Joule Thief

[poynt99]

Referring to the capacitor "phenomenon", the burden of proof is on those claiming they are fundamentally different, or different in such a way as to facilitate OU when in combination with and ordinary circuit.

.99

[poynt99]

I am simply being conservative and just doing a mundane estimate of the energy audit when you over-voltage a chemical battery.  Hence I am making reasonable assumptions.  That's actually Occam's Razor in action, don't you think?

You could also do a rough energy audit trail for the posted circuit just by eyeballing it.  Poynt crunched the real numbers a few postings back for the the proposed test.  The JT enthusiasts might be curious to do the same thing for their own setups.  When they make a LED flash, has anybody ever thought about measuring how many millijoules of energy are expended per flash, and then relate that back to the available energy in the battery setups that they are using.  Taking it one step further, it would be interesting to know how mush energy is really available in the battery you are using by measuring it first, and not just using the published spec for the ampere-hours.  It would be an interesting investigation.

MileHigh

[poynt99]

Gadget:

The short version is that the battery will charge the capacitor multiple times until it is discharged.  When you "recharge" the battery by connecting it to the charged capacitor most of the energy transferred into the battery in preparation for the next cycle is in fact lost as heat.  The battery only gets a tiny recharge when you do this.  The sum total of the energy that you put into the capacitor and try to recirculate ultimately adds up to less than the total energy in the battery at the start of the test.  The reason for this is that you loose some of the battery energy as heat to operate the circuit itself, and you loose some of the energy as heat when you go to recharge the battery.  That's your inescapable "overhead."

Another thing to ponder is the measured battery voltage.  If a battery only looses 0.02 volts when you run a test - this is not an indication of how much energy there is left in the battery or how much energy the battery just expended to run the test.  The battery could loose 5%, 10%, or 70% of it's energy.  You simply don't know how much by just measuring the battery voltage.  The battery voltage can even increase even though the battery has less energy in it at the end of the test.  So battery voltage is an invalid way of measuring the amount of energy remaining in a battery, or how much energy was expended by a battery.  Hence the need for proper testing to prove the claim.  This would apply to any device based on a battery.

MileHigh

[poynt99]

Gadget:

It doesn't boggle my mind.  For example, it is no surprise that a battery charger will get burned when trying to charge an ultracapacitor.  I could have told you that 30 years ago before ultracapacitors even existed and I could explain it all upside-down and inside-out.  I am not trying to sound smart, in different circles "anybody" would think the same thing as me and pay no attention to it.  Nothing miraculous is happening, although you perceive it to be miraculous.

The key is to understand how the energy is moving around in the circuit, and to then make measurements to confirm your understanding.  If the measurements are in accord with what you expect to happen, then it would be good for two others to confirm the same thing.  If the measurements show something out of the ordinary, then you retest and remeasure until you are truly satisfied that you got it right.  Then if at least two others can replicate the effect, then you have the start of something - just the start.

If this actually were to be done, and you measure the proper energy trail, then you are going to see how ultimately all of the chemical energy in the battery becomes heat energy and light energy.  It will be a process of confirming that our current understanding of how chemical, electrical, heat, and light energy really work.

The ultracapacitor is simply an energy storage element in this system.  Chemical energy becomes electrical energy and it then gets stored in the ultracapacitor.  The electrical energy stored in the ultracapacitor typically becomes heat by the end of the experiment.  It is really as straightforward as that - and it can be confirmed again by making the proper measurements.

One of the things that you do in your circuit is play with the power levels with respect to time.  You fill the ultracapacitor with electrical energy at a very low power level.  Then at some later point in time you discharge the energy stored in the ultracapacitor at a very high power level for a short time.  So, (low power x long time) = (high power x short time).  This is all normal, and should not be confused with over unity or extra energy.

That's the real deal, and if people on your team are sincere and willing to investigate your circuit, the above description gives you a broad outline of what is really going on, not to be confused with your impression of what's going on in the circuit.  It's all about learning to "see."

MileHigh

[poynt99]

An excerpt of Stefan's post, after he meddled with the two threads and merged them:

Let us discuss here, how to measure the JT in a right way and to see,
how the measurements are done the right way.

Regards, Stefan (admin).