What is Uncle Quentin Working On?

[pete9012S]

Do the Famous Five Short Stories throw any extra info about the nature of Quentin's work into the ring?

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm afraid I don't remember the short stories very well (I haven't read them for ages) but I must admit I thought of Quentin's experiments concerning energy yesterday, on hearing the news that scientists had succeeded for the first time in producing more energy from a nuclear fusion experiment than was put in.

[dsr]

I solved the cheap power problem in a dream a year or two ago. Some schoolboy physicist in his Dad's garage came up with a simple device, consisting of two atoms and one of the atoms was an electron short. Or else there was an extra electron. Either way, the number of electrons was out by 1.

When these two atoms were wrapped in tinfoil, the spare electron would jump from one atom to the other repeatedly, ad infinitum, generating power as it did it. For convenience, the bit of tinfoil was attached to one of those 9V rectangular batteries. In testing, the battery was able to provide unlimited power for a car, and was able to power an entire factory.

Another detail was that it produced exactly the right amount of power needed. There was no need to power it up or down; if an extra machine was switched on, the battery upped its output accordingly.

I have no idea how I managed to have (or remember) such a detailed dream or how it all made such logical sense! Maybe Uncle Quentin passed the information on to me in a dream!

[Wolfgang]

The only problem is, your device violates thermodynamics; you can't create energy out of nothing. It requires energy to remove the electron from one atom, and if the attracting force of the other atom is greater, the atom that once have it can't remove it from the other one.

[Debbie]

The only problem is, your device violates thermodynamics; you can't create energy out of nothing. It requires energy to remove the electron from one atom, and if the attracting force of the other atom is greater, the atom that once have it can't remove it from the other one.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed but can be transformed from one form of energy to another form of energy.

We had to learn that in year 7 Physics.

[Boatbuilder]

Debbie, Wolfgang and dsr, maybe you should team up and who knows, you might just come up with the ideal solution to all our energy problems - possibly with a little help from Quentin. It's almost 60 years since I got my GCE in Physics so I probably won't be able to join you as no doubt I have forgotten most of it by now.