See Joe. See Joe Cell. Run Joe Cell, at 125% Efficiency.
A few days ago, a friend of mine told me about a thing called the ‘Joe Cell’. Apparently it’s yet another attempt to build a device that puts out more energy than you put in. I’ll be honest, I’ve seen so many that this one didn’t interest me at first, but then I read the website, and it really is delightfully and repeatedly demented. You can tell he’s a crank because the website has this at the bottom:
For the rights to republish information or theories from this website, please contact: hamish@thejoecell.com
Only cranks ever imagine they can own information or theories and legally stop people disseminating them.
First things first. A Joe Cell is a series of tins of water, arranged in a Russian Doll formation, kept at low pressure. Then you ‘charge’ it: hook the inner-most and outer-most metal cylinders up to a voltage and leave it for a bit. When you’re done, it becomes a never ending battery (which may explain why “Joe Cells are reportedly… prone to dying for no apparent reason”). But then they also say that you can test it by checking the pH of the water, which is just downright silly because it’s chemically impossible to make any pH above or below 7.0 using whole, pure water, because pH is a measure of how many H+ an OH− ions there are and water is H2O. That’s one of their saner ideas – they go on to say
Some people have claimed that the Joe Cell harnesses some type of magical life force energy referred to as Orgone. Others believe that it pulls energy straight from the very fabric on the universe ’“ the aether.
That presumably being the same æther that was proven not to exist in the late eighties? Of the 19th century?
The website says the cell is “essentially a capacitor”, but one that doesn’t lose its charge as it, er, releases charge. This isn’t even bad science by this stage; this is a violation of basic maths. But the real genius lies on the “references” page. Highlights include Cold Fusion patent with similaries [sic] to Joe Cell.doc, Positive Electricity (doc), which explains that if you line up a load of protons, then “the positive charge of the hydrogen nucleus - a proton - passing rapidly down the chain by relay, without the proton actually moving down,” which is a lot like saying you can move the weight of a rock without moving the rock, and Water Car Instructions (PDF), which is just what it sounds like.
You should be careful when filling the Joe Cell, because
The Cells are reported to function only when a strong vacuum is created within the cell. For this reason, adding a pressure gauge is recommended. For the Cell to function properly, around 15 psi of vacuum will be required.
For reference, atmospheric pressure is a little over 14psi, so you will need some amount of negative gas in the cell. How you stop the water in there from instantly vaporising and thereby creating pressure I don’t know. I didn’t know atmospheric pressure in psi, of course. I read that claim and thought it sufficiently likely he’d just made the number up to warrant me looking it up on the off-chance. It paid off. Who knows how much of the rest of his site is nonsense I’m too ignorant to spot – or similar guesses that happened to be plausible?
Of course, what makes all this really perverse is that it’s designed to power a car. Even if they’d really discovered a way of getting more-than-100% efficient electricity, cars run on fucking petrol. They wouldn’t run better with a Joe Cell for the same reason that you don’t get a boost of energy when you swallow a AA battery and your car doesn’t run if you fill the petrol tank with brie. Even if it worked, it would only replace the car battery, and you won’t run a car long on batteries and no petrol (unless of course it’s an electric car). If you don’t put petrol in a car, it won’t drive from the starter motor until the battery runs out, it just won’t go. And if you modified the engine so it did, the motor would be destroyed before you hit second gear. Their “clean, green technology” is petrol. If this thing worked, he’d hook up eight of them to a copper and zinc electrode pair and run his entire house on a lemon.
In fact, he suggests having two in your car for “redundancy”, the idea presumably being that if the laws of physics don’t allow you to build a perpetual motion device, try try again. Apparently,
It would make sense to mount then on opposite sides of the engine bay, to reduce them interfering with each other’s magnetic field.
Hang on, what? What magnetic field? Beyond the same tiny field you get from any electrical current, I can’t see any part of the Joe Cell that would have a magnetic field, much less be influenced by one. He goes on to say that the water has to be utterly and completely pure. This is pretty well impossible, but he’s got an answer. Apparently you can mke 100% pure water using a device called a “conditioning cell”. Furthermore,
A conditioning cell is the same as a Joe Cell except it separate from the vehicle.
You’re just being deliberately silly now, aren’t you? Anything else it can do? Can it bringeth the rains to provide the water in the first place?
Because the Joe Cell is creating a cloud like condition on the ground, it makes sense that it could influence weather conditions.
Alright then.
Here’s a great bit explaining how to avoid interference. Also, it’s good advice for anyone who thinks the Joe Cell doesn’t yet look sufficiently ridiculous:
The charge state within the cell can be affected by electromagnetic interference from other electrical devices and power sources. This interference can be minimized by using insulating material to prevent shorting. Wrapping the Cell in Burlap (Hessian) and placing it in a plastic bucket, held in place with blocks of wood is recommended.
I love cranks. I can’t help but.