Just wondering - Heat Transfer

Perhaps, but enough to make it worth doing something?

Much as any engineer tends to view the world as a sub optimal implementation that needs to be fixed, there comes a point where you need to choose a problem big enough to make it worth spending the effort fixing it.

Surely the speed with which you can get the heat away can't exceed the rate you stick it into the heater element? Or have they changed physics again when I was not looking?

So if you are sticking electrical energy in at 3kW, and the element is not in thermal runaway heating adiabatically, then its must be dumping heat at a rate of 3kW also.

The only time more fins etc will start to pay dividends is where you have a *much* more powerful heater that you could not thermally "couple" to the water well enough to reach an equilibrium temperature on the heater that is not so high as to destroy it.

Alas the killer of many a good idea.

Then the system isn't closed and isn't a 'system'

Try to keep up.

Oh dear. How can energy 'escape' from a 'closed' system?

The total lack of scientific comprehension is actually truly frightening.

Complete lie.

No true engineer regards it like that.

Its is a chaos of compromises, all just good enough to not be worth fixing except for a very very few cases.

Stuff that works massively worse than other stuff, tends not to exist after a while.

Unil some romantic idiot decides to reintroduce it and con billions out of people to pay r it.

Windmills spring to mind....bit eventually those too will pass as te money spent on them will not be spent on stuff that actually works to keep the soceity and its culture intact, and someone will take over and build probably treadmills for all the surplus snowflakes and greens.

there comes a point where you

And that is good engineering philosophy.

Go to a company like Prodrive, and the engineers there will be analysing rally car performance in tenths of a second per stage per million pounds spent.

And the technology with the most tenths gets the budget.

Don't confuse real engineers with people like Clive Sinclair or James Dyson, or the people behind e.g. Microsoft or Apple.

There is stuff that is designed to sell, and there is stuff that is designed to work.

In the consumer market, the two are almost unrelated.

No, by definition the killer of all bad ideas.

Like 'Diversity'

Quite possibly not, but that wasn't ever really the intention was it, but only to ask 'if'?

Of course, however, sometimes such simple questions do get people interested, they come up with something and it becomes the new de-facto standard.

I never considered this topic to be one of those cases of course because the science proves it's pretty well there already. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Again, this is where you left brainers can only see / think literally. ;-(

The 'system' in this case is *normally* closed and is a system (it's even called "a central heating / hot water system" ffs!

However, there are instances where (and especially for the purposes of this thread), what was a closed system could become open and then the numbers can change.

You are welcome (again). ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Then it isn't a closed system is it?

NO wonder idiots like you believe in man made climae change.

Look if tu want t indulge in arty farty 'right brain' thinking, join the greens or the labour party and you will find loads of similarly deficient people engaging in 'magic thinking' and calling it 'new science'

But sine you are here, can you tell me what shape of road wheel might be better than a round one, and why?

For a man of your massive 'right brained' 'emotional intelligence', that should not require more than a ....couple of lifetimes....

Tell you what, I'll put back what you desperately cut out to try to make your pathetic left brainer case:

Tim Streater said:"

And your total lack of honesty and integrity is totally expected but I guess desperate times ... ;-(

Cheers, T i m

Like fixing the fences next to the railways rather than spending it on automatic train controls to stop the odd crash.

Fixing the fences is the engineering choice to lower the death rate on railways, ATC is the political solution to lowering the death rate on railways.

Doh, again, demonstrating a complete lack of mental flexibility. ;-( 'Of course' things can (and do) change, internal combustion becomes external combustion when your car catches fire.

Another attempt to denigrate me? You must be desperate (as well as a sad little man).

Now distraction techniques?

And back to the insults.

Mate, just killfile me before you dig any deeper (for your own sake).

Cheers, T i m

Skimming through Guns, Germs and Steel recently, I came across some examples where a new invention was not adopted immediately by the home country. One was why did Japan benefit from the American invention of the transistor with the finger pointed at US vested interests from vacuum valve manufacturers. Our railways and the reluctance to change from steam might be another vested interest example.

Even if Tim patents his mag-lev wheel it is going to hit serious obstruction:-)

I reckon the death rate of people getting through fences to access the rails is in the noise compared with the incidents on crossings and the like.

Fencing railways is to keep the railway in and not the public out ! its on an old bit of rail legislation from 1800 odd!...

Is that like Elephants and Trains magazine Tim?

Yes, with "Necessity (often) being the mother of invention", once invented it can be down to many factors as to what happens with / to it next (including pressures from your 'vested interests', rival solutions or material innovations etc).

Doh! ;-(

Cheers, T i m

Not always. Some ideas are good and worth doing even if they don't have a direct payback in financial terms.

(but tweaking immersion heater design probably ain't one of those!)

And at stations.

Railway tends to stray, does it?

A lot have gome missing post-Beeching :-p

In the noise too unless your including the London underground different scenario and I suppose if you discount all the women around southall and hayes and harlington which distort the national figure;(

Suppose they thought it might at one point;!..