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As someone who built his own 16-foot canoe from plans in Popular Science Magazine at age 11, and had fun with it with friends on our local bay and swamps for years, always daydreaming of such ways to power it, I’ll say this is one I never quite thought of. I was more leaning toward an inboard lawnmower engine with a driveshaft out the rear transom, running a half-submerged fan/propeller. Hey I was just a kid!
If this were a wind turbine, it would be at the “Professor Crackpot” stage.

Next inventive steps:
1: Convert reciprocating paddles to at least one paddle wheel as seen on the old Mississippi riverboats, for smoother operation.
2) Convert the paddlewheel to a regular propeller for higher efficiency.
These steps would bring this idea from the 1700’s (or even the stone age), to modern times.

You can see the similarity to wind turbine design philosophy.
A) At the bottom of the heap is the “look, it wiggles!” principle, only pursued by the most unwilling-to-accept-reality wind energy wannabes.
B) Taking a step up, you’d have surfaces oriented perpendicular to the flow, pushing or being pushed, in the direction of the flow, like this canoe.
C) You move up again to a circular motion of these same types of surfaces “pushing” or “being pushed” downwind. (Ancient revolving-door wind turbines in Ancient Persia, and Savonius machines such as anemometer cups, riverboat paddlewheels)
D) You take yet another step up, and tilt the surfaces slightly, then let them rotate always across the wind, and you have a regular wind turbine or boat propeller. This transition was over 1000 years ago in the Greek Islands for wind turbines, much later for boat propellers.
E) Lose the soft sails and place fast rigid blades with defined airfoils out there, as in Europe (windmills) 1000 years ago.
F) De-Evolution: Go back to a merry-go-round configuration, attempting to apply modern fast blades with defined airfoils to the original revolving-door windmill design of ancient Persia.

Step F is where so many “Professor Crackpots” feel that they are “progressing” in wind turbine design, never realizing they are regressing by over 1000 years!

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Questions about Moderation

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True. I remember being in audio sales, and a friend sent me Tony Robbins tapes “Personal Power”. I would put them in the car tape player and listen. Just from listening to the tapes, my sales doubled - what had been a $ good day was now a bad day, and within about 2 years I was hanging out with Bill Gates, and being offered millions for my suddenly famous new invention. But I got bored with that aspect of life and went back to being “normal”… Happy here on my Southern California ranch, I’m living the life that ex-presidents aspire to, without having to go through being president to get here.

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This is tangential or relevant to this recent comment: OCEANERGY - #39 by ufechner7

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/business/economy/portugal-russia-natural-gas.html

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Yeah, before I develop a canchor sore!
Also, it’s “Bear” in mind, not “bare”.
The list goes on.
How about the concept of “complete sentences”? What about subject/verb agreement? What about being careful about singular versus plural?
Oh well, he spells the way he wants, I don’t think we’re going to “fix” him here.
At least he comes up with some good stuff… :slight_smile:

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@dougselsam,thanks! I do try to find some anchor points. Can’t get the gold without needing a shovel. Still plenty of digging to be done. I’m still trying to get back to the future. I’m still wondering where Hoverboards got to? Still toying with the idea, as I’ve made a few things. I’m working towards a working prototype,drawing on vast some of knowledge. So far I think the best thing I can come up with is? Ionocraft with hovercraft technology. taking advantage of airflow and the energy’s the rider can put in. So far been working out how to mesh a few concepts into one design.
Ramjets, dyson pure cool me concept, co flow jets and iono craft.
Basically combine as much aerodynamic into a compact board.
I just need a few nozzles for the pure cool me, scaled down to find out.
image
Just bare in mind the Average kick force is about 1000lb.I assume that thrust as well. So it’s only a case of calculating compression ratios. To Provide much need air flow, air density, & Lift. full grown adults range form on average 9stn-15stn so 95.2544kg on the top number. The thrust must be greater to lift a rider clean off the ground. Reckoning the possibility would be key. Considering the thrust potential of the human leg. Potential losses due to drag and the harrier jump jet. Figured it was possible, it gave me something to aim towards. Mark 1 was a mock up, A visual gets to grips. Had imagined forward motion creating. circulating heated vortex convection currents. Then floating on hot air. Defending got a few good ideas. Just need to work on the execution. I’m lucky enough that it can be retrofitted to an old board, from of the shelf parts. Essentially need need to scale down some of the parts I’ve already made. To fit the board size.

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Bear in mind not to have bear feet or they’ll end up bare from the suction on top of this hoverboard

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I don’t expect that anyone should be bare footed here. Skate shoes are a must! What see i grisly bear when I see it spelled “bear”. Bear where? I’ve seen chickens deboned by a Pratt&Whitney. Safety regs apply. The aim is to have the fewest moving parts.

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On the machine
not the rider

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Machine, definitely machine! Face palming myself for not making that clearer :man_facepalming: Proper donut moment. The rider is the main moving part. The rest can be solid and purely geometric. The rider providing the input for the whole system to work.

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OK that was a good start but now you’ve gotta spell Grizzly Bear right.
And by the way, I’ve told several people about how SuperTurbine(R) was really invented as a poultry processor, that first slaughters and de-feathers, then cuts fillets, then throws them onto a solar barbecue. It was only after running it for awhile on a windy day that we noticed the power meter was running backwards.

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He’s using for a tank. I bet I can be made into some awes or wave power generator. I can’t say how effective it would be? But it’s interesting! Look a lot like a inline wave generator. that could work with passing wave action no matter the orientation?

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Guess who’s back with bright ideas?
Even one suggestion so dark that it might make you wince?
10 suggestions. The duck was one I really like. as it reminded me of all those bulk carriers which could be retrofitted. So duck duck goose.

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Stop watching him. Maybe @dougselsam can do another rant about him.

This is better How does it work?

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As long as the core knowledge is there? I can’t see what the problem is? He recently did a thing with hydrothermal carbonisation. It doesn’t matter so much if it a man in a boiler suit, or a lass in her summer dress. Provided the information is consistently correct it game on. sure good king Doug can provide a custom roasting and debunk. He’s good at them! As far as I recall, from the early training vids from performing engineering operations? Which lead in to the 6983. No partisanship was a must. More viewed ok this guy doing this? Lets figure out why? if there was something to learn? you would learn it! Impartiality, non biased and most important transparency. Yes there are various format, some that get to the point quicker than others. The was one, where some guy thought of using a feminine hygiene product, for lighting a light bulb. Yes that was was bogus! He seems to like his magic bulbs? So how it made is good. At the end of the day it just a presentation. takers or not? He’s spending hours on thing most of us can barely spare 5 minutes for. He done a solar cells based on phase shifting light. Not my everyday bread, still I do believe he call a few ideas crazy.

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It isn’t. He’s a blind man leading the one-eyed. Just because someone sounds confident and enthusiastic doesn’t mean they are smart or correct or you should listen to him. He’s wasting everyone’s time and you’re growing dumber by listening to him. Go watch this instead: Dianna’s Intro Physics Class, or anything else.

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Well that got religious quick? Two archetype mentioned in the first few words. Have been wondering if it a left or right wing thing here? Anyone behind the sheildwall going to be ok? Anyone on the sore end of it? Perhaps not? I guess that’s the difference with observations based STEM fields. It also reminds me that, it sometimes a magic show. Main challenge explaining is things to the unknowing, that things exist. You never get to know existence by ignoring it’s dark corners. Its guy like this that give the unknowing a heads up. Yes he may not be worth a squat? There are levels of dumb. Imposter syndrome is one. it well known counterparts the other. You have those who think themselves smarter than they are? then you have the exception those are hyper intelligent but struggle to relate to others? Both are pretty dumb situations to be in. Growth is just a matter of direction, It generally don’t have labels bolted on? Maybe a mission report? Or a story of today I explored……? Like fishing, wrong bate = no fish=no fish supper. Scope is awareness. Thank for the links!

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https://calwave.energy/
Seem I wasn’t to far off with my line of thinking using a mulberry harbour.
This company is using the idea. More over what look like a beetle design to achieve energy production. Enjoy!

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I have a saying:
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day.
Teach a man HOW to fish and he will teach someone else, and that person will teach yet another person, until the oceans are emptied of fish.
We’re almost there now.

Funny I just got that same email about Calwave from Interesting Engineering this morning. Ever notice that Interesting Engineering, Smithsonian, and Popular Science, all feature the same stores within a day or two of each other? I’m probably missing other online “magazines”. Looks like one more consolidation of the information you are allowed to see.

The funny thing about CalWave is they aren’t forthcoming with two key facts:

  1. How does it work?
  2. What is the output?

All they are willing to say is it lasted 10 months instead of 6 months, but I’m guessing it had some problems so they had to stop it.

They mention a reel for positioning - I’m thinking maybe it operates by underwater float-reeling.

To me it looks too material-intensive for its intercepted area.

Next, Youtube fed me another wave energy video.
Seems like the repeating theme with wave-energy stories is how every one eventually fails.

I am not sure why, but it’s been going on for many years.

OK so anyway, this sciencey-guy on Youtube is engaging and fun to watch, but I think you have to understand his target audience and probably goal of just attracting a lot of views to monetize.

While he might trigger a good idea in hardcore tech people, he’s mostly talking to kids and the somewhat scientifically-interested fans. I wouldn’t place too much confidence in the accuracy of his explanations. It’s more like “Look at this - Isn’t it interesting!”

He’s the kind of guy who is likely to repeat the Bernoulli explanation for lift, probably because that was how it was explained to him 50 years ago. Since then it has been amply proven as wrong, even just by calculations on paper, let alone CFD studies, but it still gets repeated ad infinitum. The effect is not sufficient to explain the high amount of lift an airfoil generates.

Just a few days ago I saw David Attenborough use the Bernoulli explanation for lift to explain how a fossilized flying reptile flew, quickly stated, as though there was no doubt, yet he had it wrong.

The thing about science in general is, it is almost always wrong. Scientists used to have elaborate explanations for the “strange” movements of the planets, and using those complicated explanations, were able to accurately predict apparent positions of planets far into the future, but the whole time their theory was 100% wrong.

Turned out all the planets were orbiting the sun, and “science” had been 100% full-of-s*** for hundreds of years. Meanwhile it later came to light that the heliocentric model was already understood in ancient Egypt, and probably before that, then just forgotten.

I’ll predict that it will turn out the same for everything from “the big bang” to “dark matter”, “the expanding universe”, maybe even “black holes”, on and on, all similar to thinking the Earth is flat, because it so obviously “is”, on a small scale, but stepping back to see the big picture, we realize it is an approximation, good for designing a building, but not for large land surveys.

It’s all about inappropriate, uninformed extrapolation of limited information that seems accurate in a limited scope, to a larger reality.

Anyway, when you see this science-guy’s videos of crafting a wind turbine from plastic spoons, he’s working on a tinkerer’s level - maybe impressive for a junior-high-school science fair, but why isn’t he able to build a decent actual wind turbine? Because he’s just fooling around, having fun. That doesn’t necessarily make him an authority on science, just more of a guy making fun videos with a scientific theme.

Oh and I almost forgot - lots of people with very active minds think of themselves as “breakthrough thinkers”. But to come up with actual breakthroughs requires more than just an active mind, or a high level of interest in many subjects. Those are essential qualities for an innovator, but not sufficient qualities. They are sufficient to be one more “Professor Crackpot”. To be an actual, effective innovator requires one to be able to analyze things in great detail, see where others are getting it wrong, and be organized enough to put it all together into something new that works better. Just being interested or curious doesn’t get you there. Just like being a huge football fan doesn’t make one an NFL champion quarterback…