There’s an interesting discussion going on over at the vortex-l mailing list about an experimental setup that may be able to demonstrate an LENR effect using nickel coins. The discussion is based on work done by Chuck Sites, who describes an experiment he conducted many years ago in which he uses a nickel coin in an electrolysis cell:
Here is a story about CF, from 1984 with Pons and Flieshman announced their discovery, I was a young excited physics student, and immediately want to test the concept of CF. I didn’t have palladium, nor deuterium. So I was looking for an alternative. I was thinking, Boron has a very large cross section (Q factor) and B11 could easily cold fuse given the right circumstances. So looking at what I had, what would be a good source of Ni? Not knowing it’s metal makeup I choose an American nickel 5-cent piece. (75 percent copper, 25 percent Ni) This was the Anode. A source of Boron, would be Borax (Na2B4.10H2O). The cathode, I used graphite. This was hooked up to a 65 Watt 5 Volt supply from an IBM PC. To my surprise, the Nickel got extraordinarily hot. Too hot to touch, and I melted several plastic p tree dish before changing to jars. I was always able to bring pint of water to 80C after running for about 8 hours.
Other metals used for the Anode, showed no indications of even being warm. (Steel, Aluminum, Copper, Zinc). So a US 5 cent piece gave great results. I even had a Geiger counter go off once, but it may have been a cosmic ray. Given that, I could never really understand how this Nickel got hot without radiation. I could never get a theory as to how it worked either, in spite of the fact that the experiment is very repeatable.
There have been many replies to this original message, including some follow-up by Chuck Sites, which provide clarification on some of the terminology. For curious people who don’t have access to labs and lots of expensive materials and equipment, this looks to be something that could be attempted. As always, all necessary safety precautions should be observed here. Hydrogen (very combustible) is produced in electrolysis, and depending on what you use as an electrolyte, you could also have toxic fumes to deal with. Of course you will have to be careful dealing with your electrical source.
A couple of people in the discussion thread are experimenting with this setup, and one has promised a video. A note about Vortex-l: it is a mailing list, not a web-based forum. You can see the archives here, and you will find the discussion on this experiment in two different places.