Thunderstorm makes comic late(UPDATE)

[Amber Williams]

Comic is gonna be late.  Got a pretty wonky weather going on here.  But it looks to be a fast and furious storm rather than an all-nighter.

[Caswin]

Story at eleven.

Which might be truer than it sounded when I first thought of it.  (It probably means something when that's considered "late", but I'm not sure what it is.)

[Distracting]

A thunderstorm? Oh, those are so fun to watch.


Out of curiosity, what happens to the fish when lightning hits water? I don't think I've ever seen an electrocuted fish, but lightning doesn't hit water near me often.

[Madmann135]

from what I can remember from a different forum on which that question was asked, the jury is still out.

-someone said that a plasma bolt is launched into the water due to the energy of the lightning contacting the water or something
-someone else said that the surface of the water gets electrified for a brief moment, for miles around.

There were more speculations but no one was able to answer the question with nothing other than speculation.


Amber all I have to say is be glad you don't live in chicago.  3 days of hard raining which nearly flooded the streets (well did in some cases), houses without power, 100+ heat-wave and lighting so bright it lights up the whole sky, then the thunder shakes the windows from the boom.  And that was just the first 5 days give or take.

[Zedd]

So you got caught in the same storm over here too?

[nikename2]

I hear ya guys. My internet is out at the moment too. The only reason I'm able to post is because I'm pirating off of somebodys router at the moment from the top floor of my house hehe. 

[rt]

  Welcome to Cananda .. they warned you about the snow .. but not about the thunderstorms .. I hope you're not afraid of thunder, some days it will be enough to rattle your windows.

[Netrogo]

We'll never forgive you for that Amber How dare you let the environment get in the way of your supplying us with our free entertainment!

[Naldru]

We'll never forgive you for that Amber How dare you let the environment get in the way of your supplying us with our free entertainment!

You don't fool with Mother Nature.  I once heard of a case where lightning hit a radio antenna and the antenna cable was literally vaportized.  (The radio didn't look too good, either.)

With regard to how fish are affected by lightning, I would imagine that it depends on the depth of the water and the depth of the fish.  As the depth of the water and the depth of the fish increase, more of the current would go through the water surrounding the fish rather than the fish itself.  On the other hand, the concussive force produced by the resulting thunder could kill the fish all by itself.

[Amber Williams]

*UPDATE*
Sorry. Power outage. Just got power back and am colouring now.  Comic will be up soon.

[superluser]

Sorry. Power outage. Just got power back and am colouring now.  Comic will be up soon.

Oh, I *hate* those.  I used to live in a place that had continual brownouts.  You could count on the power going out at least once a month.  It didn't affect much, but you'd get home and find your computer on a boot screen and 100 unsaved papers gone.

Now I live in a weird place that gets power from the city and some other source.  The upshot is that my block always has electricity.  I remember talking to my parents once and telling them that someone was vacuuming and kept tripping the breaker.  ``You know there's a huge blackout going on, right?'' they said.

But yeah, blackouts suck.  You have to break out the candles and find a lighter...no fun.

[RobbieThe1st]

Sorry. Power outage. Just got power back and am colouring now.  Comic will be up soon.

Oh, I *hate* those.  I used to live in a place that had continual brownouts.  You could count on the power going out at least once a month.  It didn't affect much, but you'd get home and find your computer on a boot screen and 100 unsaved papers gone.

Now I live in a weird place that gets power from the city and some other source.  The upshot is that my block always has electricity.  I remember talking to my parents once and telling them that someone was vacuuming and kept tripping the breaker.  ``You know there's a huge blackout going on, right?'' they said.

But yeah, blackouts suck.  You have to break out the candles and find a lighter...no fun.

THAT is why you get one of These.
Also, a LED flashlight or 2 is handy.
Maby I am just not sympathetic enough, but we have power outages(and the power flickers a *lot*) quite a bit over here. What did we do? we setup various battery-backups, and, we have redundant lighting and such, plus, as our stove is propane, and our fridge runs on both propane and electricity, it doesn't affect us much.


-RobbieThe1st

[Fex]

if there is a blackout here I light neonsticks so there is a bit off light and color =3

[Fuyudenki]

Also, a LED flashlight or 2 is handy.
Maby I am just not sympathetic enough, but we have power outages(and the power flickers a *lot*) quite a bit over here. What did we do? we setup various battery-backups, and, we have redundant lighting and such, plus, as our stove is propane, and our fridge runs on both propane and electricity, it doesn't affect us much.


-RobbieThe1st

Ah yes, power outages are seeming to become more common where I live.  Two in the past two weeks, instead of maybe two per year.  I'm casting a critical eye on the possibility of grabbing a UPS and plugging everything into it.

Fortunately, one of the aforementioned power outages was during the day, so my brothers and I shot each other with airsoft guns for a while.  I started trying to richochet them off the walls to shoot around corners.(yes, we were playing airsoft in the house.  Three boys, do you think there's a lot of fragile stuff?)

The second occurred just as I was going to bed, so I hopped in my room and got my flashlight, which gives off nearly as much light as the house lights, and continued business as normal.  Fairly proud of myself, I walked out of the bathroom, into my room, located the flashlight, dug out batteries, and inserted them properly, all without breaking anything, in pitch darkness.

But a propane fridge?  I thought fire made things hotter, not colder.

[xHaZxMaTx]

But a propane fridge?  I thought fire made things hotter, not colder.

And what do you think electricity does?

[DarkAudit]

But a propane fridge?  I thought fire made things hotter, not colder.

And what do you think electricity does?

This.

That was ~2 years ago. I'm fine now. 

[Naldru]

Also, a LED flashlight or 2 is handy.
Maby I am just not sympathetic enough, but we have power outages(and the power flickers a *lot*) quite a bit over here. What did we do? we setup various battery-backups, and, we have redundant lighting and such, plus, as our stove is propane, and our fridge runs on both propane and electricity, it doesn't affect us much.


-RobbieThe1st

But a propane fridge?  I thought fire made things hotter, not colder.

I remember seeing a description of a propane refrigerator some years ago, and I was able to find a
listing on Wikipedia.  However, some of the references may be easier to understand than the Wikipedia article itself. 

Don't feel disturbed if you find the explanation hard to understand.  I have a degree in chemical engineering and I find it difficult to work my way through.  The normal refrigerator using Freon is a lot easier to understand.

By the way, in a normal refrigerator, electricity isn't used to heat anything, it is used to compress the freon vapor until the boiling point raises above room temperature.

[xHaZxMaTx]

I know it doesn't heat anything.   Well, it's not supposed to heat anything, anyway.  I was saying that because the way Raist worded his sentence, it made it seem like he thought electricity is what makes refrigerators cold directly.

[Fuyudenki]

(reading article)

Naturally, electricity can't cool things directly, as it's a form of energy, and adding pure energy to any equation causes an increase in heat(and pressure).  The electricity is used to run the moter which drives the compressor, and heat is merely an unpleasant by-product.

Propane, on the other hand, is generally used for burning, and is very good at such.  The gas itself has a very low boiling point, so spraying it directly onto an object would cause the object to cool down, much like when I spill butane when refilling my lighters(which has been happening a lot lately, as the nozzles are pure metal-on-metal contact, which isn't conducive to a good, pressurized butane refill), but that has the unpleasant side-effect of filling your house with a highly flammable gas.  Alternatively, the high pressure could be used as a pneumatic motor to drive the compressor, but again, house, gas, fire, bad idea.

The only alternative I could think of was that you're somehow using the propane flame to drive a generator to produce electricity to run the compressor.  It would appear the refrigerator doesn't work like that.

(5th year senior going after a BA in Computer Engineering, but I'm planning to go back for Mechanical once I manage to stand on my own two feet.  You need both to design proper robots.)

[edit]dpme reading article.  I think I've got it, now.  Funky, seems most of the heat is being kicked out into the surrounding room.  I suspect gas-absorbtion refrigerators have higher waste-heat output than compressor-driven refrigerators.[/edit]

[Azlan]

I suggest subduing nature... put that biznatch back in her place.  Word.

[Alondro]

We didn't get anything in NJ.  Not even rain.  Now I have to water my daikon seeds. 

[Azlan]

We didn't get anything in NJ.  Not even rain.  Now I have to water my daikon seeds. 

Not Nerima Daikon I hope.

[RobbieThe1st]

(reading article)

Naturally, electricity can't cool things directly, as it's a form of energy, and adding pure energy to any equation causes an increase in heat(and pressure).  The electricity is used to run the moter which drives the compressor, and heat is merely an unpleasant by-product.

Propane, on the other hand, is generally used for burning, and is very good at such.  The gas itself has a very low boiling point, so spraying it directly onto an object would cause the object to cool down, much like when I spill butane when refilling my lighters(which has been happening a lot lately, as the nozzles are pure metal-on-metal contact, which isn't conducive to a good, pressurized butane refill), but that has the unpleasant side-effect of filling your house with a highly flammable gas.  Alternatively, the high pressure could be used as a pneumatic motor to drive the compressor, but again, house, gas, fire, bad idea.

The only alternative I could think of was that you're somehow using the propane flame to drive a generator to produce electricity to run the compressor.  It would appear the refrigerator doesn't work like that.

(5th year senior going after a BA in Computer Engineering, but I'm planning to go back for Mechanical once I manage to stand on my own two feet.  You need both to design proper robots.)

[edit]dpme reading article.  I think I've got it, now.  Funky, seems most of the heat is being kicked out into the surrounding room.  I suspect gas-absorbtion refrigerators have higher waste-heat output than compressor-driven refrigerators.[/edit]

Well, a propane fridge, commonly used in travel-trailers and campers, uses ammonia in a closed loop:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigeration#Vapor-compression_cycle

Vapor absorption cycle

        (See Gas absorption refrigerator for more details)

In the early years of the twentieth century, the vapor absorption cycle using water-ammonia systems was popular and widely used but, after the development of the vapor compression cycle, it lost much of its importance because of its low coefficient of performance (about one fifth of that of the vapor compression cycle). Nowadays, the vapor absorption cycle is used only where waste heat is available or where heat is derived from solar collectors.

The absorption cycle is similar to the compression cycle, except for the method of raising the pressure of the refrigerant vapor. In the absorption system, the compressor is replaced by an absorber which dissolves the refrigerant in a suitable liquid, a liquid pump which raises the pressure and a generator which, on heat addition, drives off the refrigerant vapor from the high-pressure liquid. Some work is required by the liquid pump but, for a given quantity of refrigerant, it is much smaller than needed by the compressor in the vapor compression cycle. In an absorption refrigerator, a suitable combination of refrigerant and absorbent is used. The most common combinations are ammonia (refrigerant) and water (absorbent), and water (refrigerant) and lithium bromide (absorbent).

The electric side is basically just a small heater, which causes the same effect then turned on.
These devices have an extra advantage, which is that they really do not fail; we have an old one thats probably 30 years old, and it works good as new. The only time they do fail is if a pipe rusts through and the ammonia gets out, in which case, its pretty-much scrap-metal(well, with enough time, effort, and money...).

Honestly though, a small inverter(like a 100-400 watt, they cost less than $50) + a car battery, is fine for powering CF lights, and your modem/router, so if you have a laptop you can run for a few hours with no problems. Also, if you have a UPS(APC ones are best), disable the beeper, and you can run lights for hours on the internal battery with no problem(that is, unless you want to void the warranty and hook up 1/2 car batteries instead, like I have done(the only problem you still have is heat dissipation, so I knocked a hole in the case side, and stuck a fan there - but the power hasn't been off long enough to test if it will actually work well enough to run my full desktop comp for a few hours)..


-RobbieThe1st

[Fuyudenki]

Isn't the usual method for testing portable power sources forcing them to be used?  If you want to find out how long your improv UPS will work, just unplug it from the wall and see how long you can go.

That's not a bad idea, though, I think I'll look into it.  Do you just wire the DC input directly to the car battery terminals?  How do you recharge the battery, if you do that?

[Naldru]

I suppose you could just hook up the batteries to a battery charger on one side and a power inverter on the other.  There are battery chargers that will charge multiple batteries at a time.  I'm not sure of the full details of how you would hook things together.  I did find one example at this site.  I would want to test anything like this heavily before I risked my computer on it.

[RobbieThe1st]

Well, it depends on the UPS. Mine, it uses 24V in(2X 12V,7AH Sealed Lead Acid), which basically means, to run it, you need 2 car batteries, in series.

Last power outage, I happened to have an extra pack, which I took apart and spliced into this power supply. The computer ran fine for about 10 mins, and then died, even though the battery still had plenty of charge in it(I was monitoring the voltage as it was running constantly) - the unit overheated(after that, I hooked it up to a string of LED xmas lights[I could have cut the string into 12-volt sections, but I wanted it in one piece), and it ran fine for hours). With a UPS like this, your main concern is not battery-size, but heat buildup.

I do have a large collection of batteries, and a good 20 amp charger, and so when I need to, I can hook up whatever I need.

If you want something really good for your ups, get a Xantrex(Trace) inverter/charger - it  charges the battery bank its hooked up to, keeps everything nice, and is designed for constant running. The only drawback with one of these, is that they cost a *lot*(I have one, but water got into it years ago, and it failed - one of these days I will fix it).

That site looks fine, if, in my case, over simplified.

Isn't the usual method for testing portable power sources forcing them to be used?  If you want to find out how long your improv UPS will work, just unplug it from the wall and see how long you can go.

That's not a bad idea, though, I think I'll look into it.  Do you just wire the DC input directly to the car battery terminals?  How do you recharge the battery, if you do that?

Well, in this case, I have to work out how to dissipate the heat - I doubt a 92mm fan will do enough, though, as usual for me, I always have something more important to do until the power goes out, in which case, I look around, and decide "ok, time to get it working".

Well, as in the posted link, I do/can hook it up directly, however, last time I messed with it, the car batteries weren't charged(and, im thinking, this set needs some EDTA and a new bunch of acid - 3 years of starting a ford f350 sorta causes problems[like the fact that, even at 13.5V, they start to bubble a *lot*, which is a bit of a problem]).

-RobbieThe1st

[Naldru]

Just wanted to mention something.  If you do hook up multiple batteries to a UPS, try very hard to have the UPS in a different room than the cmputer.  As you say, they give off a lot of heat.

[Turnsky]

Just wanted to mention something.  If you do hook up multiple batteries to a UPS, try very hard to have the UPS in a different room than the cmputer.  As you say, they give off a lot of heat.

or put a griddle on the UPS and have yourself a nice little barbecue. 

[Fuyudenki]

Luckily, I'm not restricted to 92mm fans.  I've got a pair of 6-inch(that's 15cm, folks!) fans powered by direct 120VAC wall power.  Of course, that would sap my UPS faster, but my parents have accused me of turning my computer into a hovercraft when i connected them.

Also, I'm fairly sure they don't suck that much power.

The BBQ idea doesn't sound like a bad one, though.

[Naldru]

The question is where the cooling air for the UPS will come from and where the heated air will be discharged.  The size of the fans isn't an issue, since you will probably be able to use convection currents to power the air flow.  (Since hot air raises, you have the air come in at the bottom and leave at the top.)  If the outside temperature is high (say over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 40 degrees Celsius), you can reduce the temperature of the cooling air by using evaporative cooling.  (Evaporative cooling would mean that you mix the incoming air with a fine water mist.  The evaporating water cools the air.  Of course, this stops working when you get near 100 percent humidity.)

Past a certain point, it becomes more practical to have a small gasoline or diesel powered generator if you need to keep things running.  There is also work on fuel cells that will provide several kilowatts of power.

One more word of caution.  The ideas may be nice to play with, but these aren't toys.  If you really mess up the charging and discharge cycles, the batteries can catch on fire and explode.  It is my understanding that this has actually occured with some laptop batteries.  Burning the house down will really upset the parents.

*****  ******

Never ask an engineer what is the worst that can happen.  You'll have nighnares for weeks.