[BloodEagle]

You are desperately grabbing at straws.  That fuel cell is an exercise in electrolysis, not the burning of hydrogen and oxygen.  This is effectively a chemical cell/battery.  You'd have realized that, if you'd have bothered to read the second page you referenced.

And it won't [sic] be marketed as a toy if it didn't work.

You, my good sir, have a great deal to learn about the world of advertising.

[watsisname]

Or he's just trolling everyone.

[Nuke]

you can make a weak battery with salt water, aluminum foil and toilet paper. i know because ive done it.

[jr2]

Second Law of Thermodynamics.

You cannot split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then turn that back into water, without putting more energy into the system in the first reaction than you get out of the second.  It doesn't matter if the energy put in through the first reaction comes from electricity, radio waves, or magical fairy flatulance.  If you build a generator that runs off of "burning" salt water and try to power the radio transmitter with the generator, it's going to steadily lose energy, until the system shuts down.  It's just like every other perpetual motion machine for which USPTO rightfully and automatically denies patents.

That news report is what happens when media companies decide that proper, educated science correspondents are expendable in rough economic times.  It's kind of infuriating, really.

Why does it have to re-combine to form water again?  If there was a way to actually completely split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, just burn it (or at least split it completely enough to achieve a good burn).  Any left-over water would turn to steam, (increasing the pressure on the cylinder / turbine, some aircraft and diesel engines use water injection to achieve this effect) assuming there was enough hydrogen to burn.

Any way to have an inhibitor to prevent re-combining of the hydrogen and oxygen?  Can the radio field itself act as an inhibitor?  Of course, depending on how much energy it takes to generate the radio field, that might not matter much..

[z64555]

Second Law of Thermodynamics.

You cannot split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then turn that back into water, without putting more energy into the system in the first reaction than you get out of the second.  It doesn't matter if the energy put in through the first reaction comes from electricity, radio waves, or magical fairy flatulance.  If you build a generator that runs off of "burning" salt water and try to power the radio transmitter with the generator, it's going to steadily lose energy, until the system shuts down.  It's just like every other perpetual motion machine for which USPTO rightfully and automatically denies patents.

That news report is what happens when media companies decide that proper, educated science correspondents are expendable in rough economic times.  It's kind of infuriating, really.

Why does it have to re-combine to form water again?  If there was a way to actually completely split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, just burn it (or at least split it completely enough to achieve a good burn).  Any left-over water would turn to steam, (increasing the pressure on the cylinder / turbine, some aircraft and diesel engines use water injection to achieve this effect) assuming there was enough hydrogen to burn.

Any way to have an inhibitor to prevent re-combining of the hydrogen and oxygen?  Can the radio field itself act as an inhibitor?  Of course, depending on how much energy it takes to generate the radio field, that might not matter much..

Well, your effectively asking "what happens when you burn Hydrogen." Here ya go. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning

[MP-Ryan]

Any way to have an inhibitor to prevent re-combining of the hydrogen and oxygen?

No.  In order to burn hydrogen, oxygen must be present and the exothermic chemical reaction must occur, which will always produce water.

If you'll recall the fire triangle, in order for something to burn you require a fuel (hydrogen), oxygen, and an ignition source (energy).  Remove one and no burning can happen.

[jr2]

So, (very random) question just popped into my head,

If the Hindenburg had simply burst open without the presence of an ignition source how much water would have been created?

[watsisname]

What you are asking is "Will hydrogen gas oxidize under standard atmospheric conditions?"

The answer is no.  Such an oxidation reaction requires some amount of activation energy (like a spark) to get going.

Of course, since it is exothermic, once it gets going it will keep on going until there is no more available reactant.  Hence the complete destruction of the Hindenburg from one little spark.  Whoops.

[Nuke]

its ok, they were all nazis anyway.

this probibly wont create energy but perhaps will be more efficient than current means of splitting water. you might be able to use hydrogen as a proper storage medium if you can get a relatively high efficiency.

[General Battuta]

Why does it have to re-combine to form water again?  If there was a way to actually completely split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, just burn it (or at least split it completely enough to achieve a good burn).  Any left-over water would turn to steam, (increasing the pressure on the cylinder / turbine, some aircraft and diesel engines use water injection to achieve this effect) assuming there was enough hydrogen to burn.

Any way to have an inhibitor to prevent re-combining of the hydrogen and oxygen?  Can the radio field itself act as an inhibitor?  Of course, depending on how much energy it takes to generate the radio field, that might not matter much..

Holy ****.

[Flipside]

Stuff needs energy to happen, and things always tend towards the most low-energy configuration, hence so many spheres in the Universe

[BlueFlames]

Holy ****.

This is why I advise everyone going to university to take a first-year Physics course as an elective or to fulfill a gen-ed requirement at some point.  Even if they don't remember a single equation, they'll learn and retain so many basic concepts that it'd be a lot harder to make them fall prey to this kind of bull****.

Why does it have to re-combine to form water again?  If there was a way to actually completely split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, just burn it...

Burning hydrogen is the process of combining it with oxygen, which produces water and thermal energy.  If you have abundant reserves of free hydrogen and free oxygen, it'd be a wonderful fuel, but on Earth, most hydrogen is very firmly bound up in water or hydrocarbons (fossil fuels).

[z64555]

This is why I advise everyone going to university to take a first-year Physics course as an elective or to fulfill a gen-ed requirement at some point.  Even if they don't remember a single equation, they'll learn and retain so many basic concepts that it'd be a lot harder to make them fall prey to this kind of bull****.

That's sadly not always the case. Just because you give a horse water doesn't mean that it will drink it, they have to want to drink it first.

Granted, there is a probability a student will remember SOMETHING from a course, but if the professor is a louse, the book sucks, the class at the wrong time, et cetera, that probability would be smaller than what we'd like it to be. However, if the student wants to learn the material, then that's a completely different matter.

[Klaustrophobia]

that's a good point.  i retained next to nothing of the "humanities" they made us take beyond the bits that were common sense anyway.  and i even had a mild interest in some of them insofar as could see the reasoning behind being "well rounded" as they like to say. 

[z64555]

I had recently taken an Environmental Engineering course, and was quite surprised at how interesting it was, and even more interesting was how most of the other student's weren't interested!

To further elaborate, much of the stuff in the "introductory" course stemmed from the 80's and 90's tree hugger propaganda campaigns. Common, who hasn't heard of world domination by machines, with a complete disregard to the effects of their manufacturing pollution?

Granted, I knew quite a bit of stuff the course taught already, but I hadn't realized I had learned it before. Similar "guerrilla" education tactics may be going on still...

[Polpolion]

This is why I advise everyone going to university to take a first-year Physics course as an elective or to fulfill a gen-ed requirement at some point.  Even if they don't remember a single equation, they'll learn and retain so many basic concepts that it'd be a lot harder to make them fall prey to this kind of bull****.

This is a terrible idea. 1) Not all first year physics courses cover the same material. Two semesters of physics and we didn't do anything with thermodynamics more in depth than a mention in passing. Here, you'd have much better luck taking an intro chemistry course to get this kind of knowledge. 2) Not every student has the time or money to take a full battery of introductory science courses. I managed to get 4 science classes out of the way in a year and a half, but I wouldn't want to spend any more of my time here on it because 3) Not every student needs to know this stuff. I'm here for computer science, not physics, and I wouldn't even think of forcing humanities or art students into university level science courses just to get their feet wet. Especially when you consider it will also require they take at least a couple semesters of calculus on top of that.

Those points aside, this is exactly what secondary school science classes are for. I'd guess that 90% of the material covered in the intro science courses at uni were covered in at least a conceptual basis in high school science courses, which for people that don't need to know how to use the knowledge is good enough. I'll go further and say the only way people will forget things they've learned in school is if they've never used it outside of school. Five years down the road if they haven't used it yet, they probably won't be using it. Jumping down people's throats because they don't understand the chemistry behind oxidation reactions is just immature when they don't do anything where they need to know.

[Aardwolf]

* Aardwolf points to BP's BFRed techroom description

[General Battuta]

* Aardwolf points to BP's BFRed techroom description

What about it?

Am I going to have to explain special relativity to you again?

[Aardwolf]

Obviously the trick to curing cancer is to invent subspace travel. Also, traveling through portals can remove poison from a man's bloodstream.

[General Battuta]

Obviously the trick to curing cancer is to invent subspace travel. Also, traveling through portals can remove poison from a man's bloodstream.

What does this have to do with the BFRed tech description