I met an "interesting" person in Tesco Cafe today

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bd139
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I met an "interesting" person in Tesco Cafe today

Post by bd139 »

So bumped into an interesting sort of person in Tesco café earlier. We decided, as the place was rammed, to get some lunch quickly first before doing the shopping or we’d die from starvation half way around and start chowing on unfortunate shoppers. The eldest went and sat down at a table to reserve it. I arrived at the table shortly after with drinks and there’s an old guy appeared there with her. They were talking about parkrun. Poor guy had been rejected from a couple of other people’s tables and the seating was a little scarce so she figured, yeah why not, he looks harmless.

So he’s in his late 80s and a big parkrun afficionado. Gave us the spiel, told us all about the run he had done this morning etc. He was still doing it even though his wife passed away a couple of years ago. He found it to be a good place to meet people and talk as otherwise his life was a little boring on his own. I certainly don’t mind talking to people and despite what everyone thinks about London, we do actually talk to strangers all the time. This went on for a few minutes and it came to asking what he was doing before he retired.

He was a British Airways machine shop operator and was responsible for working on tooling for various aircraft repair jigs and things like that. So a technical machine position but not that technical. He gave us a nice run down of how he used to work on Concorde which was rather cool. At this point I was rather pleased that the universe had blessed us with a connection like this.

Of course the universe is a perverse bastard. After retirement there was a problem with idle hands and brain. I expect to suffer from this as well but I’d really like to remain completely rational with it. This guy, not so much. He started talking about his inventions since he’d retired.
The first invention was pretty good. He actually had a gallery of 6x4 prints in his bag which he showed us. It was a modular bridge for getting soldiers and light weight equipment over 5m or so spans. The thing was flat packed, extremely, low weight with a whole bridge being portable by two men, assembled on site and used a cantilever mechanism to do its thing. Actually it was quite good. But when taking it to companies and the MoD it was rejected as they already had things that did it which were established. Tail between legs, he ran away to devise more things.

The next invention is where it all went to hell. Obviously devoid of the knowledge of physics he started talking about turbines and flywheels. Red flags to anyone who knows about fine crackpottery. He showed me photos of his first invention which could only be described as a bicycle wheel with head chopping blades welded to the outside. This was spun up by an electric motor in the middle with a counter-rotating mass on the other side of the motor shaft. This allowed the decapitron to “fly” (when attached to his washing line mostly by the looks). There were some mumblings about how this worked and would solve heating problems with high velocity aircraft. I did not process these mumblings too well, because I suspect he got the idea he was talking to someone “actually in the know” rather than the usual idiots and was talking pretty quietly.

The final invention was the one where things went really down the toilet. He had been reading about flywheels and come up with the usual hair brained scheme of making a flywheel drive itself. This was experimentally a 20lb (working in imperial units was another big red flag) flywheel which was spun up by an electric motor that took 100 watts of power on a 4:1 ratio box. So 20krpm in off the motor leads to 5krpm at the flywheel. Now with a 20lb flywheel he was convinced that attaching it to a 1kW or so brushless generator/alternator would give him 1kw out. If you put 100W of that back into the original motor then you’d still have 900W to play with. When confronted with the mathematics he descended into the usual perspective of there being a conspiracy. At that point I decided I had met my tolerance limit. To quote mnementh, “never argue with an idiot, because they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience”. So we made our apologies and went shopping.

I figured England must be full of these sorts of people if I casually bumped into one in Tesco Café. The real life Wallace but without the clue or success. Perhaps he needed a Gromit.

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tggzzz
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Re: I met an "interesting" person in Tesco Cafe today

Post by tggzzz »

bd139 wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:01 pm The final invention was the one where things went really down the toilet. He had been reading about flywheels and come up with the usual hair brained scheme of making a flywheel drive itself....
Well, Professor Eric Laitwaite, who was at Imperial College and one of my heroes[1], had "problems" with fliywheels too.

Somebody had invented a contraption which flung gyroscopes around in strange ways. When nothing was moving and itting on some "bathroom/kitchen" scales, the scales showed X. When all powered up, the scales showed <X. Therefore an antigravity generator, what else. That suckered Laithwaite.

I don't know the resolution, but I bet there was a "crest factor" type error in the measurement.

BTW, your daughters will probably start believing you are a deluded old codger. They may or may not be right, but hopefully after 7 years they will come to a "Mark Twain's father" type epiphany :)

[1]He used to set exams where one question was easy and sufficient get you a pass mark, one was more challenging and couuld get you a good degree, and one could not be answered adequately in the time available. He expected his undergraduate engineers to be able to determine which questions to avoid. If they couldn't, they wouldn't make good engineers anyway. I doubt he would be allowed to do that now, more's the pity.
Zenith
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Re: I met an "interesting" person in Tesco Cafe today

Post by Zenith »

tggzzz wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:19 pm
Well, Professor Eric Laitwaite, who was at Imperial College and one of my heroes[1], had "problems" with fliywheels too.

Somebody had invented a contraption which flung gyroscopes around in strange ways. When nothing was moving and itting on some "bathroom/kitchen" scales, the scales showed X. When all powered up, the scales showed <X. Therefore an antigravity generator, what else. That suckered Laithwaite.

I don't know the resolution, but I bet there was a "crest factor" type error in the measurement.
I remember seeing that on TV. I think it was in the late 70s. It must have been a chaotic system, so very hard to describe fully with mathematics.
tggzzz wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:19 pm
I don't know the resolution, but I bet there was a "crest factor" type error in the measurement.
I never heard a detailed explanation, but if it exposed a fundamental flaw in the laws of physics we'd have heard all about it and still be hearing about it. My immediate reaction was that it was to do with the speed at which the scales could react and the pattern of thrust applied to them, which I suppose is another way of saying it was a "crest factor" type error.
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Cerebus
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Re: I met an "interesting" person in Tesco Cafe today

Post by Cerebus »

bd139 wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:01 pm After retirement there was a problem with idle hands and brain. I expect to suffer from this as well but I’d really like to remain completely rational with it.
Yeah, like you haven't already started working on the first draft of "How to Invade and Subdue France on a Pension for Fun and Profit".
bd139 wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:01 pm There were some mumblings about how this worked and would solve heating problems with high velocity aircraft
Oddly specific to his background. Most people, out of ignorance, quietly ignore the problems of airframe heating at high speed, but it was a big thing for the supersonic pioneers and still remains a non-trivial problem.
bd139 wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:01 pm This was experimentally a 20lb (working in imperial units was another big red flag) flywheel which ...
Perhaps not innately as much of a red flag as it might first appear. For some reason known only to the gods, the Concorde designs were actually worked on by the British side in imperial units, by the French in metric. This was the 1960s so there was no decent excuse for the British to still be working in imperial - most scientists and engineers had switched to the rather perverse CGS system rather than SI, but they were working in metric. By the 70s we'd seen sense and started using SI, but I remember picking up many a 10 year old textbook and finding CGS units.
Zenith
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Re: I met an "interesting" person in Tesco Cafe today

Post by Zenith »

bd139 wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:01 pm
The final invention was the one where things went really down the toilet. He had been reading about flywheels and come up with the usual hair brained scheme of making a flywheel drive itself. This was experimentally a 20lb (working in imperial units was another big red flag) flywheel which was spun up by an electric motor that took 100 watts of power on a 4:1 ratio box. So 20krpm in off the motor leads to 5krpm at the flywheel. Now with a 20lb flywheel he was convinced that attaching it to a 1kW or so brushless generator/alternator would give him 1kw out. If you put 100W of that back into the original motor then you’d still have 900W to play with. When confronted with the mathematics he descended into the usual perspective of there being a conspiracy. At that point I decided I had met my tolerance limit. To quote mnementh, “never argue with an idiot, because they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience”. So we made our apologies and went shopping.
Perpetual motion machines that depend on osmosis are more interesting. They don't work - obviously - but the fallacies are more subtle than electric motors turning generators.
tggzzz
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Re: I met an "interesting" person in Tesco Cafe today

Post by tggzzz »

Zenith wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:43 pm
tggzzz wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:19 pm
Well, Professor Eric Laitwaite, who was at Imperial College and one of my heroes[1], had "problems" with fliywheels too.

Somebody had invented a contraption which flung gyroscopes around in strange ways. When nothing was moving and itting on some "bathroom/kitchen" scales, the scales showed X. When all powered up, the scales showed <X. Therefore an antigravity generator, what else. That suckered Laithwaite.

I don't know the resolution, but I bet there was a "crest factor" type error in the measurement.
I remember seeing that on TV. I think it was in the late 70s. It must have been a chaotic system, so very hard to describe fully with mathematics.
tggzzz wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:19 pm
I don't know the resolution, but I bet there was a "crest factor" type error in the measurement.
I never heard a detailed explanation, but if it exposed a fundamental flaw in the laws of physics we'd have heard all about it and still be hearing about it. My immediate reaction was that it was to do with the speed at which the scales could react and the pattern of thrust applied to them, which I suppose is another way of saying it was a "crest factor" type error.
That was the timeframe.

Chaos wasn't widely appreciated then; everything was either "linear"(=>understandable and desirable) or "non-linear" (=>intractible so avoid). Hence it wouldn't be surprising if someone didn't take account of chaos' effects.

When chaos became more widely known in the mid 80s, my feeling was "interesting and worth understanding so that it can be recognised and avoided". I haven't seen any reason to change that.

I presumed that the whirling machinery produced mostly a vibrating downward force visible on the vibrating meter's needle. We are all used to "eyeball averaging" such values, and it works in many cases. But if there is an occasional impulsive force, the needle and eyeball would be fooled.

The obvious thing would have been to put the machine on a fast-acting load cell, and use a storage scope to capture the waveform. I'll bet that integrating the value under the curve would have showed there was no difference in the average downward force. I never heard of that being done, but that's a weak statement.
Zenith
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Re: I met an "interesting" person in Tesco Cafe today

Post by Zenith »

tggzzz wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 7:23 pm
The obvious thing would have been to put the machine on a fast-acting load cell, and use a storage scope to capture the waveform. I'll bet that integrating the value under the curve would have showed there was no difference in the average downward force. I never heard of that being done, but that's a weak statement.
Sceptics, like the poor, are always with us.

Nonetheless, there wasn't enough there and it wasn't easy enough to reproduce, to attract the attention of the Gee Whizz circuit. For instance a different set of scales might have produced a very different result - but curiously that wasn't gone into. It wasn't going to produce an engaging novelty or an alternative therapy contraption. Even Lyall Watson (Supernature) couldn't have made much of it.

I'd guess that Prof Laithwaite was intrigued and a bit embarrassed that he had no easily communicable explanation, but had alternate investments of his time to consider, which would quite possibly prove more fruitful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRPC7a_ ... legeLondon

No idiot that man.
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BU508A
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Re: I met an "interesting" person in Tesco Cafe today

Post by BU508A »

bd139 wrote: Sun Nov 26, 2023 3:01 pm The final invention was the one where things went really down the toilet. He had been reading about flywheels and come up with the usual hair brained scheme of making a flywheel drive itself. This was experimentally a 20lb (working in imperial units was another big red flag) flywheel which was spun up by an electric motor that took 100 watts of power on a 4:1 ratio box. So 20krpm in off the motor leads to 5krpm at the flywheel. Now with a 20lb flywheel he was convinced that attaching it to a 1kW or so brushless generator/alternator would give him 1kw out. If you put 100W of that back into the original motor then you’d still have 900W to play with. When confronted with the mathematics he descended into the usual perspective of there being a conspiracy. At that point I decided I had met my tolerance limit. To quote mnementh, “never argue with an idiot, because they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience”. So we made our apologies and went shopping.
Had several similar discussions like this over the years. First I tried to explain people, why such things won't work but after a while I said bluntly, that they are trying to break the laws of thermodynamics which can't be done for obvious reasons. Sometimes it helped, sometimes not and if they are going to insist that it can be done, I simply walk away. It is not worth to waste time on this matter.
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bd139
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Re: I met an "interesting" person in Tesco Cafe today

Post by bd139 »

BU508A wrote: Mon Nov 27, 2023 9:42 am Had several similar discussions like this over the years. First I tried to explain people, why such things won't work but after a while I said bluntly, that they are trying to break the laws of thermodynamics which can't be done for obvious reasons. Sometimes it helped, sometimes not and if they are going to insist that it can be done, I simply walk away. It is not worth to waste time on this matter.
Yes. Recently I figured it's best to leave them to it. I mean they could be doing worse things with that level of understanding like being politicians! :lol:


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