Please log in.
Before you can vote, you need to register. Please log in or create an account.
Product: Refrigerator: Cooling
Frozen standing wave of Mercury chest fridge   (0)  [vote for, against]

(With a large nod to bigsleep, please direct any buns in the direction of bigsleep)

A chest freezer which has a metal plate (hermetically sealed (ho ho)) on the top with metal compartments going deep to shallow. There's a glass panel on one side.

The deep end is for stuff that's actually to be frozen, to the not very deep for the salad tray.

The Mercury is in a frozen standing wave, with more of the stuff around the deep compartments and vice versa.
-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 03 2019

diagram https://drive.googl...DsOA3JSQag5aeMvFcXn
[not_morrison_rm, Feb 07 2019]

Standing waves in a wave tank https://www.youtube...watch?v=NpEevfOU4Z8
Starts with a traveling wave from the wave generator. This sets up a standing wave around 0:50. Some traveling waves are seen later in the video, too, when they turn the wave generator off and also at the start of the second run. [notexactly, Feb 07 2019]

great frozen mercury wave off Kanagawa https://drive.googl...AME-O8urVueA0-5WKDL
[not_morrison_rm, Feb 08 2019]

My version of that https://deepdreamge.../ddream/mvt05e326w0
Style transferred from this photo of mercury being poured: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pouring_liquid_mercury_bionerd.jpg [notexactly, Feb 09 2019]

>A chest freezer which has a metal plate (hermetically sealed (ho ho)) on the top with metal compartments going deep to shallow. There's a glass panel on one side.

I'm with you so far, and I know what a standing wave is, but I have no idea how this is supposed to function as a freezer or make a freezer behave differently.
-- Voice, Feb 03 2019


Well-spotted that entity.

It's a standard heat pump jobbie, with heat exchanger to cool the liquid mercury. Mercury has a freezing point of -38 degrees, so a reasonably good freezer.

And you can watch the wave. For a change, you could put in some red mercury.
-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 03 2019


Are you imagining a standing wave as producing a static slope of mercury, deeper at the cold end?
-- notexactly, Feb 04 2019


Sort of, but the gradient of cooling is produced by distance from the bottom of the compartments.

I knocked up a diagram, with one cheat - the actuator is sonic, and does the cooling as well, with a boring old freezer heat pump.

Link.
-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 07 2019


I don't understand why the mercury needs to be in a standing wave, or how the standing wave is maintained
-- hippo, Feb 07 2019


//Are you imagining a standing wave as producing a static slope of mercury, deeper at the cold end?//

You'd have to watch it under a strobe light of the right frequency to make it hold still.
-- Loris, Feb 07 2019


//a static slope of mercury, deeper at the cold end// - another way to produce this effect is to mount your mercury-filled chest freezer on a handy centrifuge
-- hippo, Feb 07 2019


(sighs) according to Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon it is perfectly easy to make a standing wave in mercury, Waterhouse was using them as an ur-memory device.

Imagine a plastic pipe with contacts at various intervals on the inner top surface. At the end of the pipe there was a loud-speaker.

By modulation of the sound waves, the top of the wave would touch the contact (call is a one) and a wave that did not touch a contact (call it a zero).

Feel free to have a go at Neal Stephenson if he was just bullshitting.

</End of explanation/s>
-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 07 2019


Yeah—I still think you misunderstand what a standing wave is. See [link]
-- notexactly, Feb 07 2019


Yes, I finally do realise that a standing wave actually goes up and down.

So why isn't it called a "going up and down wave in the same place" I know it doesn't exactly trip off the tongue...

Ok, minor edit, the title is "A frozen standing wave of Mercury chest fridge".
-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 07 2019


Forget the 'wave' just create the mercury container to hold whatever shape you want it to maintain.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 07 2019


[2 fries] ...ruining everything with your simple, practical suggestions!
-- hippo, Feb 08 2019


That's why I must only use my powers for good.
<stands and waves mercurially>
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 08 2019


I was going for an other herm- pun but I could only find Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. It's all Greek to me.

NB, 0ne great frozen mercury wave off Kanagawa image. Link
-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 08 2019



random, halfbakery