The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Beyond the boundaries of established science an avalanche of exotic ideas compete for our attention. Experts tell us that these ideas should not be permitted to take up the time of working scientists, and for the most part they are surely correct. But what about the gems in the rubble pile? By what ground-rules might we bring extraordinary new possibilities to light?

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MosaicDave
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by MosaicDave » Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:05 am

Aardwolf, thanks for your reply.

Taking your responses out of order:

I don't at all disagree that a water droplet can be suspended by an electric field; of course this is correct. And I won't disagree that electrostatic levitation may have some role in the buoyancy of clouds, which I think obviously are made of droplets. I will interject here as an aside, that if you have a cloud of charged particles, or droplets, they are not going to remain clustered together; they are going to disperse, through mutual repulsion. So I think the notion of a cloud as an aerosol of charged droplets has this problem. But I don't want to argue about what might, or might not, levitate clouds. Because it's irrelevant to the "green bottles" experiment.

The "green bottles" experiment, addresses the following specific question: Does water, at room temperature and in a "normal" environment, evaporate as a monomolecular gas, or as an aerosol of droplets containing two or more water molecules. Also, I will say, I really _was_ trying to determine clearly, if things like shoes and gloves and bottles, dry faster with the open end upright, or facing down. Because as I explained, all my life I had assumed that humid air must somehow be heavier and denser. I think this is an intuitive feeling that many or even most people have; for example we always expect to find dampness in the basement, rather than the attic. I think this may be how McGinn has gone wrong; he starts with how he "knows" things must be, and applies his fertile mind (divorced from any real physical experiment) to concoct a series of exotic fabrications. But as Charles Chandler pointed out even on one of these forums, a water molecule has a lower mass than either a diatomic nitrogen or oxygen molecule, so air containing gaseous water should actually be lighter than dry air. This was something of a minor shock to me; I realized I had never really thought about it. So I decided to test it out. Merely for my own information, by the way: my objective wasn't to prove anything to anyone on Thunderbolts forum; I wanted to clarify it for myself.

As I also said, there is a certain seductiveness to McGinn's claim that, due to hydrogen bonding, more energy is required to remove a single water molecule from a bulk water surface, than is required to remove a cluster of two or more molecules together as a droplet. Now mind you, McGinn has never explained this quantitatively; he only expresses the conjecture. I will reveal a secret - another reason I tried the "green bottles" experiment was this: If it had turned out that the inverted bottle dried faster, implying the existence of multi-molecular "nano-droplets", I was planning to work out the math around the intermolecular bonding of water molecules, arrange and execute a more formalized experiment, and publish the results in some big scientific journal. And no, by the way, such a paper would not be rejected by some entrenched establishment. Real actual scientists are much more open minded than is often assumed on forums like this one; such a discovery, if supported by a real physical experiment, would be instantly and widely recognized as revolutionary and of overriding significance.

But it doesn't work: The humid air rises; no nano-droplets. The end. Afterwards, I took the time to photograph the bottles, and posted the image on Thunderbolts because some people will be interested.

Now, McGinn will say it's electric fields and charged droplets, etcetera. I know this is wrong; I've actually measured ambient electric fields inside and outside of buildings, and I know that inside of a normal building the ambient DC field is next to nothing. Especially in a building framed with steel studs, which creates a natural Faraday cage. You dismissed my suggestion to read about Faraday cages, and perhaps I was being too flippant, but if you take the time to understand the idea of a Faraday cage, you would see that yes indeed, it really is easy to isolate a local environment from any surrounding electric field, even if you've got some charged body right next door the size of the Earth. Also there is the famous the oil-drop experiment done by Robert Millikan; it exactly deals with the movement of tiny droplets suspended in air in an electric field.

Anyway, I have convinced myself, which is all I set out to do. If you or anyone else really think there are electrostatic effects, and want to repeat this experiment inside of a wire cage of window screening, which I've recommended and which would be very easy to do, or if you want to get fancier and use conductive bottles, or arrange for un-charged water, whatever that would mean, or however complex you want to make things, feel free. To me at this point it would be a waste of my time; certainly nothing will convince McGinn of the invalidity of his nanodroplets, and it would be a fool's errand to try further. But it certainly wouldn't be a waste of someone else's time, if they wanted a more convincing demonstration.

All for now--

--dc

fosborn_
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by fosborn_ » Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:43 am

To Wolfman ,
You should really start reading the material you site...
I noted in Wal's article he takes gaseous water vapor as a given, as does Charles and Seasmith and M Dave. Under your scrutiny he is wrong too.
In an electric field, the water molecule will rotate to line up with the field. When it condenses in a cloud the average electric dipole moment of a water molecule in a raindrop is 40 percent greater than that of a single water vapor molecule. This enhancement results from the large polarization caused by the electric field induced by surrounding water molecules. In the atmospheric electric field the water molecules will be aligned with their dipoles pointing vertically and in a sense that is determined by the charge polarization in the cloud. ..
Water vapor in rising air cools and condenses to forms clouds. The conventional explanation for rising air relies upon solar heating. The electrical weather modelhas an additional galactic energysource (the same that powers the Sun) to drive the movement of air. It is the same energy source that drives ferocious high-level winds on the giant outer planets, where solar energy is extremely weak. Once the water vapor condenses into water dropletsit is more plausible that millions of tons of water can remain suspended kilometres above the Earth by electrical means, rather than by thermal updraughts. The clouds would act to reduce thermals.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

jimmcginn
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by jimmcginn » Wed Nov 29, 2017 12:26 pm

Aardwolf wrote: Also, if I am wrong and you did attempt to isolate static can you explain;
1) Where the water was sourced to ensure it was electrically neutral to the bottles and laboratory environment;
2) After drying the glass bottles you were able to ensure these were also remained electrically neutral to the water and the laboratory environment;
3) How the air filters ensured that incoming air was also electrically neutral to the water, bottles and laboratory environment;
4) How you were able to ensure the air at the top of the room was electrically neutral to the air at the bottom of the room. Ideally before and during the experiment.
5) Were you able to ensure that the water used in the experiment was free of hygroelectricity. Before and after the experiment.
This is an excellent analysis. Of these five things the only one that I had kind of considered was #3.

Here is a somewhat callous way to get the point across to Mosaic Dave and Fosborn. I recently read of an Australian guy that was able to avoid work and go golfing by way of putting his work cell-phone inside one of those metallic potato chip bags to create a defacto Faraday cage. This, apparently, prevented his phone from pinging the cell tower and vice versa.

Now here is an experiment that Mosaic Dave and Fosborn can do. Turn off your phones and put them in metallic potato chip bags. Go play a round of golf. When you return take your phones out of the bags, try to turn them on and even see if you can complete a call. If your phones do turn on and you are able to complete a call what would that tell us about the notion that a Faraday cage can/does serve as some kind of magical electricity erasing device?
Not just McGinn. Wal Thornhill has a similar idea. But I guess you just think he's a crackpot and safely ignored.
http://www.holoscience.com/wp/electric-weather/
Wal Thornhill wrote: So it is proposed that water droplets in clouds experience an antigravity effect. It appears to be related to the ‘Biefield-Brown Effect,’ where a charged high-voltage planar capacitor tends to move in the direction of the positive electrode. That effect may explain how millions of tons of water can be suspended kilometres above the ground, when cloud droplets are about 1,000 times denser than the surrounding air.
Right. Moreover, if anybody should get the credit/blame for this brilliant/crazy idea it should be Wal Thornhill, since I adopted the idea after see that very webpage, around 2010, as I explained in this post:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 10&t=16597

I've also been thinking about other methods to eliminate the effects of static electricity. Another experiment I was developing involved directly weighing two containers at a fixed volume, one containing perfectly dry air and the other containing moist air. But this too suffered from the problem of how you knowingly eliminate the influence of static electricity. One method I hit upon involved freezing the containers, but now after reading your five points above I am skeptical that even that would be effective.

One last method I have been thinking about recently might allow for eliminating the influence of static electricity altogether. It involves precisely tracking the pressure as a container of fixed volume of moist air is gradually heated above the boiling temperature/pressure of H2O. If the suspended H2O therein is already gaseous then the increase in pressure should be constant up through and beyond the boiling temperature/pressure of H2O. If, however, the H2O therein is liquid then there should be a spike in the pressure as the suspended H2O therein flashes into the gaseous phase upon boiling. Problems I can foresee with this might be that the spike in pressure might be extremely slight and hard to detect. Also the pressure measuring device would have to be able to withstand high temperatures.

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes

jimmcginn
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by jimmcginn » Wed Nov 29, 2017 1:20 pm

fosborn_ wrote: Wal Thornhill takes gaseous water vapor as a given, . . . is he wrong too?
Yes, of course he is wrong (about this) too. And I stated as much in this thread:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 10&t=16597
And if you read further in the thread I also explicate a number of other conceptual shortcomings of Thornhill's model of water in the atmosphere. The truth is much more complex and counter-intuitive than anybody would imagine. I suggest reading the whole thread very, very carefully.

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes

jimmcginn
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by jimmcginn » Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:15 pm

MosaicDave wrote: I won't disagree that electrostatic levitation may have some role in the buoyancy of clouds, which I think obviously are made of droplets.
So, your disagreement is only that this would not happen at lower altitude and/or within a steel framed building? (I think some of Ardwolf's arguments are getting through to you.)
I will interject here as an aside, that if you have a cloud of charged particles, or droplets, they are not going to remain clustered together; they are going to disperse, through mutual repulsion. So I think the notion of a cloud as an aerosol of charged droplets has this problem.
I would agree there would have to be a general balance of negative and positive charges. (But, as you suggest, this issue is peripheral to the main issue under discussion here.)
But I don't want to argue about what might, or might not, levitate clouds. Because it's irrelevant to the "green bottles" experiment. The "green bottles" experiment, addresses the following specific question: Does water, at room temperature and in a "normal" environment, evaporate as a monomolecular gas, or as an aerosol of droplets containing two or more water molecules.
Nobody disputes that this was your intended target. But the actual aim of your experiment was whether or not evaporate goes up or down. To flesh out the analogy, if you were a hunter intending to bag an elk and you shoot at something in the distance that has antlers don’t be surprised if you actually end up with a deer and not an elk because both have antlers.
Also, I will say, I really _was_ trying to determine clearly, if things like shoes and gloves and bottles, dry faster with the open end upright, or facing down. Because as I explained, all my life I had assumed that humid air must somehow be heavier and denser. I think this is an intuitive feeling that many or even most people have; for example we always expect to find dampness in the basement, rather than the attic. I think this may be how McGinn has gone wrong; he starts with how he "knows" things must be, and applies his fertile mind (divorced from any real physical experiment) to concoct a series of exotic fabrications.
When you’ve bagged an elk you can brag.
But as Charles Chandler pointed out even on one of these forums, a water molecule has a lower mass than either a diatomic nitrogen or oxygen molecule, so air containing gaseous water should actually be lighter than dry air. This was something of a minor shock to me; I realized I had never really thought about it.
It’s a long standing, bedrock assumption of meteorology’s convection model of storms. But don’t feel bad, one glance at the H2O phase diagram would suggest that they didn’t really think about it either.
So I decided to test it out. Merely for my own information, by the way: my objective wasn't to prove anything to anyone on Thunderbolts forum; I wanted to clarify it for myself.

As I also said, there is a certain seductiveness to McGinn's claim that, due to hydrogen bonding, more energy is required to remove a single water molecule from a bulk water surface, than is required to remove a cluster of two or more molecules together as a droplet. Now mind you, McGinn has never explained this quantitatively; he only expresses the conjecture.
Well, . . . read this:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 40#p122435
I will reveal a secret - another reason I tried the "green bottles" experiment was this: If it had turned out that the inverted bottle dried faster, implying the existence of multi-molecular "nano-droplets", I was planning to work out the math around the intermolecular bonding of water molecules, arrange and execute a more formalized experiment, and publish the results in some big scientific journal.
Well, . . . read this:
https://zenodo.org/record/37224
And no, by the way, such a paper would not be rejected by some entrenched establishment. Real actual scientists are much more open minded than is often assumed on forums like this one; such a discovery, if supported by a real physical experiment, would be instantly and widely recognized as revolutionary and of overriding significance.
It think it would be rejected by the editor and would never make it into the peer review pool. And I'm not saying that there is some kind of conspiracy. I'm just saying that they have other factors to consider and that they would be unlikely to be able to quickly distinguish it from something that seemed severely misinformed. (And they don't have a lot of spare time to make that determination.)
But it doesn't work: The humid air rises; no nano-droplets. The end.
You bagged a deer, not an elk.
Afterwards, I took the time to photograph the bottles, and posted the image on Thunderbolts because some people will be interested.

Now, McGinn will say it's electric fields and charged droplets, etcetera.
I’m just saying that these are factors the influence of which we’d want to knowingly eliminate before we jumped to any conclusion. Moreover, it might not be the only factors we would have to knowingly eliminate (see below).
I know this is wrong; I've actually measured ambient electric fields inside and outside of buildings, and I know that inside of a normal building the ambient DC field is next to nothing. Especially in a building framed with steel studs, which creates a natural Faraday cage. You dismissed my suggestion to read about Faraday cages, and perhaps I was being too flippant, but if you take the time to understand the idea of a Faraday cage, you would see that yes indeed, it really is easy to isolate a local environment from any surrounding electric field, even if you've got some charged body right next door the size of the Earth. Also there is the famous the oil-drop experiment done by Robert Millikan; it exactly deals with the movement of tiny droplets suspended in air in an electric field.
I don’t doubt your expertise on any of this.
Anyway, I have convinced myself, which is all I set out to do. If you or anyone else really think there are electrostatic effects, and want to repeat this experiment inside of a wire cage of window screening, which I've recommended and which would be very easy to do, or if you want to get fancier and use conductive bottles, or arrange for un-charged water, whatever that would mean, or however complex you want to make things, feel free. To me at this point it would be a waste of my time; certainly nothing will convince McGinn of the invalidity of his nanodroplets, and it would be a fool's errand to try further. But it certainly wouldn't be a waste of someone else's time, if they wanted a more convincing demonstration.
I want to preface what I am about to say with the acknowledging that others might view it as desperate. But if others do view it as desperate be aware that the desperation is not because I feel that any of this is a threat to my larger model. Rather, the desperation is due to the fact that in my mind the notion that H2O (or any chemical, for that matter) could so easily defy it’s known boiling temperature/pressure is plainly absurd to me. And I can’t make sense as to how others so casually accept this supposition.

Let’s say that we take Dave’s advice and we effectively eliminate any inflow of electricity from the environment and we even find a way to knowingly eliminate any residual electrons (and or ions) and even any and all trace gases. So, we have a perfect mixture of 79% Nitrogen, 20% Oxygen, and 1% Argon with zero electric charge at ambient temperature. Now let’s ask ourselves the rhetorical question, can we assume that this mixture of gases will not have any residual charges and or other factors that would cause a nanodroplet to levitate?

Here are some other factors we might want to consider, individually and/or collectively:
1) Gas molecules in the atmosphere are highly energetic. At all times they are (depending on temperature/pressure) moving an average speed of 700 to 1100 mph.
2) Gas molecules may not be perfectly devoid of electromagnetic forces. Might there be residual EMF associated with N2 and/or O2? To me it seems unlikely that a pairing of oxygen atoms and/or nitrogen atoms would just happen to be completely neutral electromagnetically.
3) H2O nanodroplets have external EMF forces associated with their surface tension.
4) H2O nanodroplets are highly energetic, constantly giving and taking kinetic energy from their immediate environment. (This being a consequence of the high heat capacity of H2O.)
5) Lastly, all of these factors may make it very difficult to achieve said elimination of outside influence of electricity.

One caveat to this with regard to Dave’s green bottle experiment, is why would any of these factors result in only a net upward movement, as seems to be indicated in the experiment. Why would it not also cause water to evaporate out of the bottom of the bottle. To this question I have to admit that I don’t know. (But I'm still not tempted to conclude that H2O turns gaseous at ambient temperatures.)

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes

Aardwolf
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by Aardwolf » Thu Nov 30, 2017 6:32 am

MosaicDave,

Thanks for the detailed response. I won't parse in detail as James has already been though, however, there is something I want to point out. You said;
I will interject here as an aside, that if you have a cloud of charged particles, or droplets, they are not going to remain clustered together; they are going to disperse, through mutual repulsion.
Clearly not in all cases according to the paper I linked called Experimental Study of Cloud Formation by Intense Electric Fields.

You accept that electric fields can suspend water yet rule it out has having any effect on your experiment. You are certain that the water is molecular yet have no way of testing this. You say it's in a "normal" environment but so is fog. What makes your lab more "normal". It seems to me that you have just convinced yourself of the result based on circular reasoning, which is fine if you are happy, but in no way did this experiment exclude any possible electrostatic or electromagnetic effects, which was my main point.

Aardwolf
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by Aardwolf » Thu Nov 30, 2017 6:54 am

fosborn_ wrote:To Wolfman ,
You should really start reading the material you site...
I noted in Wal's article he takes gaseous water vapor as a given, as does Charles and Seasmith and M Dave. Under your scrutiny he is wrong too.
In an electric field, the water molecule will rotate to line up with the field. When it condenses in a cloud the average electric dipole moment of a water molecule in a raindrop is 40 percent greater than that of a single water vapor molecule. This enhancement results from the large polarization caused by the electric field induced by surrounding water molecules. In the atmospheric electric field the water molecules will be aligned with their dipoles pointing vertically and in a sense that is determined by the charge polarization in the cloud. ..
Water vapor in rising air cools and condenses to forms clouds. The conventional explanation for rising air relies upon solar heating. The electrical weather modelhas an additional galactic energysource (the same that powers the Sun) to drive the movement of air. It is the same energy source that drives ferocious high-level winds on the giant outer planets, where solar energy is extremely weak. Once the water vapor condenses into water dropletsit is more plausible that millions of tons of water can remain suspended kilometres above the Earth by electrical means, rather than by thermal updraughts. The clouds would act to reduce thermals.
First of all, I have never stated that water is never molecular, that's James's hypothesis. I only state that it is possible either way as we have no way of really testing it. Second, Wal merely accepts the current paradigm regarding water in the atmosphere, but if it were shown that water was not vapour just nano-scale particles, this would in no way affect Wal's conclusion. So, yet again you are picking irrelevant points. However, as someone who is;
fosborn_ wrote:open to anything that shows it [electrical effects] can apply but in a natural environment and the conditions this thread covers
do you agree with Wal's conclusions?

Aardwolf
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by Aardwolf » Thu Nov 30, 2017 10:18 am

fosborn_ wrote:Mosaic Dave demonstrates its not electrostatic, pick something else..
For the avoidance of doubt, after considering the discussion with Mosaic Dave, clearly this statement is incorrect.

jimmcginn
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by jimmcginn » Thu Nov 30, 2017 1:32 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-v5G8C70pc

What do you feel is right about this video?

Do you feel there anything wrong or misleading about it?

In your opinion, what aspects of water's observed behaviors does this video do a good job of explaining?

What aspects does it fail to explain, if any?

Is it consistent with our understanding of quantum mechanic? Electron cloud? etc.

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes

fosborn_
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by fosborn_ » Thu Nov 30, 2017 2:04 pm

Ardwolf...First of all, I have never stated that water is never molecular, that's James's hypothesis. I only state that it is possible either way as we have no way of really testing it.

When is it then? What circumstances would gaseous water vapor be present in the atmosphere ? Your vary vague on that. Please clarify exactly what your theory is. I feel like I'm getting it peace meal and on the fly.
Wal merely accepts the current paradigm regarding water in the atmosphere, butif it were shown that water was not vapour just nano-scale particles, this would in no way affect Wal's conclusion.
Wow, at lot of assumptions about Wal's casual attitude toward the accepted science. Really not his M.O.
If it were shown? OMG, He is a physicist! You think he doesn't think about every theory he apply s to his papers ?
If you think he can use nano and clusters instead of water vapor with the gas law like Mcginn? Mosaic Mike has you pegged right. Wal's paper was heavy on the properties water molecules in the form of gaseous vapor. But you can, as you do flippantly create parameter changes to other peoples papers and you give yourself a pass. Ok.

How is your fog challenge going, you still think droplets don't condense out of fog? And why do you think a methanol saturated air at 4000 volts has anything to do with ground level fog where Mosaic Dave pointed out was 200 volts and less ?

So if its ok for your paper to use ethanol, so is it for mine... :roll:
a technique for the determination of water in air at ... - AMS Journals
journals.ametsoc.org/doi/.../1520-0469(1954)011%3C0214:ATFTDO%3E2.0.CO%3...
by WC Thuman - ‎1954 - ‎Cited by 6 - ‎Related articles
An investigation of ice fog in Alaska required a technique for the determination of the water content of the atmosphere ... the air through absolute methanol, an aliquot of which was then titrated with Karl Fischer reagent. ... A method of filtering the air in order to separate water vapor from precipitated water was also developed.
.
Which clearly has no relevance..
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

MosaicDave
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by MosaicDave » Thu Nov 30, 2017 4:15 pm

Just for fun, because I have some time before going home for supper:

Let's pretend I pour a few ounces of water in a drinking glass. Or in my green glass bottle. Which I like to drink out of, because I hate drinking out of plastic. So we can work with nice even numbers, let's call it 100ml of water.

Well after a few days the water will evaporate away and dry up, right? I think even McGinn would agree to that. But just to be clear, it's one of the things we are assuming, that the water will dry up, or "evaporate".

Let's assume as McGinn does, that it evaporates into charged drops, which then levitate out of the bottle because everything's happening within an ambient electric field.

Okay, so let's think about that:

Well the water in the bottle must be charged to begin with - otherwise McGinn's method won't work. Because glass is a really good insulator, after all. So the charge won't be going through that glass or that bottle - noway, it has to start out in there from the beginning. Aardwolf says be careful, the water out of the tap may be charged. Even though the water pipe is grounded. Well maybe it's something else. But let's just say, okay, somehow we got 100 ml of water out of the tap, into the glass, and it ended up charged.

So now those nano-droplets coming off the surface of the water, are charged, and levitating out of the glass, because there's an ambient electric field that the glass is sitting in. According to McGinn.

Okay, moving along: Let's say the ambient electric field in the room is really strong. Dave says no that's impossible, but he won't prove it to us, and we are very strict scientists, no pulling the wool over our eyes, we require proof for anything we're asked to believe. (Unless we thought of it ourselves.) So let's say, the ambient electric field is good and strong, like, as strong as it ever gets under a thunderstorm. How strong is that?

Well let's look here:

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10. ... 2.0.CO%3B2

The US Weather Bureau says, they've measured fields of up to 100 V/cm. We'll work in SI units, so that's 10,000 V/m - 10^4 V/m.

So how much charge do we need, to levitate 100 ml of water in that field?

Well first, let's find the force necessary to levitate the water, in SI units. That 100 ml of water is 100 g of mass, or 0.1 kg. We are physicists, so we describe force in Newtons in SI units - and the weight of 0.1kg of mass, in the Earth's gravity, is 0.98N - let's round off and call it 1N.

So now how much charge do we need to levitate that water? F=qE, is the "electric force":

1N = q (10)4 V/m --> q = 10^-4 Coulombs (again in SI units).

So the water in the glass, begins by carrying 10^-4 Coulombs of charge. Okay.

So let's say I'm walking back from the tap, carrying that glass of water. And the charged water inside, is on the other side of the glass, from my hand. So we've got a capacitor - an old fashioned Leyden jar. I wonder what the voltage on that capacitor is?

q=CV, relates the voltage on a capacitor, to the charge it's carrying, in Coulombs. In SI units again. So we need to know the capacitance of the glass.

Well the capacitance of a glass plate capacitor, is this:

C = (K e0 A) / d

where K is the relative permittivity factor for glass; it's about 7 for normal glass;

e0, (e because I can't type epsilon) is the permittivity of vacuum, which is 8.85(10)^-12;

A is the area of the capacitor plates;

d is the thickness of the plates.

I have a pretty big drinking glass sitting here; I measure circumference and height and diameter, and come up with A = 475(10)-4 m^2.

Let's say, the thickness of the glass, is 3 mm - 3(10)-3 m.

Going to the calculator, C = 980 picofarads. Let's round it off to 1000 pF, or 1 nF, or 10^-9F.

Okay so back to q=CV:

10^-4 = 10^-9 * V

V = 10^5 Volts.

So I'm carrying that water back from the tap, in the glass that I'm carrying in my hand, and the water inside is charged to 100,000 Volts. In order for it to evaporate according to McGinn's scheme.

Maybe the ambient electric field is ten times less? Like around a weak thunderstorm?

Then we need ten times as much charge to levitate. So the water has to be charged to 1,000,000 volts, when it goes into the glass.

Hmmm....

fosborn_
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Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by fosborn_ » Thu Nov 30, 2017 5:54 pm

Masic Dave wrote..So I'm carrying that water back from the tap, in the glass that I'm carrying in my hand, and the water inside is charged to 100,000 Volts. In order for it to evaporate according to McGinn's scheme.

Maybe the ambient electric field is ten times less? Like around a weak thunderstorm?

Then we need ten times as much charge to levitate. So the water has to be charged to 1,000,000 volts, when it goes into the glass.

Hmmm....
MosaicDave

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I love old published papers, big technology isn't always necessary for innovative investigation. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways...
I think you could quit your day job and write witty entertaining science articles. Who new math could be so entertaining!
It never gets old watching you and Charles and occasionally Seasmith, using these guys as tackling dummys.
Mosaic Dave wrote; I will reveal a secret - another reason I tried the "green bottles" experiment was this: If it had turned out that the inverted bottle dried faster, implying the existence of multi-molecular "nano-droplets", I was planning to work out the math around the intermolecular bonding of water molecules, arrange and execute a more formalized experiment, and publish the results in some big scientific journal.
Mcginn wrote,,Well, . . . read this:
https://zenodo.org/record/37224
This is who lot eaiser than Experiment.com They don't review it or require a competent person with related experience in a discipline to endorse it ( did Ardwolf qualify to endorse it ?.
New upload
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https://zenodo.org/deposit/new
I could publish my paper on "See Spot Run"..
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

jimmcginn
Posts: 474
Joined: Sun May 01, 2016 6:43 pm

Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by jimmcginn » Thu Nov 30, 2017 6:51 pm

fosborn_ wrote:
MosaicDave wrote: So the water has to be charged to 1,000,000 volts, when it goes into the glass.
Who new math could be so entertaining!
You can say that again.

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes

jimmcginn
Posts: 474
Joined: Sun May 01, 2016 6:43 pm

Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by jimmcginn » Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:02 pm

fosborn_ wrote:
Wal merely accepts the current paradigm regarding water in the atmosphere, butif it were shown that water was not vapour just nano-scale particles, this would in no way affect Wal's conclusion.
Wow, at lot of assumptions about Wal's casual attitude toward the accepted science. Really not his M.O.
If it were shown? OMG, He is a physicist! You think he doesn't think about every theory he apply s to his papers ?
I don't know what you are going on about. I agree with Ardwolf, Thornhill seems to have merely accepted the current paradigm regarding clear moist air in the atmosphere. Obviously, this is not be any means uncommon, even for physicists.

Are you suggesting that he is sitting on some reproducible experimental evidence that would resolve the issue?

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes

fosborn_
Posts: 526
Joined: Tue May 17, 2011 10:20 am
Location: Kansas

Re: The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms

Unread post by fosborn_ » Thu Nov 30, 2017 10:23 pm

I don't know what you are going on about. I agree with Ardwolf, Thornhill seems to have merely accepted the current paradigm regarding clear moist air in the atmosphere. Obviously, this is not be any means uncommon, even for physicists.
See you wouldn't understand (as others have also said to you in other ways), that Wal has done all the basic labs ( as part of his education)that proves the theory s with a degree of confidence, he accepts. Have you? As far as Wal s casual acceptance of gaseous water vapor. Pure speculation on your parts, based on pure ignorance about his thinking.
You have nothing but mind experiment as everyone reminds you. Can you do any math as Charles and Mosaic Dave have labored, for our edification? Obvious no, your just as math challenged as I am. Can you site any work that directly addresses your fabrications of nano droplets using the gas laws? Wal accepts the current model because there is nothing competing with evaporation and the gas laws.

And you can't get off the hypothesis starting blocks, past evaporation , with your electrostatic droplet levitation. You literally got nothing but admitted speculation.
As Charles s clearly pointed out, its part of the bed rock. All you have is your personal self peer review. Evan with all the bluster and big talk, you have admitted to a lot of the speculation, its just it happens at really critical gaps. IMO
Charles has a good example..
Charles wrote..And how do you get bonds between your nana-droplets in the atmosphere, such that the entire air mass has a surface tension? This is where you say that it is a plasma, and all plasmas have surfaces. And because it's water plasma, and because liquid water has surface tension, and because all plasmas have surfaces, then water plasmas must have surface tension as well. But as you just described in detail, the surface tension of the water is a function of inter-molecular bonds. These don't exist in a gas, and while they exist within an aerosol, they don't exist between aerosols. So none of what you said about liquid water applies to air masses.
Mcginn wrote..One caveat to this with regard to Dave’s green bottle experiment, is why would any of these factors result in only a net upward movement, as seems to be indicated in the experiment. Why would it not also cause water to evaporate out of the bottom of the bottle. To this question I have to admit that I don’t know. (But I'm still not tempted to conclude that H2O turns gaseous at ambient temperatures.)
O help us, don't even address the gas law phobia you seem to have... You wouldn't deal with up down, so out of context, you would deal with partial pressure. unless there are some sort of draft to exchange with outside air, the partial pressure is going to reduce. If the bottle is inverted, there will be less exchange because the less dense gases are traped. the upright the less dense are not trapped so there is a constant renewal of vapor pressure to draw those phase transitioning molecules into the inter molecular spaces.
Sense we are doing analogs.. Your looking a balloon swearing its because all the negitive ions are repelling each other and it inflated its self. Who would think of compressing air to inflate it. Exotic possibilities are at the bottom of the list.
And again more sage advice from Charles
Challenge the consensus if you want, but if you don't know what you're challenging, and have a demonstrable reason for diverging, the reason is then just that you feel like arguing with somebody, validated only by the fact that the consensus can be wrong. But that doesn't make you right.
Speculation is not a factor.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

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