-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <199705240207.VAA22060@einstein.ssz.com>, on 05/23/97 at 08:07 PM, Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com> said:
Subject: carbon fibers Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 21:11:00 -0500 (CDT) From: ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home)
Reading all the discussions about Jim Bell, I became interested in the carbon fibers that Jim allegedly planned to use to disrupt the work of compiters.
I would appreciate if anyone explained me how these fibers work, how small and thin they are, and so on. I am also curious when and how this use of these fibers was invented.
Carbon is commenly used in electronics because when compressed it generates a small voltage, ala your phone receiver.
It can be both a insulator or a conductor depending on how one fills the outer valence band. Because its 'natural' state is -4 (it has 8 positions and only 4 are filled with electrons) it makes a fair conductor. Yet, it is not listed in most Activity Series for metals. I believe the idea is that since it is a reasonable conductor that when it falls across parallel lands on the pcb of a cpu it will short the lines. This would not only affect the reliability of the data because of current leakage but might in some cases cause an actual failure because of incorrect voltage or current.
In reading the complaint Jim was using a copper coated carbon fiber mesh that was then to be processed (probably cut up and ground) into a fine pouder so it could be delivered airborn. I think that the critical ingrediant was the copper coating and not the carbon itself though it should have an additive affect for the reasons mentioned above. - -- - ----------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info - ----------------------------------------------------------- Tag-O-Matic: Windows NT: From the makers of Windows 3.1! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM4Z0oI9Co1n+aLhhAQGE7wP/crh/v8P9WiPJKh7VeF3cIVjcCQdVt/5M jxSNm3u2gntlFuIiK3hXHrn6Cd5jziolfVB1QZpZO6+8H0xaP2axw8RGEUnXuAGk H74lZ5LgxANSyIGs1T9+xZs1J7rFelRhSPdbsld/YwKX2DGmT2KFhJjZUYKquiK6 movQhkOSYfs= =rg0L -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----