We’re a Top 100 Folding@HOME team! Take that Tom’s Hardware Community! No, seriously, we are that freakin‘ huge now. I celebrated by buying some more hardware to fold with. You can find out more at the Team Hack-A-Day Forum. If you don’t know what this folding thing is all about, check the team wiki. You could always drop by our long standing IRC channel, #hackaday on EFnet.
Heat pipes are used to passively transfer heat from one area to another. On pcs they’re usually found moving heat from the processor to large heatsinks on the case exterior. Heat pipes contain liquids that vaporize when heated. The vapor moves up the pipe and is cooled by the external heatsink. This transfer of heat cools the vapor and returns it to liquid form. The liquid then returns to the processor end of the pipe. This project involved building a heat pipe and charging it with R134a. While testing the pipe in a water bath the refrigerant is bled off till the pipe maintains a steady state of phase change. Even though performance could not match that of manufactured heat pipes, it’s still impressive.
