>A true story, draw your own conclusions. For some reason I remembered
>this when I came into the office this morning and had a look through the
>e-mails that came in over the weekend:
>
>About twelve years ago, when I was in college, they used to organise
>(organize for those who have strange ideas about English) extra
>curriculum activities, normally during lunch breaks. This was meant to
>broaden our horizon and expose us to different views on technology.
>
>One day they invited a weirdo who claimed he had invented perpetual
>motion. He even offered a reward for those who could proof his theory
>was wrong. In explaining his machine (sorry, this was only a prototype
>that didn't run yet) he put a balance of forces on the blackboard that
>was supposed to proof his theory. It was instantly clear to everybody
>present that he put one of the forces involved on the wrong side of the
>equation, thus 'inventing' perpetual motion. The reward was up for
>grabs.
>
>His opponent during the resulting discussion was one of the professors
>in mechanical engineering, who was willing to take up the challenge to
>proof him wrong and get the reward. He did another calculation on the
>blackboard showing what went wrong where. Actually, he did this
>calculation about 5 times. The inventor however simply maintained that
>his equations were correct, and his theory was not proven wrong. Ergo,
>no reward. I really admired that professor who was willing to go through
>the same calculations five times to educate his opponent, but if your
>are faced with someone that stubborn you won't get anywhere.
>
>This whole session made for a very interesting lunch break, but didn't
>do much to expand our knowledge. Unfortunately, the only person who
>could have learned something was not willing to listen.
>
I ran into essentially the same phenomenon during the grate vhf
suppressor debate, Gerard. Mr. Rauch stated that it really didn't matter
whether a suppressor-inductor (Ls) was made from copper-wire or
resistance-wire because reactance increases with frequency, therefore, at
VHF, "coils" act like RF-Chokes, which means that virtually no VHF
current flows in Ls, therefore nearly all of the VHF current flows in
the suppressor-R. . . When I used standard AC Circuit Analysis to
show that in typical VHF parasitic suppressors roughly equal VHF current
division takes place between Ls and the suppressor-R, Mr. Rauch dismissed
the calculations out of hand, and would not discuss the subject further.
cheers
Rich...
R. L. Measures, 805-386-3734, AG6K
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/ampfaq.html
Submissions: amps@contesting.com
Administrative requests: amps-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-amps@contesting.com
Search: http://www.contesting.com/km9p/search.htm
|