I'm always looking for leads to good stories. Also stories that the mainstream ignores. For instance, the reason the Russians stand by Assad in Syria may be because there are 50,000 Russians in the country, many of them brides of Syrian students who studied in Russia. If Assad's secular government goes, it may be replaced by Islamists, and that could be tough on those Russian wives. But to a happier story:

The NEw York Times had a piece about a car that runs on water, and I sent this to my editor at Northern Express:

MS#1677watercar/672  words

August 7, 2012

Reply to:

Harley L. Sachs

Apt. 328

2545 SW Terwilliger Blvd.

Portland, OR 97201

503 299 4328

A Car Powered by Water?!

a column by

Harley L. Sachs

Imagine running your car on DiHydrogen Oxide, or HHO, commonly known as water. The theory of HHO gas is that water is broken down into its two gassy components, hydrogen and oxygen. When those ignite they produce a huge amount of heat energy. In my chemistry class Professor Schmidt brought out a balloon filled with two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Using a long pole with a gas flame at the end, he touched the balloon. The loud explosion was so powerful it knocked the chalk off the blackboard.

So what if that energy could be harnessed in an automobile engine? . "HHO gas" got its name from physicist^[ Ruggero Santilli, who claimed that his HHO gas was "a new form of water". Historically, HHO gas has worked for torches used in working with platinum and other uses requiring small quantities. The lime light once used in theaters used HHO but was discarded as too dangerous.  For torches or limelight, yes, but the quantities produced by electrolysis of water into its component gasses is too small to run a car engine. 

Nonetheless, as reported in the New York Times and other newspapers, a Pakistani engineer Waqar Ahmad claims to have done it and demonstrated his water-powered car to parliament. “By the grace of Allah, I have managed to make a formula that converts less voltage into more energy,” the professed inventor, Agha Waqar Ahmad, is quoted as saying. The inventor got a degree in physics but is currently an unemployed policeman.

He attaches a kit to an ordinary car engine to make the conversion.

It’s true that you can run an internal combustion engine on hydrogen, but that is a different critter. That hydrogen wasn’t generated in a kit attached to an ordinary engine with a tank of water.

After seeing Ahmad’s demonstration, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the country’s nuclear weapons program  told a television reporter “I have investigated the matter, and there is no fraud involved.”

 It’s taken seriously by Pakistanis but debunked by scientists around the world. Agha Ahmad doesn’t care. He says he ran his Suzuki   for 250 miles on 10 liters of water.

If this is a hoax, it won’t be the first. A person called Ramar Pillai  once claimed to convert water to fuel and persuaded the Prime Minister, but  turned out to be a hoax.

The story emerges at a time when Pakistan is desperate for energy, a time that seems to correspond to what the British call the silly season. The news has precipitated a howl of laughter from doubters who say it’s a hoax and impossible. In that spirit, someone produced a fake video of a cleric who said he had a car that runs on “pious deeds.”

Such chaos is apparently typical in Pakistan where there’s been a flood of people with dubious college degrees ever since it was announced that all parliamentarians had to have degrees. It’s further complicated because of the conflicts between religious parties. Pakistan’s genuine Nobel laureate, for instance, was virtually ignored because he belonged to a minority sect. That kind of prejudice is not unknown in the United States, too.

Politics and religion aside, the scientific reason for the skepticism is that though the burning of hydrogen produces a lot of energy, electrolysis to extract the gasses in the first place takes even more energy than it puts out. It reminds me of the hypothetical hydrosphere which I reported on in this paper some time ago. That, if it worked, would have been a perpetual motion machine.

Any high school physics student can figure out that you can’t get more energy out than you put in. Even an electrical transformer is less than 100% efficient and it has no moving parts with energy sapping friction. It is amazing that the story of a car that runs on water would be so widely reported and turn up in the New York Times, presumably without tongue in cheek.

What next? Heavier than air vehicles that fly?  Duh.