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Robert: One can work around the salt residue with some engineering, but the initial problem is still there. That red flame is hydrogen, sodium and probably chlorine burning in oxygen. Mostly hydrogen. When you bomb the salt water with radio waves, the atoms get more energy and break free from the other atoms. Above the tube the atoms bond again and give away the energy. This energy is seen as a red flame. But all the energy in the flame comes from the radio device that broke the atoms in the first place. Ergo, the flame cannot give any more energy than the radio device uses.
When burning fossil fuels, you raise the temperature until the bonds between the carbon atoms and hydrogen atoms break, and and both atoms bond with oxygen creating carbon dioxide and water. The C=O bonds and the H-O bonds have less energy than the C-C bonds and the C-H bonds in the fuel. The excess energy manifests as burning.
In the radio thingy you start with water, containing H-O bonds. The radio waves break the bonds, giving you hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms. These recombine back into water, which still contains H-O bonds. No extra energy.
edit: typo
[ 05-30-2007, 11:40 AM: Message edited by: Iron Greasel ]
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