This interested student has discovered that scientists on any planet in the universe, using whatever units they have for charge or speed, and whatever their version of Planck's constant may be, will all come up with 137, because it is a pure number.He had a Ramanujan moment on his sick bed in Zurich. No not Taxicab Number 1729, but he brought to the attention of his visiting assistant his room number in hospital. 137! I leave it to the interested student as to why he found that extremely interesting.
137 (number - Wikipedia)
Very exciting. I typed in 136 (number) and got an equally fascinating wiki entry
136 (number - Wikipedia)
Turns out many, many numbers have fascinating significance. I balk when mathematicians say ‘this number holds the key to the universe. . . (If only we could work it out)’
136 (number - Wikipedia)
Turns out many, many numbers have fascinating significance. I balk when mathematicians say ‘this number holds the key to the universe. . . (If only we could work it out)’
It is not quoted, but I would assume it is part of a stress test somehow.
Well, the amount of "heat" in the air around my house usually drops to -26 sometime during winter, air based heat pumps get progressively less effective the more we drop below 0c. In the ground there'll be +5 to 7c pending on where you measure. The compressor was cited as 1kW if my memory is correct, and it's controlled by a frequency inverter to reduce the amount of on/off cycles to hopefully not much at all.
And let's not forget about 42!
It is assumed that the heatpump will save me about 20 000kWh per year ( the estimate is more positive than that, we'll see), we don't use gas here in Norway, and having an oil furnace is now illegal.
The solar cells is just to help get me closer to 0. If it works okay I might decide to cover the other half of my roof in some years time.
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So I'm breaking the bank to get this done now, hoping that the various signs I'm reading will cause a rise in inflation that will help me pay back the loan faster than the predictions say.
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137 is, to a Physicist like Wolfgang Pauli, the approximation to the denominator of the fine structure constant. Of which more later if you are interested.
I tend to agree with John Baez that 5, 8 and 24 are extremely interesting numbers:
My Favorite Numbers
Crop up everywhere in Maths and Physics.
Onto KaffiMann's attempt to save the Planet and a few NKr along the way with his heatpump. I have been calculating.
Recall that 1kWh is 3,600kJ. Or about 900kCals in food terms.
I spend £80 a month in winter on approximately 480 kWh of heating and other things in my bijou apartment.
This is equivalent to 100kg of woodburning. I would have to find 3kg of kindling a day in the garden or nearby builders skips to save the money! This is about half a ton of wood per year at 5kWh per kilo.
How much energy might KaffiMann find in a huge 200-y-o 20m 15 ton Oak tree in his garden? About 7 tons of dry wood. I would think about 3 tons a year will do it for his heating. Pine is quicker growing, of course.
A litre of cooking oil is about 10kWh. Enough to melt 100kg of Ice. Also enough to get 100kg of water to 100C. Interestingly, boiling a 100l of water takes about 6x that energy. This is why damp and condensation is so annoying.
The interesting takeaway from all this, is you should add 1/8 by weight of ice cubes to your drink to cool it from 20C to 10C! Or a 1/4 of ice for any icy milkshake! A useful fact IMO.
I tend to agree with John Baez that 5, 8 and 24 are extremely interesting numbers:
My Favorite Numbers
Crop up everywhere in Maths and Physics.
Onto KaffiMann's attempt to save the Planet and a few NKr along the way with his heatpump. I have been calculating.
Recall that 1kWh is 3,600kJ. Or about 900kCals in food terms.
I spend £80 a month in winter on approximately 480 kWh of heating and other things in my bijou apartment.
This is equivalent to 100kg of woodburning. I would have to find 3kg of kindling a day in the garden or nearby builders skips to save the money! This is about half a ton of wood per year at 5kWh per kilo.
How much energy might KaffiMann find in a huge 200-y-o 20m 15 ton Oak tree in his garden? About 7 tons of dry wood. I would think about 3 tons a year will do it for his heating. Pine is quicker growing, of course.
A litre of cooking oil is about 10kWh. Enough to melt 100kg of Ice. Also enough to get 100kg of water to 100C. Interestingly, boiling a 100l of water takes about 6x that energy. This is why damp and condensation is so annoying.
The interesting takeaway from all this, is you should add 1/8 by weight of ice cubes to your drink to cool it from 20C to 10C! Or a 1/4 of ice for any icy milkshake! A useful fact IMO.
I note that you correctly put the word "heat" in inverted commas, because we mustn't confuse heat with temperature.
Heat, or thermal energy, is the sum of the kinetic energies of the molecules of a material while temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules.
A potential heat source with a lower temperature does not necessarily have less thermal energy than one with a higher temperature. We have to take the mass of the potential heat source into account.
For example, a block of ice at 0 C could contain more thermal energy than a kettle of boiling water at 100 C if its mass was much greater than the mass of the boiling water.
When comparing air based to ground based systems, it is not only the temperature that is important, but also the mass of air or ground from which the thermal energy can be extracted.
I presume, therefore, that a lot of cold air must be circulated in an air based system to provide a feasible mass for energy extraction.
I am quite "Sympatico" to the problems of living in Norway. Been there lots of times. Humid and Muggy and Midge-infested in Summer, freezing and eye-wateringly Cold in Winter. The responsible Norwegians even maintain guard-rails beneath their gutters to stop huge icecycles dropping on their heads in the Street.
Whole place is a shambles before National Day on May 17th even in relatively mild Oslo, Roads cracked by Ice, Litter everywhere. Huge efforts go into the clear-up.
The only saving-grace I find in Norway is the Air Quality is generally excellent. And the land is 90% unspoilt:
Also plenty of timber. I do lie awake at night worrying about the Atlantic Conveyor water current that keeps us relatively warm in Northern Europe. It might abruptly pack up, apparently. KaffiMann will then wisely move to Portsmouth.
What I am getting at, is that the Sun is what ultimately keeps us warm. Our own Nuclear Fusion reactor. And it's free!
Whole place is a shambles before National Day on May 17th even in relatively mild Oslo, Roads cracked by Ice, Litter everywhere. Huge efforts go into the clear-up.
The only saving-grace I find in Norway is the Air Quality is generally excellent. And the land is 90% unspoilt:
Also plenty of timber. I do lie awake at night worrying about the Atlantic Conveyor water current that keeps us relatively warm in Northern Europe. It might abruptly pack up, apparently. KaffiMann will then wisely move to Portsmouth.
What I am getting at, is that the Sun is what ultimately keeps us warm. Our own Nuclear Fusion reactor. And it's free!
I wonder where the electricity to power in excess of 32.7 million electric cars will come from?
Hot air perhaps?
There very likely won't be 32 mill EV's. It really depends how long it takes to
crack autonomous driving. Turns out the simple daily task of driving is very
complex from an AI perspective. The other day I took note of how many 'edge cases' (as they call it) were experienced on a simple 10km drive... a
lot.
As far as where the electricity will come from, for the most part, Solar, Wind, Batteries in the med term. Most of the other technologies are developing
slow, energy disruption is coming fast.
Lot's of car manufacturers are likely going broke or becoming a lot smaller in the not too distant future. Big shakedown coming as everyone tries to pivot.
TCD
Driverless cars are already on our roads!
Attachments
As far as where the electricity will come from...
I doubt it will come seriously from windmills either solar cells, these are mostly a rip-off.
I think, it will come from fast neutron reactors with nuclear fuel retreatment plants.
Fast-neutron reactor - Wikipedia
I doubt it will come seriously from windmills either solar cells, these are mostly a rip-off.
I think, it will come from fast neutron reactors with nuclear fuel retreatment plants.
Fast-neutron reactor - Wikipedia
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Unfortunately, France has cancelled the ASTRID fast reactor project:
France cancels ASTRID fast reactor project - Nuclear Engineering International
France cancels ASTRID fast reactor project - Nuclear Engineering International
Mchambin, I really think you should declare a business interest here! 75% of France's power comes from Nuclear. Odd Euro to be made from exporting off-peak electricity too. Amazing really from a race that primarily prefers rooting for truffles and fine wine and the pleasures of good food.
I have visited your Nuclear installations. Primarily in the Cherbourg peninsula. Why there? Well if it all goes pear-shaped, as it likely will, Les Bouefs (Ze Engleesh) will get the radioactive fallout blowing our way to Portsmouth on the South West wind.
Have discovered much of interest about Physicist Julian Schwinger. Another unsung hero like Wolfgang Pauli. Really this Super-Einstein and Super-Feynman baloney has to stop!
Julian Schwinger - Wikipedia
His grave is marked with his remarkable contribution to the Magnetic Ratio of the Electron, formerly thought to be 2 by such luminaries as Paul Dirac:
Alpha (The fine structure constant so liked by Pauli, 1/137 approx) / 2 Pi.
His grave is marked with this remarkable contribution to Quantum Electrodynamics. Also interesting is he was a Radar man so understood fields.
A slightly more depressing thing I noticed, was he and Pauli were both killed by Pancreatic Cancer.
I have visited your Nuclear installations. Primarily in the Cherbourg peninsula. Why there? Well if it all goes pear-shaped, as it likely will, Les Bouefs (Ze Engleesh) will get the radioactive fallout blowing our way to Portsmouth on the South West wind.
Have discovered much of interest about Physicist Julian Schwinger. Another unsung hero like Wolfgang Pauli. Really this Super-Einstein and Super-Feynman baloney has to stop!
Julian Schwinger - Wikipedia
His grave is marked with his remarkable contribution to the Magnetic Ratio of the Electron, formerly thought to be 2 by such luminaries as Paul Dirac:
Alpha (The fine structure constant so liked by Pauli, 1/137 approx) / 2 Pi.
His grave is marked with this remarkable contribution to Quantum Electrodynamics. Also interesting is he was a Radar man so understood fields.
A slightly more depressing thing I noticed, was he and Pauli were both killed by Pancreatic Cancer.
The reality is driving itself is starting to be discouraged by the manufacturers themselves. They want you to have a car but they don't want you to drive it...too much. I'm behind a brand new car with it's lights on, fine. Then an LED turn signal comes on so bright I can't look at it, it's like a welding arc(no exaggeration), in the DAYTIME. At night the headlights on a lot of new cars are the same, so bright you can't look. Subliminal perception? More like subliminal coercion. Hey Big Bro!
France has the most advanced energy production infrastructure in the world.
They didn’t make a big noise, jump up and down about it and there was no bs either.
They just did it.
Driverless cars are already on our roads!
Yeah, that's for sure.
Although over here at least, it can be an expensive pass time, they're clamping
down on mobile mobile use.
TCD
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