Sun, HP "scrap" (???)

[Chuck Guzis]

On 1 Jun 2007 at 16:53, woodelf wrote:


> But the one of the arguments from the news reels was the bright flames.
> Hydrogen + Oxygen does give a flame you can see. Also once you got
> your hole burning then does the hydrogen kick in.

Maybe you can see a hydrogen flame because you've got vision into the 
UV.  But a hydrogen flame is very difficult to see in normal 
illumination (and just about impossible under daylight conditions) 
for mere humans.

See, for instance:

http://www.humboldt.edu/~serc/h2safety.html

I remember from my misspent college summers working as an 
instrumentation tech at a steel mill that one needed a special 
detector to see a hydrogen flame.  Those of us who worked at the 
hydrogen-generating plant were warned about this.  Hydrogen in 
quantity is nasty stuff--we had to check our toolbelts, matches, 
cigarette lighters and any steel pocket contents at the gate, lest we 
would cuase a spark and ignite the stuff (the range of explosive 
mixtures of H2 and O2 is very wide).  I learned how blunt a 
sparkproof screwdriver could get in no time at all.

Cheers,
Chuck