# This is not fusion. But what is happening? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 11, 2016, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294 "2016-10-11T23:59:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/1 "2016-10-11T23:59:47Z")
[YouTube link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KV8hz5Ubfc) The guy from the video is coming to the Seattle Skeptics meetup next week to show us his 'Do It Yourself Cold Fusion." As a group, we don’t like to attack our guests when they stray from reason, but I’d like to have some intelligent things to say that might show him where he’s gotten confused. So I’ve decided to start a discussion here. My thought on watching the video is he simply seems to think that pencil lead is pure carbon. I think the clay used to bind it probably has some iron in it that accounts for the magnetic residue. Some of my pencil points even attract a magnet. Anyone have any other hypothesis? Any thoughts on how to easily test to differentiate guesses from one another? One members says she’s ordered some pure graphite to have him try. Wish I owned some sort of radiation detector. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/2 "2016-10-12T00:36:12Z")
The iron is from the clip leads. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/3 "2016-10-12T00:38:37Z")
This is trivial to debunk. Forget the battery, take the pencil, and shave some bits of lead from the tip with a knife onto a piece of paper. Put a magnet under the paper, and voila, “little specks are moving around”. I just tried this. But I suppose he’ll then tell you that you’ve just shown that cold fusion happens just from abrading carbon. –Mark ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/4 "2016-10-12T00:46:00Z")
And anyway, how does he think you can fuse carbon (atomic number 6) and oxygen (8) to get iron (26)? Obviously it’s fusing carbon with nitrogen. :smack: –Mark ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/5 "2016-10-12T01:13:41Z")
Actually pure graphite can be made to be slightly magnetic, but yes, there probably enough ferrite in the binder to make it sufficiently magnetized by exposure to a permanent magnet. All he is doing here is charring the binder to make the graphite flake off. This isn’t any kind of fusion, and certainly not C-O fusion which can be readily determined by looking at a periodic table. The amateur scientist with his reductionist, “The only conclusion we can come to here…” is a moron. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/6 "2016-10-12T03:35:06Z")
> [@Saltire](#): > > Wish I owned some sort of radiation detector. You probably do. A critical point made about Fleischmann and Pons’ initial experiments was that if they were actually seeing the fusion they claimed, they would be dead. Neutron detectors are tricky, but there would be no doubt that sitting over a real fusion reaction will lead to fatal consequences. A useful question to ask your presenter might be to get him to explain why he isn’t dead yet. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/7 "2016-10-12T06:34:25Z")
A properly-controlled experiment would have helped. Such as trying to abrade, then pick up grains of the pencil lead without doing the sparky bit. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/8 "2016-10-12T06:38:36Z")
On thinking about it a bit more, the heat of the electric arcs that he’s making, even though they are small, might be sufficient to reduce some oxides of iron in the clay into metallic particles. (not fusion, just small-scale ore smelting) ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/9 "2016-10-12T07:06:25Z")
The whole thing is trivially stupid anyway. The video is claiming that not one but two oxygen atoms fuse with not one but two carbon atoms in a single hit. This is basically inconceivable. (The argument seems to conflate chemical and nuclear reaction.) But, assume [sup]12[/sup]C and [sup]16][/sup]O (which are by far the most abundent, to be really totally dominant here) you would be looking to get [sup]56[/sup]Fe. Which is fine so far as it goes. Not actually any spare neutrons to worry about. Now, he gets a visible trace of iron particles - enough to pick up with a magnet and be visible. Isotopic mass of [sup]56[/sup]Fe is 54.9382934 Isotopic mass of [sup]12[/sup]C is 12 (by definition) Isotopic mass of [sup]16[/sup]O is 15.99491461956 So our mass difference is 1.0515 or say about 2% Hang on - so 2% of the mass of the iron he picked up got converted into energy? Wow! How much iron did he make? Hard to know. You can see it he claims. Even if the dust he picked up isn’t pure iron, it contains enough to pick up the mass of the dust. Say he made one microgram of iron. (Apparently a fingerprint weights about 50 micrograms). 2% of that goes into energy. That would produce 3.5x10[sup]6[/sup] J of energy. Not all will be apparent locally, but a goodly fraction of it will. That is the equivalent of 0.5kg of TNT. He won’t be just losing his eyebrows. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/10 "2016-10-12T07:21:11Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > A properly-controlled experiment would have helped. Such as trying to abrade, then pick up grains of the pencil lead without doing the sparky bit. Exactly. This “experiment” needed a control. He’s claiming his process transformed carbon and oxygen into iron. Okay, run two chemical analyses: one with the scrapings of two pencils and one with the scrapings of two pencils after they’ve been run through his battery-powered fusion process. If his theory’s correct, you should detect iron in the second sample that isn’t present in the first sample. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/11 "2016-10-12T12:39:35Z")
Iron fusion is endothermic … ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/12 "2016-10-12T12:44:44Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Iron fusion is endothermic … But he isn’t fusing iron, he is making iron. Or at least so he claims. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/13 "2016-10-12T13:59:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Francis Vaughan** : > > But, assume [sup]12[/sup]C and [sup]16[/sup]O (which are by far the most abundent, to be really totally dominant here) you would be looking to get [sup]56[/sup]Fe. Which is fine so far as it goes. Not actually any spare neutrons to worry about. Not any spare, because there’s not enough in the first place. Oxygen and carbon (and nitrogen and almost any other light element he’d have available) all have equal numbers of protons and neutrons. The one exception, hydrogen, has _more_ protons than neutrons. But any isotope of iron with any sort of stability worth mentioning has more neutrons than protons. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/14 "2016-10-12T14:13:50Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Not any spare, because there’s not enough in the first place. Oxygen and carbon (and nitrogen and almost any other light element he’d have available) all have equal numbers of protons and neutrons. The one exception, hydrogen, has _more_ protons than neutrons. But any isotope of iron with any sort of stability worth mentioning has more neutrons than protons. Ugh! I can’t add up :smack: Neither can the guy trying the experiment. I sort of assumed the basic addition had been done. :smack::smack::smack: ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/15 "2016-10-12T14:26:03Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > But he isn’t fusing iron, he is making iron. Or at least so he claims. Ummm, he’s making iron by fusing carbon and oxygen. We all know that fusing two hydrogen to make a helium releases energy, this is what powers our sun. Three helium fuse to make carbon and again releasing energy. This trend doesn’t continue, fusing smaller elements into iron draws energy. When this happens in super massive stars we have a terrible imbalance that causes one type of supernova. So my post “Iron fusion is endothermic” is an intelligent sounding thing for the OP to say. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/16 "2016-10-12T14:29:47Z")
He’s obviously con/fused. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/17 "2016-10-12T14:43:11Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > This trend doesn’t continue, fusing smaller elements into iron draws energy. When this happens in super massive stars we have a terrible imbalance that causes one type of supernova. > > So my post “Iron fusion is endothermic” is an intelligent sounding thing for the OP to say. However the turning point for this is [sup]56[/sup]Fe That is the nucleus with the highest binding energy, from here heavier you need a net input of energy. But from lighter down you can reach iron without. It is the moment when all you have is iron that causes the sudden cessation of energy, and the freefall of the star towards the core. The shockwave that results then it all meets in the middle is where the energy for the fusion of heavier elements come from. But iron is a starting point for this, not a result. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/18 "2016-10-12T15:26:27Z")
Stars that produce a type IIa supernova have iron in their core BEFORE they explode. They use the [Silicon burning process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon-burning_process) to fuse chromium with helium to produce iron. This releases energy. It’s only after they reach iron that there are no further reactions that release energy. –Mark ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/19 "2016-10-12T15:49:47Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > A properly-controlled experiment would have helped. Such as trying to abrade, then pick up grains of the pencil lead without doing the sparky bit. That’s the first thing I noted. Actually, it’s really the only thing I thought. I really don’t know anything about cold fusion, but if you’re going to prove you created it (or anything) by showing that scrapings from the inside of a pencil are magnetic after your experiment, you need to show that they aren’t before hand. That’s just, like, duh. For someone trying to prove cold fusion, you’d think he’d be familiar with the scientific method. Even if he wanted to defraud the people watching, he’d could have faked that part. Also, unless I missed something (and I might have, I sort of skipped around), I didn’t see why he had that part of the pencil, about an inch up, exposed. ---
**Author:** ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294/20 "2016-10-12T16:14:40Z")
Thanks, everyone. It’s going to be hard to destroy this guy’s position without being a bit rude, but we’ll try. One always wants to avoid feeding the ‘skeptic equals cynic’ concept. If you’re in or near Seattle, you can come to the meeting. It’s next Tuesday evening (Oct 18) at a pizza place on Greenwood. Just look it up on [Meetup.com](http://www.meetup.com/seattleskeptics/events/234180342/). [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-not-fusion-but-what-is-happening/768294.md?page=2)