I didn’t get to the whole paper, but I imagine the challenges of keeping that membrane clean are remarkable.
Ok, I’m being brief but you seem genuinely curious, so, lemme explain what I mean:
In thermo, you would draw a line around a closed system, and say basically conservation of energy applies in this system. Energy in = work out + losses.
In a system where one input is the ocean, you basically just consider that infinite because of the size differences. One dinky little pipe compared to the mass flow into the system from the ocean, that math would be silly to bother with. That said, to swat down the stupid “this is perpetual motion” comments from people with Reddit engineering degrees, you also have to add in the energy input into the system of the sun, which is keeping the water from freezing over the course of 1 million years as it runs someone’s sarcastic water wheel.
Adding salt is endothermic, it absorbs energy.
Most people have this mentally backwards since it's currently so hard to separate salt and water and they don't really notice the water getting cold when they stir in salt. But... there's no reason a process couldn't separate them and give off energy from a thermodynamics point of view.
The separated state has an easy way to receive energy to overcome that hump. It just needs agitation. There should be a way to reverse it and gain energy but we haven't found a good way yet.
That is separating salt from water releases energy. There's nothing perpetual motion about a process that separates fresh water and salt and also gives energy. I'm not sure if the above works or not but physically there's no issue with this.
Think about it - if it really worked you have invented a perpetual motion machine, since you could just feed the fresh water through a little water wheel back into the ocean.
You don't need to do any maths at all to know that his maths has gone drastically wrong somewhere.
Saying “maths” instead of just math sounds quite odd, why are you making it plural? Is solving one equation “a math” and solving multiple equations “maths”?
> So, get off your ath, let's do some math.
Still a minority in people right?
The sun isn't what causes pressure in the ocean...
The Anglo-American linguistic divide is always fun to examine. We don't always come out ahead, but now and then we get winner like "acclimate."
If you don't like something coming between "mathematics" and "are", how about "I can prove Fermat's Last Theorem, but the mathematics are pretty high level." One could argue that many people would say "the math is pretty high level", but I think I've heard each before. It doesn't feel odd to write at all.
Maybe a single mathematic would be a single concept/subject, like arithmetic or algebra?
The four mathematics are arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
> maths
That's what it's called in the UK (and maybe Australia & NZ). Shortening of mathematics. I could say the same about "legos". :)
It may be wrong but it really isn't "obviously delusional."