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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 16 2015, @04:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the fixing-the-teachers-should-help dept.

Active problem-solving confers a deeper understanding of science than does a standard lecture. But some university lecturers are reluctant to change tack.

Outbreak alert: six students at the Chicago State Polytechnic University in Illinois have been hospitalized with severe vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain, as well as wheezing and difficulty in breathing. Some are in a critical condition. And the university's health centre is fielding dozens of calls from students with similar symptoms.

This was the scenario that 17 third- and fourth-year undergraduates dealt with as part of an innovative virology course led by biologist Tammy Tobin at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. The students took on the role of federal public-health officials, and were tasked with identifying the pathogen, tracking how it spreads and figuring out how to contain and treat it — all by the end of the semester.

In the end, the students pinpointed the virus, but they also made mistakes: six people died, for example, in part because the students did not pay enough attention to treatment. However, says Tobin, "that doesn't affect their grade so long as they present what they did, how it worked or didn't work, and how they'd do it differently". What matters is that the students got totally wrapped up in the problem, remembered what they learned and got a handle on a range of disciplines. "We looked at the intersection of politics, sociology, biology, even some economics," she says.

Tobin's approach is just one of a diverse range of methods that have been sweeping through the world's undergraduate science classes. Some are complex, immersive exercises similar to Tobin's. But there are also team-based exercises on smaller problems, as well as simple, carefully tailored questions that students in a crowded lecture hall might respond to through hand-held 'clicker' devices. What the methods share is an outcome confirmed in hundreds of empirical studies: students gain a much deeper understanding of science when they actively grapple with questions than when they passively listen to answers.

http://www.nature.com/news/why-we-are-teaching-science-wrong-and-how-to-make-it-right-1.17963


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday July 16 2015, @06:35AM

    by anubi (2828) on Thursday July 16 2015, @06:35AM (#209841) Journal

    Kinda reminded me of an engineering project I did at university about 40 years ago.

    At that time, test equipment was quite unavailable on my budget, but I did have a 3" CRT I had scrounged from some old equipment. I was going to build my own oscilloscope.

    All during my high school years, I had been scrounging. I had a nice assortment of tubes from TV sets, and was convinced those IF tubes (6CB6) for TV sets would make great deflection amplifier tubes. They would easily handle the 300V or so I needed to deflect the CRT beam. I knew TV IF was right at 45MHz, so I should have no problem building an oscilloscope to make it to 10MHz, right?

    So I built the thing. Used everything I knew about differential amplifier design.

    When I turned it on, it worked beautifully... up to 5KHz. Not MHz.... KHz!

    Not a great thing to discover a week before I was to present this to the class. Boy, was I disappointed. Beautiful bright beam, but did not even make it out of the audio range.

    I never forgot the lesson I learned... about plate resistance and driving capacitive loads.

    It was a lot of fun anyway to build the thing. Learned a lot. The professor liked it even if it did not work worth a hoot. He gave me a good grade - despite its piss poor performance, because I explained to his satisfaction exactly what I had done wrong and what I would change on the next revision of the design.

    I think he was impressed because most of the other students built their projects from a kit. Mine was 99% recycled old scrap parts. Even the CRT shield was a soup can. The only thing that was new was the aluminum chassis I built it in. l I gotta admit, it sure *looked* impressive. Like a movie prop.

    I am a strong believer that experience is a really good teacher.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @12:21AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @12:21AM (#210253)

    Kinda reminded me of an engineering project I did at university about 40 years ago.

    At that time, test equipment was quite unavailable on my budget, but I did have a 3" CRT I had scrounged from some old equipment. I was going to build my own oscilloscope. [Tale of woe snipped for brevity.]

    You are my hero. Seriously. Massive respect. I'm sure you learned much more than than all the other students in the class combined. If I were the professor, I would have recognized that I was in the presence of a budding genius and given you an 'A'. Are you accepting applications for a protege? Where do I apply?

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Friday July 17 2015, @08:57AM

      by anubi (2828) on Friday July 17 2015, @08:57AM (#210354) Journal

      Thanks...

      Actually, I did get an A. The professor even warned me to watch out for the plate resistance thing.

      I had copies of schematics of the college's oscilloscope that I had talked one of the engineering lab assistants into getting for me, as he had access to the departmental files of the test equipment we had. I was basing my design similar to that of our Dumont 304. Except I wanted to use a smaller CRT, and felt those 6CB6 were designed for high frequency. I had built enough audio amplifiers that I was quite comfortable designing around pentodes - and how to set all the grid biasing voltages knowing I was going to have quite a voltage swing on the plate.

      If you feel so inclined, google those old Dumont 304a oscilloscopes... and you will see what was "new" when I was a kid.

      These were just beginning to get old enough that they were showing up all over the place.

      After studying "cascode" amplifiers and the "grounded grid" configuration in class, I was all starry-eyed about driving the cathodes of a pair of 6CB6 differentially from a pair of transistors... a differential cascode amplifier if you will.... with the collectors of the bottom transistor part ( long tailed pair of 2N697 ) in cascode with the cathodes of the 6CB6; control grid of which was "grounded" at +12V, screen grid about +120 volts, suppressor grid at cathode potential, and plate voltage expected +50 to +300 volts DC. I knew I could set the operating current via the long tailed transistor pair resistor, then set the plate voltages by the plate resistor to +350V, so that I could very neatly swing one plate down and the other up simultaneously to make a very clean differential sweep drive for the CRT.

      I guess you know why I was using vacuum tubes... transistors were just then coming out. I considered myself extremely fortunate to get two pair of 2N697. The university had some. I do not believe that at that time, transistors with anything near 300 volt ratings even existed...

      I was so enthused over the prospect of running everything so clean, differentially, so that I could drop all the way down to DC that I completely ignored all the capacitance I was throwing into the plate circuit with all my neat cabling. I was completely deluded by dreams of UHF grounded-grid designs that I saw in the Radio Amateur's handbook.

      And I was so tickled to be designing with something so new.... a TRANSISTOR!. These were so new and it was the first silicon one I had ever seen. I had built some amplifiers with germanium transistors and they were not the easiest things to work with... they changed specs with temperature all over the place. Noisy too. Or, at least, the ones I had were noisy. It was hard trying to get me to abandon my 12AX7 and 6AK5 vacuum tubes for that. ( I loved 6AK5 for microphone and guitar preamps... these tubes were made for TV tuners, but they sure made nice low noise microphone amps! Easy to come by too - as living in a military town at the time, I could get my hands on expired radiosondes, and a lot of them had one in them... but I did have to unsolder them - they did not put any sockets in the radiosonde. )

      I will warn you that having insane curiosity to "re-invent the wheel" does not seem to be much appreciated by the business crowd. I only wish I was in the position of hiring proteges. I would invite you over. In my mind, the most important thing I look for is insane curiosity. Anyone can buy a degree ( cite: congressmen and even presidents of the USA ). If you do not have curiosity, you are like a static charge - all voltage and no current.

      I feel I was quite fortunate when I came out of University to work for some of the best at Chevron Oil Field Research in La Habra. Chevron had a whole flock of really top-notch scientists and engineers there, and I worked under them. Two in particular, Zeke and Jon, showed me more stuff than I could ever absorb. It was several years before I began to understand at their level. This team of engineers and scientists DID the stuff that students study at university. I really hated to leave the place when they shut down during an oil glut in the 80's.

      I ended up going to a local aerospace firm that got bought out by Wall Street, and I utterly failed to shift gears to a more businesslike pace. I tried to adapt, but I guess the adage about teaching old dogs new tricks rang true. A lot of us old dogs had to be put to pasture. Simply weren't fast enough. I know that was true in my case.

      I feel I have finally reached "Zeke" status, and actually I find it quite painful to know I have finally amassed an understanding of how most of this stuff works, but unlike Zeke and Jon, no one to pass it to. They had me and three other young whippersnappers to teach. Seems such a shame that I cannot even teach at the local community college as I technically only have a bachelor's degree in EE ( despite hundreds of hours of college courses not in matriculation programs ), and they want a Master's to teach. I was not in a classroom all those years... I was in the field working with those who were actually doing the stuff that they taught in University.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2015, @09:57AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2015, @09:57AM (#210735)

        Have you visited your local hackspace?

        You sound like the sort of person that they would welcome.

        https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces [hackerspaces.org]

  • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday July 17 2015, @01:17AM

    by Geotti (1146) on Friday July 17 2015, @01:17AM (#210266) Journal

    Haha, that is the sort of experience that allows someone to tell others to get off their lawn later in life! ;)

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Friday July 17 2015, @05:01AM

      by anubi (2828) on Friday July 17 2015, @05:01AM (#210314) Journal

      Wishful thinking!

      I will be brutally honest with my reply... it may rile some feathers ... but this has been my experience doing things as I have.

      I always wanted so bad to understand thoroughly what I was doing - but I often took too long to do it. You know... business perspective.

      The guys who built from a kit, with plans already laid out for them, got the same degree I did.

      And spent a lot less time doing it.

      End result... they developed more "people skills" and can hire someone else to fix their broken things.

      I can design my own things and fix my own stuff.

      I got laid off from aerospace and never did get back into the job market, and now less than a year from social security and medicare, I am not really trying to re-enter the rat race.

      I tried a few times, trying to work with companies who had robotics to maintain... however they wanted me for close to minimum wage - and on call. Most did not want me around because they already had support agreements with major service corporations. At the wage I was earning, it cost me damn near what I earned, sans tax, to work.

      I saw all the neat things I could do with Arduinos and Parallax propeller chips. Things like I used to do for satellites. Except this time, using dirt cheap parts. Only problem is it takes me sometimes months to build something from scratch... just as at it took me several months to build that oscilloscope.

      When I build mine, I do not use Arduinos per se, but I use the software development platform, which is quite good, and use ATMEL 328P chips and the like. Although my stuff may not look like any Arduino you have ever seen, they all have the Optiboot software running in them, have the six pin serial programming port, and use Arduino sketches. My strong belief is that if I do things this way, anyone else who inherits what I have done has a good start at maintaining or modifying what I have done into something else he needs.

      Not only do I design the hardware, I will have to write a lot of the software too - as I am pulling off all sorts of tradeoffs as to what I will do in silicon or in code. The kind of stuff that interests me is energy management, refrigeration, solar panel optimization, battery management, and thermodynamics such as ice-bank thermal energy storage stuff.

      I do not even know who to talk to in a larger company for consideration for hire in this kind of thing. Its futile trying to talk to personnel... can you imagine my frustration trying to get someone like that turned on to the idea of storing energy as a block of ice? Here, I am excited as I know I can use something as simple as water to build an energy storage module that is far far far cheaper and more reliable than trying to store the energy as a chemical reaction stored in battery cells. Especially when the end result I wanted in the first place was to be able to control the temperature of something.

      Its something I would love to implement at WalMart or Disneyland. They have so many opportunities for energy management there, but how in the heck does one even find anyone in those companies to talk to? Unsolicited letters just get trashed. Job fairs? Forget it. The interviewers have no idea what a joule is. They seem pre-occupied with a wish-list of minions to hire for entry level.

      Headhunters send me barrages of inquiries for highly personal data, which is then not guarded properly and distributed to those who do nothing but cause me problems with identity theft. Companies complain of not finding qualified applicants. They seem to be having the same problem as I would have if I first welded my water main shut then complained I had no water.

      I am not a real social person, so I have no idea who to talk to. Talking to someone technical may even be worse, as he is apt to perceive me as his replacement.

      So far, I have remained really low key. I would love to work for someone who appreciates the kind of stuff I am capable of, but I would rather remain at a low income level than have to tolerate someone in my life constantly snapping his fingers - push, push, push, now, now, now. Who cares if its junk as long as it gets done today... all for some management bonus I will never see. I simply cannot do things that way.

      When I have to pay for others to do things I could have done myself if I was not at at work, I end up on the losing end of it.

      It cost me more of my resources to go to work than I was making.

      I simply cannot stand working under a stopwatch. Drives my blood pressure through the roof and makes dark spots show up all over me.

      The money-men want the suit and tie guy, and I am the guy with the solder iron and test probe. Guys with the leadership skills to lay working men off are needed a lot more in this country than men of the tool, as we are blessed by the signature of the banker to pay for someone overseas that will do it for less.

      Yeh, I have become quite a bit pessimistic after my layoff... but seeing the graphs I have seen [google.com], everyone is seeing the same thing.

      Given the leadership of this nation, our tax codes, and our legislation, it seems prudent just to take what I have, go tri-state, and try my best to go "off the grid".

      I have been to the mall and am watching the stores shutting down as more and more people have had their jobs exported, and - like me - are no longer spending.

      I now sit watching the convergence of debt and our ability to pay. I get the idea that these lines are going to cross about mid-September or so.

      There are a lot of YouTube videos showing up about this as well. I do not believe any of the interstellar or messianic causality, but I am of the strong belief that having everyone so far in debt is an extremely unstable situation, which is not going to end well. I have seen the frustrations I have had trying to start up my own company - especially when it came to hiring anyone... and how little our politicians - local, state, and federal - value the segment of our population that has the technical skills to actually do anything. I see thousands highly skilled technical people... homeless. While manipulative types bask in wealth. Per tax law.

      We went through it in 2000 ( dot.com bubble ), 2007-8 ( real-estate bubble ) and now we are coming up on 2015-6 ( car title loan/student loan bubble ).

      One thing I have noted is a strong correlation between the late-night TV running of "flip this house" type real-estate free seminar shows that has uncannily preceded every crash by about six months. I believe these shows are financed by the banks who are stoking up another round of frenzied buying, which will be followed by fed rate hike, followed by inability of the borrowers to pay the note, followed by another round of foreclosures. Except this time, we are going into this with the fed rates at zero percent, meaning the fed can't drop interest rates another four percent to inject yet more loans into the market.

      I get the idea things are likely to crash. If companies have to rely on their own local talent to keep their machines going, I may have a job. Otherwise, its really hard to compete with H1-B or simply having them sending the whole shebang to China to have it built.

      I know this is kinda lengthy, so I have waited until this topic is stale to post it. I kinda want to leave this on a public forum as my take on where I see this nation going.

      I believe our politicians have sold us out to the bankers, who will end up owning everything, yet all they did was provide pen and forms. The so-called money the bankers can print from thin air existed only in people's minds, and they let the banking elite take everything they had... with nothing more than a pen - backed up by the armed forces of the United States of America. The villian is nothing more than a mathematical construct known as "fractional reserve banking" combined with usury. A terrible financial illusion used by an elite few to rob an entire nation of its wealth - right out from under its nose.

      I know this is kinda lengthy, so I have waited until this topic is stale to post it. I want to leave this on a public forum as my take on where I see this nation going.

      • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday July 17 2015, @01:13PM

        by Geotti (1146) on Friday July 17 2015, @01:13PM (#210406) Journal

        I for one would prefer love to have people like you on my team vis-a-vis jackasses, who only know how to please the TA by working through and checking off bullet points.

        It's people like you, who have the capability to enact real change and actually create something. Unfortunately for both of us, (besides being across the Atlantic) I'm also still stuck with my masters thesis, so it'll be a while until I could make you a proper offer. Who cares if a project takes a year instead of a month, in the end, it's this that is going to last an eternity in contrast to the cheap plastic crap. For many, quality trumps anything else.

        But, maybe the key is decentralization?

        For instance, I know this guy, who's an EE, but he's really turned more into a salesman, because he insisted on having a small computer store for years instead of making money. We come up with the occasional great idea there from time to time, but both lack the resources (mostly time) to implement them, as he has to keep the store running (i.e. fix computers and set up wi-fi routers for clients) and me - see above.

        So yeah, maybe you just need to connect to the right people, who will let you do your thing and organize the social aspect for/with you? But keep in mind that you don't have to work at a big company to do big projects. You just need a product that is competitive and for big installations quality will play a crucial factor. Also, if you're interested in regenerative energy, look at places like Greece, where there are a lot of people who need quality builds that they can rely on, which won't cost the whole world, due to the subventions for an army of marketeers and bureaucrats. (I can provide you with one or two contacts there as well, but there may be even better places.)

        Thinking about that, maybe you can try approaching some organizations that do stuff in/for third world countries?

        Don't despair!

        • (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday July 18 2015, @01:10AM

          by anubi (2828) on Saturday July 18 2015, @01:10AM (#210662) Journal

          I find your remark about working in third world countries quite intriguing.

          I kinda believe I belong in the third world, as America has become a mature ( meaning no longer growing ) economy whose main assets are not factories, but bankers, salesmen, celebrities, politicians, and a military to enforce the will of same onto the rest of the world.

          A few weeks ago, there was a discussion on using makerbots. I was quite intrigued and offered another of my diatribes about my grandpa, and how much I was taken in by how he was so self-sufficient that I believed he could survive anything except an attack by government. My grandpa was a farmer - and as a kid, I was so taken in by all the machinery he had at the farm... and how he would teach me what it was for. I remarked I saw so few men that were like my grandpa.

          One of the replies [soylentnews.org] took me by surprise, but it was very insightful.

          "They are still out there, but mostly in what we call "third-world" countries."

          I have thought a lot about that reply and realized how true it is.

          One of the little pet projects I am running on the side is a little water desalinator that works like a magnetohydrodynamic generator in reverse. I pass an electric current through moving salty water so I can exert force on it with a magnet. The saltier the water, the better it conducts, and the more force I can put on it.

          I use techniques similar to uranium enrichment to separate enriched from depleted salinity water. Very similar to vortex refrigeration for separating warm and cool air.

          Its a tradeoff between the force I can exert on the water with the magnet, the difference in salinity of the "depleted" and "enriched" sidestreams and osmotic pressure which relentlessly wants to remix the streams. So I end up using many in cascade. Just like they do to enrich uranium.

          One of my friends has some contacts in China.

          If I get my prototype running and know for sure this works the way I think it should work, I believe he will help me get established to make them in China.

          Right now, I have the project on hold until I can get a 3D printer to make the separator channels. The last round of tax took the money I was saving to buy the printer.

          China is the main source of the neodymium I need for the magnets. The third world could probably use the water from these things. Over here in America, we can just print the money to pay for stuff as well as pay for the execu-managerial skills of telling people like me not to reinvent the wheel. Its the benefit of having the world reserve currency. The bankers print up as much money as our politicians want as long as our politicians use the Armed Forces of the United States of America to enforce the signatures of their pen. So, we are pretty fortunate as we can just "raise the debt ceiling" to pay for whatever we want from someone else.

          Nobody seems to build stuff here anymore. I end up getting darned near everything I use from China. If not WalMart, its AliExpress. America attracts people more important to society: Bankers. Politicians. Salesmen. Sports players. Hollywood celebrities. And most importantly, the ability to back up the pen with unlimited physical force ( nuclear, if need be ). We have "illegal aliens" come in to do the backbreaking manual labor for a pittance of scrip.

          There was an episode on Star Trek about Scotty trapping himself in a transporter beam loop for a hundred years, only to be released into a world where he was useless. I feel that way a lot.

          --
          "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
          • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Saturday July 18 2015, @07:02AM

            by Geotti (1146) on Saturday July 18 2015, @07:02AM (#210709) Journal

            Really, from what I read, you should disregard the banksters and just do your thing. It's an easy excuse (and/or trap to fall into) to indulge in defeatism, but the enthusiasm comes (back) all by itself once you get back to working on your dream(s). As an engineer, maybe it's better to focus on the solution instead of the (tangential) problems.
             

            Regarding your design, you can always print stuff somewhere else [1-5] , at least for the prototype and until you get the funds together, or you can start a kickstarter or indiegogo with minimal "soft skills." That's also where your "street" cred would come in handy, as I imagine many more would vest trust in someone who's capable of coming up with his own designs instead of using a kit. You can also use software like Solidworks & co. to get the right design up front, so you minimize print runs.

            [1] https://www.stratasysdirect.com/technologies/direct-metal-laser-sintering/ [stratasysdirect.com]

            [2] https://materialise-onsite.com/en/TechnologySelector/Materials [materialise-onsite.com]

            [3] http://www.3dsystems.com/quickparts/investment-casting-patterns/quickmetal-plaster-mold-casting [3dsystems.com]

            [4] http://www.3dsystems.com/quickparts/prototyping-pre-production/directmetalprinting-dmp [3dsystems.com]

            • (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday July 18 2015, @08:12AM

              by anubi (2828) on Saturday July 18 2015, @08:12AM (#210715) Journal

              Thanks for the links! I will have to look into those.

              Actually, the plastic is what I need... so I can get the water flows, electrode positions, and the magnets all held in the proper orientation.

              The problem about machining the channels so precisely is the flow has to be laminar. Any turbulence only remixes the streams. Part of how this thing works is based on bernoulli effects - similar to those used in fluidic computers.

              ( Yes, there is a such thing as a fluidic computer.... google it if you do not believe me. )

              You are so right... it is very easy to fall into defeatism, when one gets so discouraged that one decides that pursuing something is futile. What makes it so frustrating to me is I see no physical explanation why this will not work; I believe there is a great need for it; yet I see very little interest in it. I get the idea business is not interested because once one sees this thing, he can go off and make his own and not worry about patents. It looks scalable on any level from cups to swimming-pool fulls. Knowing me, I will release what I do under the MIT license and tell 'em to have at it. I am not big enough to protect a patent anyway - but I would like to know that a lot of people could get fresh water out of this thing from the oceans or other sources of salty water. If I can get this thing running, I will probably end up putting it up on YouTube along with links to the files to print the channels and where to get the magnets. I do not want this to be another Bedini motor thing that has done nothing but get everyone's hopes up and only pranksters on YouTube seem to be able to make operable units. I have been watching another jokester based in Italy stringing people along for years promising unlimited power, but allows no-one except handpicked people to evaluate his system.

              I am sure if I release such a thing, I will see patent attorneys throwing cease and desist letters all over the place. Business may not want to have much to do with creating something, but they will spend money on lawyers to tell other people they can't do stuff - and our Congress will back them up. That is why I think its so important these things be made in such a way people can make their own and not involve the elite and their pens and paperwork.

              Good excuse to start learning Solidworks.

              As usual, I have no intention of involving investors until I am sure my end is solid.... if there is one thing I hate to do, its to get someone else's resources - whether it be tools or funds - and screw it up. When I can put this in a truck, drive over to the Pacific Ocean ( not far from me ), drop the inlet hose in the sea, and send potable water out the other end, then I will invite the others to work with this design and take it to the next level. Most likely out of China.

              If I can make this work, then I will know I have enough "street cred" to take this further.

              --
              "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
              • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Saturday July 18 2015, @09:13AM

                by Geotti (1146) on Saturday July 18 2015, @09:13AM (#210727) Journal

                The links I supplied before all link to metal printing, if it's plastic you want, that makes it a lot simpler and cheaper, as there are quite a few online services that you could turn to (most well-known being shapeways probably).

                But maybe it would still be a good thing to keep in the back of your head that you can print titanium parts as well. As a matter of fact, with tools like Within (http://www.withinlab.com) you could probably make a printed structure much lighter but at the same time more robust/resilient/flexible than a traditionally manufactured one [citation needed].

                Regarding patents, just be a pirate and throw it out in the open under a pseudonym, similar to how "they" did it with bitcoin.

                And finally, I have a similar attitude to taking other people's money, but if you clearly state that this is experimental and all you need is for a thousand people to chip in a tenner, it'd still be worthwhile for them, even if the design does not work out as long as you document it etc. Even Billy is supposedly investing in disrupting technology as he believes that iterating on existing tech will fail to bring us forward as much as we need to attain a sustainable future. There's a lot of other people willing to invest in projects, where the risk may be much higher than usual, but the potential for change would be far greater than with "traditional" means. I know I would.

                • (Score: 1) by anubi on Monday July 20 2015, @09:02AM

                  by anubi (2828) on Monday July 20 2015, @09:02AM (#211342) Journal

                  About the patents... I am not the first to think of flowing a current through water so I can exert force on it with a magnet.

                  If one googles "magnetohydrodynamic desalination" [google.com], they will get a good start on what I am tinkering with.

                  Another similar technique is the "Linear Kinetic Cell" offered by Ener-Tec (PDF) [ener-tec.com]. That one is mostly for addressing scale buildup in heat exchangers. I am concerned the field orientation is not proper for desalination.
                   
                  As far as tinkering with LKC's, I do have three old dryer motors I could sacrifice for their copper wire, which I could wind onto common plastic drain pipe and excite it from DC and up to see if I can get any unusual behaviour from a flow of briny water in it. I already have a good quantity of ammonium sulfate to tinker with... it, like sodium chloride, is ionic, and will conduct. However the ammonium sulfate is also quite useful as lawn fertilizer, so disposal is not a problem. I hate to buy anything I cannot recycle one way or another.

                  The design of my magnetohydrodynamic unit uses neodymium magnets where the flux is perpendicular to the flow, which is deflected by lorentz forces acting between the magnetic flux, the current flow in the water, and the inertia/fluid dynamics of the water. I use techniques very similar to fluidic computers to control the flows, as what I am working on would probably best be described as a hybrid fluidic analog computer.

                  I did not know what I was doing was called until I started horsing around with magnets, dishes of water, and injecting power just to see if the water would behave in a magnetic field like a motor winding would. Its such a tricky spelling I linked it directly, as just spelling the name of it correctly is a feat accompli.
                   
                  YouTube is full of videos describing water doing strange things when you get containers of it at resonance. Nothing that defies physics, but some of it sure looks unusual. I could not help but think that I might be able to separate salinity of water using the same concepts as vortex and acoustic refrigeration.

                  If nothing else, I can sure make some unusual artwork with this. Using the water as a lens/prism and using multicolored LED arrays, there seems almost a limitless amount of water art I could construct if I were so inclined, using magnets, lorentz forces, and resonances to excite the water at different points.

                  Being I have had a lot of experience in the thermodynamics of heat transfer and phase change, as well as the electronic design of embedded controllers, if anyone could pull this off, I would be as good as any.

                  Especially, being unemployed and having the time to work on it.

                  I do not have that much money, but I do have plenty of "stuff". It just takes time to rebuild the stuff into what I need.

                  I have this shelved for now as I need to use my resources for other things... number one keeping the tax men fed and making good on debt service.

                  I do not want to drag myself down so much economically I end up working as a greeter for WalMart. That would take up all the time I need to do other things.

                  Right now, most of my work is on my Arduino and Propeller boards. And tinkering around with the actuators.

                  I will be needing those embedded resources to control everything else. Including the fluidic artwork which I intend to do as training exercises in fluidic resonance. I have to build up my infrastructure in the sequences in which I will use them.

                  I figure in a couple of years, I will be onto Social Security and have enough money to pursue actually building the desalinator.

                  I know this whole thing is a lot like that first oscilloscope.... I am apt to build it and be disappointed. But maybe I will learn enough from the ones that did not work to let me build one that does. I would have a hard time making promises to anyone when I do not know myself if what I want to build will even work. This is a personal curiosity quest I am going to have to do at my own pace and as my resources permit.

                  I know I am getting a little wordy with these diatribes, but I do have an ulterior motive for doing it. I want my work left on a public forum in case anyone is doing similar research or needs some evidence to say such things are already prior art. I also want a public timestamped record as to when I was discussing these things. If I am successful, but it took me years to do it due to something as simple as funding, it might give others who are in position to evaluate people the tolerance to let them try, even if they see it is "reinventing the wheel". I know I got into trouble on the job for trying to do things in unusual ways. I guess its something like OCD, where I seem compelled to do things that I have never seen before, kinda like wanting to take roads I have never taken before just because I do not know what is there. I pay the price for that curiosity, but then at least, like Frank Sinatra used to say, I'll do it my way. Even if I greet you at WalMart.

                  I see employers lamenting a shortage of technical people. I am of the strong belief we have absolute floods of very good technical people... all we need is tolerance to let us create. I do not believe anyone can create all caged up in a cubicle... neat rows of us like hens caged at an egg farm, with the manager constantly putting grain in the feed slot and expecting eggs at the other chute. They tried to do that to me, and I could not do anything in those conditions.

                  • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Monday July 20 2015, @01:06PM

                    by Geotti (1146) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:06PM (#211390) Journal

                    Really, I maybe understand a small part of what you're up to, but if you want a record, maybe a gist on github [github.com] is a good idea? It will keep revisions together with dates, so maybe it would be more suitable to keeping a record.
                     

                    I am concerned the field orientation is not proper for desalination.

                    I'm not sure if that is at all possible, but couldn't you adjust the orientation dynamically? Like, uhm, an FPGA, or something? (Sorry, I lack the physics theory to be of more use here...)

                    Anyway, also maybe use sites like freelancer.com instead of working as a greeter? It'd probably be much more productive. It sounds like you live in a rural area, so, again, use the internet instead of constraining yourself to local businesses. If what you can do is going to benefit a lot of people then wouldn't that be a great motivation.

                    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Monday July 27 2015, @09:01AM

                      by anubi (2828) on Monday July 27 2015, @09:01AM (#214188) Journal

                      Yes... it would make me feel a lot better if I knew others were interested, however at present, I feel like an an old red hen [wikipedia.org].

                      Its discouraging when I see how much our Government pays for the administrative skill to lay off domestic engineers, and how little our work means.

                      If I can get the desalinator working, my only hope is some friends who have relatives in China that may take an interest in replicating it.

                      Incidentally, was it you that remarked you lived "across the pond". England? I am quite impressed by Pico Technology over there. I have three of their oscilloscopes. I have recently bought some fantastic little Parallax Propeller based VGA controller modules from "HobbyTronics" in England as well.

                      I am seeing where more and more I am seeing other countries take the lead in this high-tech stuff. Especially Japan. Even the Arduino I am so fond of originated in Italy. A lot of the software tools I use came out of Russia.

                      --
                      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
                      • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:14PM

                        by Geotti (1146) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:14PM (#215026) Journal

                        England?

                        Currently - Germany, so if you need someone to source you stuff from there/here, just ping me here.

                        and how little our work means.

                        The work means a lot to people. I think it's better to ignore governments (and corporations) in the case of a greater good.