Mat's BX Blog

[Thread Bear]

Have you managed to make polymerised water. Apparently this is very difficult and it is really odd stuff.

Also understand that clean cold water freezes after warmer clean water when put in a refrigerated environment. The act of evaporating the energy off making the warm water freeze at a higher temperature than the more stable cold water?

Interesting thought is that differing people will have different freezing points. Do women really freeze first?

As to car springs, anti freeze etc. Just goes to show what a damned civilised place Great Britain really is. Mmm... North Atlantic Drift.

[electrokid]

Also understand that clean cold water freezes after warmer clean water when put in a refrigerated environment.

Quite strange stuff water - and, hopefully, the subject of some basic physics experiment I intend to do when I get a bit more organised.

Some years ago I needed some distilled water - not your de-ionised stuff which still has loads of stuff in it but with + ions and - ions in balance - I needed the real Mcoy. So I grabbed the wallpaper stripper stem generator and a clean-as-I-could-get-it plastic 5 litre container and rigged them up with the plastic container in an old freezer which lived in an outhouse and a hose from the stem gen running into it and left it running for a while. It worked fine - and I switched it off some 5 hours later with the container about 3/4 full and getting too hot so support much in the way of further concentration.

Now here's the strange thing... I had switched off about 4pm in the afternoon and put the container on a work surface in the kitchen and thought no more of it. I went into the kitchen just after 9pm that evening and had a strange feeling - near to the container I felt warmth ! I felt the container - it was still piping hot I have worked on electronicly controlled ovens that ran at 60 degrees so I know exactly what 60 degrees feels like to the touch - this container was still just over 60 dgrees C

Other watery oddities... If you compress water to several hundred atmospheres ( can't remember the exact figure) and heat it to around 260 dgrees C + it will suddenly reduce in volme by about a third.

Freeze water and it forms a crystal structure: compress it to 6 atmospheres + and freeze it, it takes on a different crystal structure. If you release the applied pressure and allow it to thaw completely - then re-freeze it at normal atmospheric pressure it once again takes on the crystal structure it had when frozen at 6 atms. Weird !

[Thread Bear]

Ooh I have to remember now. I think it is the right value. Water has an IQ rating of 6. This is because it knows how to go down hill and can escape from a container if the sides are low enough and it has something to climb. Is water the lowest level of life? I cannot say carbon based life as there ain't no carbon in it! So there is a thought for everyone who thinks intelligent life has to be carbon based. Might have to be water based, which we all are? Bugger me this BX thing is heavy stuff.

[electrokid]

I thought it was only 5.7 - but that's just me...

[citsncycles]

Is water the lowest level of life?

Nah, it's those people that try to get you to pay for getting compensation that you can get for free!

[mat_fenwick]

Also understand that clean cold water freezes after warmer clean water when put in a refrigerated environment. The act of evaporating the energy off making the warm water freeze at a higher temperature than the more stable cold water?

This is down to a couple of different mechanisms - the main reason is that with warmer water the molecules are moving more quickly, and hence heat is lost more quickly. Also, once the outside layer of water has cooled, stronger convection currents are set up in the water which further speeds up the rate of cooling. I wonder whether a warm container is more likely to mould into the ice inside a freezer, improving the heat transfer due to greater contact area?

Obviously this experiement only holds true for a certain range of temperatures - I should imagine that water at 5 °C will freeze quicker than boiling water! But very interesting all the same.

Quite strange stuff water

What are you doing messing with water? Everybody knows that water and electricity don't mix!

[Tinkley]

Yeah, but Electrokid has to generate his electricity somehow....and his area is not suitable for a wind turbine....

To Citsncycles 'Nah, it's those people that try to get you to pay for getting compensation that you can get for free!'

Or get you to claim for whiplash injuries from 3 years ago.

How do they get access to personal phone numbers etc, we have been getting calls from compenstion claims 'helpers' from the July accident (head on) involving the C4.... Data protection is not worth the paper etc etc

To TB ' This BX is heavy' yeah the diesels are heavier on the chest than the small petrols...

[Paul296]

The best thing about water I find is that it makes a lovely refreshing drink: try it with a dash of orange squash a few ice cubes and maybe a small umbrella and a cherry for that added touch of class: mmmm delicious - cheers!

[Thread Bear]

I always get da umbrella stuck in my froat.

Now does the form of water, remembering the crystalline structure and polymerised option, make any difference to your body when ingested, without an umbrella. This leads on to Hearmothopy, no idea how you spell that one, where the effectiveness of the treatment increases with the dilution of the ingredient put into the water as the treatment inducer. The argument is water has a memory so you get to a dilution where its feasible that no molecules of the activator are present yet the 'solution' is strong enough for an efficacious treatment. Sounds bonkers, tests seem to agree, but many folks believe it and treatments work. Could water be more intelligent than we thought with its unrecognised memory. It could explain why it always rains in Manchester and the Sahari desert was all down to a big argument over elephant pee some 12,000 years ago.

[electrokid]

Well I thought that we would graze the subject of homeopathy at some stage here and there's piles of crap written on both sides of the arguement which extends to Wikipedia's entry for Jaques Beneviste as well. The best description of Beneviste's involvement that I'm aware of is in "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart - recommended if you have an open mind - avoid it like the plague if you haven't.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Field-Quest-Sec ... 0007145101

I recommend Waitrose squashes - excellent

Sadly I blew up my excellent socket 7 Win98SE machine - did sterling service did that: but the Win2K machine live on despite having an AMD core ! No not enough wind here in sunny Woking - unless you count... er...

What are you doing messing with water? Everybody knows that water and electricity don't mix!

Perhaps I should have said Fizz-ics experiments

[Tinkley]

My sister has joint written a homeopathy book...


http://www.worldcat.org/title/bellis-pe ... c/45750439" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Poor old 98 box P2 400 can still 2D draft as quick as a new one but sure is slow with 3D and rendering compared to full multicore stuff - 955 AMD quad in Win 7 with GTX460. Access to a couple of Haswell i5 4750 boxes too, one with GTX770 so not shabby on graphics eh?. W2K is a 1.7 Athlon and beats the pants off a Vista dual core Intel piece of shite despite pretty poor graphics Radeon 9200 running at 4x AGP as thats all the m/board can do. Why moan, it was a free gift and near faultless after Bios updates and drivers.

[electrokid]

"Spagyrically" eh Wow - I learn something new every day. The other thing I learnt today was that every time a ?- decay occurs, an anti-neutrino is also produced. Further reading got me stumped with an unanswered question though - does a ?+ particle trigger a geiger-muller tube ?

[mat_fenwick]

Way over my head now It's bringing back memories of physics lectures; bizarrely the most vivid one is whn th guy I was sitting next to spontaneously and completely unexpectedly sat up straight, and vomited all over the desk. Can't remember anything I learnt, but I won't forget that!

Back to the BX now - I thought I might have cured the ABS light coming on, but no Seems like a different problem though, as I no longer seem to get it flashing on over the odd bump or tight corner. Now it stays on dimly most days, although will sometimes go off when the glow plugs turn off (I have the 'afterglow' plugs and relay from a Xantia) or if the engine is restarted on the move. This leads me to think it's a voltage issue, but the battery voltage is OK; not yet measured the voltage at the ABS ECU.

I've been meaning to bypass the ignition switch with a set of relays anyway, as the starter motor contact has a voltage drop across it so suspect the others aren't too good either. Must pull my finger out!

[electrokid]

Way over my head now

Yeah... mine too, sadly and apologies for being way off topic

There's definitely something about physics lectures that tends to bring out the worst in us

Knowing that the ABS sensors are becoming rare I've asked a couple of times in the past if folks would send me any duff ones so I could look into remanufacturing or at least finding some kind of solution by adapting something else but it's never happened. I hope to be at the NEC on the Sunday and Steve / IOWBX may be leaving some duff ABS sensors for me from his earlier visit - and the more the merrier of course.

I'm guessing that no longer responding to bumps etc probably means you have sorted anything to do with the wheel sensors unless it's a grounding issue - ie: screen connection connected to ground at the wheel when it shouldn't be - or vice-versa - not connected to ground at the wheel when it should be.

[mat_fenwick]

Yeah, I figure one problem has started as another was cured! That said, it went out as normal this morning...

Wired up a set of relays to take the load off the ignition switch - arguably it's curing the symptoms rather than the problem. But on the other hand by reducing the current through the switch, you're minimising any voltage drop and any that does occur would be unlikely to stop the relay coil from operating. Plus it means that the bits likely to fail are in standard, easily replaceable relays rather than the ignition switch itself.



New number plates have arrived and look good quality. Font and spacing look correct - I've found it very annoying in the past when buying number plates if they spacing is off centre. Maybe I should get out more...