Making Ice Without Electricity 608
j-beda writes "Time Magazine is running an article telling us how Dave Williams is trying to make ice for third-world applications using the Hilsch-Ranque vortex-tube effect (first developed in 1930 by G.J. Ranque), where swirling air is split into hot and cold components." The method is horribly inefficient but Williams is hoping it could yield helpful results in areas where electricity is really not an option.
Clean water first??? (Score:5, Insightful)
New definition of "moving parts" (Score:2, Insightful)
> The vortex tube, also known as the Hilsch-Ranque vortex tube, is a heat pump with no moving parts
> ressurized gas is injected into a specially designed chamber and accelerated to a high rate of rotation (over 1,000,000 rpm).
How can you rotate anything without moving parts???
Eletricity is always an option (Score:1, Insightful)
This guy is basically clueless.
Compressed Gas in the 3rd world? (Score:3, Insightful)
The big question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's be honest here (Score:1, Insightful)
Take away all of your food, clothing, and money.
Take away your education and literacy.
Leave you starving in unarable land.
Now build a generator! Good luck!
Seriously. You are an asshole. Do you think people in third world countries have distinctly different brains? For the most part, their societies were either screwed by outside influences (see African colonialism), or they simply reached a point of equilibrium where technology was not required. (Native Americans.)
This doesnt make them stupid, but it sure as fuck does make you look that way.
Asshole.
Alternative uses...Uranium enrichment (Score:2, Insightful)
How inefficient? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Clean water first??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not use electricity? (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone wants to do something really interesting for the third world, make an adsorbtion freezer using solar concentrators for the heat source. This article discusses some issues: http://me.sjtu.edu.cn/english/scientific_research
Re:Clean water first??? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only use for this is in refrigerators and keeping food fresh.
Which is a major advance of civilization. It's not as if all areas that lack electricity are equal. Some already have clean water, but a lack of refrigeration would allow more local storage of perishable food for one thing. I'm sure there's many other benefits to the economy I'm not aware of.
In Soviet America... (Score:1, Insightful)
Soviet America, indeed.
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's an idea for next time 2Pac... Steal things that will save your life! Leave the gold and the Air Jordans... Try helping your neighbors. Try not to wait for the government to fly in and air drop you a new teat to suckle at like a 40 of St Ides.
Just a thought. Sorry, I meant to say "You feel me?"
Re:The big question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
=Smidge=
Re:Why not just make electricity? (Score:3, Insightful)
a car alternator can be ad anywhere, fix a sproket to it, modify a bike and BINGO!! you have a electricity generator. get tricky and put a battery and a 12V inverter in the mix (all of which can be had extremely cheap and easily acquired in any country) and you have what you need to run a plethora of electrical devices.
everyone keeps missing one really important thing.
most everyone in villages in africa could care less if they had electricity. they have lived for 90 trillion years without it and ice. and they really could care less about it.
think about it, if you know how to sucessfully thrive without complex technology why would you want to become dependant on it? the American indians did very well (and even lived long lives for nomadic people) without tech.
I'm thinking that drinkable water, basic sanitation and basic engineering education sothey can build better homes, better spears or hunting tools to kill the tigers and lions (in kenya!) or food and simple things like agriculture are far more important than a freezer or electricity. Ohh how about something silly like basic medicine?
Leave it to us in the USA to save the world with tech that is not important.
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, any fool knows that a catagory 4 hurricane, broken levee's, 10 feet of flood water, and the breakdown of social order shouldn't require any pesky government meddling to deal with. Just gutsy individuals with a can-do attitude!
Those dang people should quit whinging and get over their "victim" mentality.
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:2, Insightful)
We live in a democracy. That means we get a certain type of leadership - always. You can talk about how nice it would be to have a better government, but that's not how the system works, and you're not going to save lives by preaching about how government should be better. That's like expecting a bridge to carry more weight because you argue that steel should be stronger. The government is what it is, and we need to engineer around its limits.
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:4, Insightful)
In my limited experience, I have found that people who share your worldview have seldom faced poverty or any real need... more often, that worldview seems to be an excuse for conservatives to convince themselves that there is no class, and that poor people choose to be poor.
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:2, Insightful)
How about wind power? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, if there's no wind, you're fscked.
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, the states asked for aid, and Bush signed a state of emergency, BEFORE Katrina hit. There was no question about authority. FEMA and the federal government had all the authority and responsibility in this situation.
Secondly FEMA dropped the ball so badly because we have had five years of a government that thinks just like you do. The Bush adminstration has so little respect for government agencies that they choked them with insufficient budgets and apointed unqualified cronies to run them, forcing out experienced disaster management people. Read the recent columns by Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman in the NYT for lots of details.
Is it any wonder New Orleans got the response it did with the leaders we have?
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:3, Insightful)
I vote because it's better than not voting (I suppose). I wouldn't pay taxes if I had that option. All 300M of us would probably do a heck of a lot better than you would think, were some of us not so conditioned to sucking on Uncle Sam's teets for sustenance.
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:3, Insightful)
I was referring to the dependence on government aid to rebuild. That's what insurance is for, but as you will soon see, that insurance is going to be paid for by me and every other tax payer in America.
And I was referring to the morons that stayed behind when they could have ridden free buses out of those areas before the hurricanes hit. Then laid blame on everyone but themselves when they were stranded.
Those dang people should quit whinging and get over their "victim" mentality.
I agree, except I'm not being facetious. It's truly a sad day in America when so many come to rely on the teat of government instead of themselves and their neighbors.
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:4, Insightful)
The school buses were part of the evac plan, ask why they were neatly parked and padlocked untill they were covered with 5 feet of water instead.
Ask what the mayor was waiting for; ask why the governor took so long to declair an official emergency so the feds would have dictatorial power to do the right thing, ask why the state turned away a red cross convoy bringing blankets, food, water and generaters to the superdome
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think people's grip was that we didn't have enough dependence, but that FEMA was there and just stood by.
Constitution that gives states power in times of crisis.
Yes. I believe we should go back to the days of ye old states rights too and the federal government has overstepped its bounds, but considering most of the Louisina state guard was not in the state at the time it was very hard for them to react.
We can have a bomber fly from the midwest USA and hit Serbia and come back in one day. Why couldn't we have air dropped military personell onto the streets of New Orleans as soon as it was apparent that the local forces were overwhelmed and trying to survive on their own. We are talking about people's lives here... Not some juristiction issue. If a city was hit by an earth quake or a tidal wave and the local authorities were totally destroyed then someone has to help.
In the matters of personal economics and morality then yes the government should keeps it's hands off states rights, but when it's talking about an event that the states cannot handle and lives are at risk then it's the Federal Governments duty to step in immediately.
and you're not going to save lives by preaching about how government should be better
What if that preaching leads to a change in a system that later saves lives in the future? To say "Oh we couldn't have done anything so let's not change anything because we can't stop it in the future either" is the worst head in the sand mentality a nation could have.
We live in a democracy.
Not to be semantic, but its a republic. If we lived in a democracy we'd have Proportional Representation [wikipedia.org] like Israel does.
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In Soviet America... (Score:1, Insightful)
The sad fact is that Blacks are more prone to riot and loot than any other race. While other races have rioted in the past they don't seem to be ready to do so at the drop off the hat as Blacks do. For instance when Rodney King verdicts where handed down the Black ripped L.A. apart because they didn't get their way. On the other hand when OJ Simpson got off there where no White riots.
Now then, I'm sure this comment isn't PC or even going to stay up here long before being labeled as a troll. But the sad fact is this is true. Instead of sticking our heads in the sand and pretending these facts aren't true we need to take a detailed look at why Blacks are more prone to do this. The old arguments just don't hold water anymore, its not poverty or the after effects of slavery. It has to be something in the culture or even genetic, but it has to be addressed.
Re: engineering around government (Score:3, Insightful)
But besides that, the super-dome was engineered to withstand a hurricane, and had food and supplies for thousands of people. What they didn't count on was that levies would breach and people would be stuck there for a long time. That means they had no plan to get people out of the super-dome once they were there.
And no, the government can't just pick them up and move them at a moment's notice. When the military deploys overseas, it is the result of months of planning and preparation. Not to mention that a large scale deployment requires access to at least a well developed airfield, and preferably the ability for ships to dock and deploy equipment and personnel. New Orleans had neither at the time of the emergency.
In the face of a lack of necessary planning and preparation we were left in a situation where thousands of people were left for days to fend for themselves while several levels of government made an uncoordinated attempt to provide aid.
To say that this disaster had something to do with how some people might vote is disgusting, offensive, and ignorant. You should try-thinking for yourself once and a while instead of just reading and regurgitating what you read on BBC.