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Gentle folk I bid you look upon the new version of the treadmill question


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1 minute ago, XSIV4S said:

Yeah Mazda 929 was doing that for awhile. It was a damned expensive sunroof to replace.

The funny thing is the modern Mercedes is quickly becoming a piece of crap. At my last company we refurbished a great many and they had the weirdest problems and broken parts when they came in. Things broken at 25-50 thousand miles that should have lasted for a decade or two.

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1 minute ago, XSIV4S said:

The funny thing is the modern Mercedes is quickly becoming a piece of crap. At my last company we refurbished a great many and they had the weirdest problems and broken parts when they came in. Things broken at 25-50 thousand miles that should have lasted for a decade or two.

 

Last Benz I owned was a W220 S500. Great ride and all, but I had 3 Airmatic struts and the controller fail on me within 2 years. Really funny when you get to your garage and discover that you now own a lowrider, sitting on its fenders. Needed a very low jack for sports cars, blocks and a flatbed each time. Total PITA.

I know that things got better in the W221 but lost track. I'm still having this itch for an AMG GT, we will see...

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Nope.  Entropy always wins.   The parasitic drag of having to use energy to move the windmill will be greater than the power the windmill produces. 
 
 
As a tangent, the surface area of a car is not large enough to power it by solar panels.   It would barely even increase range.  What it could do is charge the batteries when the car is parked.  Most people do not realize how little power solar can produce. 
 
Gas is a very energy dense material. Look at it this way.  Take a single gallon of gas. Now look at a car. It will move that car 20-40ish miles at 70 miles per hour.   If you covered a car with solar panels it would take a day to get a charge to do that.  

Yes, and the gasoline combustion process is abysmally inefficient...even 100-plus years into the game.


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14 hours ago, Rabbi said:

Nope.  Entropy always wins.   The parasitic drag of having to use energy to move the windmill will be greater than the power the windmill produces. 

As a tangent, the surface area of a car is not large enough to power it by solar panels.   It would barely even increase range.  What it could do is charge the batteries when the car is parked.  Most people do not realize how little power solar can produce. 

Gas is a very energy dense material. Look at it this way.  Take a single gallon of gas. Now look at a car. It will move that car 20-40ish miles at 70 miles per hour.   If you covered a car with solar panels it would take a day to get a charge to do that.  

Yep, Entropy always wins. Otherwise someone could invent a perpetual motion machine, like a generator powering an electric motor with an electric motor powering the generator.

Socialism is to political/economic systemns what perpetual motion is to physics. Eventually you run out of other people's money. Entropy always wins.

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On ‎7‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 1:39 AM, Rabbi said:

Nope.  Entropy always wins.   The parasitic drag of having to use energy to move the windmill will be greater than the power the windmill produces. 

 

 

As a tangent, the surface area of a car is not large enough to power it by solar panels.   It would barely even increase range.  What it could do is charge the batteries when the car is parked.  Most people do not realize how little power solar can produce. 

 

Gas is a very energy dense material. Look at it this way.  Take a single gallon of gas. Now look at a car. It will move that car 20-40ish miles at 70 miles per hour.   If you covered a car with solar panels it would take a day to get a charge to do that.  

The World Solar challenge racers shown can easily be driven by the solar panels alone over level ground. Will they be really fast? No. They are allowed 4 square meters of solar panels, which easily produce over 1 horsepower. That is more than sufficient to propel them down the road. They complete a 3000 KM race with no more than a 5KWH storage battery. That allows them to continue moving in adverse conditions. However they could easily reach there destination and have the same battery charge as when they started by waiting a bit of time at the end of the race. Thus traversing the 3000KM purely on the available power from the sun.

 

Are they practical for normal transportation? No, but they exist. They are in no way perpetual motion machines as they gaining energy from the sun, thus not meeting the definition of a perpetual motion machine not having external power to continue in motion.

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4 hours ago, racerford said:

The World Solar challenge racers shown can easily be driven by the solar panels alone over level ground. Will they be really fast? No. They are allowed 4 square meters of solar panels, which easily produce over 1 horsepower. That is more than sufficient to propel them down the road. They complete a 3000 KM race with no more than a 5KWH storage battery. That allows them to continue moving in adverse conditions. However they could easily reach there destination and have the same battery charge as when they started by waiting a bit of time at the end of the race. Thus traversing the 3000KM purely on the available power from the sun.

 

Are they practical for normal transportation? No, but they exist. They are in no way perpetual motion machines as they gaining energy from the sun, thus not meeting the definition of a perpetual motion machine not having external power to continue in motion.

First of all, gaining energy from the sun would not make something a “perpetual motion machine”. That is not how that works.    The sun is a finite amount of energy and entropy applies. 

 

Second, those cars are not analog to real cars.  They are not shaped like real cars. The surface area of the cells are arrainged in a more efficient pattern and they do not have the weight or capabilities of real cars.

 

If you put such a power system into an Accord, the car would not make it to the end of the driveway and it would take it a while to get there.   

 

The amount of solar energy that hits a given area is finite and pretty small.  You can not change that.  

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8 hours ago, Rabbi said:

First of all, gaining energy from the sun would not make something a “perpetual motion machine”. That is not how that works.    The sun is a finite amount of energy and entropy applies. 

 

Second, those cars are not analog to real cars.  They are not shaped like real cars. The surface area of the cells are arrainged in a more efficient pattern and they do not have the weight or capabilities of real cars.

 

If you put such a power system into an Accord, the car would not make it to the end of the driveway and it would take it a while to get there.   

 

The amount of solar energy that hits a given area is finite and pretty small.  You can not change that.  

I have accepted all that in my post. All I am saying is that it is not a can't be done at all thing, It has been done. It just can't be done practically within the normal parameters of what people want in  a car.

 

You can have a reasonably practical purely solar powered car with sufficient battery storage. You just need solar powered charging stations.  

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35 minutes ago, racerford said:

I have accepted all that in my post. All I am saying is that it is not a can't be done at all thing, It has been done. It just can't be done practically within the normal parameters of what people want in  a car.

 

You can have a reasonably practical purely solar powered car with sufficient battery storage. You just need solar powered charging stations.  

I don’t think you understand how those solar challenge cars are made and the challenges and planning that go into driving them.   They do not represent something that could be used in any useful way. 

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18 minutes ago, Rabbi said:

I don’t think you understand how those solar challenge cars are made and the challenges and planning that go into driving them.   They do not represent something that could be used in any useful way. 

I do understand that. I have acknowledged/stated that at least twice. It does not mean they do not exist. What was said can't happen has happened. It means nothing to anyone's daily life. But they exist. It is kind of like their being 5 species of Giant Chinese Salamanders. It has no impact on anyone's daily life, but they still exist. But it means saying there is only one species of Chinese Giant Salamander is not a factual statement, as it has been shown otherwise that they exist. Does that matter to anyone outside a very narrow group? No. Would the average or even above average lay person be able to tell them apart? Maybe not, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

 

Do you deny the World Solar Challenge cars exist? Do you acknowledge that they travel 3000KM across Australia under solar power? I am trying to understand which part of what I said you believe is not true.

 

 

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1 minute ago, racerford said:

I do understand that. I have acknowledged/stated that at least twice. It does not mean they do not exist. What was said can't happen has happened. It means nothing to anyone's daily life. But they exist. It is kind of like their being 5 species of Giant Chinese Salamanders. It has no impact on anyone's daily life, but they still exist. But it means saying there is only one species of Chinese Giant Salamander is not a factual statement, as it has been shown otherwise that they exist. Does that matter to anyone outside a very narrow group? No. Would the average or even above average lay person be able to tell them apart? Maybe not, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

 

Do you deny the World Solar Challenge cars exist? Do you acknowledge that they travel 3000KM across Australia under solar power? I am trying to understand which part of what I said you believe is not true.

 

 

You are trying to turn something into something it is not to prove a point. 

 

When people say "direct solar powered cars will not work" in a conversation about cars, that last for years, transporting people around at highways speeds, over reasonable ranges......it is not a "gotcha" moment to point out experimental vehicles that are utterly useless as viable transportation exist. 

 

But if you want us to agree that experimental vehicles that are utterly useless as viable transportation exist, I do not think anyone is arguing that point.  

 

There is a math problem at work here.  There is nothing that can be done to change the amount of solar energy that falls on a given point.  It is not enough to directly power cars....as we currently use cars.    If you add battery capacity to these cars, it helps, but there is still a math problem.  You charge at X rate from the cars panels to produce Y range.  Those things mean the car will have really long down times to get a charge.   If you add power from an outside source, (be it hamsters running on wheels or outside power produced by solar) you no longer have a self contained solar car.  You have a car that still needs to be "fueled."  

 

To be really blunt, if you cover a normal car in solar panels, it would probably power the car at about 1 MPH as long as there is good light.  Adding batteries does not change this, unless you let the car sit in good light for days to charge the batteries.  Once you start using the batteries, the car, even though covered in solar panels, probably does not increase range more than 1 or 2% from the solar panels. 

 

We can use something other than "solar power" to make it more understandable. 

 

Imagine gasoline fell from the sky.   We know it takes 10 gallons of gas  to move a normal car about 300 miles at 70 MPH  It takes less than 5 minutes to add another 10 gallons of gas, and thus you have another 300 miles of range.  

The entire car is set up to catch gasoline as it falls from the sky.  The amount of gas falling from the sky is not enough to power the car as it falls.  It is a single drop worth every minute or so.   If you let the car sit out for a few days, it could add up to 10 gallons, but the car is not usable while "charging" the tank.   

 

This is the problem with solar.  

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We functioned for hundreds of years with transportation that only had one horsepower. We were thrilled and it was very practical. The World Solar challenge cars have averaged more than 55mph over a 8 hour period. Hot, miserable, impractical, fragile, and needing a huge support team; but not exactly slow.

I have agreed to all your points of impracticality, in fact I pointed them out myself.

You understand the notion of proofs. You can keep pointing out whatever you want about the problems with solar powered cars that function only from the power from cells on the surface of the car. The fact is they exist, when you said they were not possible. 

You are not the only smart or knowledgeable person in the room. Nor the only stubborn person in the room.

I am right for what you said. You are right for what you meant, and I even agreed with that.

 

Have a great day!

 

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