PSA: Running On Water

[packbat]

From Making Light: A Japanese company, Genepax, has announced and demonstrated a new fuel cell system that runs on water..

Allow me to be careful for a moment. This is important enough - and I happen to be well-trained enough in the relevant field - to make strong statements about, and I do not want to leave a false impression.

*ahem*

It is impossible to make a fuel cell system that runs on water. Further, it is impossible to devise a process for separating water into hydrogen and oxygen that costs less useful energy than the fuel cell produces by recombining the two. Any person claiming to be capable of doing so is, to borrow a phrase, a lunatic, a liar, or Lord of the Cosmos.

I am not even joking. Of course, in this case, I'm betting it's (a) or (b), for a very simple reason: the machine described in these articles violates conservation of energy. To quote Sean Carroll's Alternative-Science Checklist:

Scientific claims — whether theoretical insights or experimental breakthroughs — don’t exist all by their lonesome. They are situated within a framework of pre-existing knowledge and expectations. If the claim you are making seems manifestly inconsistent with that framework, it’s your job to explain why anyone should nevertheless take you seriously. Whenever someone claims to build a perpetual-motion device, scientist solemnly reiterate that the law of conservation of energy is not to be trifled with lightly. Of course one must admit that it could be wrong — it’s only one law, after all. But when you actually build some machine that purportedly puts out more ergs than it consumes (in perpetuity), it does a lot more than violate the law of conservation of energy. That machine is made of atoms and electromagnetic fields, which obey the laws of atomic physics and Maxwell’s equations. And conservation of energy can be derived from those laws — so you’re violating those as well.

Genepax is pulling a scam, intentionally or not. The only possible way their device could work is by annihilating the entire modern structure of physics and chemistry simultaneously, and destroy them far more thoroughly than general relativity and quantum mechanics destroyed their respective predecessors. Do not even dream of betting against those kind of odds.

---

One final note, for those who may be curious: it was not any special wisdom of mine that allowed me to come so rapidly to the above conclusion. It was a simple three-step process:

1. Diagram the claimed process - where the fuel comes in, where the energy and known waste comes out. (You have to have waste come out - that's the second law of thermodynamics.)

                ________________________    _____________
water (fuel) -> | Genepax's MEA system | -> | Fuel Cell | -> water (waste)
                ------------------------    -------------
                                                      L----> energy

2. Add up the known outputs and subtract the inputs. (The inputs are always known. They're the things you have to pay for.) Compare to zero.

(energy + water) - water = energy > zero

3. If the answer is greater than zero, it's a scam. Q.E.D.

If any part of the above is unclear, I will gladly explain in the comments. Thank you for your time.

Comments

OK you really need to get a Philosophy of Education qualification ASAP, this stuff is excellent

[explodingbat.livejournal.com]

Bringing in parents to act as teaching assistants was a tactic my primary school (in a smallish farming village) used with great success, but it isn't currently allowed for secondary schools (ages 11 to 16, and often up to 18). Your idea of separating the roles of the person who knows what the kids need to learn from those who keep the class in order (with a rapid training/certification system for the latter) is certainly the direction we should be going.

Using social pressure to get the younger kids to want to learn is another stroke of genius. What were the results of the test program you were in? Why wasn't it widely adopted?

And I'm all for transparent accounting: Hackney borough (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Hackney) (where I am) is one of the most notoriously corrupt councils in the country.

| ...history, science, math, literature, "physical ed"...

Does the U.S. system have equivalents to PSE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_and_Social_Education) (aka Politics, Sex and Everything else) and RE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Education) (religious education)? For the longest time I didn't understand the point of the Creationism-in-schools debate because I didn't realise that it was about wanting to teach that stuff as part of Science classes, instead of the humanities where I assumed it belonged.