Recent content by django

I was wondering, take a gun on the one hand and a rocket on the other, using the same amount of “fuel”, the rocket seems to propel its payload further than the gun. Does this imply that reaction processes are more efficient than expansion processes? After all how far a gun can propel a heavy...

OK, forget about space, let's talk about range! The scud, which was a pretty inefficient type of missile, was just twenty or thirty feet in length, used a fract5ion of the fuel equivalent of the scud and could carry a 450Kg payload for 500Kms or so. How does this compare with the huge 510 ft...

mqb phs I think around 40% efficiency for the diesel under ideal running conditions is more accurate. As for the comparison between piston engines and rockets, there seems to be a long standing myth that expansion processes are more efficient than reaction processes. They are not. Look at the...

The compressed air car is a much desired development in the search for an alternative cleaner, non-polluting form of motivating power that can be used in transportation. For the past 150 years the IC Piston engine, working on the Otto cycle and first invented in 1866 by Nicholaus Otto, has been...

Torque is claclulated in absolute units, in this case foot pounds. You have to take into account the angular velocity, and the radius and mass of the fly-wheel. But here's the interesting thing if you have a fly-wheel that is two feet in diameter, and apply a force of 1lbwt. to turn the...

Angled supports, sound good. But make sure that you have left holes in the retaining wall, for the rain water to drain through, or else it will serve as a dam and the combined weight will bring the whole thing down. django

Isn't this what the Rotary Pulse Jet Engine is all about. See the thread on the Rotary Pulse Jet engine in this forum. django

It might surprise you to know that I, at one time thought as you did, that there could not possibly be much energy in reactive forces. Looking at some of the posts by other members in this thread, this seems to be a widely held view. What changed my mind, and set me thinking was an article on...

It sounds to me something like Stevenson's steam engine. django

It comes to the same thing, the shell takes the places of the combustion chamber. Am I right Astronuc? I think that it is a pretty fair post, always remembering that rate of flow can be speeded up to optimise power. Further, strictly speaking because of the fact that the propellant is expoanded...

Chroot point taken. django

Should I take that to mean that in your opinion the cannon with the nozzle would be less effective. Let me put it anotherway. For example, take an open ended cylinder of a certain diameter, equipped with a piston and a cork pushed tightly into one end, and call this cylinder A. When the piston...

You(aggregation of atoms, neutrons, electrons etc.,) can believe what you want. And for all you know you may very well be right. Ciao. django

oblef Yeah! But what you are forgetting is that you yourself are a very complicated aggreagation of matter, that just happens to classify what is happening as a sense of touch! django

oblef Wrong! You should actually be in a forum dealing with medical sciences! When you touch something, the nervous system in your hand activates neurons within the brain that inform you of the kind of substance that you are 'touching'. So what we are dealing with here is not physics, it is...