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Fantods, whole no. 9, Winter 1945
Page 24
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page 24 EFTY-NINE does that represent? It works out as 216 million KWH. In units you can heft, that's 573 trillion foot-pounds. As Channing pointed out, the voltage would actually never rise to the fantastic figure of 40 billion. The condenser would arc over and discharge as soon as the voltage rose high enough to strike across the space between the plates. Let's assume a breakdown voltage of the comparatively modest figure of 30,000 -- that would be about right for one centimeter of air. How much energy is required to raise the voltage from 3,000 to 30,000? The formula shows the energy at 30,000 to be ten times that at 3,000, or 163 KWH. Whence the energy required is 163 less the 16 KWH already stored at 3,000 volts, or 147 KWH. A much more modest figure, but still it's 3,900,000 foot-pounds. Which means that if energy is to be conserved this much work must be done by whatever outside force (e.g., gravitational) operates to remove the dielectric's drooling out of the intense electrostatic field between the plates, at least under the conditions which prevail in Venus Equilateral. It's a whole lot like having a cylinder full of air and closed by a light-weight piston at the top, and then worrying for fear the piston will drop of its own weight to the bottom and cause the cylinder to explode from the pressure developed in the confined air. Channing should have thought of that by the time he got to Joe's, at the latest. However, if he simply must have something to fret over, a consideration of the possibility of the condenser's plate-grillwork's collapsing from electrostatic attraction ought to do. If we assume a spacing of one centimeter between the plates, the total force between them is something like 659,000 tons. Conceding that a lot of this might be balanced off by clever construction of the grillwork, one still sees it as a structure in very unstable equilibrium. Slight inaccuracies in spacing and alignment would subject the plates to heavy stresses. Incidentally, the current which Farrell interrupted with his non-arcing alloy was on the order of 8,000,000 amperes. "A minute spark flashed between the contacts." That, I shall have to see -- from a distance! ---------------------------------------- "There is room in the ether for much speculation" ---------------------------------------- -Efty's Reprint Section- From Futuria, Vol 1 Num 2; an extract from the Official Minuntes of the January 15, 1943 Meeting of the Futurian Society of New York........... "A motion passed to close membership rolls of the FSNY on the grounds that no newcomers now could possibly fit in with the long-standing Futurian tradition." -o- From Pan, Number one, December 16, 1944; a news item by lts............ "Speaking of rises in populationses, the Futurian Society of New York's graph is also leaping sharply upward. During the week ending December 16, three new members were added. The lucky lucky fans were Judy Zissman and Larry Shaw, at a special meeting of the Futurian Executive Committee at the Zissman apartment (a very weird sort of place which is constantly melting away at the edges), and a someone who must be known here as the Apostate, at a special meeting of the Futurian Executive Committee at -- but that would be telling." -oOo-
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page 24 EFTY-NINE does that represent? It works out as 216 million KWH. In units you can heft, that's 573 trillion foot-pounds. As Channing pointed out, the voltage would actually never rise to the fantastic figure of 40 billion. The condenser would arc over and discharge as soon as the voltage rose high enough to strike across the space between the plates. Let's assume a breakdown voltage of the comparatively modest figure of 30,000 -- that would be about right for one centimeter of air. How much energy is required to raise the voltage from 3,000 to 30,000? The formula shows the energy at 30,000 to be ten times that at 3,000, or 163 KWH. Whence the energy required is 163 less the 16 KWH already stored at 3,000 volts, or 147 KWH. A much more modest figure, but still it's 3,900,000 foot-pounds. Which means that if energy is to be conserved this much work must be done by whatever outside force (e.g., gravitational) operates to remove the dielectric's drooling out of the intense electrostatic field between the plates, at least under the conditions which prevail in Venus Equilateral. It's a whole lot like having a cylinder full of air and closed by a light-weight piston at the top, and then worrying for fear the piston will drop of its own weight to the bottom and cause the cylinder to explode from the pressure developed in the confined air. Channing should have thought of that by the time he got to Joe's, at the latest. However, if he simply must have something to fret over, a consideration of the possibility of the condenser's plate-grillwork's collapsing from electrostatic attraction ought to do. If we assume a spacing of one centimeter between the plates, the total force between them is something like 659,000 tons. Conceding that a lot of this might be balanced off by clever construction of the grillwork, one still sees it as a structure in very unstable equilibrium. Slight inaccuracies in spacing and alignment would subject the plates to heavy stresses. Incidentally, the current which Farrell interrupted with his non-arcing alloy was on the order of 8,000,000 amperes. "A minute spark flashed between the contacts." That, I shall have to see -- from a distance! ---------------------------------------- "There is room in the ether for much speculation" ---------------------------------------- -Efty's Reprint Section- From Futuria, Vol 1 Num 2; an extract from the Official Minuntes of the January 15, 1943 Meeting of the Futurian Society of New York........... "A motion passed to close membership rolls of the FSNY on the grounds that no newcomers now could possibly fit in with the long-standing Futurian tradition." -o- From Pan, Number one, December 16, 1944; a news item by lts............ "Speaking of rises in populationses, the Futurian Society of New York's graph is also leaping sharply upward. During the week ending December 16, three new members were added. The lucky lucky fans were Judy Zissman and Larry Shaw, at a special meeting of the Futurian Executive Committee at the Zissman apartment (a very weird sort of place which is constantly melting away at the edges), and a someone who must be known here as the Apostate, at a special meeting of the Futurian Executive Committee at -- but that would be telling." -oOo-
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