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From: jlg@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.misc,net.physics
Subject: Re: perpetual motion
Message-ID: <23889@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 29-Mar-85 17:52:34 EST
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Posted: Fri Mar 29 17:52:34 1985
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Xref: watmath net.misc:7733 net.physics:2374

> I saw a film somewhere (whose name I forget) about using hydrogen as
> a fuel. It seems that John Q. Public isn't ready for it -- street
> interviews showed that everybody thought of the Hindenburg.
> 
> They had a nice set of scenes where somone shot tanks of propane,
> something else, something else again, and hydrogen with a bullet from
> a rifle. The hydrogen was the only one that didn't go *BOOM*.

I saw that film too.  It was on PBS (I think it was the Canadian program
"the Nature of Things").  The shots were at propane cylinders, gasoline
tanks, hydrogen cylinders (both pressurized and liquid hydrogen were used),
and finally at a hydrogen storage tank in which the hydrogen was stored in
a loose chemical bond with something else (I forget what).  All but the
gasoline and the chemically stored hydrogen exploded.  The gasoline caught
fire and burned (and finally exploded) after a subsequent shot.  The
chemically stored hydrogen never even burned.  I thought it was an
impressive test.

By the way, I've seen several experimental programs which use hydrogen as
an automotive fuel.  Most use safe storage methods like the one described
above.  The problem is that hydrogen is still not cost competitive with
gasoline.

J. Giles