Burning Water and Critical Thinking

What's happening to our critical thinking skills? About a week or so ago a story broke about a man who had figured out a way to 'burn water'. What made this odd is that it was widely reported as 'news' and was promoted with all of the restraint of a lead story for the National Enquirer.

Here is a typical 'news' story.

And here is a typical YouTube 'news' story.

Maybe I'm the one who is mistaken here, but let me make an observation and ask a few questions.

First of all, the water is not burning. Water does not burn. Hydrogen and Oxygen mixed together will, however, burn quite well. So, to clarify the first mistake in reporting, the man is not burning water, he is burning hydrogen and oxygen, which is produced via electrolysis.

Now, this is certainly nothing new, so I"m kind of surprised it merited such coverage. Is it because the inventor did it without using any wires? That seems to be the case.

According to the basic claim the inventor, John Kanzius, stumbled across the discovery while researching something else. He found that by placing salt water into an electromagnetic field operating at a particular frequency he could spontaneously produce electrolysis to such an extent that a continuously running flame of burning hydrogen and oxygen could be produced.

This leads to a whole bunch of questions, none of which seem to have been asked.

(1) Has anyone been able to replicate his results? (This is the most important basic question of all to begin with).

(2) How much energy is his electromagnetic field generator consuming and is it more than the amount of energy produced by burning the hydrogen and oxygen? (I think the obvious answer is that he used a shit load more energy to generate the electromagnetic field than his small flame produced. And, in which case, why all of the excitement?)

(3) Is this method of electrolysis significantly more efficient than any number of other more commonly known techniques?

(4) Does the effect scale? If he puts a giant pan of water inside the field, rather than just a test tube, does he still get the same magnitude of effect? (If he can put a massive body of water into the field but still produce effective electrolysis regardless of volume, well then he might really be onto something.)

If this man has found a highly efficient way to perform electrolysis on water, that is certainly of note and, time will tell as further research is conducted. However, if he can produce more energy out of the system then he puts into it via the electromagnetic field then he would have stumbled onto some kind of 'free energy' device (especially free considering the fact that the final product from burning hydrogen and oxygen is the same water you started with!).

Somehow, I'm thinking this is still rather impossible and I don't see how this cute little test-tube burning demo deserves all of the hype and attention it has received.

Here is a follow-up new story on the National Geographic website where they claim an independent scientist has reproduced the technique. Still no word on how much energy it takes to get the effect and, most importantly, how it scales. Has anyone put a large quantity of water into the electromagnetic field or only tiny test tubes? What is the difference in the measured effect based on the volume of water inside the field?