Saturday, August 2, 2014

JREF´s Redwood: Stupid Is as Stupid Does

My last article was about an incident on the JREF forum where one local troll declared to the world that he could not find any data about aluminum in Dr. Harrit´s 2009 nano-thermite paper. The article reveals how a lone truther on the forum humiliated Mr. Spanx by pointing out that Harrit´s paper has been available for more than 5 years, and that it quite clearly shows the evidence for the elemental aluminum in the chips.

It also shows how a fellow JREF-Troll tried to save Mr.Spanx by claiming Harrit´s data does not show aluminum in the residue from the ignited chips, and how the truther debunks that by referring to two graphs in the paper. The truther also noted how Spanx has accidentally debunked the JREF defense against the aluminum in the residue: The JREFers had previously acknowledged the aluminum in the residue, but claimed that Dr. Harrit did not prove a thermite reaction because he did not prove the aluminum in the residue is an oxide. But Mr. Spanx had unwittingly cited a paper that proves this is not necessary.

In this article, I am revealing how another troll tried to save Mr. Spanx with an even more stupid comment: Enter Mr. Redwood! Instead of acknowledging Harrit´s aluminum data for the residue, Redwood tried to go back to pretending there is no aluminum in the pre-ignition data. How sophisticated!

But incredibly, that was not Redwood´s most stupid ploy! No, he also tried to debunk Harrit´s nano-thermite finding by claiming that Spanx´s cited paper on thermite-residues actually proves that normal thermite out-performs nano-thermites (as if it matters). But of course, Mr. Redwood only managed to prove how poor his reading comprehension skills are. He cited a bit from the paper saying that when one compares normal macro-sized thermite to the same thermite made with the sol-gel method, the normal non sol-gel thermite has a noticeably higher IGNITION POINT. The problem is that poor Redwood had "understood" this to mean that normal thermite is more powerful than std thermite, and he said so in a very arrogant post:
"In other words, micron-sized aluminum in thermite outperforms nano-meter sized aluminum, but formulating thermite into a gel makes it easier to ignite. That is all. Class dismissed."
The "lone truther" MirageMemories pointed out Redwood´s flatulent mistake in a very nice and polite way:
"All I see is a lot of posturing in an attempt to divert attention from the acknowledged aluminum revealed in figures 25 and 26 of the 2009 Bentham paper.
Your "money quote", where you seem to think that the words "advanced by 68.1 deg C and 76.8 deg C" refer to the micro aluminum outperforming the nano aluminum actually refer to the fact that when the micro aluminum thermite is prepared as "normal thermite" or "simple" as it is put in table 1, and not prepared as a "nanocomposite" or a "sol-gel thermite", the IGNITION POINT is raised by about 68 and 77 degrees!

Figure 5 and Table 1 in Spanx´s paper actually confirm that the nano aluminum outperforms the macro aluminum in every way: it ignites at a lower temperature, has narrower DSC peaks with more power (best of 4.3W vs best of 2.96W), and more energy (best of 1648J vs best of 955.2J)."