From avalonbiker at yahoo.com Wed Feb 24 16:03:28 2010 From: avalonbiker at yahoo.com (Nick Reiter) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:03:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [NewCandle] more aluminum roll experiments for February In-Reply-To: <937692.98669.qm@web65410.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <335138.94912.qm@web65415.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Yet another month goes by, and I still haven't found anything else to play with! Well, no, thats not true - I have been spinning some mercury magnetohydrodynamically but thats for another time:) A moderately overdue update on yet more aluminum foil roll experiments shall follow here... When we last checked in, I had reported that healthy hydrolysis had kicked in without the addition of a metal salt, in a "all pure materials" distilled water bucket run, with foil rolls. Sam Faile and I gave that one a designation of Pixie 24. The next experiment after that, was the use of a 50-50 blend of distilled water and ethanol. Now in this case, a couple of interesting features were observed, one of which SEEMED key, and seemed to imply that we were producing a chemical reaction modified by the tight turn Casimir cavities of the foil rolls. As far as the gas evolution from the rolls immersed in the ethanol water mix, the end result was somewhat less in total volume than the pure water run before it. It also appeared to be highly delayed as a reaction - taking about a week to catalyze. The neat part was what I discovered when the bubbling finally dropped off, and I pulled a roll to peel apart (initially to look at the level of visible oxidation, pinholing, or visible anomalies. For each foil roll, the outer surfaces of both inside and outside turns were pretty much pristine and shiny - non-oxidized. Even for about 1 turn on both inner and outer, the surfaces of the foil were pristine. HOWEVER, at a distinct demarcation line, where the tight turn-to-turn spacing of the foil began (and where presumably any liquid infiltrating said cavities would be within a zone of modified vacuum field density from Casimir Effect cancellation) a very uniform, very shiny deposited or reacted layer was found. The coating was quite beautiful - a bronze brown color, as smooth as an anodized surface, but apparently much thinner, as it was not hard or crusted, and seemed very conformal to the supple foil. The sampled roll was sliced open, and the presence of the unknown brown coating was extremely homogeneous. The foil in addition to being coated with the unknown substance was also very pinhole free, unlike the surface found after the more aggressive hydrolysis of either salt water solutions or pure water. Not having any EDS, mass spec, or GC available anymore, I cannot do anything but guess as to the composition of gas coming off the bucket, OR the bronze-brown coating. However it was very clear that the coating reaction was only occurring in the region of turn-to-turn cavity liquid infiltration. The end turn regions of the foil, either hanging loosely into the liquid medium, or even at a surface to surface spacing of a fraction of a millimeter were un-affected. Something energetic was going on in the cavity regions! My guess is that the bronze colored coating could be carbon. Following this, we set up a run of foil rolls using a weak thorium nitrate solution - in sequence similar to the uranyl acetate solution bucket of late last year. The thorium nitrate run again appeared to produce a distinct dip in CPM as read by the Geiger counter, during the period of solution infiltration into the turns of the rolls, though it was not as robust as the uranyl solution. Also, when the reaction period was done, and gas production (which was slow to modest) was finished, the ThNO3 rolls were nowhere near as "hot" as the rolls that had been in the U-Ac experiment... only showing about 1000 to 2000CPM at 1cm distance. Another bucket experiment requested by Sam Faile that is essentially doing nothing after 3 weeks made use of some low viscosity silicone fluid (.65cSt) to replace water. The most recent bucket run made use of a .15M solution of ammonium nitrate in water, to replace the ThNO3. This seemed to be a modest gas generator too, but the whole idea of nitrates as salts for hydrolysis is probably not panning out practically. It also makes for really noxious smells in the case of NH4NO3 solution. The last point of note has to do with the repeated observation of very slight short lived (typ less than 10 minute) alterations of averaged background radiation CPM as read by the Geiger Mueller tube, when pointing at the foil roll stack - during the time that (even non-radioactive) liquid media are infiltrating the foil roll turn cavities. The "null blip" observed with the ethanol water mix was about the same as with pure water, but faster (presumably due to lower viscosity - faster infiltration?) This latter effect needs to be tested in a far more controlled way before I can say too much about my confidence level. The results of the ethanol-water bucket though, that seem to show a deposition or reaction only where Casimir cavity geometry is present, is much more exciting at present. Best to all, nr From hheffner at mtaonline.net Wed Feb 24 21:02:42 2010 From: hheffner at mtaonline.net (Horace Heffner) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:02:42 -0900 Subject: [NewCandle] more aluminum roll experiments for February In-Reply-To: <335138.94912.qm@web65415.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <335138.94912.qm@web65415.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6A55DEEA-7331-4577-9781-F0A263C5B64A@mtaonline.net> On Feb 24, 2010, at 12:03 PM, Nick Reiter wrote: [snip fascinating and puzzling stuff] Nick, I still have no idea what is going on, and have less the more you discover. It may be useless, but if you want I would be happy to take some optical microscope pictures of some surfaces if you would like. I would just need some snippets in sealed plastic bags identified with sample numbers. I wonder if shipping such would be illegal due to radioactivity. There would be a lot less radioactivity than in some welding rods, but I still have to wonder. Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/ From NewCandleAdmin at ipdiscover.com Thu Feb 25 14:33:40 2010 From: NewCandleAdmin at ipdiscover.com (Keith Nagel) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:33:40 -0800 Subject: [NewCandle] more aluminum roll experiments for February In-Reply-To: <335138.94912.qm@web65415.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi Gents, As you say, it's likely the coating is carbon based. You might try sticking an aluminum anode and cathode into one of your solutions and passing some current through to see what gross anode and cathode reaction areas look like. Might give you some insight into what's normal/not normal. Here are two thoughts that struck me about your novel large area foil corrosion experiments. 1) When foil layers get close, the electrolyte is forced to a film. This increases resistivity of the electrolyte, and prevents free flow of reaction byproducts. The local composition of the electrolyte can become quite different than the bulk composition over time. 2) In general, there are two important distances w/ respect to a submerged piece of metal. The Stern layer is the distance to the layer of tightly bound ions against the metal. Farther out is a more diffuse layer of counter charged ions. This chart illustrates what I mean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DoubleLayer.gif One might expect that if a continuous metal foil comes close enough to itself to penetrate either of these two layers that different behaviour might be noticed during corrosion, separate from any casimir influence. For what it's worth, if you are experimenting with non-aqueous solutions, try acetone and whatever salts you can dissolve in it. It can be a little challenging to keep all the water out of the soution, but some molecular sieve drying beads have worked for me in the past. The principle advantage to using nonaqueous solutions is that you can get a higher voltage across the Stern/Helmholtz layer. K. -----Original Message----- From: newcandle-bounces at ipdiscover.com [mailto:newcandle-bounces at ipdiscover.com]On Behalf Of Nick Reiter Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 1:03 PM To: New energy for the new world. Subject: [NewCandle] more aluminum roll experiments for February Yet another month goes by, and I still haven't found anything else to play with! Well, no, thats not true - I have been spinning some mercury magnetohydrodynamically but thats for another time:) A moderately overdue update on yet more aluminum foil roll experiments shall follow here... When we last checked in, I had reported that healthy hydrolysis had kicked in without the addition of a metal salt, in a "all pure materials" distilled water bucket run, with foil rolls. Sam Faile and I gave that one a designation of Pixie 24. The next experiment after that, was the use of a 50-50 blend of distilled water and ethanol. Now in this case, a couple of interesting features were observed, one of which SEEMED key, and seemed to imply that we were producing a chemical reaction modified by the tight turn Casimir cavities of the foil rolls. As far as the gas evolution from the rolls immersed in the ethanol water mix, the end result was somewhat less in total volume than the pure water run before it. It also appeared to be highly delayed as a reaction - taking about a week to catalyze. The neat part was what I discovered when the bubbling finally dropped off, and I pulled a roll to peel apart (initially to look at the level of visible oxidation, pinholing, or visible anomalies. For each foil roll, the outer surfaces of both inside and outside turns were pretty much pristine and shiny - non-oxidized. Even for about 1 turn on both inner and outer, the surfaces of the foil were pristine. HOWEVER, at a distinct demarcation line, where the tight turn-to-turn spacing of the foil began (and where presumably any liquid infiltrating said cavities would be within a zone of modified vacuum field density from Casimir Effect cancellation) a very uniform, very shiny deposited or reacted layer was found. The coating was quite beautiful - a bronze brown color, as smooth as an anodized surface, but apparently much thinner, as it was not hard or crusted, and seemed very conformal to the supple foil. The sampled roll was sliced open, and the presence of the unknown brown coating was extremely homogeneous. The foil in addition to being coated with the unknown substance was also very pinhole free, unlike the surface found after the more aggressive hydrolysis of either salt water solutions or pure water. Not having any EDS, mass spec, or GC available anymore, I cannot do anything but guess as to the composition of gas coming off the bucket, OR the bronze-brown coating. However it was very clear that the coating reaction was only occurring in the region of turn-to-turn cavity liquid infiltration. The end turn regions of the foil, either hanging loosely into the liquid medium, or even at a surface to surface spacing of a fraction of a millimeter were un-affected. Something energetic was going on in the cavity regions! My guess is that the bronze colored coating could be carbon. Following this, we set up a run of foil rolls using a weak thorium nitrate solution - in sequence similar to the uranyl acetate solution bucket of late last year. The thorium nitrate run again appeared to produce a distinct dip in CPM as read by the Geiger counter, during the period of solution infiltration into the turns of the rolls, though it was not as robust as the uranyl solution. Also, when the reaction period was done, and gas production (which was slow to modest) was finished, the ThNO3 rolls were nowhere near as "hot" as the rolls that had been in the U-Ac experiment... only showing about 1000 to 2000CPM at 1cm distance. Another bucket experiment requested by Sam Faile that is essentially doing nothing after 3 weeks made use of some low viscosity silicone fluid (.65cSt) to replace water. The most recent bucket run made use of a .15M solution of ammonium nitrate in water, to replace the ThNO3. This seemed to be a modest gas generator too, but the whole idea of nitrates as salts for hydrolysis is probably not panning out practically. It also makes for really noxious smells in the case of NH4NO3 solution. The last point of note has to do with the repeated observation of very slight short lived (typ less than 10 minute) alterations of averaged background radiation CPM as read by the Geiger Mueller tube, when pointing at the foil roll stack - during the time that (even non-radioactive) liquid media are infiltrating the foil roll turn cavities. The "null blip" observed with the ethanol water mix was about the same as with pure water, but faster (presumably due to lower viscosity - faster infiltration?) This latter effect needs to be tested in a far more controlled way before I can say too much about my confidence level. The results of the ethanol-water bucket though, that seem to show a deposition or reaction only where Casimir cavity geometry is present, is much more exciting at present. Best to all, nr _______________________________________________ NewCandle mailing list NewCandle at ipdiscover.com http://ipdiscover.com/mailman/listinfo/newcandle_ipdiscover.com From avalonbiker at yahoo.com Thu Feb 25 15:41:52 2010 From: avalonbiker at yahoo.com (Nick Reiter) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:41:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [NewCandle] more aluminum roll experiments for February In-Reply-To: <6A55DEEA-7331-4577-9781-F0A263C5B64A@mtaonline.net> Message-ID: <548259.41263.qm@web65414.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Hi Horace, Thanks for the offer. You know the legality of some of that is pretty ambiguous. I spent no few hours puzzling about it back in December, when I had the opportunity to take a couple samples of my "fun foil" with me when I had to go to Germany to help the Teutons at our plant set up my former....er... their SEM. On one hand, a tiny thumbnail snip of foil even with the uranyl residue on it would never possibly set off any detectors... or would it have? Who knows, maybe they have radiac dogs a'sniffin in Frankfurt. So since nobody could share what the law actually was, I didn't try it. Same way with US mail. I don't think I would on principle, even if a thoriated welding rod or Coleman mantle would be orders of magnitude more emissive. But what I WOULD be happy to send you would be some snips of the shiny brown coated foil, as well as the more usual "grey" oxidized foil from an aqueous hydrolysis run. AND... you know, it might be fun from an artists perspective if I could find you some foil snips that had those strange dendritic ternary Al-halogen-alkali compounds... the "anemones" or squids. Let me see what I can round up - again, thanks for the offer! nr > [snip fascinating and puzzling stuff] > > Nick, > > I still have no idea what is going on, and have less the > more you discover.? It may be useless, but if you want > I would be happy to take some optical microscope pictures of > some surfaces if you would like.? I would just need > some snippets in sealed plastic bags identified with sample > numbers. > > I wonder if shipping such would be illegal due to > radioactivity.? There would be a lot less radioactivity > than in some welding rods, but I still have to wonder. > > Best regards, > > Horace Heffner > http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/ > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > NewCandle mailing list > NewCandle at ipdiscover.com > http://ipdiscover.com/mailman/listinfo/newcandle_ipdiscover.com > From avalonbiker at yahoo.com Thu Feb 25 16:00:58 2010 From: avalonbiker at yahoo.com (Nick Reiter) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:00:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [NewCandle] more aluminum roll experiments for February In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <45132.17981.qm@web65416.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Hi Keith, Thanks for the thoughts back... > As you say, it's likely the coating is carbon based. > You might try sticking an aluminum anode and cathode > into one of your solutions and passing some current > through to see what gross anode and cathode reaction > areas look like. Might give you some insight into > what's normal/not normal. ****************Yeah, this one is long overdue as far as control runs. Even attaching forced potentials to two different rolls should be telling. > > out is a more diffuse layer of counter charged ions. This > chart illustrates what I mean. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DoubleLayer.gif > > One might expect that if a continuous metal foil comes > close enough > to itself to penetrate either of these two layers that > different > behaviour might be noticed during corrosion, separate from > any > casimir influence. *****************Excellent. Thank you. One of the big challenges has been to accurately characterize the cavities formed by the turns. Ideally, if two sheets of foil are placed in intimate contact, the cavities formed would be defined in form and dimension by the machine finish of the aluminum. You would think that such engineering data would be common and easily obtained, but for me t'warent. I beat the bushes high and low for values of Ra (average roughness). Best I can say is that the gap between two foil roll turns is a chaotic network of linear gouge cavities separated by thinner passages, with the long axis of the gouge cavities being in the direction of the foil winding, and normal to the direction of the roll axis. The dimensions of the gouge cavities would be between Ra and 2Ra in diameter. Which seemed to imply 100nm to maybe 2 microns? (depending on shiny or dull foil sides) Certainly within the range of size where Casimir forces would be noticeable... but to what degree and in what way? > > For what it's worth, if you are experimenting with > non-aqueous > solutions, try acetone and whatever salts you can dissolve > in it. It can be a little challenging to keep all the > water > out of the soution, but some molecular sieve drying beads > have worked for me in the past. The principle advantage > to using nonaqueous solutions is that you can get a higher > voltage across the Stern/Helmholtz layer. ***************Excellent - thanks nr From hheffner at mtaonline.net Thu Feb 25 16:17:19 2010 From: hheffner at mtaonline.net (Horace Heffner) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:17:19 -0900 Subject: [NewCandle] more aluminum roll experiments for February In-Reply-To: <548259.41263.qm@web65414.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <548259.41263.qm@web65414.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Feb 25, 2010, at 11:41 AM, Nick Reiter wrote: > Hi Horace, > > Thanks for the offer. You know the legality of some of that is > pretty ambiguous. I spent no few hours puzzling about it back in > December, when I had the opportunity to take a couple samples of my > "fun foil" with me when I had to go to Germany to help the Teutons > at our plant set up my former....er... their SEM. On one hand, a > tiny thumbnail snip of foil even with the uranyl residue on it > would never possibly set off any detectors... or would it have? > Who knows, maybe they have radiac dogs a'sniffin in Frankfurt. So > since nobody could share what the law actually was, I didn't try > it. Same way with US mail. I don't think I would on principle, > even if a thoriated welding rod or Coleman mantle would be orders > of magnitude more emissive. > > But what I WOULD be happy to send you would be some snips of the > shiny brown coated foil, as well as the more usual "grey" oxidized > foil from an aqueous hydrolysis run. AND... you know, it might be > fun from an artists perspective if I could find you some foil snips > that had those strange dendritic ternary Al-halogen-alkali > compounds... the "anemones" or squids. Let me see what I can round > up - again, thanks for the offer! > > nr Sounds great! Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/ From hheffner at mtaonline.net Thu Feb 25 16:44:51 2010 From: hheffner at mtaonline.net (Horace Heffner) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:44:51 -0900 Subject: [NewCandle] more aluminum roll experiments for February In-Reply-To: <45132.17981.qm@web65416.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <45132.17981.qm@web65416.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Feb 25, 2010, at 12:00 PM, Nick Reiter wrote: > > *****************Excellent. Thank you. One of the big challenges > has been to accurately characterize the cavities formed by the > turns. Ideally, if two sheets of foil are placed in intimate > contact, the cavities formed would be defined in form and dimension > by the machine finish of the aluminum. You would think that such > engineering data would be common and easily obtained, but for me > t'warent. I beat the bushes high and low for values of Ra (average > roughness). Best I can say is that the gap between two foil roll > turns is a chaotic network of linear gouge cavities separated by > thinner passages, with the long axis of the gouge cavities being in > the direction of the foil winding, and normal to the direction of > the roll axis. The dimensions of the gouge cavities would be > between Ra and 2Ra in diameter. Which seemed to imply 100nm to > maybe 2 microns? (depending on shiny or dull foil sides) Certainly > within the range of size where Casimir forces > would be noticeable... but to what degree and in what way? I have a little bit of experience with Al foil as electrode, if I remember it correctly. The foil I used started out (microscopically) shiny with long ridges and some grooves. After a while it turned darker (though it still looked shiny to the naked eye) and much smoother. It could be some degree of smoothness has to develop before Casimir forces or whatever begin to take major effect. However, that certainly can't account for effects you have seen immediately upon putting the foil into the solution. Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/