[rerevisionist]

Kinetic Theory, Applied to Gases, is a Serious Mistake - Leading Unconsciously to Danger

This is a line of thought developed by Phil Holland. (My commentary and my wording - he may disagree with it).

The general view is that gases are composed of points moving at high speed. If enclosed in some sort of vessel, the impacts on the side of the vessel are responsible for pressure, and the change in average kinetic energy of the small balls when they change direction gives the amount of pressure. The temperature is a function of the average speed of the balls. That's the kinetic theory of gases - there are statistical treatments of collisions between atoms (or gas molecules); and Boyle's law, involving pressure and temperature and volume, is consistent with the model.

So what's wrong with that? The problem is that gases don't behave as points; they are larger, somewhat as atoms, considered with a haze of electrons around them, are larger than nuclei in the traditional model. Thus wind is explainable as a collection of small 'balloons', since these can move somewhat as a unit. Presumably even on a small scale there's a relation between pressure and volume. This is important when considering nuclear reactions, or any situation where there's local heating. If atoms convert to gas, there is - for some reason, observed if not understood - a change of state, with a pressure increase. This is obvious with conventional explosives, where the sudden production of nitrogen gas causes a huge increase in pressure for any given volume. However, if there is a local heating effect as predicated of fission, if evaporation takes place there's huge local internal pressure. Phil Holland claims that the usual kinetic model simply assumes all the atoms are points, a high temperature implying just more energy, not a volume increase. A subtle mistake to which he attributed nuclear criticality at Windscale in Britain (later renamed Sellafield).

Note this can apply to more everyday situations. He claims water flooding into the boilers of Titanic flashed into water vapour, which caused explosions sufficient to blow the ship in half. (Omitted from the recentish film).

[rerevisionist]

Mooninquirer, I'm not sure what you're getting at, I have to say.

[1] You say right at the end that I'm endorsing the accepted model. This is not so. I was talking about Titanic's boilers; if water gets in, it change state to water vapour, and this occupies a much larger volume, creating an explosion. The kinetic theory predicts the H2O molecules are points, which move around faster as temperature goes up. The alternative view is that there's a change of state from near-points into little balloons, and that is what causes the explosion.

[2] I don't follow your reasoning on fission; I'd be grateful if you'd restate it, please, and preferably separate the emotive material form the science.

[3] On fission, I don't think you, and certainly not Ranb, were getting near the possible complexity. (I'm afraid we decided to ban Ranb, who posted dozens of postings with little content - they're still on the site). For one thing uranium, or other metals, have complicated metallurgical structures, with internal crystals or domains, or maybe sintered grains held together in some way. IF the traditional view of fission applies, the are frequent fissions and neutrons are released. BUT IF there's a big energy release locally, the pressure will increase, causing local deformations and cracks, and also affecting the atoms, and their electrons, in contact with the fission products. So the whole electromagnetism may change too. Unless your mental model takes all this into account, it may turn out to be wrong - which obviously is why people test things, especially if they are new and may be unpredictable.

[4] Maybe we're using 'kinetic theory' in different senses in some subtle way. Can you explain what you mean by this, please? ---

nuclear fission + kinetic theory = nuke bomb hoax

[FirstClassSkeptic]

I liked the gas model where all the little balls were connected together with coil springs.

[rerevisionist]

[1] Kinetic theory and gases - another remark on this topic is that the kinetic theory cannot explain wind. If air is a collection of tiny cannonballs, they (arguably) will not continue collectively in one direction; with each collision the collection of material will scatter. The model of gases as tiny balloons - or if you like tiny forcefields, as atoms are visualised - is more consistent with wind. It's also consistent with explosions, and the particular example referred to by Phil Holland was at Sellafield, which had, or was supposed to have had, a 'criticality' incident.

[2] I still can't see what you're getting at when you say 'nuclear fission + kinetic theory = nuke bomb hoax'. Can you please say it again? You needn't repeat what physics teachers and others say, though. If you have an elegant disproof of nukes, that would be terrific, an obvious improvement on the indirect stuff.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

One thing that bothers me about the idea that gas molecules are jittering about in a random order is, what force exactly is making them jitter? A single molecule is in a sea of similar molecules. It would seem that forces of attraction, and repulsion would be the same in all directions.

When a small amount of gas is released into a vacuum chamber, the gas immediately fills the chamber. It doesn't just slowly jitter its way around the chamber. It's fast. Like a compressed spring that is suddenly allowed to expand. That's why I like the model that has the molecules connected with springs. It just makes more sense, based upon my experiences with compressed air and such.

[rerevisionist]

I think the jittering idea comes from Brownian motion - if small similar-sized particles, e.g. some types of plant spore or pollen, in liquid are looked at with a light microscope, they quiver. The energy presumably comes from lighting and heating used to make the things visible. There's a belief due [apparently] to Einstein, that random collisions of molecules cause the motion. The resulting path is called a random walk. However, the molecules are far smaller than the e.g. pollen grains - I've seen it compared to fish hitting a battleship. Very likely the motion is caused by convection currents but in some chaotic small-scale way.

The idea that a gas 'atom' - the smallest particle of a gas - needs elbow-room, has the same attraction as the idea of springy 'atoms'. That's the reason gases as tiny solid cannon balls seems wrong.

I'm afraid Mooninquirer deleted some of his messages from this site, in a huff. I would have been interested to see if he could answer these questions - I doubt it, since he doesn't seem to understand that a hypothetical model is not the same thing as 'established science'.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

http://xanadu.math.utah.edu/java/brownianmotion/1/

The first good explanation of Brownian movement was advanced by Desaulx in 1877: "In my way of thinking the phenomenon is a result of thermal molecular motion in the liquid environment (of the particles)."

[rerevisionist]

Re: Kinetic Theory, Applied to Gases, is a Serious Mistake

Post by mooninquirer » 02 Nov 2011 04:12

@ FirstClassSkeptic ---- are you sure the model referred to GASES ? In the very reasonable assumptions of kinetic theory applied to gases, there are NO springs connecting the gas molecules. An IDEAL gas would have the least attraction between the molecules. Real gases that are very good examples of ideal gases are the NOBLE gases, also called the inert gases, which are all just atoms. The MOST ideal gas of the noble gases is helium. The only forces acting between the molecules ( or in the case of a noble gas, the atoms ) of the gas, are when they collide with one another. We can safely apply Newton' s Laws of motion to the atoms, and say that all the macroscopic states of the gas such as the volume, pressure, and temperature, and the gas laws like Gay Lussac's Law, or the universal gas law, PV = nRT ( where P is the pressure, V is the volume, T is the temperature, R is a constant, and n is the number of atoms or molecules ) are predictable based on classical mechanics. The heat or the internal energy of the gas is the sum of the kinetic energies of the molecules composing the gas.

But with a solid, specifically KINETIC theory does not work as well, because there ARE forces of attraction between the molecules or the atoms composing the solid. Importantly, because the atoms or molecules in a solid are always confined to a specific location, their heat is exactly the vibration of the molecules. So it is useful to think of a solid as a bunch of balls with springs attached. At high heat, or high temperature, the ball are vibrating fast; at low heat or temperature, they are vibrating slow. To be fair, the expression "kinetic theory" is very often NOT applied to the liquid state of matter, or the solid state, because the key assumption that there are no attractive forces between the atoms or molecules does not apply. There are forces of attraction like the Van der Waals forces, which involve forces of electrical attraction ( but NOT chemical bonding, neither covalent, nor ionic ) between the electron clouds, and this involves quantum mechanics. So the term used to describe heat on the atomic or molecular scale is statistical mechanics, or quantum statistical mechanics.

My high school freshman physical science teacher, who had a master's degree in chemistry, really, really emphasized what was heat in a solid, on the atomic or molecular scale. He kept drawing diagrams on the blackboard representing atoms or molecules in a solid, and the vibration. He ALSO very strongly stated that the moon landing was a hoax. When I asked him how come we never see evidence of one sixth gravity on the moon in the Apollo footage, he stated with premeditated, well-prepared-for determination and anger ---- and I can STILL hear him shrieking, " LOOOOOOOK !!!!!!!! I-I-I-I-I-I-I WILLLLL NNNNNNOOOOTTTTTTT BEEE A PROP-A-GAN-DIST FOR NASA !!!!!!
I and a few other other students, including a football player, also wanted to know ( because the average person wonders this as well ), so we pressed him. I said something like, " well I ask, because YOU brought up the moon, when you asked us to think about a balance and a spring scale on the moon, and the spring scale measuring a different weight in comparison to the Earth measurement, but the BALANCE measuring the same mass in comparison to the Earth measurement." He said, " MY JOB IS TO TEACH YOU SCIENCE, NOT TO DEFEND NASA ! I AM NOT BEING PPPPPPPPPPAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDDD FOR THAT !!!!" I pressed him further, but I was thinking to myself, "What the fuck ? I just asked him a simple question ?" Then he said, " MY JOB IS TO TEACH YOU SCIENCE !!! NOW I AM TELLING YOU, OBJECTS WOULD WEIGH ONE SIXTH LESS ON THE MOON, EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE THE SAME MASS. YYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOUUUUUU HAVE TO TAKE WHAT YOU LEARN AND REALIZE THE TRUTH YOURSELF !!!!!! NOW, DID YOU EVER SEE ANY EVIDENCE OF ONE SIXTH GRAVITY ? " When I said, "ugh, well, no, I did not......," he then thundered, but with very great satisfaction, " WELL, THEN, YOU HAVE YOUR ANSWER !!!!"

I am posting this here to show this science teacher's great willingness to defy government propaganda for the sake of science. I have had MANY other science teachers and professors saying the moon landing was a hoax, but sometimes they just stated that it was a hoax without raising their voice. But what he did, was to show the utter OUTRAGE and the STUPIDITY of the news media talking heads taking the moon landing as a serious scientific and technological achievement. This is very unnerving to anyone who places a lot of value in science. THAT was why he was angry. This was in a Catholic school, so I doubt he had to fear for losing his job. But I have had many professors at a public university saying in no uncertain terms that the moon landing is a hoax, and doubting that a nuclear bomb would explode.

Now. When a nucleus fissions, the daughter nuclei, also called the product nuclei, or the fission fragments, are driven apart with a great ( great for a single nucleus, and at this scale ) coulomb force of like charged electrostatic repulsion, because they are both positively charged. What had previously kept them together is the STRONG FORCE, which was overcome when the U 235 nucleus absorbed a neutron, causes it to become U 236, and become unstable. It does NOT immediately fission. The model of the nucleus as a racked up triangle of billiard balls struck by a cue ball is a VERY childish model, only used for a very elementary or initial introduction. Much better is the water drop model of the nucleus. EVERYONE, even the propagandists for nuke bombs, would agree with this, and it is stated in the documentary E=MC^2 THE BIOGRAPHY OF A EQUATION, right after the discussion of Lise Meitner's discovery of nuclear fission. She rightfully deserves credit, because her friend Otto Hahn did NOT realize that a fissioning had occurred, but he detected barium that hadn't been there before in a sample of uranium. He bombarded the sample of uranium with SLOW NEUTRONS.

Now, we skeptics are agreed that E= mc^2 is NOT necessary to explain the energy released in nuclear fission. And I tell you, although it is claimed that Einstein is the father of modern physics in this documentary, it is the many female scientists who completely steal the show, along with Michael Faraday, who is portrayed as a very good, hard working, humble, honorable man, as well as a great theorist and experimenter. I think there might have been a disconnection between the producer and the director of this doc. Very surprisingly, Einstein is portrayed as a man of low moral character --- cocky, arrogant, selfish, lazy, pumping other people for ideas, very unfaithful ---- and Einstein's wife as the real genius who does all the work.

When the nucleus fissions, the product nuclei cannot go very far, because they have to carry with them huge electron clouds, as they are really atoms. They bump hard into the neighboring atoms, which greatly increase the vibration of those atoms. The two or three neutrons, however, are not encumbered by an electron cloud, and they DO fly away, very far from the nucleus from which they came. They surely are not going to be absorbed by the next nucleus, because it is as small as a pea at the center of Yankee stadium. There is a time delay between the absorption of the neutron, and the fissioning of the nucleus, and not every nucleus that absorbs a neutron fissions. About 85 % of the U 235 nuclei that absorb a neutron split.

Long before the claimed energy of a Hiroshima bomb is released, the critical mass would melt, or vaporize. Even if the ENTIRE critical mass vaporizes, this would only be a TINY fraction of the claimed energy release of a Hiroshima bomb. I say, that not even THIS would happen. At the very center of the critical mass, in a space about the size of a cherry, a pea, or even just a mustard seed, the solid uranium would vaporize. Almost NONE of the nuclei would have fissioned at all, even in this mustard seed size portion at the very center, because the nuclei are very far apart, and enough of them would fission to create this heat. It would vaporize because of the HEAT, caused by the greatly increased vibration of the uranium atoms, caused by the daughter nuclei being driven apart. And that mustard seed of uranium vapor would expand and blow apart the critical mass, and thus destroy it. It would be an extremely small explosion, if at all. It could ALSO be that it would melt. And melting would destroy the critical mass as well, because it is absolutely essential that it be balled up close together. If the uranium spread out, it would have the same effect as the subcritical pieces being originally separated from each other.

A metal melting in a tiny fraction of a second is something that anyone familiar with working on electric circuits knows. Short a circuit and POOF ! ----- a lot of bluish white sparks fly out. I have seen the metal melt on my screwdriver, from this very brief event. So it makes sense to me that the melting and / or the vaporization of the uranium metal would take place BEFORE enough nuclei would get a chance to fission for the claimed energy release of a Hiroshima bomb. The entire critical mass vaporizing would require only on the order of one ten thousandth of the energy that is claimed for Hiroshima. And the very moment that critical mass melts, or even the smallest portion of it ( which always would have to be at the center ) vaporizes ---- there goes the chain reaction ! The chain reaction will necessarily cease and desist, because it no longer would be a critical mass brought together !

Because kinetic theory explains what heat is on the atomic or molecular level ---- the heat of any amount of substance is the sum of the vibrational kinetic energy of the atoms or molecules that make up that substance ---- it is essential to understanding the fly in the ointment, or the insurmountable stumbling block, to the success of nuclear explosions, even if we accept nuclear fission. THAT is what I mean by the equation :

nuclear fission + kinetic theory = nuclear bomb hoax

I am also coining a BRIEF statement to sum up the physics problem of the nuke bomb hoax, because I realize that this idea needs to be SOLD. Easily remembered "soundbites" are needed. Note that Herman Cain has recently risen to the top of the polls in the GOP field. Many analysts attribute it to how easy it was to boil down his whole campaign : "9-9-9."

Now, getting back to my freshman science teacher. He DID state that nuclear bombs explode in the lecture, and he gave that "boilerplate," or trite and overly worn, expansive gesture with his hands, that everyone makes who tries to justify nuke bombs exploding. The lecture he said this was toward the end of the semester, probably in December, and I had the time to talk to him after class, because Cross Country season was over and I didn't have to go to practice. And it was the last class I had, at the end of the day. So I had plenty of time to talk to him. And it was HIS last class as well. He was very eager to talk about the CONCEPT behind science. Maybe if I pestered him with help on routine drill problems, he would be less eager. But talking about the concepts behind science, especially if it involves thinking something different or a sense of discovery, is the ultimate experience for any science teacher, and the very reason that went into that field. But we did spend some time talking, and I told him exactly what I am typing here, except I was able to illustrate with hand gestures, and using the blackboard. I pointed to the diagram that he had drawn on the board to illustrate the heat on the atomic level, of a solid. I basically said that what he described in class was only an explanation of why the critical mass would get hot, and NOT why it would explode. He said I had a very good point. He was smiling, and I could see him thinking. He ALSO added that the problem was much worse --- that only SLOW neutrons would cause a fissioning, and they had to be slowed down by a moderator, which are present in a nuclear reactor, but said not to be present in the bomb. I then wondered out loud, "what about Hiroshima ?" He could not answer that question. He was not uncomfortable or anything, but we did not get into any kind of historical discussion, about the secret rulers of the world lying to us. But I DID feel a mildly spooky feeling, that comes about when I realize that there is something unfamiliar out there that I did not realize before. I did NOT approach him, to question his authority, or say he was wrong, or to be any kind of conspiracy theorist. All I wanted to do was understand, and I just assumed that there was something that I was not getting. To my great surprise, he agreed that I had a good point.

I am a very sincere person. I give a lot of detail of my vivid recollection of what this teacher said, my personal reflections, in order to show its depth, and its truth. I would NOT be wasting my time typing this out if it were not true. He was NOT the only SCIENCE teacher who doubted that nuke bombs would explode. I had another in high school, a biology teacher, and my university physics professor, who was also a VERY distinguished researcher in solid state physics, and a physics graduate student whose field was relativity theory ---- they ALL doubted that nuke bombs would explode, to my great surprise, actually. And NONE of them had any problems with relativity theory, nuclear fission, or kinetic theory. The problem was with how nuclear fission interacts with kinetic theory, to result in something that would only get hot, and NOT explode with anything NEAR the claimed energy for nuke bombs.

Now, I CANNOT be the only one with this experience. There must be many other people out there as well. I am sure there are some students out there right NOW struggling with this contradiction, which reveals the nuke bomb hoax. Perhaps their teacher might tell these students, " You have a good point. Say, if you do research on the internet and write a paper on it, I will give you extra credit ! "

[rerevisionist]

The first good explanation of Brownian movement was advanced by Desaulx in 1877: "In my way of thinking the phenomenon is a result of thermal molecular motion in the liquid environment (of the particles)

Interesting because it's wrong, and shows how subtle mistakes get into circulation and hard to remove.

Water molecules are now known (usual provisos) to have a slight charge. Despite H2O being neutral overall, the molecule is usually shown as a bit like a mickey mouse head, with two small hydrogens poking out. There's an asymmetry of charges, with the two 'ears' charged one way, and the other side of the molecule charged the other way. Or something like that.

This means for example sodium ions in the blood aren't just tiny Na+ things floating around, but attract a surrounding shells of water molecules. But the same thing happens with water molecules themselves; they attract their neighbours and various pattern take shape, not of course very stable ones. When water freezes, the patterns become ossified into various geometrical forms. (Imagine an executive toy made of small magnets, with a pair of north poles at one side, south at the other. If you have a deep tray of these, pulling them out would generate strange patterns, probably like water - drips, strands, loops). Surface tension presumably results from this. Anyway 'thermal molecular motion' is wrong - it's not the isolated molecules that have the effect, but clumps of them. A bit like an egg being boiled, jittering about as expanding bubbles move it..