Demise of the chest freezer?

[Jimmy Wilkinson Knife]

I just took my expired chest freezer (as in double the size of a washing machine) to the dump, and was accused of it being commercial. Do people not use these things anymore?

[Bill Wright]

I bought one before there was VAT. I got a big one because it was cheaper than a small one due to Purchase Tax on small ones. Mine was 16 cubit feet. It cost £82. All its life it had a peculiarity in that the yellow neon would only glow when illuminated by the room light. I never understood this. When I decided to replace the freezer I found that it had leaked underneath. The concrete floor was frozen sold due to water getting between the cracks and freezing. When we lifted the freezer the floor came with it. I now have two Beko uprights. They are fine. As a precaution I gave them their own mains supplies and their own RCDs, nothing to do with the house. I also bought two of those little thermometers on a wire. They cost £12 + VAT. I extended the wires. They give an interesting insight into the way the inside temp of a freezer cycles up and down.

Bill

[NY]

On 21/10/18 16:33, Bill Wright wrote: > I also bought two of those little thermometers on a wire. They > cost £12 + VAT. I extended the wires. They give an interesting insight > into the way the inside temp of a freezer cycles up and down.

How much range of temperature does the thermostat allow (its hysteresis) between switching the pump on and off? I've always wondered.

When we changed our central heating thermostat from an old-fashioned bimetallic strip to a Hive system, it was interesting to see how much more constant the room temperature was, as recorded by the internal temperature sensor of our weather station, than it had been with the bimetallic thermostat.

I imagine the same will be true with old freezers (bimetallic) versus new ones (solid-state temperature sensor).

You were lucky that you replaced your old freezer with a Beko. I presume from your description of a concrete floor that it's outside or otherwise unheated. Beko are one of the few manufacturers that still can be sited in a room that is not maintained at around 15-20 deg C; most of them stop working if the ambient temp drops below about 10 deg C. I've always thought that there is something slightly illogical about a device that is designed to cool the inside of it not working if the outside temp gets too cold (ie when the pump has to do *less* work). But it's all to do with refrigerant used, and whether (for a combined fridge/freezer, if it uses one thermostat to control both compartments, instead of having two separate ones as they should do (trying to infer the temp of the freezer from the temp of the fridge is naive in the extreme).

[Jimmy Wilkinson Knife]

Shouldn't they all be using Peltier blocks by now? I can't understand w= hy we still use the compressor in the 21st century. My car fridge opera= tes at any temperature, it simply creates a temperature difference betwe= en the inside and the outside of the container.

[Bill Wright]

No, Peltier is very inefficient.

Bill

[Jim Wilkinson Knife]

There must be a better substance then?

[Bill Wright]

Not necessarily. Many imperfect things in life are as good as it gets.

Bill

[Jim Wilkinson Knife]

Everybody thinks that until a new invention occurs.

[Bill Wright]

But until the new thing has been invented it won't be available will it? So what you've got is as good as you're going to get, now.

Bill

[Jim Wilkinson Knife]

Unless people are sensible enough to work on improving it. Or do we have to wait for the Japanese to do it for us?

[Bill Wright]

But as I said, until it's invented it isn't available.

Bill

[The Natural Philosopher]

And the chief point of studying engineering as a university degree subject is to understand what products can NEVER be available and stop wasting time developing them.

Back in my time at GEC elliotts I was tasked with making a pulse amplifier for a laser rangefinder. The idea was simple., A ruby laser (might have been CO2: I forget) would fire a pulse of light at the target, you get a red flash back, measure the time diifference and bingo. Thats the range for your tank guns to elevate to.

My first project ever and I got some assistance, but got my bit working and then we took the thing up to the roof to mesasure ranges of some local objects.

It was dire. On a clear day we could relaibly detect a white painted house at 1.5 miles.

For anything tank colored in bad weather - well you might have been better off with opticval rangefinders.

I was disappointed. Maybe my amp wasnt low noise enough, but I dndt know how to impriove it so that project got shelved for nme....until a 'boffin' came around. To see if hois elevated knowledge could help wiotyh aqny issue. We brought up te rangefinder.

"Ah. Um. What is te laser power? I see, and what is the noise figure of te photodetctor? Ah. I see. I'll get back to you after lunch when I have done some calculations"....

"Well by my calculatins assuing mo loss in diry air and a good reflective target like a white wall, you might if you are lucky get abouut 1.5 miles. Any worse atmospherics or a less reflective target and itr would be a lot less"

"Anything we can do anbout that"?

"Bigger laser, or a better photodetector, but the detector is near the limit anyuway, so not much to be gained there".

I do not recall how many more millions of budget were siphoned from that project into ones with more promise before we told the MOD it was essentially still born.

No amount of tinkering could overcome the basic physics.

I had a similar problem with Sinclair, but this time I was more clued up into matters engineering. I wrote several pages detailing why the piece of ferrite he wanted to use could never power the CRT tubes he wanted to use in the microvision. (Essentually a poiecve of ferrite can only stire so much energy, and this energy, times the frequency its driven at, is the most power you can get through it as a transformer. Frequency was fixed and synched to linescan, so that was that). I thoiugt Clive woiukld be delighted to know the thing ciuld nevcer works and stop wasting tine =me on it. Sadly I was not really aware of the marketing issues, that he had taken hundreds of thousnans of pounds in advanced orders and would be in deep water - possibly on criminal charges - if te fact that hs product not only didnt work, but couldn't work, was ever revealed.I got 'constructively dismissed'

Its all the same with electric cars and windmills and solar panels today, They can be proved to be ineffective and not worth the money, but the people who throw taxpayer money at them don't know that, and the punters are queing up to advance book their '21st ecntury pocket televisions' - their electric cars and what have you.

Since its you Bill, reflect on the realities of a pocket TV in te days of VHF/UHF.

- We only had CRTs as a display device.

- to get a decent picture most people required a roof or loft mounted yagi . A whip antenna on a pocket TV was never going to do the job (early show prototypes were in fact shown with a secret antenna on the roof of the dsho hall, and a booster hidden under the stand, to make the signal strength really high.

- we did just about have some custom Ics designed that half worked.

Today, witha 4G cellular network, 16nm silicon fab and LCD screens, the thing can be done. Every smart phone shows that. And Clive always knew what the sheeple WANTED. Just not how to deliver it. Which is much harder.

Nothing has changed. Men with plenty of self assurance born out of total ignorance assure punters that, given enough of their money, something really marvellous can be delivered. The reality is that in most cases it can't. Its just a scam to get money.

Electric cars were where pocket TVS were in 1973. Or computers in 1965. You could see they would be popular but the technology to make them didn't exist for any but a few expensive niche applications.

LCDs stared to appear IIRC in the mid 1970s, but it wasnt till around

2000 that they started to be good enough for monitor and TV purposes. That is an example of a technology that was possible, but required huge amounts of development to get it to where it was the de facto display standard.

Electric cars? well everything is there except the power source. Batteries, as we currently understand them, can never be good enough. The physics says no.

So throwing money at battery research will simply take BEVs to a slightly wider niche market than the shoolrun/supermarket run.

And its doubtful that without subsidy they will ever be cost competitive.

That MIGHT all change if some other way of storing electricity than electrochemical or hydrocarbon fuel that is practical inexpensive and safe turns up.

But there's no point in throwing money at it because we dont even know where to look. Unless you are a con artist.

When lasers first were invented no one had a use for them beyond light shows at pop concerts.

We had a solution, but to what problem? They came out of entirely unrelated research.

One of te easire ways to become famous is to assure people that you are a visionary, can see the future, but you just need a lot of their money first. Sinclair. Musk. Every bankrupt solar panel company and windmill company.

Heck, steal enough money to give lots to charity and you can even get a knighthood!

Look at that cunt Geldof. Arguably his 'Aid' has made things infinitely worse for sub saharan africa. But he's made a career out of it and it's financed his coke habit.

And he got a knighthood. And he's f****ng IRISH FFS!

Jimmy Savile got a knighthood for HIS work bonking underage girls and possibly boys 'I do so love children'

"As a nation at that time we held Savile in our affection as a somewhat eccentric national treasure with a strong commitment to charitable causes. Today's reports show that in reality he was a sickening and prolific sexual abuser who repeatedly exploited the trust of a nation for his own vile purposes"

What am I saying?

That the world is very very corrupt, and greed for fame and fortune driuves many to be compulsive liars, self publicists and that the best way of covering up their seediness is to engage in 'charitable works' - its like buying an indulgence to get your sins forgiven

Chuck in some substantial donations to the party in goverbment and a peerage is assured.

Sciuence as students of Popper understanbd (but wilkinosn pork sword dpoes not) is not about wehat yiyu can do, its about waht you cant. All te 'proof'; is not that scuence is right, but that its wrong, and if you cant priocve it's wrong and it seems to work, its science.

So science is really good at showing what will not work. It's less helpful at making stuff that should work actually work. Engineering is always about 'lets think of an idea, eithertest it by building it to see if it DOES work, or run the numbers on it to see if it DOES work.

90% of tech startups fail because the idea was crap. I suspoect teh nunber of government funded ones is even higher.

The 'if we throw money at scientists and technologists who promise us results, they will deliever them' school of thinking is just another example of leftism - its magic thinking that doesnt represent reality, just aspirations, and moral self righteousness.

[Bill Wright]

A brilliant post. Better than anything you'll see in the newspapers or on the telly.

Bill

[Roger Hayter]

Much of it is quite sensible, but brilliant is overstating it. For instance, with electric cars everyone but the rich will just have to put up with 100miles maximum range, our rulers will not mind that too much.

[Gym Sulkinson Fork]

So far. Until we get batteries that last longer or charge faster. Just look at the AA rechargeable battery to see how it's improved from NiCad to NiMH to LiIon.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The hole pointy of te post was to point out that we CANNOT get batteries that 'last longer'

We are near the theoretical limit already, Pork Sword III..

you will have to change your nym every time you post now

*plonk*

Just

Oh dear.

Look at how well the steam engine has improved from Stephensons 'rocket'

I wonder why we don't use them on our railways?

[Joe Silkinson Spoon]

People probably said that when we were still using Cadmium.

Done.

Oh do grow up.

We use the internal combustion engine, a better system. It's called progress. Do get your head out of the sand....