Recall my blog post of a few years ago, concerning “water cars” – using water as fuel, the claim being that hydrogen can be extracted from water on the fly, and then burned (ie recombined with oxygen) to power a car.
Blogging Engineers Come to Blows over Water Powered Cars
June 19th, 2008
The argument Engineers had against water cars was that chemically fusing hydrogen & oxygen into water releases more energy than it uses, so therefore chemically splitting water into hydrogen & oxygen has to use at least as much energy as it releases. Law of Conservation of Matter & Energy and all that. Therefore continually splitting and recombining water to power oneself as one drives down the road is a ridiculous proposition. Isn’t it?
Here come nuclear Engineers arguing the opposite — that nuclear fission – splitting large elements (such as uranium) into smaller atomic elements – releases more energy than it uses … but so does fusing small atomic number elements, such as hydrogen, into larger atomic number elemenets also release more energy than it uses.
Hmmmmmm…
So nuclear fusion is on the horizon now, the Scientists & Engineers are working furiously in international cooperation, and will be conveniently employing themselves for decades to come, just to make it happen, ay?
They laughed when it suited them, but now they’re talkin’ out of both sides of their hats, are they?
