Flywheel UPS 150
DrZap writes: "Saw this in a trade magazine, a UPS using a flywheel to store kinetic energy instead of batteries. Environment friendly and everything!"
The shortest distance between two points is under construction. -- Noelie Alito
Re:This isn't new (Score:1)
AC
NASA was researching this tech... (Score:1)
Re:Eco friendly? Wouldn't a LEAD flywheel be bette (Score:1)
Duh. Lead is soft. You encase the lead in a thin shell of harder metal. Next problem?
This is what will happen... (Score:2)
How cool.
This will be repeated at every lunch break at the company, for the amazement of everyone. After the loose side of the box has gently fallen on the ground, 10 strong employees will put back the 850 lbs Flywheel Module on 4 bricks for tomorrow's show.
Unfortunately, this puts an enormous stress on the device, and it will break after a few show. MTBF of 100,000 Hours? Not in "normal conditions"!
That makes no sense. (Score:2)
Not much of a problem, is it?
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Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:2)
- A.P.
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Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
Re:You think this is *heavy*? (Score:1)
Why not? That's the type of customer they want buying these things. Those racks of storage batteries have to be replaced sometime. They are pitching this as an alternative that doesn't have to be replaced every few years.
new sorta death (Score:2)
I think it is bound to happen as these devices become more popular, but it probably will be fairly unusual.
The only reason I mention this is that I am "somewhat" amused by the idea that a new technology is creating a new way of dying as well. Perhaps there will be a day where the casual newspaper reader will come across the headline "Two engineers killed in flywheel discharge in Coeur d'Alene" and not think it out of the ordinary.
This also goes along with the idea that mother nature will invent all sorta of gruesome ways of dying to deal with the fact that we keep on solving conventional ways of dying as time goes on. In the end, I suspect that she will be forced to rely on spontaneous human combustion as the catch-all unsolvable/incurable death once science has cured disease and engineers have prevented most accidents. Until then, expect that flywheel discharge will occasionally send a hapless individual into their next life.
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:1)
Supporting Argument: This thread is about alternatives to burying flywheels; places where burying isn't a possibility. You try paying attention to the discussion before admonishing others to re-read something.
Resolution: The polite thing would be for you to apologize - are you up to that?
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:2)
Thus I imagine the stucture would resemble a block with a hallway built into it with a right-angle and some good solid doors. Presumably the walls would be free-standing as so to minimize any transmitted impact.
Figuring six inches for the walls, 4-feet of sand and allowing some extra for supports & conduits it should all fit within a cube 15" on a side.
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:4)
actually an old idea (Score:1)
Inefficient as hell (Score:2)
We're going back to moving parts here. At least a battery-based UPS would have minimal moving parts, probably a few relays for overcurrent protection and a transformer with a moving center tap to regulate voltage in the traditional UPS. With a big moving part like a flywheel, we have got a fair bit of noise here. The specs [beaconpower.com] say less than 55 dB, which is roughly the amount of noise produced by a typical conversation. And the efficiency of the system is somewhat pathetic. The system can store up to 2 kWh of energy. It takes three hours for it to store up this much energy with an input power of 2.5 kW, meaning you input 7.5 kWh of energy to it. The remaining 5.5 kWh of energy was wasted. Wasting so much energy is not the way to be environmentally friendly! True, a traditional battery based UPS would cause environmental pollution when you tried to dispose of it, but 5.5 kWh of wasted energy every time you had to recharge the thing would likely produce even more pollution in total. True, the system may have many potential advantages, especially for use in harsh environments that would ruin most battery-based systems, but to call it environmentally friendly is an absolutely laughable claim. It is probably even less environmentally friendly than the average battery UPS, it just produces a different kind of pollution (by wasting much of the energy provided to it from the power generation system). And one more thing: the thing is immense, it weighs a total of 1050 lbs!
Spare Drum Memory Unit (Score:2)
;)
Nah, this is ollldddd. (Score:1)
EMC (Score:2)
It may be huge and heavy, but it's a damn sight easier to manage than a room full of lead-acid batteries, and you don't have to refill it every five years or contact the EPA every time you do any work on it.
Makes cooler noises, too.
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Digital convergence (Score:1)
But then again, a friend of mine was nearly decapitated by a Toshiba X32 drive with a premature ejection problem.
Re:Three words... (Score:2)
But wait! Bury enough of these things and we'll eventually have enough angular momentum to shift the Earth's axis! Think, man! This will kill us all!
Hey, maybe this is the reason Uranus is rolling around on its side...
Chelloveck
Re:Digital convergence (Score:1)
Perhaps one of these [google.com] can help with your friend's problem.
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Re:Does it also work for FedEX vehicles? (Score:1)
Geoff
Problem (Score:2)
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Useful on a large scale (Score:2)
I read an article on
Kevin Fox
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Re:From the Wheel Out of Control Department (Score:2)
After all, we have thousand ton trains hurtling around with FAR more kinetic energy than this flywheel would ever have...
Answers... (Score:3)
A single flywheel would act as a gyroscope, yes.
Two equally massive flywheels spinning in opposite directions but at the same rate would effectively cancel the effect though. (This has been tried with bicycles to prove that balancing a bike is not actually due to gyroscopic effects).
I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that flywheels, no matter what, will be more efficient the larger they are, given that friction is the only thing that will cause the flywheel to lose energy... and friction is a function of the surface area of the wheel.... wheras the amount of energy stored is based on the mass... and as surface area is a square function, wheras mass is cubic, you end up with diminishing returns as things get smaller.
Same sort of thing as why a flea can jump 50x it's own height (or whatever the number is) but a human can't... as muscle strength is proportional to cross sectional area of the muscle, but mass is proportional to volume....
Also, one issue is the possibility of explosion in any mobile device. The fact that a chemical cell can only discharge so fast can also be viewed as a safety feature when we're talking about consumer devices. A nano-flywheel-cell or something in a phone might have a propensity to explode violently should something disturb it.
Also, regarding some sci-fi.. I *wish* I could remember the author or title.. but I recall reading some sci-fi from the 50's or 60's that dealt partially with using some small-ish black-holes (they called them kerr-newman black holes
Not a problem: in fact, it's in production..... (Score:1)
Re:Does it also work for FedEX vehicles? (Score:1)
Where have I seen this before? (Score:4)
http://www.afstrinity.com/ [afstrinity.com]
http://www.activepower.com [activepower.com]
http://www.acumentrics.com [acumentrics.com]
http://space-power.grc.nasa.gov/ppo/projects/flyw
All with URLs displayed, for you who fear goatse.cx. Somehow, this doesn't look like that new of a technology. (And besides, I thought a REGULAR UPS was heavy!)
Re:Lousy numbers... (ok in some cases) (Score:2)
I have supported sites where onsite maintanence cost $7,000 per incident (and just wasn't possible for parts of the year). Sure makes you think twice before typing each remote command.
Maybe these things will be common someday, not soon. Railroad crossing lights in the US used to be powered by large buried batteries. Periodicly trains would come by, hoist out the old one and put in a new one then haul the old one back for recharging. Maybe 40 years from now using chemical batteries in UPSs will seem just as silly.
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:2)
What if the elevator fell on the flywheel?
I think you'd have a chain reaction on your hands...
Re:You think this is *heavy*? (Score:1)
Been there for year (Score:1)
Cheers
Seagate rides again! (Score:2)
Reminds me of those old MFM Seagates...
Seriously - does anyone really want something that weighs half a ton and spins so damned fast that it'll drive a generator for three hours sitting next to them?
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:2)
How big a disc do you need if you use depleated uranium? Also you could mount the thing with the disc vertical. So it simply becomes a thick wall.
Re:Lousy numbers... (Score:2)
The problem is that the batteries need maintaining. Also if the idea of the UPS is to supply power whilst a generator is brought on line then being able to run for 7 hours isn't really relevant.
Re:new sorta death (Score:2)
I've only heard of this happening once, due to a manufacturing defect. Loads of people sit very close to large disks spinning at high speed every day. Parts of jet engines do not rain out of the sky constantly though.
Re:So big... I want a little one!! (Score:2)
Thus you want a wheel rather than a simple disk. With most of the mass on the rim.
security concerns? (Score:1)
The reason I ask is that if they're implemented inline, they might be able to kinda act as a proxy for the A/C. That could be important because apparently Van Eck/Tempest phreaking has become somewhat passe' in fedland. Instead it's (apparently) possible to observe what a computer is doing by reading the power lines. No, I don't have references; it's really a he-said-she-said thing.
But what I'm wondering is if you could use a flywheel to clean and sterilize your A/C current usage.
This isn't new (Score:1)
But it did have a really fast punchcard reader.
Re:Flywheels are a great solution (Score:1)
Actually one of the companies mentioned above has a mobile product, using two opposed flywheels:
http://www.afstrinity.com/specs/spec_mfpm.html [afstrinity.com]
Interesting that the currently available systems seem mainly aimed at high-drain short duration applications - would they be less efficient at much lighter loads (e.g. as primary power source)?
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:1)
perfect (Score:1)
Re:Richard Feynman is cool... (Score:1)
Thus, if he takes a right angle corner, he'll have to walk in such a way to keep one suitcase before him, and the other one behind (rather than the usual position of one to the left, and one to the right). Not only will this be very uncomfortable (especially if heavy), but it will also look suspicious as hell...
Re:Richard Feynman is cool... (Score:2)
Wouldn't the Bellhop notice that the suitcases are slightly trembling, as soon as he picks them up (a little bit like the feel of a holding a spinning HD in your hands)? And what about that whirring sound?
And, as the prankster himself has to walk in a straight line with the suitcases once they're active, wouldn't this force him to do the spinning up part in a straight line before the hotel lobby (and thus probably in plain view)?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:1)
Read the specs.
It weighs 1050 pounds.
"Weight--Flywheel Module
850 lbs
Weight--Electronics Module
200 lbs"
Re:Flywheels are a great solution (Score:1)
If my understanding of physics is correct, then a simple flywheel would *have* to act like a gyroscope. Maybe two wheels spinning in opposite directions or something.
Re:Eco friendly? Wouldn't a LEAD flywheel be bette (Score:1)
Re:This isn't new (Score:1)
Probably wasn't very efficient - but as well as the UPS function, the inertial damping was extremely effective at eliminating power spikes.
Re:Flywheels are a great solution (Score:2)
This is more of a problem with vehicles, where the flywheel is subject to tradeoffs between operating at a very high speed to store a lot of energy, practical limits on flywheel size and weight, and the weight of the armor around the flywheel needed to prevent potentally deadly chunks from flying loose if it does disintegrate. I understand they're trying to develop graphite composite flywheels for vehicles.
None of this has to be a huge problem for a fixed installation, however. You could make it massive and fairly fast and put three feet of reinforced concrete around it without too much trouble.
Re:Does it also work for FedEX vehicles? (Score:2)
With the flywheel hub/axle mounted vertically it would only torque the car when power was being added to or removed from it. Two counterrotating flywheels would cancel even this effect, and the engine mounts would mainly have to deal with changes in the road's incine because the gyroscopic effects would try to keep the car from leaning or pitching up and down.
Mounted sideways, though, those effects would oppose turns and aim the car in unexpected directions when they were attempted.
On the third hand, I'm not sure any of that would apply enough force to matter.
sorta not so new death (Score:2)
Evidently no human injuries were reported, but a few walls were casualties.
This idea has been around for a long time... (Score:2)
This UPS wasn't really used as a UPS because a loss of power would affect more than just the control system (the hydraulic systems ran off of pumps which were operated by electric motors) but it sure ironed out the spikes nicely.
Re:Does it also work for FedEX vehicles? (Score:1)
Re:new sorta death (Score:1)
Re:Not quite (Score:1)
hyperbole (h-pûrb-l) n.
Now some quick calulations
I found a reference for the energy release of good ole TNT or trinitrotoluene is around 4680 joules/gram.
Lets see 1 Jjoule is 1 watt*sec therefore
2 Kw*H ~ 1.5 Kilo of pure TNT.
I think that could destroy a masonary wall quite nicely. The time period the energy is release is very important.
BTW, Just cross checked the above calculation with a cool site
http://www.megaconverter.com/mega2/
Not quite (Score:2)
If you attempted what you suggest your flywheel would start spinning uncontrolled and would reduce 10 city blocks to rumble and hence why they bury this thing.
Re:Flywheels are a great solution (Score:1)
Re:Does it also work for FedEX vehicles? (Score:2)
Three words... (Score:1)
Kinetic energy weapon. I read their safety page and I'm still nervous. Their odds of one in a million for failure modes still seem rather high to me.
Another thing that springs to mind is reference to flywheels as energy storage in science fiction. Harry Harrison uses flywheels as a technological prop for powering motorcycles/monocycles in his Stainless Steel Rat series. You charge (spin up) the flywheel at night and use the stored kinetic energy by day. Use regenerative braking to get back some energy for "free" while you ride. And you get the gyroscope effect to keep the bike upright. Very quiet, simple and clean. Neat idea.
Re:Does it also work for FedEX vehicles? (Score:3)
Does it also work for FedEX vehicles? ... So that's how those big brown trucks full of packages get around!
Oh, the horror :-) Sorry if this is off-topic, but the image that just sprang to mind is so compelling ...
Right now I'm seeing scores of marketeers at FedEx and UPS clutching there hearts over that comment. I don't know which group would be more apoplectic, the FedEx guys for misidentifying their mortal enemy (UPS)'s trucks as FedEx delivery vehicles or UPS for hanging FedEx's our-name-is-a-verb on that oh so distinctive brown truck. You just wiped out two different companies' marketing droids with one swift blow!
Give yourself enough time to switch to pedal power (Score:4)
Who'da thunk it? -- an employee fitness program and disaster contingency program all in one!
Piller (Score:1)
Re:Three words... (Score:2)
Useful for satelites (Score:1)
If you were to use high speed vacuum sealed flywheels on magnetic bearings then the friction is obviously very low, and the limit on the lifetime of the system is a material limit. Currently a fair amount of development cash is beiong spent on making fibre materials to use in flywheels which don't fail catastrophically, have predictable and high failure stresses and low creep.
There was an article [wired.com] about this in Wired a few months back.
Re:Efficiency? (Score:1)
Re:Digital convergence (Score:1)
bollocks. Rotational energy, not angular momentum is the name of the game. 1/2 MJw^2 with a 40X drive getting up to about 900 rads/s, the mass of a CD at about 20 grams, and the polar second moment of area of a circle being piR^4/4 then the rotational energy is less than a Joule.
Re:Useful for satelites (Score:1)
I love marketing euphemisms (Score:1)
In the unlikely event of failure, our composite rim is designed to delaminate in a safe and controllable manner.
I guess 'explode into shreds' didn't score well with the managers...
Re:Give yourself enough time to switch to pedal po (Score:1)
Unfortunately, the average person can only maintain about 75 watts output while pedaling. People who train, and bike regularly have been known to do 120 watts. Note, this is sustained for long periods of time, not burst output, which can be 300 or more watts for short periods. This flywheel unit does 500 watts for 4 hours.
Temkin
Re:This isn't new (Score:1)
When I was a kid, my dad was a mainframe operator. They had something similar for power conditioning in a 4 foot high 6x8 foot box with an IBM label on it. I only found out about it because it was the only thing making noise after I hit the EPO switch (I was like 6 years old, and they didn't have a Molly guard on it... Gimme a break.). In retrospect, it was remarkable that he continued to answer my questions at that point. :-)
Temkin
Re:So big... I want a little one!! (Score:1)
Caterpillar and several other companies make smaller ones (file cabinet sized). Check out Cat here [caterpillar.com].
maru
Re:new sorta death (Score:1)
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Re:Not quite (Score:1)
That's the thing about kinetics: a 150# washing machine spinning at 2-5 rps is a whole hell of a lot less dangerous than an 850# disk spinning at 1000+rps.
Kind of the same way you can stand under a 60 watt lightbulb for 4 hours and not notice, while a 50 watt laser will cut your arm off in 5 minutes.
Re:This idea has been around for a long time... (Score:2)
I used to work in a mainframe installation that had a M/G set with a small flywheel, just to get rid of power spikes. It was synchronous, 60Hz in and out, vertical shaft, and about half the size of an oil drum. The installation was in an R&D facility for heavy hydraulic equipment (up to locomotive size), so big surges were common. Worked fine. It wasn't intended to maintain power over a power loss, but it completely stopped surges and spikes.
Re:Eco friendly? Wouldn't a LEAD flywheel be bette (Score:1)
Re:Give yourself enough time to switch to pedal po (Score:1)
Re:You think this is *heavy*? (Score:1)
Lousy numbers... (Score:2)
High capacity deep-cycle lead acid batteries trample all over those figures. A quality lead acid 12V battery that can deliver 25 amps (300 watts) for more than seven straight hours (more than 175Ah, at that discharge rate) costs maybe $US400, and weighs maybe 60 kilos. That price might be high; I'm not an expert on the pricing of any battery I can't carry up stairs :-).
Four of those suckers in parallel feeding your inverter and you've got the flywheel system's sustained output, with more than three times the capacity.
A plain 1.5kW inverter with output at least somewhat like a sine wave is $US350 or so, for a basic model - more, no doubt, for a fancy standby-power-control pure-sine-wave thingummy. But since Beacon Power don't even quote pricing for their buried half-ton humming monster, you can bet that traditional systems are FAR cheaper.
OK, I suppose you pay for reliability, and if the thing really does last 20 years with zero maintenance then that's something. But properly treated high-grade lead acid batteries have ten year service lives. And the lead's recyclable; dedicated recycling places will pay you by weight for dead wet lead acid batteries.
Re:Lousy numbers... (Score:2)
If they're non-sealed super-long-life units, yes. If they're sealed lead acid (SLA) disposables, no. Even cheap and nasty SLAs manage a five year lifespan; ones with ten or better year spans (as long as they don't get more than a few hundred full cycles in that time - many hundreds of partial cycles are fine) are also widely available. Lead acid has unexciting energy density, but it's an evolved technology, folks :-).
> Also if the idea of the UPS is to supply power whilst a generator is brought on line
> then being able to run for 7 hours isn't really relevant.
OK, no problem. Go for little dinky SLAs that any schmuck can hump around in a backpack then, if you only want a one hour run time.
Oooh! (Score:1)
Re:Oooh! (Score:2)
So, in this case, I think it is a fair assessment that nearly all first posts that are not on topic are deemed flamebait, troll, or overrated. Would you not agree? So being first is bad timing... Word to being the sacrificial lamb!
Re:This idea has been around for a long time... (Score:1)
Well, ok, small flywheel vs. big ship, but eh.
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:1)
Building an entire structure just to house the flywheel is quite rediculous.
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:1)
Not exactly. (Score:1)
Counter rotating flywheels do not cancel gyroscopic effects. Having flywheels in a counter rotating configuration doesn't cancel the tendency of their axes to keep pointing in the same direction. It just reduces the "twisting" effects when you try to point their axes somewhere else.
Also the other way to get more out of the flywheel is to have a relatively small one spin very very fast, using magnetic or some other near frictionless bearings. Strong materials like carbon fibre are commonly used for such flywheels.
And many chemical cells can explode violently when discharged at rates higher than their spec allows, especially those high energy+power density cells commonly used in modern power hungry mobile devices.
Cheerio,
Link.
Re:Useful for satelites (Score:2)
Actually, you have to do this for another reason too; it would be pretty hard to change the direction the satellite is pointing at with a flywheel (gyro) spinning inside it. Put two flywheels spinning in the opposite direction of each other, and the effects pretty much cancel each other out.
Re:Three words... (Score:2)
Wired covered this a year ago ! (Score:2)
not for home use (Score:1)
Weight--Flywheel Module: 850 lbs
Weight--Electronics Module: 200 lbs
That's a total of 1050 pounds! I'll stick with my 5 pound APC UPS for now. Plus, my landlord would not appreciate 1/2 ton of weight in our second floor computer room!
The specs [beaconpower.com] on the flywheel system are pretty interesting, too. It is definitely big and noisy - more so than my 586 full tower web server box.
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Wired had a great article on this a while back... (Score:2)
Re:Does it also work for FedEX vehicles? (Score:2)
Flywheel brakes transfer energy to a flywheel to stop the vehicle, instead of just creating waste heat through friction. The energy in the spinning flywheel can then be used to accelerate again.
Scientific American had an issue dedicated to hybrid automobiles a few years back (I'm too lazy to look up the issue, though I did check their on-line archives -- not there) and there was an article about a research team that designed and built a car with a high-tech flywheel.
It was a really cool car. It actually used a small jet turbine as the primary power source, because it's an extremely energy-efficient type of engine, but the slick part was the flywheel. In order to make sure the flywheel would hold a "charge" for a long time, they tried to make it completely frictionless. The flywheel didn't have any mechanical supports at all; it rested on a magnetic field inside a vacuum-filled spherical enclosure. A magnetized arm that rotated around the enclosure was used to accelerate and slow the flywheel.
They said when the flywheel was up to full speed, it would take several months to spin down. The main downside of the flywheel was weight, not only of the wheel itself, but also of its enclosure. The wheel was obviously designed to store a lot of kinetic energy, and the designers worried about what would happen if the enclosure were cracked open during an accident, so they designed it to withstand incredible forces.
Re:not for home use (Score:2)
In reality, when I was in the military (DEC PDP11/35 era/pre IBM PC) we ran off a rotary no break. It had a motor, generator, big electric clutch, and diesel engine. It was the least reliable UPS we had. The problem was related to the big fan load on the system. When the flywheel was used to start the generator after an outage of 5-6 AC cycles, the speed became low quickly causing the inertia of the fan load to reverse current the system while starting the engine. After the engine started, the current by the slowed fans combined with the voltage sag (frequency about 50-55 HZ) from the slow generator tended to drop things offline as overcurrent protection operated, which then spiked the system. Most 60 HZ motors tend to draw lots more current at 50 HZ. To make matters worse, sometimes the engine didn't start right away.
The best system we had was a fulltime UPS (not standby) with about 20 minutes of battery backed by 4 conventional standby generators. The UPS was online all the time, not a standby UPS. This provided excelent spike protection. It was handeled by the battery charger and battery bank. There was no voltage or frequency changes during an outage. It simply worked. It had two banks of batteries so the batteries could be changed without shutting down. I remember the battery room. Rows and rows of 2 volt cells in fiberglass racks connected to produce 300 volts and fused at 900 amps. To check the water, you needed to break up the groups to 25 cell blocks with switches. About once a year a bank of batteries was deep cycled to test for capacity and all terminal connections were cleaned and checked.
And their Enterprise solution... (Score:2)
I'd expect though that you could be a happy energy concious 21st century citizen by reading the Mother Earth news [motherearthnews.com] which would recommend scrapping the computer instead of getting a flywheel to power it.
I have to say though, It's certainly an interesting concept.
--CTH
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You think this is *heavy*? (Score:4)
The real attraction to these is that they live for a long time. Even if you have power problems, they won't be stressed very much, and in the long run, you save money by not having to keep on buying new batteries when the old ones inevitably die, regardless of use.
Beaconpower website light on technical details... (Score:2)
Re:Flywheels are a great solution (Score:2)
e = m * v^2
So 2x the rotational rate (at a given diameter) gives 4x the energy stored. So what works best is to use a very strong material and spin it as fast as possible without coming apart.
Re:So big... I want a little one!! (Score:2)
It probably could be made in smaller size for a PC, but some of the costs don't scale down well, so I'd expect it to be too expensive.
Re:So big... I want a little one!! (Score:2)
Richard Feynman is cool... (Score:2)
Ingredients:
2 large suitcases
2 large flywheels
A nice hotel
Fasten the flywheels inside of the suitcases, one in each. Point them in the direction of the hotel and spin them up, then close them (looks like two innocent suitcases). Take both suitcases and walk in to the hotel (in a straight line). Get a bellhop to take your luggage. Watch as the bellhop rounds a corner and the suitcases jump out of his hands! He'll probably think your suitcases have been posessed by the devil :-)
The only question I have is... (Score:4)
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