What is Digg?Sponsored by Activision
Introducing DJ Hero Game view!
djhero.com - Scratch and mix 102 songs in 93 original mixes from today's hottest artists. Available Now.
221 Comments
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -22/+196"All the tools we need are out there, they are just clouded by big money and big politics, it is time to take a stand and make a difference in this world before all hope is lost."
No, the tools aren't out there. A "water powered car" is really powered by electrolysis, which produces hydrogen -- so "water cars" are really already on the market, we just call them "hydrogen cars" instead.
Here's the problem: electrolysis takes more energy than you can possibly get from the hydrogen released. So you might be able to make pull a few kWh worth of hydrogen out of a tank of water, but it'll take about 5x as many kWh worth of electricity -- it'd be much more efficient to just use the electricity.
The water car myth is 70 years old. It needs to die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuelled_car
"Water fuelled cars have featured in urban legends at least since the 1930s. The story is usually that a lone inventor invents an engine that runs on water but the idea is suppressed by either the big oil companies or the motor manufacturers in order to safeguard their profits."
If you believe this *****, I've got a bridge to sell you. And a case of Head-On. - Daedalus81, on 10/12/2007, -23/+133Yea, umm, wasn't this guy's invention declared a hoax ages ago?
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -13/+80And yes, this guy specifically was debunked in court:
"The Water Fuel Cell on the other hand, was examined by three expert witnesses in court who found that there "was nothing revolutionary about the cell at all and that it was simply using conventional electrolysis."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuel_cell
If anyone assassinated Stan Myer, it was probably someone who he'd duped into investing, who was pissed when they realized his "invention" was worthless. - rodgerdodger5, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28I have to reply to this one. My dad was a Machinist and did quite a bit of experimentation with running engines (our car, my go-kart and our tractor) on hydrogen generated with electrolysis. He used a 400 amp DC aircraft generator (or alternator?) powered by a V8 engine to produce enough current to make a usable quantity of hydrogen. I personally witnessed engines running on nothing but hydrogen many times. Yes, he was using a gasoline powered generator to make the hydrogen but that is not the point. You could also use the AC that comes out of your walls. Another thing that people don't realize about this is that what comes out of the tailpipe when you burn hydrogen is nothing but water vapor. Also almost any gas engine with a carburetor will run on pure hydrogen with no modification. The other byproduct of the electrolysis is just pure oxygen which could be vented off. You get twice as much hydrogen as oxygen because water is H(2)O. With a DC system, one plate + generates H and the other one - generates O. (I think?) My dad used stacks of electrolysis plates and I think he used the combined product of hydrogen and oxygen gas (which was very potent stuff - I don't remember for sure as it was long ago and he has passed away many years ago and he was a cool Dad and is missed very much). He used to fill balloons with it for me that were VERY loud when lit with strip of newspaper. He also made a VERY cool little metal cutting torch that would run on combined H and O from the electrolysis cell.
He had a number of problems that could be solved using modern technology. #1 is that hydrogen is explosive. You could solve this by pumping it into a chemical sponge. (this is what United Nuclear is trying to do with their fuel cells - see www.unitednuclear.com) #2, his water in the electrolysis cell would turn to orange muck after a while because he was using stainless steel plates for the electrodes and you (I think?) can get around this by using something like carbon or platinum for the plates. The orange muck was a byproduct of the steel reacting with the water and (maybe?) making iron oxide/rust. I am no chemist and this is all from memory.
Basically he was trying to invent a fuel cell back in the 80's and his system did take a lot of energy to make the hydrogen. He also had no knowledge of chemistry and was trying to come up with a mechanical solution to the safety issue and also had issues with generating the hydrogen itself... He also made a huge crazy contraption explosion proof piston tank using a giant piston and spring to vent in case of an explosion in the hydrogen generating tank...(this is probably NOT a good way). He was a machinist and this was the only way he knew to try and solve the explosion problem).
Hydrogen is a very viable fuel to run a gas engine on though. Just put a line with enough hydrogen flowing down the throat of the carb and the engine will start and run just fine on pure hydrogen along. Just water vapor will come out the tailpipe too. It has been too long ago for me to remember if my dad was using just hydrogen from one plate or the combined product of hydrogen and oxygen from both sets of plates. It does take energy to generate the gasses from water it but it is definitely pollution free and much more available than gas.
If there is even a chance of truth that this guy figured out how do make his electrolysis plates into a capacitor or separate the Hydrogen using less energy then it should be looked into a little bit more and not dismissed as a fraud. Tesla did a lot of experiments with high frequency energy and perhaps this guy actually did stumble onto something. People should never forget that we do not know everything and people criticized almost all of the scientists that made major discoveries in their fields. See this web page for interesting experiments with water capacitors and negative resistance that might aoply. Just from my layman's knowledge, there might be more to this than a fraud or con.
http://home.earthlink.net/~lenyr/ - interrogate, on 10/12/2007, -7/+32I wasn't aware the government was in to killing people with worthless inventions...
- smokeyjw, on 10/12/2007, -4/+26He was a fraud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Fuel_Cell - Hashiro, on 10/12/2007, -8/+29Direct link
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2358637173689658380&sourceid=docidfeed&hl=en - Daedalus81, on 10/12/2007, -8/+29That's fine, but if you think this invention was actually real to the point that it would be efficient then you are retarded.
- nonannystate, on 10/12/2007, -6/+27I love it when people use Katrina as a sign of all these federal governmental plots... if all those people had evacuated as they were supposed to, hardly anyone (maybe those left at the hospitals and such) would have died. Hardly anyone died anyway; the final figures weren't even worth of a goddamn headline. And if the job of securing the levees had been done by whom it was supposed to have been done (the local government; the city, the state) then they wouldn't have broken. But noooooo.... A Republican is in the White House so it's the Republicans' fault. I hate Bush with a passion but I have the sense enough to know when to blame him for his idiocy (Patriot Act/Iraq) and when not to (completely natural disasters made worse by idiotic local people). One I will grant you in this one... FEMA chief Brown was just as stupid as Bush. But FEMA STILL doesn't own the responsibility of evacuating people; it's supposed to help re-establish areas AFTER disasters have passed. But in our current utterly welfmare minded state, we need big daddy federal guv to bail us out preemptively of all our foolish local failures. But we still hate the power these governments have... if they're not dominated by liberals. Can't have it both ways.
- YoJR, on 10/12/2007, -8/+28Dig +1 to HappyScrappy for writing a chemical equation :)
Dig -1 to HappyScrappy for not balancing said equation :( - nipuL, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20Murdered in 1998, wow. Way to keep your finger on the pulse digg!!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19more like the movie Rain Man
- sosoez, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Even with his patents, he did not demonstrate how to reproduce his results. And he lost when his investors sued him. What about this isn't an obvious scam?
- 7ghent, on 10/12/2007, -11/+24Uh, where's the reputable news source that backs up the claim that this guy was murdered?
Marked inaccurate. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+19@treelovinghippie
"government taking a cut of the fuel"? You mean... paying for the roads we drive on with the gas we purchase to drive on roads? Those bastards! The fuel tax is one of the more fair taxes we have... those $3 billion interstate projects get their funding from somewhere, better that it be from the people using said interstates. - raybury, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17Yes, and apparently the Clinton government: His death occured in 1998. Which makes this slightly more timely than the Day-After-Tomorrow island that apparently sank 20 years ago.
- nonannystate, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Absolutely; this story is such BS. It's inconceivable that so many in this thread believe it. But then again people still fall for phising emails, alien abductions, and the loch ness monster.
- rc3105, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14seems more likely the result of a disgruntled investor
:- - lampshade, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14If this is the thing I saw before, it was *****. The device used the hydrogen and oxygen from the water to then power the car.... except that the original stuff I saw never explained how you separated the water into hydrogen and oxygen. You need another source of power for the separation. If that second source comes from say plugging in your car, then you would have to make the case that the power coming from your coal burning power plant that is shipped to your house is better than the energy you would get from a tank of gas...
Anyway, I think this is that same guy in which case he was at best misinformed and at worst a fraud. - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16More likely someone took his life 'cause he'd defrauded them out of thousands of dollars. Not exactly "helping", was he?
"the court found Meyer guilty of "gross and egregious fraud" and ordered to repay the investors their $25,000"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuel_cell - goodoldharris, on 10/12/2007, -8/+19Urban myth. I first heard this story (just switch the name of inventor) when I was in high school, more than a decade a ago.
(BTW: What the ***** does this have to do with left wing?) - shodanx, on 10/12/2007, -7/+17more like Dumb and Dumber
as in Stanley Meyer and his Investors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuel_cell
I like how he put something like "In jesus we trust" on his fraud demo buggy
Stanley Meyer's proposed design violated the laws of thermodynamics
anyone who thinks otherwise has:
A) not done his homework searching on this guy
B) is a nut job
also that guy died from food poisoning at a shody restaurant and it happened like a million years ago, this is not news, this is not even interesting
this is just a call for nutjobs to come out of the woodwork
get that off the front page ! - Derelict267, on 10/17/2007, -6/+16Yay here come the conspiracy theorists i'll get my popcorn
- polypropglop, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12For all you idiotic people who dismiss this genius and his accomplishments, take a look at the PROOF. Here's the actual gun that was left at the crime scene!!
http://www.hasbro.com/media/media/Super%20Soaker%20Flash%20Flood.jpg
A wise man once said:
"Some say knowledge is power, but that is not true. Water is power." - blincoln, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13"Water-powered cars" use electrolysis or other methods to crack the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then convert them back into water. It takes *more* energy to do that than to just run the car with whatever you're powering the electrolysis system with. There is no way around that. This is another obvious hoax, like every other "water-powered car" story in history. Marked as inaccurate.
- interiot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11There's a big difference between "we don't know if it's possible to do X" and "based on our current understanding of physics, X probably can't be done". Also, given the number of people who have tried to sell or get investment for perpetual motion machines, it's probably best to approach such devices with a healthy dose of skepticism until scientists start confirming that our understanding of physics has recently been updated.
- interrogate, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13He was no threat to the oil industry, as his invention did nothing.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10You can also check out this video, it tells the story in a bit more detail...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3953634519146582505&q=stan+meyer - pingring, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8@rodgerdodger5
The electrolysis process is a very destructive one. In an ionized-water solution (water with a salt), the cathode? is destroyed as part of the reaction. Little can be done to mitigate this, outside of using platinum electrodes. Carbon ones will dissolve over time as well. What Stan Meyer discovered wasn't traditional electrolysis, but rather using high voltage and resonance to "crack" the water apart.
Traditional electrolysis requires the use of a salt (sodium chloride works well), or acid (like H2SO4) to put free ions in the water. As current moves from the anode to the cathode, the respective H+ and salts move to the charged plates and bubble out of the solution.
Stanley's invention, rather, was supposed to take a fairly constant amount of current, and pulse it at a high enough frequency to match water's natural resonance. It worked better the more pure water was, and didn't require (or recommend) a salt or acid added in. I tried building the device -- the schematics were readily available online -- but I typically couldn't find the resonant frequency of the water. As such, the yield was low. I did manage to find resonance one time, which worked just as it did in the description. You could see the water level drop over time, power consumption was low, but I was never able to reproduce my results after that. Eventually, I burned the circuit up leaving it on too long, and never bothered to reconstruct it :( - diggless, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11water doesn't contain energy, you have to expend energy to create fuel from from it. there is no way to make a water powered car.
Water doesn't burn, water doesn't do anything but sit there and evaporate. It does contain things that make great fuels, hydrogen and oxygen. But combined in water form there isn't a lot of energy to be reaped from them, its pretty stable.
that being said, anything is possible, but if it were real why isnt the information out there to recreate any of the results he achieved? - joshduck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8@nfulton: No. Basic high school chemistry will teach you otherwise. Combining hydrogen and oxygen releases energy (exothermic reaction). That's basically why you can burn hydrogen. H + O = H20 + excess energy. Seperating them requires energy input (endothermic). That's why water sits around as water, and doesn't spontaneously turn into hydrogen and oxygen.
- annonimality, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Given that he stole $25,000 from investors, I think it's more likely one of them killed him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuel_cell - Jelloyeti, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11You are all so stupid it makes me want to leave digg and never return, maybe I will.
22 gallons of water to go from LA to NY? It shouldn't take anywhere near that considering the fact that anything capable of deriving energy from water would be a viable perpetual motion machine. Turn H20 into hydrogen, burn hydrogen to produce energy to drive car, hydrogen combustion results in H20. Repeat.
This has been mentioned, and repeated numerous times in this comment thread. If you really think the oil industry was so afraid of this hoaxer that they had him killed off, then you're stupid. Plain and simple.
Making a car that runs on water requires an outside energy source to split the oxygen and hydrogen. Put the energy in, and some of it comes back out when you burn the two together. Thermodynamics bitches. - billjackson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8@Corrosionx
Let me politely correct you on your FEMA argument. It was not FEMA that turned any trucks away. It was the Governor and Mayor that turned trucks away. More specifically they turned Red Cross trucks away.
This is not the place to discuss Katrina. Let me just say, after living through it, pulling people off of roof tops, and finding dead bodies, this Katrina mess started at the local level, got worse at the state level, and was out of control by the time FEMA had the chance to mess it up.
God Bless. - UCFartstudntJON, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Wikipedia People???!!!! that is your source? really, wikipedia? Boldly proclaim your vast knowledge and research. What should alarm you is the Lack of viable, credible, research, investigations, reports, etc, where is the Media? Who the Hell are "Three expert witnesses" Fine, it was a giant hoax and we should all just forget about it.
- frankidadio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Here's the guys US patent
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT4936961&id=lLcjAAAAEBAJ&dq=ininventor:Stanley+ininventor:Meyer&as_drrb_ap=q&as_minm_ap=1&as_miny_ap=2006&as_maxm_ap=1&as_maxy_ap=2006&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=1&as_miny_is=2006&as_maxm_is=1&as_maxy_is=2006 - bennyboy371, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7No, Hyde was.
- annonimality, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11Maybe if his invention had actually worked it would be tragic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuel_cell
- interrogate, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Do people actually think the government had anything to do with this? He didn't invent anything special, as his car still used electricity at some point.
- vammirato, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Just to add a little fuel to the conspiracy fire....
I once heard a story about how we could create safe, hover-craft like vehicles that were powered by magnets. The craft would be propelled by altering the magnetic fields to accelerate in various directions.
Not only did this type of vehicle drastically reduce the amount of energy it takes to get from point A to point B, it also reduced the need for paved roads.
Everyone talks about big Oil....what about big ROADS? If we didn't need roads not only would a multi-billion dollar construction industry dry up but the commercial real estate business would get turned on its ear....think about all the exits on all the highways with all the businesses that you would no longer need to drive by. - interrogate, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6//sarcasm...?
- SelfAbortion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@Masterchi
I think pasting your reply once was enough. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Funny I never said anything about 9/11 or Hurricane katrina but everyone seems to like putting words in my mouth...
Check out the patent here
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT5293857&id=fPEbAAAAEBAJ&dq=Stanley+Meyer - buzneg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5There's many claims of Over Unity. Some are plain hoaxes, maybe some are for dis-info, but some are real. Check out Steorn.com they are a real company, they put a $100,000 full page ad in the Economist, and they claim to have a jury of top scientists to check out their claim. If they're a hoax they're an expensive one..
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -32/+37"It is a shame that it has to be like this, but big corporations really do control the world."
And I'm sure in your fantasy world the workers control the means of production, and only take what they need to survive, right?
Because, you know, communism is a great system and has never failed... Except every time it has been tried. - hazlett, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I have a pretty good ***** detector, built-in, but when I saw the video, Tom Ryan and Gail Hogan, I knew this was a hoax.
The story ran, of course, no denying that, but Tom Ryan retired from the local news about 20 years ago, and Gail Hogan has not been a newscaster for over 10 years. All that, plus, neither was ever on Channel 6, both were on Channel 4, WCMH. If Stan Meyers (Myers?) is dead it was probably by natural causes and if the car has disappeared perhaps it is with the auto I owned 20 years ago....in a junkyard somewhere, garnering rust and dust.
Of course, those of you who beleive this stuff will continue to do so, and I realize I am wasting time and electrons telling all this.
Besides, the card did not run on water but on a hydrogen fuel cell, tecnology still being developed.
Get real people, get real......... - bmicallef, on 10/12/2007, -15/+20This is an excellent case where an Open Source mindset could have ensured both the proliferation of the technology as well as the decentralization of a "key-man".
That is to say, if Stan had not been the sole proprietor of this technology, the world could have benefited regardless of his death. Additionally, because there would not have been a single owner, Stan's murder may have never happened, as Stan's death would have not effected the ability for the technology to continue being developed and applied.
For both Stan and his invention this is truly tragic. - Kalibr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Weird Story.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Don't you mean a crackpot lunatic!?
- KiloCharley, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"a car that runs on water" circa 1903, sounds ridiculous,
"a car that runs on hydrogen and oxygen" circa 2006, makes sense.
maybe this guy WAS ahead of his time? -
Show 51 - 100 of 225 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is 