Geek brain...
That must be it....
I just have a geek brain.....
....and sometimes it goes off on these weird tangents without me. Take the other day:
I'm surfing around on Wikipedia at work, just for something to pass the time, and I run across an entry for Stirling Engines.
Now, for those of you who don't know what a Stirling engine is, I'll include a link here to the article I found, and let you read all the hoary details about it: Here
In a simple description, it's a piston engine that uses an enclosed gas (air, helium, nitrogen), and takes advantage of the fact that when you heat a gas it expands, and when you cool a gas it contracts. These engines use a difference in temperature to run. Some models they have out there don't need a big difference in temp. Heck, a few of the models will run by simply sitting in your open hand: your hand supplies enough heat to the one side to set up the difference, and away it goes. On the other side; the bigger the difference in temp., the more power you get out of the engine.
Well, I'm not a mechanical engineer. I can understand machinery, but I'm not really great at designing and building them. You want an absolute genius with that stuff? Go talk to
grevydude. Which is what I want to do.....and I'll tell you why!
I do know a good bit about computer hardware. I also know about a little device they've had out in the computer hardware world for awhile called a Peltzier Cooler. These things are wonders! Thin little wafer-looking things that you can use to chill a CPU in a computer. You apply a small voltage to the wires, and one side gets HOT, and the other side gets COLD. You apply the COLD side to your CPU and the heatsink to the HOT side, and it will litteraly force the heat off of the CPU and into the heatsink. More than just what natural thermal transfer would do. Great for all you over-clockers out there that don't want to deal with water-cooling your computer......
Well, here's where the geek part hit me.....
Most model Stirling motors that folks have build out there have all (or almost all) been run by applying some sort of heat to the 'hot' side by combustion. That makes sense, as these are known as 'External Combustion Engines'. But I noticed right away that these engines don't need to have the 'hot' side "HOT". What the engine needs is a difference in temperature between the hot side and the cool side. Well, a Peltzier Cooler creates a difference in temperature between it's sides when you apply a small voltage (most of the ones that you put in a computer are only 5V DC). Like, a 180 deg. F difference between the sides! So, if I set up the 'hot' piston and the 'cold' piston of a Stirling motor to face each other, and sandwich a Peltzier Cooler between them, then the Peltzier will FORCE the existing heat energy that's already there from the 'cold' cylinder to the 'hot' cylinder. 180 deg. is way more than enough temp. difference to get a Stirling to run (if built right), and you wouldn't have to have any sort of combustion to run the model; you would just need a small battery.
....thus my needing to talk to someone who has more practical experience ( like
grevydude ) in building mechanical models. I know generally what this model should look like, and I believe it would run like a champ; I just don't have the skills, let alone the tools, to put something like this together.
This all makes my geek brain hurt! I hate myself for this $h!t sometimes...
......maybe I should just stick to tatting.....