Re: Energy, was Toruses and Treehouses (was: Interiors)

[Patrick Salsbury <salsbury at sculptors dot com>]

On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 09:51:47AM -0500, Charles J Knight wrote:
> > suspended 
> > down a 50' high concrete pylon sitting next to an old hydro dam 
> > that's a few 
> > miles from my house. The house would be arrayed vertically, having 4 
> > or 5 
> > floors suspended off the pylon, and the entire wall would be glass, 
> > overlooking the water as it rushed past. (The house would have its 
> > top near 
> > the top of the falls, and the bottom down at the bottom, so you'd 
> > see the 
> > entire length of the falls from just about any room in the house.) 
> 
> It sounds stunning, Pat.  We want pictures!!!  High res pictures!  (not
> thumbnails) Pictures with a capital P and that rhymes with T and that 
> stands for trees!
> 
> Whoops...sorry.  :-)  Momentary lapse.
> 
	I'm due to get another scanner. I have lots of pictures of the
place, and even did a sketch years ago of the pylon. I would like to whip
up some 3D models superimposed over that scenery to give a realistic feel
to the concept house. It really is a magical place.

> Now...with regard to energy sources.  Let's be realistic here. 
> Relatively 
> few sites are suited to micro-hydro, so let's examine some power sources.
> Is anyone else familiar with the Minto Wonder Wheel invention from the
> 1970s?
	True enough that many places aren't suited for it, but this one I'm
talking about is. In fact, it used to *be* a micro-hydro place. (There are
still bits of old, destroyed machinery, pipes, wires to carry the
electricity out to the grid, etc.) 

> 
> I found an article in an old Popular Mechanics (or was it Pop Science?),
> scanned the pictures, entered the  text, and uploaded it to 
> http://www.keelynet.com years ago.  I'm looking up a direct link to my
> original files right now...found one at a Keelynet mirror site.  
> http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/freenrg/minto.html
> 
> Basically, it operates on the same principle as the old "bobbing bird"
> toys.
> Heat at the bottom causes a fluid to vaporize...that pushes out the
> fluid,
> and creates an imbalance...then the whole arrangement is top heavy and 
> falls over.
> 
> It requires a temperature difference of at least 3 degrees F to function,
> but
> it will function for centuries.
	This is really cool! And the funny thing is, I was just looking at
Billb's site earlier this week, for a different thing. He's got a cool page
on traffic waves at http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html
which closely parallels my thinking on traffic theory, here:
http://reality.sculptors.com/~salsbury/Articles/traffic.busting

	That Minto Wheel is a neat sounding gizmo. Not sure I need
*another* project, but that one might be fun... :-)

-- 
Pat
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