This kid is going places.
Not really, reality will hit him rather hard
No way a teacher wouldn’t know this!
Okay so the light bulb example can be wrong. My grandpa would heat his room with a 100 watt bulb meaning both the light and the heat were useful outputs.
I mean isn’t this wrong? It may be near 100% but there’s never 100% conversion to a single kind of energy. For example, even if it’s just a tiny faction, magnetic field convert electrical energy to kinetic energy, no?
100% of that tiny fraction still returns to heat.
Ah so we count following convertions. That clarifies things, thx.
What about heat pumps they have efficiency in the range of 200-300%
Heat pumps move heat around, whereas radiators create it.
The “efficiency” of heatpumps relates to heat they import into a system for a given amount of power, compared to creating heat with that power. They are not generating that heat. They are moving it.
Similarly, it’s much more energy efficient to use a wheelbarrow to collect ice and move it inside, than it is to make ice cubes in freezer.
Power-line losses before your house, so only a electric heater is only 96%-85% effecient. When the heating for bird feets is accounted, it’s 100%.
Unless it makes a noise or a light that escapes the house
Well it is heat. If we count power lines as part of an electric heater I’d say that’s still effective.
Blaming the heater for losses in the power lines doesn’t seem fair.
what if you’re running it directly from a generator?
If the generator is inside the house, 100%. But then you could just burn the fuel…
you could just burn the fuel…
You’re assuming this heater is on grid power. We just need to power it by solar panels that are inside the house, under a skylight. Now we’ve got a 100% efficient heater, just don’t ask about PV efficiency…
induction losses:
The entropy machine has a 100% efficiency
Isn’t some energy still dissipated as light instead of heat?
When light is absorbed by surface, the material temperature increases and remits light at a longer wave, ussually in the IR spectrum. So its safe to say all light is heat enegry.
Which travels to a location, hits it and is eventually converted to heat.
So not a heater…but the universe.
Typically a heater is in a room, so any light doesn’t need to go further than the nearby walls
But a heater produces heat and light. The light might turn into heat later but that’s not heat from the heater. Otherwise everything is s heater and it’s all part of the same heater… the universe.
Aren’t computers damn near 100 percent efficient heaters?
No, they’re damn near as power-efficient as electric space heaters though if I’m not mistaken, but these are not 100% efficient.
Forgive me for being argumentative, not my intention to be combative but now that I’m thinking more about it, isn’t everything a 100% efficient heater? Like sound hits an object, and is turned into heat. Light hits an object and is turned into heat. Electricity travels down a wire and is turned into heat(usually).
Or light.
Noise would be a small but non-zero form of heat loss that shouldn’t contribute to temperature increase
Noise would turn in to heat as it’s absorbed, so it’s just heat with extra steps. Same deal with lights
Perhaps this is a dumb question, but perhaps it is not:
If you just had, in say a studio apartment, or a single bedroom, basically just a large container of water, where the container is made of something fairly to considerably thermally conductive…
Would or could this act as something like a thermal regulator for the room, to a potentially useful degree, such that it could ease the overall power usage of an AC/Heating system?
The water doesn’t do anything, in like a drsigned machine sense; its not part of plumbing or heating, its just a big ole tank of water, sitting there.
The idea I am going with is something like how large static bodies of water act as regulators for nearby climate zones, through a day night cycle … they tend to keep temperatures in the surrounding area a bit more stable, though of course humidity and the water cycle have other effects in a more open weather system.
I also realize there are a lot of potentially confusing or confounding variables at play here.
I’ve seen someone do something slightly like this with a greenhouse. It had a large tank of water in the middle. It was black, so it absorbed sunlight during the day, heating the water, and then that kept the temperature up at night.
I think it also had something to do with an aquaponics setup? Like there were either fish in the tank, or in a “pond,” and fish shit water would be cycled out to the plants because fertilizer?
So a bunch of the other comments have mentioned this but you would be creating a thermal battery essentially. These can be useful for smoothing out the temperature changes in that room but it isn’t exactly efficient since the only way to heat or cool it is by changing the temperature at the surface of the container.
Adding passive heat sinks like radiator fins would increase the efficiency as it would absorb or diffuse the temperature difference with increased surface area but it would still would be subject to things like the air conditioning turning on and off more regularly when there is a higher ambient temperature delta or condensation when the weather is hot and moisture is high. You’ve essentially added an inactive water boiler tank in the middle of a room that takes up space and takes a long time to either heat up or cool down and it still would be lagging behind where you want the temperature to be.
You’re on the right track to a good idea with trying to store thermal energy but it can be made better with a few tweaks:
- Let’s make the tank part of an active system by adding pumps and a heat exchanger that integrates with your current air duct system (assuming you have one). We can heat and cool the tank directly instead of passively so that our time and energy is directed more efficiently.
- Insulate it so that we minimize any unwanted heat changes
- Move it to a utility room or outside so you aren’t taking up room space
Now we have a thermal battery that works with your air conditioning system as opposed to against it. This can be paired with other methods of heat/cooling such as a solar system.
But if you’re in a dorm or somewhere you can’t make changes, it could make sense if you aren’t paying for electricity, you actively heat/cool the bucket by putting it in a freezer or on a heater/fire, and you don’t mind a large metal container in the middle of the room? Just watch for a lot of condensation when cooling the air.
Move it deep underground, congtats you just invented geothermal 😁
Honestly, not even that deep can used for geothermal. You can dig 6 feet deep for a horizontal ground loop in most places and still be completely usable for a ground source heatpump.
Congrats, you’ve invented a radiator.
You see this with normal heating systems. My house has hot air heating with a big burner and vents in the rooms. It is great for instant heat but once it turns off you lose the heat just as fast. And if you dont have a vent in the room it can be pretty cold.
But the house I grew up in had water filled radiators in every room. Took ages to warm up the house but it would transfer an awful lot of heat into the brick walls so it would stay warm for a really long time after the heating shut off.
So in the old house in winter you really didnt notice the heating turning on and off but in my new one it is painfully obvious. I really want to rip it out and get a better system.
Useful? No, mainly because you need circulation of the air to feel it.
I didn’t downvote you, but:
Ok, then… have a ceiling fan above it?
A very slow one, that uses little energy?
Secondary thought! What if you attached a bunch of processor heat sink type fins to the mass? Might not be good for long term regulation, but it would smooth out temperature curves daily.
Yes but then the downside is you have a giant porcupine that will draw blood, in the middle of the room, lol.
You could buff that out a bit though?
…?
Badges of honor are not so easily dismissed.
Yes but there might be nonmasochists in the household, guests, children, pets, etc.
Not everyone is defacto down with a blood sacrifice for the Omnissiah.
Very fair. I forget my selfishness on occasion. Thank you for reminding me that I am not the center of the universe.
No need to apologize for someone else. But I appreciate the thought.
And you are absolutely right. A ceiling fan, plus a thermal mass would work.
I don’t think it’s a dumb question at all. I’m not a physics person but I think what you’re describing is a thermal battery. It’s the reason people put tiles in their ovens for smoothing out hot and cold spots and moderating temperature swings from the oven cutting on and off or opening the door.
Yes, this is called thermal mass, or more scientificly, heat retention. The more stuff you in have a space, the more resilient to change it’ll temperature it is. Insulation, is basically putting a bunch of high retention materials in perimeter of a building so that it stays more consistent
Hrm.
What about:
Radiant Barrier.
Basically, as I understand it, this stuff is extremely good at reflecting heat… not… absorbing and containing it. And it is relatively stupidly cheap, for how effective it is.
Like, its so effective that the industry that makes traditional US home insulation batting… basically did everything they could to make it so as few people know this stuff exists as possible.
Radiant barrier is a different insulation mechanism and is also good. The nice thing about radiant barrier is it requires very little material to do its thing. The best solution is a combination of the 2, but most insulation is still opperating by thermal mass.
Sounds like adobe sorta.
Lots of places in the desert with big walls.
Large brick/stone fireplace+chimneys do similar in colder climates, holds heat in the winter and stays cooler in the summer.
Oh, I hadn’t even thought of that. I always thought stoves were just way more efficient, but a giant old school hearth-thing actually makes a lot more sense now.
Something you’ll forever see now: In the United States, homes in the North have inboard chimneys and hearths. The brickwork is inside the walls for better heating in the winter. Homes in the South have outboard chimneys, so that you can cook in the summer without dying of heat stroke.
Electronics teachers generally clarify “other than resistive heaters”
Also a question of optimizing its use
noo get the oily greasy food away from technology 😭
What are you, afraid of fire? This is progress. Cavemen were bold and progressed.
The resulting grease fire will increase the electrical power->heat conversion calculation over 100%!
A completely valid pannini press, imo.
Like this is literally the ‘modern problems require modern solutions’ meme.
I’ve used older PC battlestations of mine as ‘bonus’ spaceheaters more than once, lol, sorta like those ‘pocket warmer’ apps for phones that would just run some absurd computation that would redline the cpu, hahah!
That’s sausage-bread though
Oh.
Sorry, I’m… actually unfamiliar with concept.
Is that basically a sausage with a small loaf of bread baked around it?
Sorry it’s a sausage roll in English; it’s called sausage bread in Dutch
I had some frozen imitation crab legs that I wanted to eat, but didn’t want to microwave proper. I put them on top of my PC’s GPU radiator and ran a stress test while watching stuff so it would thaw faster without overheating.
I have a little “tradition” of doing a playthrough of very hardware-demanding stuff in winter. Tarkov is one of my favs for this since it’s unoptimized as hell and the post soviet aesthetics really fit the season
I waited until winter to rip my DVD collection because it meant hours of high throttle on the PC.
I may get flack for this but mine was the Cinematic Mod version of HL2.
Not because I wanted … the terrible ‘cinematic’ music, or ludicrous XXX character model ‘upgrades’… I genuienly liked the revamped maps, greater texture detail.
GAH! Unless you personally disinfected them and wiped them clean of disinfectant, GAH! Know how many people play footsie with those?
… Some people keep track of their power bricks and know where they’ve been.
… Never thought ‘good cable management’ would become a hygiene/sanitation issue, but, apparently it is.
Not me. I leave my power bricks at the bus station and tell them don’t call until you have daddy’s money.
… so… you’re saying I can rent a power brick from you?
100% efficient!!! You’re using all the energy to do meaningful work!
Setup sponsored by Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, to have a real toasting effect.
Any resistance heater, but the most efficient ≠ the most cost effective.
A heat pump will drop to 100% efficiency in cold enough weather.
Can heat pumps drop below 100%?
They can drop all the way to 0 if the temperature difference is high enough. You can’t heat your house with a heat pump if it’s 0K outside.
Heat pumps generally come with an electrical resistive backup in case it’s too cold outside, so even at arbitrarily low temperatures a heat pump can only drop to 100%
At that point, the heat pump is off and you’re using a resistive heater. You can’t just glue an LED to an incandescent lightbulb and call it a 50% efficient incandescent lightbulb.
True. You know, the moment I left that comment, I thought that was pedantic, I shouldn’t have said it, but by that point if I had deleted it it would just sit there saying deleted forever and that would bother me even more
I usually issue retractions by just putting a strikethrough on the text of the comment (using double tildes [~~] on each side).
