to find his twin left behind older due to time dilation during the trip. For the sake of simplicity we will say that acceleration and deceleration from light speed took 1 day each and that the trip covered 1 light year, so essentially 365 days. From the perspective of the twin that made the trip the journey would take two days, or the time at which he was not at light speed where time stopped. For the other twin it would be a year before his twin returned. Thus the Twins parradox.
My problem is that from the perspective of the twin making the trip he covered 1 light year in only 2 days. This means according to the standard equation of S = D/T he covered one light year at a speed faster than light. At least according to his clock and earths perspective. He physically covered the distance it takes light to cover in 365.25 days, but from his perspective it only took two days time... or roughly 182 times the speed of light. The equations of relativity explain this fine from one perspective or the other. What they do not do well is mix the perspectives. For example here we have the Distance covered from Earth's point of view, or Relative Frame of Refference (RFR), and time from the space ships RFR.
So from earths RFR. He traveled at the speed of light and took a little over a year to make the trip. From the Ships RFR, to make a long story short, distance between the points he traveled shortend so that D/T works out to the speed of light. My question then boils down to something practical. What did the traveling twin take to eat ? Did he take meals for 365 days of travel ? Or did he take meals for 2 days of travel. If he needs 365 days worth then he becomes a human version of Schrödinger's cat if he only takes enough for 2.
This problem is worse if you don't bother with accelration. Because for something travelling at the speed of light any S = D/T solution would be S = D/0. Division by zero. Infinity. Infinite speed. Thus according to relativity Distance must also go to 0 else speed exceeds that of light. So while you cannot exceed the speed of light, you can get anywhere in no time at all if you can reach that speed. At least according to relativity. And there is much experimentation to back this up. For example, GPS sats work on the principles of time dilation. But no matter how it is explained to me I still cannot get over the question of what you would take with you to eat on a voyage at the speed of light to the nearest star.
For the time being I think the twins parradox is not real. I think if you could travel at the speed of light and you traveled for one year you would return a year older and still be of an age with your twin. Here is my reasoning.
Take two earths, call them alpha and beta. Lets place them one light year apart. Light leaving one earth reaches the other one year later and vice versa. So lets say each receives TV signals from the other. It is presently the year 2014 on each of our identical earths. Yet due to the set limit of the speed of light each would receive signals from the other that are a year old. Thus TV signals received at either end would be from the year 2013.
Now lets take Two space ships, Two pairs of twins, Two TV sets and Two TIVO's split evenly among the two planets. One of the twins from the two pairs leaves their respecitve planet the same day on a ship traveling at the speed of light. Lets follow ship one.
Ship one launches from alpha in the year 2014 with a TV set watching the signals recieved from the second earth 1 ly distant. He accelerates to the speed of light. He is now encountering the TV signals from beta at twice the speed of light. IE they are comming towards alpha at the speed of light and he is headed to beta at the speed of light. Thus by the time he reaches beta he will see two years of programming and land there in 2015. If he then tuned into TV from his origin planet he would see programming from 2014 showing his launch. He then gets back into his ship and goes back. Again he sees two years of programming and lands back home on alpha in 2016 where he is greeted by his twin, and if he tuned back into the other earth he would see programming from 2015 showing his departure.
Ship two has the exact same experience only in reverse.
Now if they actually sat there and watched their TV sets I think it would be hard to argue they did not spend two years traveling. IE they left in 2014, and returned in 2016. I think time dilation is an artifact of observation of something at high speed. IE the clock is ticking by at the same rate on the ship itself, but you simply can't observe it to tick at the same rate. GPS works on the basis of that observation. So breaking the twins parradox according to my reasoning does not break GPS. If you like try and consider how communications with the ships in transit would work. While the signals comming from the destination planet would be encountered at twice the usual speed (including, just for S&G's, a timming pulse) , no signals could be encountered from the planet being traveled away from cause they could not overtake the ship (provided it was traveling at the speed of light).
However when you start to consider the ships communications things get very interesting indeed. Think of it in terms of observation. The ship leaves in 2014. Lands on Beta in 2015. But you can't observe the landing at Beta till 2016 at Alpha. So it would seem accordingly that once the ship went to light speed it would dissapear. In 2015 you would start to see it leaving earth and watch it progress over the course of the year till it landed on Beta in 2016 (observed 2015 from Beta). As you were observing the landing at beta in 2015 the ship would then arrive back at alpha in 2016. Then you would observe the ship leaving Beta and watch its progress back to Alpha and complete your observations in 2017 even though the ship arrived in 2016.
As you can see the observation of the ship is very out of whack with the ships actual location. The actual location is how GPS works thus you must adjust for it as relativity dictates. What relativity does is allow for the prediction of observance of things traveling at high relatively different velocities. However I hold that is as far as it goes. Time does not dilate. Else traveling at the speed of light is traveling at infinte speed and from your perspective you would pass through all points of the universe simultaneously... and that as far as a beam of light is concerned the universe has no deminsion... IE it is still just a point.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Google, Adsense, it makes sense
I have put up the Adsense code and found that adjusted for inflation, my two cents are actually worth 31 cents !!!. Hey its more money than I had before I put it up and that is always a good thing.
If you blog or run a website and have wondered about adsense then you should take the time to try it out. The setup can be as unobtrusive, or in your face, as you want it to be. If you understand enough HTML to mess with your own website you have no excuse for not putting an adsense snipet in there somewhere. If you are using Blogger, like I am, the template tinkering is actually pretty easy. Once it is in place it is very easy to set up your account information with adsense and have any money made deposited direct to your bank account.
I would like to see a bit more flexibility in ad sizing as that is the thing I found most difficult to balance with my layout. However, that would have been far less of an issue if I wasn't relying on the blogger template.
The potential power of this system for distributing ad money to individuals is exciting. Think of it this way. There are billions spent each year on getting ads in front of people. However the money for getting those ads seen is funnled into a few places like TV stations, or newspaper owners. The advent of the web has de-centralized information dispersal and it is only a matter of time till ad revenue starts splintering out accordingly. So instead of the ad money trickling down from say a newpaper to an individual reporter, this allows money to be funneld directly from the ad creator to the content producer that is going to move the ad in front of someone. Like a popular columnist, a highly rated sitcom etc... Only instead of nielson ratings that are based on a select few it is now disperesed on a per click (succesfull end to advertisement) based on the proximity to the person that drew the attention in the first place. In short a very democratic system. With the targeting (ads placed near relavent content) ad servers to the millions of content providers on the web there is no lag. No waiting for nielson ratings, it is a constant shuffle of where people are and the money follows along with them. And hey, it just might let me make some money on the side as I rant about what I want to rant about.
So really you ought to give it a whirl if you are in the habit of creating content online. I may have even created a new tagline... Google Adsense, it makes sense.
If you blog or run a website and have wondered about adsense then you should take the time to try it out. The setup can be as unobtrusive, or in your face, as you want it to be. If you understand enough HTML to mess with your own website you have no excuse for not putting an adsense snipet in there somewhere. If you are using Blogger, like I am, the template tinkering is actually pretty easy. Once it is in place it is very easy to set up your account information with adsense and have any money made deposited direct to your bank account.
I would like to see a bit more flexibility in ad sizing as that is the thing I found most difficult to balance with my layout. However, that would have been far less of an issue if I wasn't relying on the blogger template.
The potential power of this system for distributing ad money to individuals is exciting. Think of it this way. There are billions spent each year on getting ads in front of people. However the money for getting those ads seen is funnled into a few places like TV stations, or newspaper owners. The advent of the web has de-centralized information dispersal and it is only a matter of time till ad revenue starts splintering out accordingly. So instead of the ad money trickling down from say a newpaper to an individual reporter, this allows money to be funneld directly from the ad creator to the content producer that is going to move the ad in front of someone. Like a popular columnist, a highly rated sitcom etc... Only instead of nielson ratings that are based on a select few it is now disperesed on a per click (succesfull end to advertisement) based on the proximity to the person that drew the attention in the first place. In short a very democratic system. With the targeting (ads placed near relavent content) ad servers to the millions of content providers on the web there is no lag. No waiting for nielson ratings, it is a constant shuffle of where people are and the money follows along with them. And hey, it just might let me make some money on the side as I rant about what I want to rant about.
So really you ought to give it a whirl if you are in the habit of creating content online. I may have even created a new tagline... Google Adsense, it makes sense.
Monday, November 21, 2005
GM slashing its workforce
Well History has a way of repeating itself and here we are. Once again the US auto industry is in serious doo doo. GM is about to slash some 30,000 jobs and 12 plants from its lists in an effort to dump 7 billion in operation costs.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Immortality
Here is some more news on the ainti-aging front. In short some Eggheads successfully knocked out a couple of genes in several batches of yeast cells. Instead of living one week they lived 6 weeks. So if it worked just as well for people then an average 72 years would turn into a 432 year life span. Of course the question is going to be if you can do it after birth. They tried knocking them out in mice but birth development was deffective without their presence. However it would be very interesting to see if they could x out the genes via a retro virus in a mature adult mouse and see if it had a similar effect. Then do the same to a mouse near the end of its life and see if it restores some vitality. Further trials with Mice (they also have the two genes) are planned and will take much longer as mice already live a couple years. So don't get your hopes up just yet for a shot from the fountain of youth..
If you have never tried to think out the implications of super longevity then you should. There are some serious rumbles comming from the the guys in lab coats that essentially translates to it is going to happen. Even the pessimistic think people being born now have a good chance of seeing 120 - 150 year life spans with a far more vigorus old age than typical now. The optimistic ones think such an improoved life span will see them through to more breakthroughs and thus keep them ahead of death, perhaps indeffinatly. The implications of that are simply mind boggling.
If you have never tried to think out the implications of super longevity then you should. There are some serious rumbles comming from the the guys in lab coats that essentially translates to it is going to happen. Even the pessimistic think people being born now have a good chance of seeing 120 - 150 year life spans with a far more vigorus old age than typical now. The optimistic ones think such an improoved life span will see them through to more breakthroughs and thus keep them ahead of death, perhaps indeffinatly. The implications of that are simply mind boggling.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Holy Orwell's Ghost Batman....
The UK is looking to seriously upgrade its traffic camera system. How much ? Well right now sporadically placed cameras are used to catch speeders and CCTV cameras are used to track general traffic. What they want to do is get a camera every 1/4 mile or so on the road that has the ability to recognize license plate numbers and store there activity... IE which cameras they are seen on. And store the record for two years. Nominally it is to crack down on the use of uninsured/untaxed cars, it will almost certainly be used to monitor speeding offenses as well along with the more nebulous idea of denying the use of the roads to criminals.
Can this system do some good things ? Yes I suppose so. However all the talk here is of ways to collect more money for the government. Lets see... expensive system, it generates money, more expensive system, generate even more money. This is a bad cycle. Traffic monitoring needs to be more about providing a benifit to the tax payers. Not a burden of ever increasing and often arbitrary infraction penalties. I would feel better about the implementation of this tech if they were talking about how such omnicient monitoring tied to individual vehicle information, situation and road conditions could be combined with a car communication system to create an interactive and adaptable traffic safety system. IE two way communications with the cars so that it can warn drivers of unsafe conditions, overspeed, tailgating etc... BEFORE hitting them up for money because they strayed 6 mph over an arbitraty speed limit instead of just 5. You could have enough information to be able to say that someone driving 100 on a deserted motorway is not being unsafe when someone weaving through rush hour traffic at 40 is being unsafe. How about since the system is automatic, reducing the burden on sending notices why not use it to issue warnings to uninsured/untaxed vehicles giving people a fair chance to recitfy the situation before penalizing them.
Just in general, traffic fines are not supposed to be a relied upon revenue. No budget should EVER be allocated on the basis of collection of penalties due to law infringement. It is a direct conflict of interests. If you are allowed to earmark and rely on money you make from such sources it provides a vested interest in seeing that those infractions occur. For example setting an arbitrary speed limit that has the impossible task of defining what is a safe speed of operation for all vehicles, in all conditions. I for one think that all penalties should be returned to the public at large, or at least subtracted from the tax requirements. There should be NO incentive for the government to collect penalties from infractions.
The record of vehicle location information over 2 years is frankly scary as hell. There are serious abuses available there if you keep its access limited and serious abuses available if it is open. I just am not sure I could be convinced the good outweighs the bad. On the one hand the system could potentialy obsolete car theifs in one fail swoop. On the other if access to the data is restricted you will have little or no recourse in the event of a false positive or worse yet out right fradulent charges generated by those who control it. Its the old who watches the watchers issue.
Can this system do some good things ? Yes I suppose so. However all the talk here is of ways to collect more money for the government. Lets see... expensive system, it generates money, more expensive system, generate even more money. This is a bad cycle. Traffic monitoring needs to be more about providing a benifit to the tax payers. Not a burden of ever increasing and often arbitrary infraction penalties. I would feel better about the implementation of this tech if they were talking about how such omnicient monitoring tied to individual vehicle information, situation and road conditions could be combined with a car communication system to create an interactive and adaptable traffic safety system. IE two way communications with the cars so that it can warn drivers of unsafe conditions, overspeed, tailgating etc... BEFORE hitting them up for money because they strayed 6 mph over an arbitraty speed limit instead of just 5. You could have enough information to be able to say that someone driving 100 on a deserted motorway is not being unsafe when someone weaving through rush hour traffic at 40 is being unsafe. How about since the system is automatic, reducing the burden on sending notices why not use it to issue warnings to uninsured/untaxed vehicles giving people a fair chance to recitfy the situation before penalizing them.
Just in general, traffic fines are not supposed to be a relied upon revenue. No budget should EVER be allocated on the basis of collection of penalties due to law infringement. It is a direct conflict of interests. If you are allowed to earmark and rely on money you make from such sources it provides a vested interest in seeing that those infractions occur. For example setting an arbitrary speed limit that has the impossible task of defining what is a safe speed of operation for all vehicles, in all conditions. I for one think that all penalties should be returned to the public at large, or at least subtracted from the tax requirements. There should be NO incentive for the government to collect penalties from infractions.
The record of vehicle location information over 2 years is frankly scary as hell. There are serious abuses available there if you keep its access limited and serious abuses available if it is open. I just am not sure I could be convinced the good outweighs the bad. On the one hand the system could potentialy obsolete car theifs in one fail swoop. On the other if access to the data is restricted you will have little or no recourse in the event of a false positive or worse yet out right fradulent charges generated by those who control it. Its the old who watches the watchers issue.
Great Quote
Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
Ellen Goodman
Ellen Goodman
Sunday, November 13, 2005
H2N-GEN Car Gadget
This is an interesting gadget that has popped up on alot of radars. Just read about it in this month's popular science edition and have seen several web links other than the engadget review. In short this is a rather odd gar gadget claim. The basic idea is that the gizmo takes electricity and splits some distilled water via electrolysis and the resulting gasses (hydrogen and oxygen) are pumped into the intake and added to the regular combustion process. At that point the inventor claims 10-40% increase in fuel efficiency.
I have seen a lot of people saying that this thing can't work for a number of very good reasons but I am not so sure they are right. So lets deal with them.
First the article lists an increase from 35% engine efficiency to 97%. It is widely known that internal combustion engines are around 35% efficient. What most people don't understand is that this is not due to combustion efficiency. IE the fuel is completely burned. Modern fuel injection and spark systems attain the practical maximum efficiency of burning fuel. The loss of efficiency is in the loss of heat and internal workings of the engine... IE conversion of power to rotational energy and radiating lots and lots and lots of heat. In otherwords the car liberates virtualy all of the energy in the gas, something like 95% in a modern fuel injected engine. However, it only manages to harness 35% of it. This means that there is deffinate room for improovement but if it is realized then you have to be wasting less of the energy that is released in the process of combustion. In other words, you have to be losing less energy as heat. So any increase in fuel efficiency that is not an over unity scam has to result in less waste heat.
Now the idea that burning the hydrogen would add net power is ludicrous. But if you pause for a moment and consider the use of nitrous or water injection in combustion engines then it is possible to see how this might actually work. Injecting relatively small amounts of nitrous or water into the combustion cycle can net 100-300% increases in engine power output from the same amount of burned fuel. Using hydrogen in the same manner could allow you to net your fuel efficiency gain. IE essentially your taking the energy of the hydrogen to create higher compression ratios in the combustion cycle of the engine. When you do this to gain extremely high power for brief periods of time it is fairly destructive to the engine. IE it isn't designed for the increased power. However if you used this ability to create normal levels of power from less fuel then you could realize the claims of the inventor.
You could do the same thing via higher compressions with the pistons, however you hit a problem with detonation after about 10:1 and to realize higher compression ratio's you have to use much higher octane fuels. The added cost of the fuel normally negates any gains beyond ratios of 9 or 10:1. Injecting nitrous or water gets around this problem as this is alternative way of retarding detonation than by directly increasing the octane of the fuel. They are not viable as long term power generation because with nitrous you just shift you fuel costs.. IE the gas is used more efficiently but you only get it by expending nitrous which isn't cheap. Water injection has issues with durability of the engine if memory serves. So my guess is this process works in a similar fashion. Any power derived from combusting hydrogen derived from electrolysis from electricity generated by the engine being used has to be a power losing process. But if that power is used to create higher compression similar to nitrous or water injection than it can serve as a lever to getting more out of the gasoline combustion process and we already established there is more available there and that injection process can be used to get at it.
So here is the basic idea. Lets say the hydrogen generation process eats up 5hp of energy. According to those pesky laws of thermodynamics any direct combustion derived from that process could not net more than 5hp worth of energy. Practical conversion efficiency maxes out in the 90% range. Lets say you can net 4hp of combustion energy from 5hp of electrolysis. If that the re-introduction of that 4hp via hydrogen and oxygen to the combustion cycle serves the same purpose as nitrous or water injection systems then the result would be a 100-300% increase in the engine power output from burning gasoline. IE you are creating a more efficient converstion of the combustion of the gasoline into mechanical power by upping compression not adding power via hydrogen combustion. The combustion is used to up the compression ratio of the engine which in turn leads to higher efficiency in turning the combustion of gas into mechanical energy.
Now also acording to those laws of thermodynamics you cannot get more power out of your gas than it contains. Currently engines get about 35% of the stored energy in gas turned into mechanical energy turning the wheels. The rest is lost in conversion from one form of the energy to another. Most of the drive train is in the high efficiency conversion range... like 90%+ and the real energy loss in gas engines turns out to be heat. So if you are now getting 70% of that energy turned into mechanical energy you have to be either more efficient in the drive train or losing less heat. The drive train hasn't changed so to net 100% increase (35% upped to 70%) you would have to have a corresponding drop in the running tempreture of the engine as it would be losing less energy by radiating it off as heat.
So if this guy isn't a crank then the process would be something like this. You take a 100hp engine that gets say 10mpg at max output. You install this system and immediately you take a 5hp hit. You use the 5hp to generate hydrogen turning this into a 95hp engine getting worse fuel economy if you don't use the result of that process. However IF the hydrogen/oxygen from the electrolysis injected into the combustion cycle has a similar effect to adding nitrous leading to a ~100% increase in power output due to higher compression rates then 95 available hp turns into 190 available hp. You then cut the fuel injected into the cycle in half so now your getting 95hp burning 50% of what generated 100hp before. So at a perfect converstion ratio you are now about 44% more effiecient at turning gas into mechanical energy which is possible. Now instead of 10mpg you would be getting around 14mpg which is at the higher end of his claims. If this is what is happening then the waste heat being radiated would have to decrease by a similar amount so the engine would run cooler. According the the original artical exhaust temps were drasticly reduced. If this is true then the guy may be on to something.
Some may wonder why they don't just do this via nitrous or water injection. The problem is that your fuel costs don't go down with nitrous as you have to replace it like you do gas and it isn't cheap. Water injection to increase efficiency has been tried many times and failed for many practical reasons... namely added complexity. High temperature water is very very corrosive. While this process would still generate some water (hydrogen combustion forms water) you would be forming less. IE this system would up combustion by the result of combusting hydrogen in oxygen... water injection does it by injecting enough water to up the compression due to the fact that water does not compress. If the amounts are similar then this system will encounter similar durability issues when this is used for long durations rather than for short term power boosts.
I have seen a lot of people saying that this thing can't work for a number of very good reasons but I am not so sure they are right. So lets deal with them.
First the article lists an increase from 35% engine efficiency to 97%. It is widely known that internal combustion engines are around 35% efficient. What most people don't understand is that this is not due to combustion efficiency. IE the fuel is completely burned. Modern fuel injection and spark systems attain the practical maximum efficiency of burning fuel. The loss of efficiency is in the loss of heat and internal workings of the engine... IE conversion of power to rotational energy and radiating lots and lots and lots of heat. In otherwords the car liberates virtualy all of the energy in the gas, something like 95% in a modern fuel injected engine. However, it only manages to harness 35% of it. This means that there is deffinate room for improovement but if it is realized then you have to be wasting less of the energy that is released in the process of combustion. In other words, you have to be losing less energy as heat. So any increase in fuel efficiency that is not an over unity scam has to result in less waste heat.
Now the idea that burning the hydrogen would add net power is ludicrous. But if you pause for a moment and consider the use of nitrous or water injection in combustion engines then it is possible to see how this might actually work. Injecting relatively small amounts of nitrous or water into the combustion cycle can net 100-300% increases in engine power output from the same amount of burned fuel. Using hydrogen in the same manner could allow you to net your fuel efficiency gain. IE essentially your taking the energy of the hydrogen to create higher compression ratios in the combustion cycle of the engine. When you do this to gain extremely high power for brief periods of time it is fairly destructive to the engine. IE it isn't designed for the increased power. However if you used this ability to create normal levels of power from less fuel then you could realize the claims of the inventor.
You could do the same thing via higher compressions with the pistons, however you hit a problem with detonation after about 10:1 and to realize higher compression ratio's you have to use much higher octane fuels. The added cost of the fuel normally negates any gains beyond ratios of 9 or 10:1. Injecting nitrous or water gets around this problem as this is alternative way of retarding detonation than by directly increasing the octane of the fuel. They are not viable as long term power generation because with nitrous you just shift you fuel costs.. IE the gas is used more efficiently but you only get it by expending nitrous which isn't cheap. Water injection has issues with durability of the engine if memory serves. So my guess is this process works in a similar fashion. Any power derived from combusting hydrogen derived from electrolysis from electricity generated by the engine being used has to be a power losing process. But if that power is used to create higher compression similar to nitrous or water injection than it can serve as a lever to getting more out of the gasoline combustion process and we already established there is more available there and that injection process can be used to get at it.
So here is the basic idea. Lets say the hydrogen generation process eats up 5hp of energy. According to those pesky laws of thermodynamics any direct combustion derived from that process could not net more than 5hp worth of energy. Practical conversion efficiency maxes out in the 90% range. Lets say you can net 4hp of combustion energy from 5hp of electrolysis. If that the re-introduction of that 4hp via hydrogen and oxygen to the combustion cycle serves the same purpose as nitrous or water injection systems then the result would be a 100-300% increase in the engine power output from burning gasoline. IE you are creating a more efficient converstion of the combustion of the gasoline into mechanical power by upping compression not adding power via hydrogen combustion. The combustion is used to up the compression ratio of the engine which in turn leads to higher efficiency in turning the combustion of gas into mechanical energy.
Now also acording to those laws of thermodynamics you cannot get more power out of your gas than it contains. Currently engines get about 35% of the stored energy in gas turned into mechanical energy turning the wheels. The rest is lost in conversion from one form of the energy to another. Most of the drive train is in the high efficiency conversion range... like 90%+ and the real energy loss in gas engines turns out to be heat. So if you are now getting 70% of that energy turned into mechanical energy you have to be either more efficient in the drive train or losing less heat. The drive train hasn't changed so to net 100% increase (35% upped to 70%) you would have to have a corresponding drop in the running tempreture of the engine as it would be losing less energy by radiating it off as heat.
So if this guy isn't a crank then the process would be something like this. You take a 100hp engine that gets say 10mpg at max output. You install this system and immediately you take a 5hp hit. You use the 5hp to generate hydrogen turning this into a 95hp engine getting worse fuel economy if you don't use the result of that process. However IF the hydrogen/oxygen from the electrolysis injected into the combustion cycle has a similar effect to adding nitrous leading to a ~100% increase in power output due to higher compression rates then 95 available hp turns into 190 available hp. You then cut the fuel injected into the cycle in half so now your getting 95hp burning 50% of what generated 100hp before. So at a perfect converstion ratio you are now about 44% more effiecient at turning gas into mechanical energy which is possible. Now instead of 10mpg you would be getting around 14mpg which is at the higher end of his claims. If this is what is happening then the waste heat being radiated would have to decrease by a similar amount so the engine would run cooler. According the the original artical exhaust temps were drasticly reduced. If this is true then the guy may be on to something.
Some may wonder why they don't just do this via nitrous or water injection. The problem is that your fuel costs don't go down with nitrous as you have to replace it like you do gas and it isn't cheap. Water injection to increase efficiency has been tried many times and failed for many practical reasons... namely added complexity. High temperature water is very very corrosive. While this process would still generate some water (hydrogen combustion forms water) you would be forming less. IE this system would up combustion by the result of combusting hydrogen in oxygen... water injection does it by injecting enough water to up the compression due to the fact that water does not compress. If the amounts are similar then this system will encounter similar durability issues when this is used for long durations rather than for short term power boosts.
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