(With a large nod to bigsleep, please direct any buns in the direction of bigsleep)
A chest freezer which has a metal plate (hermetically sealed (ho ho)) on the top with metal compartments going deep to shallow. There's a glass panel on one side.
The deep end is for stuff that's actually to be frozen, to the not very deep for the salad tray.
The Mercury is in a frozen standing wave, with more of the stuff around the deep compartments and vice versa.-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 03 2019 diagram https://drive.googl...DsOA3JSQag5aeMvFcXn [not_morrison_rm, Feb 07 2019] Standing waves in a wave tank https://www.youtube...watch?v=NpEevfOU4Z8Starts with a traveling wave from the wave generator. This sets up a standing wave around 0:50. Some traveling waves are seen later in the video, too, when they turn the wave generator off and also at the start of the second run. [notexactly, Feb 07 2019] great frozen mercury wave off Kanagawa https://drive.googl...AME-O8urVueA0-5WKDL [not_morrison_rm, Feb 08 2019] My version of that https://deepdreamge.../ddream/mvt05e326w0Style transferred from this photo of mercury being poured: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pouring_liquid_mercury_bionerd.jpg [notexactly, Feb 09 2019] >A chest freezer which has a metal plate (hermetically sealed (ho ho)) on the top with metal compartments going deep to shallow. There's a glass panel on one side.
I'm with you so far, and I know what a standing wave is, but I have no idea how this is supposed to function as a freezer or make a freezer behave differently.-- Voice, Feb 03 2019 Well-spotted that entity.
It's a standard heat pump jobbie, with heat exchanger to cool the liquid mercury. Mercury has a freezing point of -38 degrees, so a reasonably good freezer.
And you can watch the wave. For a change, you could put in some red mercury.-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 03 2019 Are you imagining a standing wave as producing a static slope of mercury, deeper at the cold end?-- notexactly, Feb 04 2019 Sort of, but the gradient of cooling is produced by distance from the bottom of the compartments.
I knocked up a diagram, with one cheat - the actuator is sonic, and does the cooling as well, with a boring old freezer heat pump.
Link.-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 07 2019 I don't understand why the mercury needs to be in a standing wave, or how the standing wave is maintained-- hippo, Feb 07 2019 //Are you imagining a standing wave as producing a static slope of mercury, deeper at the cold end?//
You'd have to watch it under a strobe light of the right frequency to make it hold still.-- Loris, Feb 07 2019 //a static slope of mercury, deeper at the cold end// - another way to produce this effect is to mount your mercury-filled chest freezer on a handy centrifuge-- hippo, Feb 07 2019 (sighs) according to Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon it is perfectly easy to make a standing wave in mercury, Waterhouse was using them as an ur-memory device.
Imagine a plastic pipe with contacts at various intervals on the inner top surface. At the end of the pipe there was a loud-speaker.
By modulation of the sound waves, the top of the wave would touch the contact (call is a one) and a wave that did not touch a contact (call it a zero).
Feel free to have a go at Neal Stephenson if he was just bullshitting.
</End of explanation/s>-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 07 2019 Yeah—I still think you misunderstand what a standing wave is. See [link]-- notexactly, Feb 07 2019 Yes, I finally do realise that a standing wave actually goes up and down.
So why isn't it called a "going up and down wave in the same place" I know it doesn't exactly trip off the tongue...
Ok, minor edit, the title is "A frozen standing wave of Mercury chest fridge".-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 07 2019 Forget the 'wave' just create the mercury container to hold whatever shape you want it to maintain.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 07 2019 [2 fries] ...ruining everything with your simple, practical suggestions!-- hippo, Feb 08 2019 That's why I must only use my powers for good.<stands and waves mercurially>-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 08 2019 I was going for an other herm- pun but I could only find Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. It's all Greek to me.
NB, 0ne great frozen mercury wave off Kanagawa image. Link-- not_morrison_rm, Feb 08 2019 random, halfbakery