I'm a newbie, and have been experimenting with various OU technologies (I'm especially intrigued by the story of Roy Meyers).  My dad was a ham, and I was always curoius of one long wire antenna strung around the outside of the house and tied up to some trees (one of many antennae).  This wire hung loose next to his gear, and he had a huge capacitor he discharged it into before using it.  I was always warned not to touch it.  This experience has always encouraged me question scientific laws and not take them all as handed down from God.

But for now, I'm testing some various ideas, one incorporating a stepup coil into a battery (which I was thrilled to hear Hutchison mention in his radio interview).  He also discussed a battery with a junction barrier on the end which I'm trying to picture.  Reid diagrams his p-n junctions on the side of one of his batteries.

I'm going to try to make some Rochelle salt tonite if I can locate the tartar. 

QUESTION: Has anyone determined if the crystals can be polarized without a charge?

best of success with your testing. - Duane

G'day all,

@mdmiller:  Your question "Has anyone determined if the crystals can be polarized without a charge?"
 A cell made with rochelle salt will be just the same as any other galvanic cell, taking on the polarity of the dissimilar metals used to make the electrodes.

To see if there was a self polarization effect in the crystals ( rochelle salt), I ran 2 tests on 9th april.
I made 2 cells, identical in every way, except for the polarity of the voltage applied during cooling.
Each cell comprised of an aluminium tube, rochelle salt and 0.01 gm NaCl and a central copper electrode.
The first cell was polarized in the conventional manner ie -ve to aluminium case and +ve to the copper electrode.
After polarization the Cu remained positive (1.44V) and over a period of 4 days had reduced to 0.710V.

The second cell was polarized with +ve to the aluminium case and the -ve to the Cu electrode.
After polarization the Cu post measured -16v. This voltage quickly diminished and swung positive.
2 minutes later it's voltage was 130.9mV. 24 hours later the voltage on the Cu post was up to+ 0.859V

The dissimilar metal electrodes alone have the power to determine the cells polarity, but whether they can polarize the molecular structure of the rochelle crystals I don't know. Ionic crystals need a helluva lot of voltage to turn them around.

See you later

Ian

Ian-
thanks for sharing your research.  I made some rochelle salt last night, piece of cake, I think.  This morning I had this big chunk of crystal grains--see attached photo of this first lump of salt.  Hope this is what I should expect to get, if not, someone let me know please.  I had evaporated it down to about 75%, and set out in the garage where it was cold last night, about 30F.  I think the supercooling sped up the process.

I ran onto this interesting article on growing the crystal under enhanced magnetism.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5858084.html

so with the remaining "tarter honey" after I remove the first salt chunk, I applied two geo magnets in alignment and concert with earth mag. I tried to position the neo's vertically to also achieve the natural magnetic dip.  This was about ten minutes ago, I'm running back and forth to this message as I type.
After reading thru the article at freepatents again, I realized it was probably better to simulate zero gravity and oppose the natural earth field. So I just ran into the garage to swap the magnetic force and surprise surprise --  The entire remaining honey in the jar had crystallized and it was warm, very warm, probably 100F.  The magnetism running through the material had produced quite some heat, considering that it is still below freezing in the garage.  Now I have a big solid chunk of salt.
-Duane

An old time product and commonly called waterglass, it is readily available and cheap (in keeping with the dirt-cheap aspect).  I get it at the local ceramics shop, they have a drum of it and refill my container.  Artists use it in clay instead of water, so that in firing the clay doesn't shrink.  I think I paid about $3 for a quart and have used it in some other experiments for waterproofing some building materials.

Yes, we have mentioned waterglass before. In my experience, waterglass dries neatly if the surface area is large enough, or if you heat it hot enough,
about 200 degrees celcius should suffice to make it solidify nicely. But below that temperature and if the surface area is small in relation to the volume,
it takes forever to dry out and solidify completely. This is due to its water-proofing qualities. The stuff was used some decades ago to waterproof cellar
walls etc, and if applied to such a cellar wall it tends to form a nice dry and hard layer that is porous to water vapour but not to liquid water. In my experience,
when you use waterglass in cell mixtures, the mixture takes very long to dry properly. This appears to be due to the fact that the top layer of waterglass
evaporates its water quite quickly, then thickens and forms a sort of rubbery film on top of the cell contents, and that layer only allows very little water
to evaporate. I still have a cell here that I made over 3 months ago, and the waterglass "crystal" in it is still not entirely hardened and it is still a little "sticky"
when I touch it. Adding a very little bit of it to a mix instead of water does seem to work, although I am not sure if that really has much of an effect.
I guess it depends on what other materials you use in your cells, and since I tend to make most of my cells with a bit of silver sand or quartz in there,
the resultant "soup" when I boil it already contains quite a bit of silicate, so it may just be that the waterglass binds nicely with that.
By the way, although waterglass is a sodium silicate solution, sodium silicate does come in many forms beside waterglass. In fact, metal and silicate
compounds are many, and many are also quite easy to make. Boiling a mix of water and fine quartz sand and then adding NaOH in the right amounts
will produce a sodium silicate for example. (Watch out when you do it though, boiling mud contains silicic acid which is not something you want to get
on your skin at high temps, and obviously NaOH is also nasty stuff, so use caution.)

I did not know that it was used in clay... even though I know a few ceramic artists...
Does it not mess up the nice internal structure of the clay, thereby making the clay product more fragile?
I do know potters sometimes use it to waterproof their pottery...

Mixing waterglass with lime and portland you can achieve some funky products.

does it? Like what?
I know portland cement and gopolymers are interesting but I have not tried any in my cells yet,
although some cells do contain a mix that seems to be very similar to geopolymer binder, chemically speaking.

And that brings up another thought, the Lambertson E-dam WIN cell is based on cermet and sound similar to these Reid-Hutchinson devices.

In what way do you think it is similar? As far as I recall, the "E-dam" thing had to be pulsed with input current for it to operate? How is that similar
to a cell that needs no input and gives output?

I have been thinking about this for a while now,
decided to put the question to you guys here:

Since this thread is increasingly about our own experiments with crystal cells,
and no new or really usefull input has been provided by Hutchison,
perhaps we should start a new thread titled "Crystal cell experiments"
instead of constantly bumping the Hutchison thread up...?
After all, JH has never posted anything here, and all the info from him
is vague or second/third hand info...
And there's a lot more info gathered here by us, the forum members, than
JH has ever given.

About the JH blog: I am very sceptical about anything coming from JH on
the subject of his cells, especially if he claims to be in contact with people
in Germany. After all, mr. Reid lives in Germany, and has been researching
crystal cell tech for more than a decade now, during which he has sought
contact with JH several times to discuss their seperate crystal cell experiments
and research approaches. Hutchison has apparently not been willing to
exchange info with Reid. Reid himself has been actively gathering proper
research data, incl. measurements by several different physicists (doctors &
professors), and including a recent time-wave influence test.
I have not seen any such data from Hutchison ever.
And since Hutchison also gives me complete radio silence as soon as I ask him
questions about his cells or tell him about mine, while Reid untill now has been
quite forthcoming with information (towards me at least), I am seriously inclined
to value Reids work a lot more than Hutchisons. So far Hutchison has not really
shown anything, he has just made a lot of noise.
If the info on his blog is correct, the cells he's making don't put out anywhere near
the 3V 3amps he bragged about before...  So even his own blog turns his
previous statements questionable now...

to @Koen1   (if this double-posts I'm sorry the website or my internet is acting wierd)

it's probably the website, I get it as well every now and then. Closing the browser, then restarting it and surfing back to www.overunity.com helps most of the time,
or at least it does on my end. But it is particularly annoying if it happens while you're posting a reply.

in reply to your question on sodium silicate, one interesting simple mix is wollastonite (calcium silicate) and sodium silicate (liquid form).  mix a tablespoon of wollastonite into a thick paste, pop in the microwave for a minute - forms a very nice lightweight insulative material, it has expanded quite a bit, not sure if it qualifies as a geopolymer, but it would make a good hot pad

Hmm well ok, I'll have to try it sometime. Don't have any calcium silicate around at the moment but I think tossing some pure calcium into
my silicate "soup" should do the trick (with proper calculation of the amount, of course). So you're ading solid silicate eh?
Well I have noticed that waterglass can nicely bond silicate compounds, so it's not very surprising that it works out nicely with wollastonite.
It's not exactly the geopolymer stuff I was talking about, as that is generally an aluminosilicate compound with somewhere near equal amounts of Al and Si
in the silicate material. But what you describe sounds like a form of homemade calcite, so in that respect I think you're right in that it might make
a nice hot pad.
I recall from my waterglass experiments that mixing it with gypsum also resulted in a nice hard white material, lighter than gypsum and less crumbly.
Those cells never gave any proper output though, nor did my other attempts using calcium, so I didn't continue that line. Besides, gypsum is known to
be very porous and to absorb water from the air, and other experiments seemed to show gypsum is able to give a voltage but only until it has dried
out completely, and then the voltage drops to zero.

one thing I noticed on Reid's cell in the pictures he shows (the 'D' sized cell) it looks like it is poured, dried (or cooked) then during this process expands.  note how the bottom of the cell has "puffed out" from the tube form, like making blueberry muffins.  Then the cell has been flipped over with the top of the muffin on the bottom of the cell.  This tells me that some component in the electrolyte has expanded - my rough estimates from measuring/estimating the volume in photoshop is about 12% expansion.  I'm guessing that is causing an air entrainment.  Now, are these little bubbles important ?

I assume you are talking about the picture in his pdf portfolio? The one with the paper sticker on it?
Yes, that cell material has reacted in the tube. Yes, it forms bubbles while reacting. Yes, it does increase in volume a bit while reacting.
And as far as I know that cell was not turned upside down, but I am not entirely certain. That is one of his older cells and I have not seen it.
I have seen quite a number of his cells, but none of the ones I saw during my recent visit to him had that type of bulge at the bottom.
He and I have discussed our cell experiments quite extensively, and he has never mentioned turning his cells upside down. It may be that
he did upturn it for the photo, just to show a nice flat surface. But my guess is that it is either a bulge of welding material (used to seal the
bottom), or perhaps the bottom was not welded shut entirely and this bulge is just some of the cell material that got squeezed out during
the baking process. I am not sure.
In any case, the cells he showed me the other week don't have such a bulge, and I would not focus on it too much if I were you.
As for the bubbles, I think they are a result of the reaction and not intentional nor necessary. In my own cells I also get bubbles
sometimes, but I try to get them out during the cooking&baking process.
Also, and I am sorry that I cannot give more details at present, I do know that the method Reid used to produce his cells has evolved
over the years, and he used a different process around the time that picture was taken. I won't give a complete description, save to say
that that process was not very easy and some of the cells apparently exploded due to pressure buildup inside the cells, which were
completely sealed. Clearly there was expansion going on with no room to expand.

So, quick recap: yes, the stuff he used in the cell type shown on that picture did expand during the "baking" process, and the bubbles
are also a result of the "baking" process. No, the bubbles are not important.

In his latest cell experiments, Reid has been using an Argon atmosphere to make the cells. This is obviously intended to minimise any effect
air might have on the reactions inside the cell. As he is still working on them, it is not yet clear if that has a positive effect on output.
We also talked about other gases that might or might not effect the cell material...

Take a look at those 3 cells he's holding in that small pic of the barometer/thermometer demo setup I posted.
Now that is not the clearest pic and I will see about posting some more, but it does show what his latest
cell types look like. They look quite similar to the few I posted: just a metal tube with a layer of wax over it
to seal it from the air, with the cell material inside it. No material bubbled over the edge, and if all went well
during the production process also no bubbles inside it (or at least as little as possible; in my own versions
I try to get all bubbles out and I believe Reid does the same). (That pinkish stuff is the wax)

Now I have a few different cell type "lines" that I experiment on, so I can't really say none of my cells have bubbles.
But my "Reid cell" line has hardly any to none. My "metal oxide" line on the other hand, is very hard to keep
bubble-free, as a number of the oxides react quite aggressively inside the cells and the stuff foams and bubbles
like crazy sometimes. Of course it depends on what oxides I have mixed in, how much of them is in there,
what other materials are in the mix, how much water is in there, and how hot I "bake" them. But in general
those cells bullbe quite a bit and regularly they will start to solidify in that bubbly phase, so the material inside
turn out quite porous. In those cells I also try to keep the bubbling to a minimum, as I have the strong feeling
that bubbles are not good. Obviously bubbles are not beneficial to the materials final crystal lattices, or structural
matrix if you will, and this has great effects on the electrodynamic properties and processes inside the material.
So there's a little more on the bubbles for you. I would say: get rid of bubbles if you can.

Okay, first of all, as far as I know the pic you attached is of a different cell than the bulgy&bubbly one referred to earlier.
This cell has the typical "new" folded central electrode; Reid has started to use such shaped electrodes not very long ago,
at most about a year or two ago if I am not mistaken.
Also, you can see that the cell material is a lot less bubbly. Just fyi.

The casing is very thick, about 1/8"  (I'm assuming aluminum)

Not strictly; the thickness of the metal should be enough to stay rigid during the production process,
and if you use materials that can react with the tube metal you should take that into consideration
when obtaining tubing (and take a slightly thicker tube to make sure it holds).
Also not necessarily aluminium, I have also seen cells made with iron tubing and with copper tubing.
The trick is to "tune" the metal to the material mix and other electrode metals used.
But in his older cells he did indeed use aluminium.

There is some type of lining inside the casing, possible impregnated, thus the crystals adjacent. Is this a fiberboard material?

No lining is used as far as I know. I think the boundary layer between the cell material and the metal may have a different colour than the
rest of the material, as I have seen this in several of my own cells. I shall ask Reid to make sure.

The electrode is shaped like a paddlewheel (whoa, is that interesting after reading his COP paper) plus the electrode has one weak leg (thinner)

This is not really a requirement, but more an advancement Reid found that such "cross" or "star" electrodes appear to result in higher output voltage.
This does however depend on the other metals used, and on the purity of the electrode. Most of his older cells have simple rods as central electrodes,
while most of his newer cells have such cross or star shapes. As far as I know the one thin leg is not important; it is probably just a result of the folding
of the electrode, and if may even be possible that the second half of that leg is there but does not protrude from the material... most I have seen have equal legs.
 

The overall cell dimensions follow the law of squares
The relation between the inner casing diameter and the electrode diameter follow the law of squares.

I am not sure. I know that the very early cells were quite large, about width of a coffee mug and twice the height.
There were even a few "artillery shell" sized ones. But quite a few of the newer ones are quite small.
I have one of Reids newer cells here for testing, it is only about the size of a thimble.
I do not know of any necessary "law of the squares" dimension specifications.
Can you please elaborate on how exactly the cells follow the law of the squares?
(could it be that I missed that completely? )

hope that helps. If there is anything that is not clear or that you would like more details on,
ask me and I will ask Reid next time we speak, should be later this week.

Hey dang, you're right, there appear to be fibronacci series going on here...
I need to ask Reid about that, as he hasn't mentioned it yet... But surely it is not
coincidental.

You have some good points, I will talk to Reid and see what he says about the
one thin leg, the 6-legged star electrode, and the other stuff.

Could very well be that he planned those fib dimensions all along, and never told
me because I just happened to have picked very similar dimensions on pure gut feeling...
Ok not entirely gut feeling, but I can't explain how I got to those dimensions
in a very logical way, there was a lot of gut feeling involved
Thanks for pointing it out to me, I'm really impressed.
Would like to hear your "law of the squares" interpretation if that goes any deeper than the
golden mean relations...

Oh, and yes, the pic is of one of Reids test cells. But it is a relatively recent one,
as that pic was only added before posting his latest april 2008 version of his portfolio.
His full portfolio can be downloaded at http://www.vakuumenergie.de/doc/Portfolio_0408.pdf.
I assume you are working towards your own batch of experimental cells?