Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!ames!ncar!gatech!rutgers!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!uvicctr!collinge
From: collinge@uvicctr.UUCP (Doug Collinge)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Free power from 'whispering wires' ??
Message-ID: <449@uvicctr.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jul 88 01:51:14 GMT
References: <3170@tekgen.BV.TEK.COM> <1310011@hpcilzb.HP.COM>
Reply-To: collinge@uvicctr.UUCP (Doug Collinge)
Organization: University of Victoria, Victoria B.C. Canada
Lines: 29

In article <1310011@hpcilzb.HP.COM> eric@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Eric Novikoff) writes:
>You CS types need to take an E+M class!!!! 

Listen politely but do not accept the assurances of an scientist or engineer
who says something cannot be done.  They seem to be highly inclined to 
invoke their intuition and call it science, extrapolationg wildly or applying
formulae while not accounting for unknown variables.  I don't know why this
is but it certainly gives science a bad name.  How often do you hear scientists
say "We really don't understand much about this..."?

A wonderful example:  I was watching some show, 60 Minutes or somesuch,
listening to a hydrogeologist laughingly put down water diviners, saying
that "it just doesn't work" and so on as if he knew BECAUSE HE IS A 
HYDROGEOLOGIST.  Well, I know it works because I use it to find buried
pipes.  I don't know if it works for digging wells but I certainly would
not claim it is impossible.

Anyway,  in the case of the farmers stealing power from transmission lines,
I'd take the one guy's word that he'd seen it done over dozens of EEs
waving transformer equations proving that it can't be done.

-- 
		Doug Collinge
		School of Music, University of Victoria,
		PO Box 1700, Victoria, B.C.,
		Canada,  V8W 2Y2  
		collinge@uvunix.BITNET
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