Re: Hey Mr. Hyde!

From: Evenbit (nbaker2328_at_charter.net)
Date: 03/29/04 

Date: 29 Mar 2004 11:09:40 -0800

"Beth" <BethStone21@hotmail.NOSPICEDHAM.com> wrote in message news:<r6B9c.70$Bg5.32@newsfep3-gui.server.ntli.net>...
>
> Plus, when I said it, I was merely attempting to be "complete" about
> things...the Earth's own gravity does play a _vital_ part that it
> would be wrong to label it "irrelevent" or something...
>
> After all, in that "water cycle", gravity brings the rain back down,
> gravity makes the rivers flow to the oceans...what we actually have is
> an _interaction_ between two constant and, for the purposes of the
> Earth, effectively permanent forces...what sunlight does, gravity
> "resets"...without gravity's part in this, it would be only "half an
> engine", so to speak...it would "fire" just once...then that's
> it...gravity plays a _vital_ role in "resetting" the situation once
> again for it all to go around and around forever...
>

You definitely have a different take on the workings of the world than
the typical scientist or engineer. This is undoubtedly due to your
creative, lateral-thinking, and intuitive mind. In fact, your unique
mind-set would probably make you a successful scientist or engineer on
the order of "Corpernicus, Tesla, Edison, Einstein, etc." because you
continually challenge conventional thinking and that is exactly the
work which brings about advances in these fields.

Scientists tell students that gravity is not a source of energy
because they don't want the students to go off investigating
"perpetual motion" machines and other nonsense that clearly do not
fall into the realm of science.

Engineers study _systems_. This is the reason for all this 'pigeon
holing' with heirarchies, labelling, classification, diagrams,
definition of forces and their equations, etc. Success comes from
having a clear overall picture of what is really going on in the
system instead of just sitting back and saying "oh, that there happens
because the god of the ocean caused it to be that way" or "this person
loves me because the planets are aligned such that he has no choice
but to do so" [....and, of course, this line of thinking leads to the
evils of religion, mysticism, faith, and such ilk which keeps people
locked in their own boxes of fiction instead of releasing them to the
revelation of the reality that they live in.] The system approach
keeps one looking at the facts in the process with an eye toward being
consistent in ones description of the world. You certainly don't want
students concluding that gunpowder is the power of lightning and
thunder captured in dirt form.

Now I will show you how you have gotten this "gravity is the 'reset'
mechanism" thing upside down. I will use a simple electrical circuit
in this discussion since you have shown some reasonable understanding
in that area. Suppose I place a coil of wire on a table such that its
axis is vertical {wrap wire from one end of a cardboard tube to the
other end and place this tube errect on one of the ends}. [there I go
again with the dirty talk, Annie, but in defense I must note that
Beth's diatribes seem peppered (for instance, "Eros") with intimate
innuendo, pregnant phrases, subtext, veiled versus, allusions and the
like] I connect the wire ends to an appropriate light bulb. Then, I
pick up an earth magnet and drop it through the coil so that it lands
on the table. The magnetic field of the magnet will induce a current
in the coil. This current will travel through the bulb and make it
light. Now, where did this energy come from? It came from ME! _I_
am the one who picked up the magnet and held it above the coil. While
holding the magnet above the coil, we say that the magnet has stored
energy, or more precisely, "static" energy. It has the "potential" to
do work. When I drop the magnet, the force of gravity pulls the
magnet toward the table, thereby releasing the stored energy by way of
the magnetism inducing the current in the coil. This is "kenitic"
energy, or energy at work. We DO NOT point to the _force of gravity_
and say that it is the source of energy because we see that the _force
of gravity_ is the SAME as it was before -- 9.8 meters per squared
second -- and hasn't been reduced one iota. Likewise, we DO NOT point
to the _force of magnetism_ and say that it is the source of energy
because we see that the _force of magnetism_ of this particular magnet
is the SAME as it was before -- say a flux density of 2.6 webers per
squared meter -- and hasn't been reduced one iota. So, you can see
that we treat these forces as merely "cogs in the wheel" or mechanisms
of the machine. Likewise with the water cycle -- gravity is simply a
"cog in the wheel" for this system. The actual energy input that
drives the system is the solar radiation which evaporates the water.

This is why people say that fossil fuels don't pack much of a punch.
When you look at the whole system (instead of taking the narrow view
that you suggest of only looking at the end result [a technique that
can only lead to conclusions that the world is controlled by magic])
and take into account that a tree grows because of photosenthesis, you
look at the process of photosenthesis...how long it takes to form the
lenthy strands of protein, you look at the process of
fossilization...how long it takes the pressure due to gravity to
transform these strands of protein into even l-o-n-g-e-r strands of
protein so that you get coal, oil, and natural gas. Then you look at
the amount of energy you get out of these items and compare it with
how much energy was _used_ to bring about the storage of this small
amount of energy.

I suppose one could take my "systems" discussion above and apply this
thinking to the "solar radiation is the source of all energy"
statement and conclude that _solar radiation_ and _the nuclear force_
are just cogs in the wheel ...parts of the mechanism... and not the
actual *source* of the energy. And you would be absolutely RIGHT!
The real source would be the Big Bang, or God, or whatever set this
Universe in motion. But I leave that discussion for the entropy
scientists to chew on.

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