

Pulse jet tea kettle - hansc
http://hackaday.com/2012/09/21/pulse-jet-tea-kettle/

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ajays
This brought a huge grin to my face. I think I'll be smiling for the rest of
the day, just thinking about it. It's wonderful to see people tinker and
explo(r|d)e stuff!

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utopkara
Similar thoughts here. Still don't quite understand why the brits like their
tea with milk.

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ajays
I drink (black) tea with milk. So here's a _very_ anecdotal/hypothetical
thought: my brother switched to drinking black tea without milk. A couple of
years later, he had a kidney stone; and the doctor claimed it was the tea.

Some of the tannins that give the tea its color are small enough to get into
the blood stream, but get caught in the kidney, possibly leading to stones. So
if you add milk, the big fat molecules of milk trap these, which prevents them
from getting caught in the kidney; hence no stones.

I could be wrong...

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utopkara
You could be right. I've been drinking black tea no milk/sugar for 10+ years,
no kidney stones yet. Which would make me superhuman, and I'd like that
possibility even if it is quite slim.

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shabble
I was hoping this would involve some sort of crazy energy transfer like
cavitation heating or something. Still a neat project, but I'm sure there are
better things to do with a functional pulse-jet.

This led me to wonder: what's the fastest (and at least hypothetically non-
widespread-destructive[1]) method of boiling a kettle-sized volume (say, 1.5l
or so) of water[4].

1.5l * 4.2kJ/l/K * (100 - 20)K =~ 500kJ energy required.

Exactly what sort of (practical) coupling achieves the most effective transfer
is the purpose of the challenge.

Thoughts?

[1] in the spirit of the George Goble[2] approach to BBQ ignition optimisation
using liquid oxygen[3]

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Goble>

[3] <http://www.humournet.com/collage.archives/collage096.txt>

[4] Trickery involving reduced pressure to achieve low-temp boiling are
considered cheating. I"m not sure what the benchmark pressure would be though,
since you'd probably want a high-pressure heating vessel in case you overshoot
and vaporise it.

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jlgreco
The trick is to maximize surface area. Taking this to it's logical conclusion,
the fastest way to boil that much water probably involves aerosolizing it into
a rather large and hot flame. Perhaps that LO2/charcoal flame. ;)

If that is cheating, then the solution is probably somewhere in the middle I
suppose.

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eckyptang
Another creation by Colin Furze here: the flame throwing scooter, which
incidentally got him arrested.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UNr1XClnec>

I wish I had the time to do pointless and dangerous things like this.

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indiecore
I wish I had the tools and space to do stuff like this.

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robertfw
I'd suggest looking for a local hackerspace. You can find a fairly
comprehensive list here: <http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces>

There you'll likely find the tools, space, and most importantly a community of
people willing to give you advice :)

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hcarvalhoalves
I found the insane guy immensely entertaining.

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ChuckMcM
And there is always the Jet powered beer cooler :
<http://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer/>

So now you can cook things or freeze them :-)

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brianbreslin
Can someone explain this in laymen terms please? looks cool though.

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ghostfish
A pulse jet is an incredibly simple kind of jet engine, usually with no moving
parts. They were used on the V1 flying bomb in WWII. Wikipedia probably
explains it better than I can <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_jet_engine>
. The version in this video is a valveless pulsejet.

Basically, he put the combustion chamber of the pulse jet in a tea kettle, so
instead of just glowing red hot when it's running, it heats water. Also, it's
awesome.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Also, google "jam jar pulse jet." I made one in about 5 minutes last summer.
Lot of fun, but scary when you realize it's a hot flame contained in a glass
jar.

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Florin_Andrei
Oookay, that's just insane.

I think I might try it.

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powertower
Looks dangerous. I wouldn't use it.

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prodigal_erik
"Looking at Goble's video and photos, I became, as an American, all choked up
with gratitude at the fact that I do not live anywhere near the engineers'
picnic site." - <http://www.davebarry.com/misccol/charcoal.htm>

Does my heart good to see there are still some hardcore tinkerers out there,
though.

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furyg3
You will be happy to know that the site mentioned in the article is still
available:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19961227054127/http://ghg.ecn.pur...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961227054127/http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/)

