speaking of alternate power sources, PBS (yeah, that's when you know
nothing is on cable 150 channels later) aired a show about the evolution of
the automobile from what it was to what it will be. the owner of Compaq
computers funded a project to develop a more efficient car. what they
developed was a car that uses gas and electric simultaneiously. they showed
it running as well. the neat part about it was that the enginge if you want
to call it that, is more of a turbine.. almost like a jet engine. the
armature spins on a frictionless bering system, so the whole thing needs no
oil at all. their first model only had 2 moving parts. the armature of the
'engine' and the armature of the electrical motor which was powered by
electricity generated by the 'engine'. the new model (and this is what
amazed me) had a flywheel system for electrical generation. there is a
large disk set at the back of the car encased in something (i dont remember
htat part) and vacuum sealed, creating an almost frictionless environment.
but once it got moving, it would spin at almost 60,000 RPM's and wouldnt
stop for almost 16 days. the idea behind this flywheel system is that while
it's spinning, it's generating electricity to be used when the car really
needs it.. almost like a turbo.
anyway, i just thought i'd mention that, maybe it'll start a thread that
could be almost as good as that demons in the night thread (which was
probably some of the best stuff i've read on this list)...
have fun..
-chris
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:09:57 EDT