The tentacle centaurs...
...breathe hydrogen, therefore would not use copper oxide rectifiers exposed to their atmosphere.
- copied from here.
The Eksers generate electricity with copper oxide rectifiers exposed to the air.
The tentacle centaurs breathe hydrogen.
Strong electricity would raise the temperature.
At a slightly raised temperature, copper oxide and hydrogen would be transformed into hydrogen oxide (water) and copper.
Therefore, the rectifiers would cease to exist.
Therefore, hydrogen-breathers, like the tentacle centaurs, cannot be the Eksers.
This is one of the clues. However, some of us (me) do not know enough science.
Tomorrow, probably: "Margin of Profit."
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And it seems reasonable to think many spacemen would NEED to have a good, practical, working knowledge of science. Ship officers, technicians, engineers, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
I don't think I had heard of copper oxide rectifiers before reading "Hiding Place". They were *mostly* obsolete by the time I took courses on electricity & electronics in high school.
The Wikipedia article on them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_rectifier
notes they still have advantages for low voltage high current applications like aluminum smelting.
That article links to a paper
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294259463_The_Copper_Oxide_Rectifier
which notes that copper from different regions was better or worse for the application because of the presence or absence of minor impurities. The reasons these impurities made a difference was hard to work out given early 20th century chemistry & physics.
The Eksers would have had to develop some refined chemistry & physics to get their rectifiers to be reliable.
In van Rijn's position I wouldn't have *known* that copper oxide would be unstable in a hydrogen atmosphere, but I might have suspected it & looked up relevant texts.
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