The Choice, Part One: The Technology, by Robert Gore

Posted by straightlinelogic 8 years, 4 months ago to Technology
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I usually keep my life and personal details out of my blog posts. However, the story of Dr. Arnold Kelly and electrostatic dispersal (ESD) technology is a fascinating one. It also reveals much of what is wrong with today’s world and crystallizes the economic, political, and philosophical issues underlying humanity’s most critical choices: achievement or destruction, life or death. This article is longer (three parts) than the usual SLL article and is somewhat of a departure, but I believe those who read it will find it enlightening and rewarding. I found writing it more interesting than another grind through the issues that currently serve as grist for the blogosphere.

This is an excerpt. For the full article, please click the above link. This article involves a real life demonstration of the issues examined in Dale Halling's article "The 'Great Ideas are Dime a Dozen' Myth," featured on Galt's Gulch (https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...) and The Savvy Street (http://www.thesavvystreet.com/the-gre....
SOURCE URL: https://straightlinelogic.com/2016/08/23/the-choice-part-one-the-technology-by-robert-gore/


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  • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 4 months ago
    Good. Look forward to the next installment, Robert. I can attest from first hand experience of the insane difficulty of getting new beneficial technology implemented. Current challenge: the state version of the EPA wants to be told trade secrets to cover their asses from future FOIA requests before they will agree to allow a real world test of our invention.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 4 months ago
    Fascinating, Robert, I eat this stuff up.

    I too, have observed corporate behaviors called: "The White Collar Hoax" and I observed in my book that most, high up in the corporate ladder, are only concerned with the perpetuation of business, not the creation of business.

    I'll read the other two parts tomorrow, it's getting late.
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  • Posted by lrshultis 8 years, 4 months ago
    "The charge the sprayer imparts on an individual particle is 54.4 electron volts (a tremendous amount of energy to put on a particle—your breakfast only required two or three electron volts to digest) or exactly four Rydberg units."

    Fact check: one Calorie = kilocalorie = 2.611e+22 electron volts. So, say that your breakfast is 200 Calories = 200 kilocalaries, then your body would use something like 40 Calories = 40 x 2.611e+22 = about 1.04e+24 electron volts for digesting the food, which is nowhere near 2 or 3 electron volts. Also 54.4 electron volts is a very very small amount of energy as is the Rydberg unit. Though at the molecular level that would be plenty of energy to ionize the stuff.

    Where are the other parts of the article?

    If the improvements give a better technology, then it is more than just seeing a way to jump on the gravy train with a patent monopoly. I don't see how placing a charge on an aerosol will do any more than disperse the spray unless the destination of the spray has an opposite charge to attract the charged stuff as has been done for decades in spray painting? Could mix positively and negatively charged stuff so that the spray stays together with less dispersion.
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    • Posted by 8 years, 4 months ago
      The charged particles go to the nearest grounded, not oppositely charged, surface, which is generally the target surface. We want the individual particles to fly apart due to Coulomb repulsion. It replaces the need for a high pressure container (although a minimum amount of pressure is necessary to get the particles to the charge-injector and out the orafice). The particles arrive on the target surface and uniformly coat it, a demonstration of which I've seen. Unlike the spray painting application you mention, STA application requires no special treatment of the target surface other than to make sure it's grounded. As for your math on the energy, I got the analogy from Dr. Kelly, but a calorie is .001 of a kilocalorie, and I'm not sure of the relationship between food calories and the energy needed to convert it. However, the magnitudes you cite are significantly different, so I may have got the analogy wrong. It wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong, or perhaps Dr. Kelly is wrong, or perhaps I just misinterpreted what he said. I'll get back to you on that.

      Parts 2 and 3 will be posted within the next week.
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      • Posted by lrshultis 8 years, 4 months ago
        Food Calories, with capital 'C', are 1000 calories, with a small 'c', which are about 4 joules of energy in size or about 4 watt seconds, a very small amount of energy.
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 4 months ago
      Regarding the amount of energy, you say 54.4 eV is a very very small amount of energy, but then you say that much energy per molecule is enough to free an electron from an atom. I agree with both claims.

      Are you just showing your calculations, or are you saying 54.4eV is too high or low?
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      • Posted by 8 years, 4 months ago
        What I was trying to say, but may not have been clear (and I may have got my analogy wrong), is that 13.6 eV is the energy required to ionize hydrogen, or seperate the electron from the nucleus. That's a Rydberg unit. There are four Rydberg units, or 54.4 eV, on each droplet the sprayer charges. That is not too high or too low, it's just what's on the surface of the droplets, although according to Dr. Kelly it is a lot of energy for a droplet. Dr. Kelly doesn't know why there are exactly 4 Rydberg units on each droplet, and is trying to get physicists at Princeton interested in figuring out the answer.
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        • Posted by lrshultis 8 years, 4 months ago
          It looks like he is adding electrons to the molecules to make them negative. That should be easier than removing electrons and making positive ions. Kind of like making static electric charge on a comb or in a Van de Graaff generator which gathers electrons on a moving belt and deposits them on a metal sphere. It would seem that an actual ground may not be needed, only that the stuff can discharge at a lower potential which is not as highly charged?
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          • Posted by lrshultis 8 years, 4 months ago
            I shouldn't be saying 'molecules' there since the thing atomizes the material into droplets of large numbers of molecules. Depending on the electric potential as the drops pass through the device that atomizes the stuff at a certain number of drops per time period, it would seem to be possible to add just four Rydberg units of charge to a drop.
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 4 months ago
          "What I was trying to say, but may not have been clear"
          My question was for Irshultis. :) I understood what you said. Irshultis answered my question, but I don't know enough about electric charge when it's not moving through a wire or semiconductor to evaluate it.

          Not really understanding the science, I figure maybe it's just like existing painting technology. As an engineer I say it's easy to dismiss it as "nothing new" but hard actually to get a new implementation working. Maybe something really cool will come from it. It's not a new invention, I say, but if they keep trying things they may find some great new applications. dbhalling would say, "CG, you are a total idiot. A new way of putting things together that solves a problem in a new way is a new invention." He's probably right about the second part.

          Since the electric charge is not moving, I really don't anything about it, but it sounds like something that may lead to something cool.
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  • Posted by term2 8 years, 4 months ago
    This technology sounds like one that is used every day in a process called powder coating. The paint particles and charged and blown onto the surface to which they are intended to stick. Then the part is heated to melt the paint and have it stick to the part very tightly. Most metal parts used ioutside in off road parts for example are powder coated

    I would think that one could charge insecticides and spray them on surfaces.

    The gun has to be charged, and the recipient grounded for this to work.

    The particles dont stick tightly to the intended surface by themselves at all. Something would have to keep the particles on the surface, like some sticky liquid or gel.

    With powder coating, quite a bit of voltage is required to impart the proper charges to make the process work. Not sure how this inventor is getting the charges onto the particles, or how the recipient surface is grounded.

    No doubt the alphabet agencies in cahoots with existing companies in the field would want to slow this down to give the existing spray can people time to somehow compete against this technology. They call this cronyism in my book.

    Get rid of new ways of doing things if you can, otherwise slow them down so maybe it takes them longer to gain a foothold or they go out of business.
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  • Posted by mia767ca 8 years, 4 months ago
    Robert...excellent article...

    on a side note, i have had the same experience with "bell curve" findings in training pilots (Air Force and commercial...American Airlines) and individuals learning to trade the stock market (i was an instructor in all three situations)...some individuals can simply look at a trading chart and "see" the trades...when questioned about "how" they see the trades, they cannot describe how they see it...they just do...
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 4 months ago
    Cool. Does a can full of it totally deviate from the ideal gas law? Does PV = nRT work, but with the gas constant (R) being a function of charge?

    BTW, The TLA ESD is already taken: electrostatic discharge (ESD). I'll never be able to think of it as anything else. :)
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