Isn't it reasonable to doubt Young Earth Creationism?

redfern

Active member
I see an opportunity for one or the other — or both — of us to improve our understanding of thermodynamics. Let’s see if you agree with my critique of your description:

Regarding the bolded part, you're not going to get a worse burn because of the greater energy (assuming the pan has greater mass). It is the conductivity of the metal that quickly transfers heat compared with the cake that does the damage.

For the same reason a blanket can feel warm, but a suit of armor at the same temperature could feel cold.

This is because of conductivity — inherent to the material — not energy.

Wow, wow, wow, Stripe. As enshrined in hundreds and hundreds of TOL threads, reaching back years, you have consistently exemplified the epitome of Christian ugliness in conversations. And now this post, in which you manage to show that you are actually capable of recognizing a technical misstep on my part and pointing it out without resorting to name-calling or mockery or insults. I think I might print this post from you out on glossy premium paper and frame it over my desk as evidence that miracles do happen at ToL. Thank you so very much.

And yes, it would have been more accurate of me to identify the heat conductivity of the hot pan as being the primary reason it would burn your fingers. I will not stridently resist admitting my error, as CM seems wont to do. If you, Stripe, continue to engage in rational technical explanations without rancor like you have here, that will be a quantum leap in the value of ToL as an interface medium for people to discuss their differences.

Again, my thanks and admiration for your politely pointing out a relevant scientific error I made.
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Wow, wow, wow, Stripe. As enshrined in hundreds and hundreds of TOL threads, reaching back years, you have consistently exemplified the epitome of Christian ugliness in conversations. And now this post, in which you manage to show that you are actually capable of recognizing a technical misstep on my part and pointing it out without resorting to name-calling or mockery or insults. I think I might print this post from you out on glossy premium paper and frame it over my desk as evidence that miracles do happen at ToL. Thank you so very much.

And yes, it would have been more accurate of me to identify the heat conductivity of the hot pan as being the primary reason it would burn your fingers. I will not stridently resist admitting my error, as CM seems wont to do. If you, Stripe, continue to engage in rational technical explanations without rancor like you have here, that will be a quantum leap in the value of ToL as an interface medium for people to discuss their differences.

Again, my thanks and admiration for your politely pointing out a relevant scientific error I made.
I was bound to get something right sooner or later, the law of averages being what they are.

But I can't promise anything regarding civility. If you start being a nincompoop, I'll have to call you one. You can either get over it or ignore me.

For example, I can point to thousands of on-topic, relevant and civil posts I've made here, but you call me the paragon of Christian ugliness. :idunno:

After a night crying myself to sleep and years of counseling, I've gotten over it.

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CabinetMaker

Member of the 10 year club on TOL!!
Hall of Fame
[MENTION=5148]redfern[/MENTION] is talking about water coming to a boil and changing phases. Basically, he is discussing this graph:
LjCJHTzRZG8kxGU8Kvx8

This is the typical graph for phase changes of water at one atmosphere. Everything he said about this is correct. Even his comment regarding a closed system wherein you heat the water past the boiling point by 10° to 30° and the releasing the pressure are correct. This is not the system that is being discussed in the rest of this thread. Walt's system involves temperatures will above the boiling point and pressures will in excess of one atmosphere. Once you go above one atmosphere then you enter the steam tables and use those to answer certain questions about the energies in the system. This is what is used to design thermal power stations and it called the Rankine Cycle. It is covered in depth in the first semester of Thermodynamic classes.

Then you get to a point known as supercritical where the steam tables no longer apply. The properties of a supercritical fluid are both gas-like and liquid like at the same time. Given the pressures and the temperatures involved for supercritical fluids to exist, it is fair to say that there is a significant amount of energy stored in the fluid. Within in carefully designed and controlled manufacturing processes, supercritical fluids are expanded through a nozzle to produce a desired result. In other cases, a supercritical fluid can be used as a solvent.

Walt's theory as explained in links provided by Judgerightly have provided some conflicting information regarding the starting point for the supercritical water postulated to be below the surface. It is then released through a series of random cracks that simultaneously open around the globe. I have not been able to find any research showing what happens when a supercritical fluid's containment is suddenly breached. Given the energies involved in both temperature and pressure, I have reason to believe it would be and exceedingly violent event that would eject far more steam that water. And when the water did start to come up, it would be far from cool. It would depend on how much heat is still being added to the water since the core of the earth does not suddenly stop being hot.

Finally, there is new scientific evidence that there is a significant reservoir of water below the surface in a newly discovered rock. Given this new evidence, it is time for proponents to revisit their hypothesis to see how this new information affects them. I have pointed out this new information several times on this thread and it has been ignored each time. I find that exceedingly interesting given the postulated volume in this new discovery is several times the volume of all the water on the Earth's surface.
 

redfern

Active member
CM, from the content I see in your most recent big thermo post, I suspect you have been subjecting yourself to a quick refresher in what thermo really says. But alas, like many cram study sessions, that just isn’t a good way to firm up your understanding of a subject.

And I have to offer caveat for my absence over a few days. Crossing lotsa time zones, - trains, planes, and automobiles - are not conducive to my being promptly responsive to TOL threads. But at least I suspect the Laws of Thermo are the same here as they are far away where I was a few days ago.

So now back to the subject at hand. You posted:

[MENTION=5148]redfern[/MENTION] is talking about water coming to a boil and changing phases. Basically, he is discussing this graph:

LjCJHTzRZG8kxGU8Kvx8

This is the typical graph for phase changes of water at one atmosphere. Everything he said about this is correct. Even his comment regarding a closed system wherein you heat the water past the boiling point by 10° to 30° and the releasing the pressure are correct.

I appreciate the graph and the accompanying comments. You are right when you say “This is the typical graph for phase changes of water at one atmosphere”, and that means this graph is very relevant to your claim about water flashing to steam that spawned my jumping into this thread.

But … I can’t resist putting this in here – Look near the bottom of the graph. In blue it says “heat of vaporization”. Now look directly above that to where the dark horizontal line is that depicts the vaporization (and condensation). How to label that line – no problem – since we are depicting the heat of vaporization, we’ll label this line as “e + vaporization = evaporization” line. Uhhh – no, like it said in blue near the bottom, that is called just “vaporization”, with no “e” on the front. Maybe whoever made up that term was thinking of “evaporation”, which is almost the same as vaporization, but at lower temperature. Where did you find this graph anyway, at “Uncle Clem’s School of Thermodynamics for Moonshiners?”

The very next thing I see in your post says:

This is not the system that is being discussed in the rest of this thread.

Speak for yourself. In spite of your strenuous efforts to try to keep the focus on perceived faults in Walt’s ideas, until you convince me that you get this regime of thermo right, I am not inclined to trust your judgment in Walt’s far more esoteric regimes of temperature and pressure.

I have pleaded with you to go the math route on the water flashing to steam question, only to have you say that I should do the math, and then you again assure us that you took classes in this stuff, and that this stuff applies in systems like the Rankine Cycle. But oodles of engineers and others who fundamentally rely on physics have to take classes in which thermo is taught. A whole lotta them think that thermo is not gonna be something they will be dealing with after graduating, and so they just muddle through it, and most of the time they are right. But occasionally one of them finds himself involved in a TOL discussion. Not a good time to confidently assert you know thermo, when you’re one of the masses that just muddled thru it in college.

I hope to soon move past this thermo issue with you, but first still some residual red flags I have on what you have said.

… Finally, you are attempting to deal with gradual ling heating water to boiling.

I don’t think I specified with how fast I heated the water. Can you show me in the thermo equations where that is gonna be a factor? All I am concerned with is the water at the conditions you originally mentioned – 212 F (and I was willing to go above that temp just to be sure). If you want me to heat it in a hurry with using a bank of welder’s blowtorches, fine.

I am talking about a closed system that is already well above 212 degrees.

Do you think ignoring the heating process up to the 212 temp, and only looking at the thermo involved above 212 is gonna change how much of water flashes to steam?

There is enough energy in the water to more than account for the latent heat of vaporization needed to convert liquid water to steam.

And that pretty well states our point of divergence. More later on that.

Tell you what – I will move on from this thermos business if you go with me through a specific mathematical example. If you want, I will do the math, and you will either concur or show where I am in error, OK? Here is what I am proposing, based on your recent comments. You said:

Go get a pressure cooker and fill it with water and put the lid on and seal the pressure release valves. Heat the water to 300 degrees and remove the lid

Gotcha. I’m going to put a beautiful fluorescent label on the lid that says “New Soccer & Rugby Equipment Inside – Free”, so Stripe will be the one taking the lid off. We will start with say, 10 pounds of water (I pick pounds instead of kg or liters or whatever just because it simplifies some of the calculations). The water will initially be at just above freezing – 32 F. (Starting with cold water also simplifies some of the math.) I’m gonna measure the heat in BTUs, again for mathematical simplicity. If you object to any of these units, let me know and I will use units you prefer, and will toss in the necessary conversion factors. For the comfort of the readership who don’t deal much with units of heat, a moderate sized home water heater will need to use about 35,000 BTUs each day for showers, baths, laundry, etc.

We will use a heat source that can supply enough heat to raise the temperature of the entire 10 lbs of water by 10 degrees F each minute. Gonna keep cooking that water right up till the water it is at the 300 F you mentioned (water will be under pressure, of course). Since you earlier said you were “talking about a closed system that is already well above 212 degrees”, I propose we keep this thing at that 300 F level for 16 solid weeks, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, long enough to really see if “there is enough energy in the water to more than account for the latent heat of vaporization need to convert liquid water to steam.”

Now my first question to you is, since “some portion of that water will flash to steam”, roughly how much do you say will flash to steam when we have Stripe take the lid off that pressure cooker? An answer that is within 10% will be fine, in pounds or kg or whatever of water that flashes. What say ye? Give us your guess and let’s then do the math.
 
Last edited:

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
I’m going to put a beautiful fluorescent label on the lid that says “New Soccer & Rugby Equipment Inside – Free”, so Stripe will be the one taking the lid off.
:rotfl:

Nice try. However, rugby is a real sport, while soccer is for fags. So I'd be steering clear of that one.

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CabinetMaker

Member of the 10 year club on TOL!!
Hall of Fame
CM, from the content I see in your most recent big thermo post, I suspect you have been subjecting yourself to a quick refresher in what thermo really says. But alas, like many cram study sessions, that just isn’t a good way to firm up your understanding of a subject.

And I have to offer caveat for my absence over a few days. Crossing lotsa time zones, - trains, planes, and automobiles - are not conducive to my being promptly responsive to TOL threads. But at least I suspect the Laws of Thermo are the same here as they are far away where I was a few days ago.

So now back to the subject at hand. You posted:



I appreciate the graph and the accompanying comments. You are right when you say “This is the typical graph for phase changes of water at one atmosphere”, and that means this graph is very relevant to your claim about water flashing to steam that spawned my jumping into this thread.

But … I can’t resist putting this in here – Look near the bottom of the graph. In blue it says “heat of vaporization”. Now look directly above that to where the dark horizontal line is that depicts the vaporization (and condensation). How to label that line – no problem – since we are depicting the heat of vaporization, we’ll label this line as “e + vaporization = evaporization” line. Uhhh – no, like it said in blue near the bottom, that is called just “vaporization”, with no “e” on the front. Maybe whoever made up that term was thinking of “evaporation”, which is almost the same as vaporization, but at lower temperature. Where did you find this graph anyway, at “Uncle Clem’s School of Thermodynamics for Moonshiners?”

The very next thing I see in your post says:



Speak for yourself. In spite of your strenuous efforts to try to keep the focus on perceived faults in Walt’s ideas, until you convince me that you get this regime of thermo right, I am not inclined to trust your judgment in Walt’s far more esoteric regimes of temperature and pressure.

I have pleaded with you to go the math route on the water flashing to steam question, only to have you say that I should do the math, and then you again assure us that you took classes in this stuff, and that this stuff applies in systems like the Rankine Cycle. But oodles of engineers and others who fundamentally rely on physics have to take classes in which thermo is taught. A whole lotta them think that thermo is not gonna be something they will be dealing with after graduating, and so they just muddle through it, and most of the time they are right. But occasionally one of them finds himself involved in a TOL discussion. Not a good time to confidently assert you know thermo, when you’re one of the masses that just muddled thru it in college.

I hope to soon move past this thermo issue with you, but first still some residual red flags I have on what you have said.



I don’t think I specified with how fast I heated the water. Can you show me in the thermo equations where that is gonna be a factor? All I am concerned with is the water at the conditions you originally mentioned – 212 F (and I was willing to go above that temp just to be sure). If you want me to heat it in a hurry with using a bank of welder’s blowtorches, fine.



Do you think ignoring the heating process up to the 212 temp, and only looking at the thermo involved above 212 is gonna change how much of water flashes to steam? [I was looking at putting in a tankless water heater. The burneres in those things are huge, 100,000 BTU and up. The definition of a BTU is the amount of energy required to heat 1 pound of water by one degree Farenhite. So wheter I take one hour to heat one pound of water or one minute to one pound of water by one degree, it takes one BTU. (Note: I am assuming a prefect system that has no losses.) So no, the heating process wil not change the amount of energy (temperature) in the water. Water at 212°F is 212°F whether heated in a microwave in 2 minutes or on the stove for 10 minutes.]



And that pretty well states our point of divergence. More later on that. [I agree that the energy required to convert water to steam must come from someplace. In the case of super heated water, the vaparoization energy will come from the liquid itself. That is why, in the videos below, you will see water instanatly boil yet not all the water converting to steam.]

Tell you what – I will move on from this thermos business if you go with me through a specific mathematical example. If you want, I will do the math, and you will either concur or show where I am in error, OK? Here is what I am proposing, based on your recent comments. You said:



Gotcha. I’m going to put a beautiful fluorescent label on the lid that says “New Soccer & Rugby Equipment Inside – Free”, so Stripe will be the one taking the lid off. We will start with say, 10 pounds of water (I pick pounds instead of kg or liters or whatever just because it simplifies some of the calculations). The water will initially be at just above freezing – 32 F. (Starting with cold water also simplifies some of the math.) I’m gonna measure the heat in BTUs, again for mathematical simplicity. If you object to any of these units, let me know and I will use units you prefer, and will toss in the necessary conversion factors. For the comfort of the readership who don’t deal much with units of heat, a moderate sized home water heater will need to use about 35,000 BTUs each day for showers, baths, laundry, etc.

We will use a heat source that can supply enough heat to raise the temperature of the entire 10 lbs of water by 10 degrees F each minute. Gonna keep cooking that water right up till the water it is at the 300 F you mentioned (water will be under pressure, of course). Since you earlier said you were “talking about a closed system that is already well above 212 degrees”, I propose we keep this thing at that 300 F level for 16 solid weeks, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, long enough to really see if “there is enough energy in the water to more than account for the latent heat of vaporization need to convert liquid water to steam.” [Cute but irrelevant, the amount of time is irrelevant, it is the temperature that is the measure of energy..]

Now my first question to you is, since “some portion of that water will flash to steam”, roughly how much do you say will flash to steam when we have Stripe take the lid off that pressure cooker? An answer that is within 10% will be fine, in pounds or kg or whatever of water that flashes. What say ye? Give us your guess and let’s then do the math.

I never said that all the water would flash to steam. Some part of the water will flash to steam so that the system reaches equilibrium. Here is a fun little experiment that can be done with a microwave. I do not recommend that you try this. This actually happened to my mother and she got second degree burns on her hand because of it.


So, this serves as proof of concept - super heated water will instantly boil when disturbed. Instantly boiling means that vapor bubbles (steam) will form and expand throughout the liquid resulting in the video we see.

We see that as the super-heated water exists to atmosphere, a portion of it does, in fact, flash to steam taking away enough energy so that the condensate becomes water at one atmosphere.

One last chart for you to consider in your thoughts.

290px-Carbon_dioxide_pressure-temperature_phase_diagram.svg.png

The only area of the chart that is of interest is the supercritical area. This is a thread about whether it makes sense to believe in a young Earth and it is based on Walt Brown's book, at least in part. Walt is postulating water in a supercritical state contained below the crust. The question is what happen to a supercritical fluid when in is released. You are more than welcome to do all the math you want on the system you described above and it doesn't matter. You seem to understand that you don't want to be the one to take the lid off the pressure cooker. Why not? In any case, the total energy in the supercritical fluid is the starting point for Walt's hypothesis. The question becomes, what happens to that energy when the containment vessel (the Earth's crust) is rapidly breached.
 

CabinetMaker

Member of the 10 year club on TOL!!
Hall of Fame
For some, Mythbusters may not be scientifically rigorous enough so here is another video done by a PE that looks at flash steam. Listen carefully to his explanation.

 

redfern

Active member
I never said that all the water would flash to steam. Some part of the water will flash to steam so that the system reaches equilibrium. …

Dear Cabinetmaker,

I may indeed have misunderstood what you initially said about flashing to steam. But let me present (one more time) your exact words that first caught my attention:

… Water boils at 212 F. If you heat water above that and use pressure to keep it from boiling, it will remain in a liquid state. When that pressure is released, those water molecules will instantly flash to steam. Simple physics. Basic thermodynamics.

You talk about heating water to above boiling and having it under pressure, and then you say “, those water molecules will instantly flash to steam”. Can you point out any words in your statement that would lead one to understand “those water molecules” refers to just a subset of the water molecules that were heated? It is your sloppiness in your phrasing that caused the issue.

But more significantly, I have encouraged you to show that you actually have an accurate understanding of what you term “Simple physics. Basic Thermodynamics.” But you get defensive and make grandiose claims that you took classes in this stuff, and worked problems like this, yet when I repeatedly ask you to actually show the math on a pretty simple problem, over and over you respond with nothing more than assertions and bluster. Maybe that is how you got through your thermo classes – when the test question asked “How many joules of energy”, you respond with an essay about the assumptions involved in the question, and the need to focus on some extreme pressures and temperatures rather than on what the question said.

I have come to the conclusion that you are nothing but a well-meaning old-earther who has found it sufficient to try to bluff your way out of proving your competence. Either that, or … maybe you are an old-earther in the same sense that Benedict Arnold was an American patriot.

I fully expect that when we get down in the trenches of battle, and I see you declare that you are going to blast Walt Brown, you grab a bazooka and hoist it to your shoulder, then I am gonna yell “Stop, you don’t know what you’re doing.”. You will smirk and say you know all about bazookas, and you will say, “See when I pull this trigger, a blast of fire will come out this tube and scare the bejeebers outta Walt. And I will respond by explaining that blast of fire is from the back end of the missile in the tube, meaning the missile is going to come out at me, not Walt. My sincere recommendation is you be forbidden from wielding any weapon more lethal than a butter knife.

And, by the way – as per that 300 F pressure cooker - the one with the new sign on the lid saying “New Rugby & Only Rugby Equipment Inside – Free” - only about 9% of the water will flash to steam.

But thanks for playing, anyway.
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Dear Cabinetmaker,

I may indeed have misunderstood what you initially said about flashing to steam. But let me present (one more time) your exact words that first caught my attention:

You talk about heating water to above boiling and having it under pressure, and then you say “, those water molecules will instantly flash to steam”. Can you point out any words in your statement that would lead one to understand “those water molecules” refers to just a subset of the water molecules that were heated? It is your sloppiness in your phrasing that caused the issue.

But more significantly, I have encouraged you to show that you actually have an accurate understanding of what you term “Simple physics. Basic Thermodynamics.” But you get defensive and make grandiose claims that you took classes in this stuff, and worked problems like this, yet when I repeatedly ask you to actually show the math on a pretty simple problem, over and over you respond with nothing more than assertions and bluster. Maybe that is how you got through your thermo classes – when the test question asked “How many joules of energy”, you respond with an essay about the assumptions involved in the question, and the need to focus on some extreme pressures and temperatures rather than on what the question said.

I have come to the conclusion that you are nothing but a well-meaning old-earther who has found it sufficient to try to bluff your way out of proving your competence. Either that, or … maybe you are an old-earther in the same sense that Benedict Arnold was an American patriot.

I fully expect that when we get down in the trenches of battle, and I see you declare that you are going to blast Walt Brown, you grab a bazooka and hoist it to your shoulder, then I am gonna yell “Stop, you don’t know what you’re doing.”. You will smirk and say you know all about bazookas, and you will say, “See when I pull this trigger, a blast of fire will come out this tube and scare the bejeebers outta Walt. And I will respond by explaining that blast of fire is from the back end of the missile in the tube, meaning the missile is going to come out at me, not Walt. My sincere recommendation is you be forbidden from wielding any weapon more lethal than a butter knife.

And, by the way – as per that 300 F pressure cooker - the one with the new sign on the lid saying “New Rugby & Only Rugby Equipment Inside – Free” - only about 9% of the water will flash to steam.

But thanks for playing, anyway.

Where do I sign?

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Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
I got into a discussion about young Earth creationism recently. My position was that YECism is completely debunked because it is obvious that there are objects in the night sky that are much older than 6,000 years. For instance, the galaxy Andromeda is roughly 2.5 million light years away. That means that when we look at Andromeda, we don't see it as it is today. We see what it looked like two-and-a-half million years ago. (It takes the light from that galaxy that long to reach us.)

My friend, who is a Christian (but not a YEC) agreed with me, but introduced me to a bit of apologetics that says this: just as God made Adam in a mature state, so too he made the cosmos appear mature. I guess this works, but it sounds a little bit like squaring the circle. After all, in doing this, God has given anyone with a telescope very good reason to doubt the literal accounts in Genesis. My friend even added a nice counter argument along this same vein: we can see stars that are much farther than 6,000 light years years away enter their dying phase. By creationist logic, when we see this, we are in fact seeing stars die that were never born in the first place. That makes no sense!

Unless you are going to see God as a cosmic practical joker, the "mature universe" apologetics are not very plausible. But my reason for starting this thread wasn't just to push that point. My question is for YECs: Isn't it reasonable for a person to conclude that the universe is older than 6,000 years? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that it is. Can you really fault anyone for coming to that very sensible conclusion? After all, even if the accounts in Genesis ARE literally true, God went through a lot of trouble to make it look otherwise. Whether it turns out to be true or not, isn't it reasonable to doubt young earth creationism?

Gee, that Vulcan fella didn't last long, did he. :think:

:think:

:think:

:noid:
 
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