Hi Nigel,

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 01:04:29PM +0100, Nigel Duckworth wrote:
> 
> My Tacoma Narrows analogy was to do with efficient use of energy, the 
> bridge was destroyed by 40 MPH winds!

It's still a bad analogy, whether the energy to break a H-O bond is added
gradually, and stored by resonance (I'm not even sure this is possible), or
all at once, the total amount of energy is the same. It doesn't matter how
efficient the process is, using electrolysis to generate hyrdogen always
takes more energy than is returned by using the hydrogen. There is _always_
a net loss. This is an unfortunate fact of the universe we find ourselves
in.

> Same reply for resonance and a word-search on Wikipedias 'resonance' 
> page doesn't reveal  "woo-woo"? :)
> 
> ... it does refer to the bridge failure though;
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance

Whenever resonance is mentioned with regard to free energy, over unity, or
perpetual motion the word is a good indication of crack-pottery. James Randi
uses the word woo-woo a lot in his writing, which is where I saw it.

Matthew

-- 
"I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish.
 The wicked sometimes rest."   -- Alexandre Dumas
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