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The Museum of Unworkable Devices
Jippy_ writes "The quest for perpetual motion has been going on since at least the 11th century according to this site, and scientists have been getting it wrong ever since. Take a gander at some of the most valiant efforts (and ultimately the biggest failures) in trying to beat the laws of physics through the last 1000 years, along with other impossible inventions and devices."
the server that hosted the site!
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
MS-Windows Museum :-P
(somebody had to say it)
Table-ized A.I.
do they have a BeBox?
...Lisa Simpson?
alias uptime="echo '5:33pm up 22342352324 days, 6:28, 2124315623 users, load average: 2432.40, 12312.31, 123123.19'"
For new bogus-physics product companies to get coverage from wired.com and get 10 million in funding
I think that the problem with these devices isn't the laws of physics per se, I think its just that they were never properly marketed.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
That's ironic, coming right after a story about yet another Sendmail security update.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> scientists have been getting it wrong ever since.
No. NON-scientists have been getting it wrong.
It's just not possible. Energy will always be taken away in the process that can't be "recycled." It's neat to watch people try to make super efficient machines though...I wonder if any low friction fluids, etc. have come out through the development of these inventions?
Colossians 2:8
My nomination for the museum of unworkable devices is DRM
but the condom was not.
I for one have always been interested in perpertal motion machines and the related laws of physics. I believe so that if we could just improve effeciency we will achieve very near pertual machine like effects. I meen if we are using engines that are only 40% effiencent and we can improve that to 98% then that is still very possible. IMHO
Where's the cat with buttered toast attached to its back?
In theory a PM machine CAN work. Only one itty bitty problem... The machine needs to be perfectly designed and built. Also, no mass can be gained or lost (A perpetual waterfall can't work because water evaporates). PE(potential energy)=KE(kinetic energy) so you use the KE to make more PE. The major problem comes in when someone wants to use this machine to power somthing. Then some of that KE is used for other work than "recharging"(adding PE back to) whatever medium you are using to power your PM machine. This causes the machine to slowly lose its energy and come to a halt. There must also be no interferance at all (no wind, rain, or movement of the machine). Gravity and atmosphere wouldn't cause the machine to stop though. Again... it is possible to make on of these machines but: a) It must be designed and built flawlessly and b) It cannot be used to power anything other than its own movement.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells?
;-)
Surely they must be there, at least for another 10 years
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
The quest for perpetual motion has been going on since at least the 11th century
Without ever stopping!
I am a scientist now and after studying physics I guess I am completely cured from the idea that there could be a perpetuum mobile, a machine that produces energy out of vacuum.
But I remember say 20 years ago I spent a long time trying to invent such machines. I kept trying to design it and kept asking people why it wouldnt work. It took a long (frustrating) time before I could sortof acknowledge that it didnt seem to work.
So honestly... who has undergone the same process?
Googlefight "Slashdot Troll" against "BSD is dying" 303:229. BSD thus cant die.
This images are pretty neat with the stereoscopy. Don't substance exist that when you put pressure on them they generate electricity so therefore you could take a big rock and sit it atop some of this substance and you would have unlimited amounts of power. I think the more elaborate the perpetual motion machine the better. That would be a great contest, who could design the most elaborate and outrageous perpetual motion machine. I have the ultimate perpetual motion machine why not just throw something into space. Theoretically it should keep on spinning forever. Thats perpetual motion. Anys just my crazy ideas.
Checking out my form of escapism.
what of the timecube?
I have requested that the UCS, or
Union of Concerned Scientists, act
to evaluate Nature's Harmonic Time
Cube Principle of Creation - for the
welfare of children, nature and the
future of all humanity. The dumb,
stupid and evil bastards have ignored
their obligation to their humanity
fellowship to research Time Cube,
and deserve to be spit upon publicly.
It is their moral duty to test Time
Cube, and a curse of evil if they ignore
the greatest discovery of humanity.
I have offered $10,000.00 to the evil
bastards if they disprove Time Cube.
They can't disprove it, so they hide
like yellow-belly bastards they are.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In a superconductor, electrical resistance is ZERO. Electric current will move forever.
Of course, you need to keep your superconductor cold, so put it in outer space, or keep the liquid helium flowing.
And for you nitpickers: yes, there are superconducters that work at liquid nitrogen temperatures, but you can't make wire out of them yet.
A wheel that can only turn in one direction(ratchets or something) and two paddles on it. Place it in a very very very very low density gas. There will be times when no particles are striking the wheel, and times when more are striking one paddle than the other. Sometimes this will cause the wheel to move in a direction it cannot-the ratchets won't let it, and sometimes it will try to move in the other direction, where it will turn.
No energy lost in collisions and no friction and an infinite supply of high-energy, low-density gas of course.
I heard this somewhere, but I forgot why it doesnt work.
A flawless design for a perpetual motion machine... the only thing I need to make it work are a couple monopole magnets and a room-temperature superconductor. Honest!
Send $1,000 to P.O. box 324, NY, NY 20002 to get in on the ground floor!!
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Try using the Atari 5200 or Atari Jaguar joystick without taking your eyes off of the screen.
I thouht I was terrible at Aliens vs. Predator until I realized I kept getting killed because I was staring at the controller more than I was looking at the game.
Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid. --John Wayne
Voyager 10's on it's way to perpetual motion.... until it slams into something/someone.
Matter 'o' factly, last I checked, it's getting faster.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
I mean even the server follows the spirit of the exhibits!
I stole this Sig
This reminded me of the Anime Laws of Physics.
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
They want things that don't work? Monday through Friday I'm in an office full of them.... They get paid too!
Ha, just when you thought the field was closed, suddenly it's open again.... And since it's being exposed and marketed by Dr. Steven Greer you know it has to be true.
The Transcript Here-- thinkyhead software and media
The Troll Engine.
what it does is post a comment extoling the virtues of Windows 95 over Linux. It then uses the heat generated by the ensuing flamewar to power a small town.
When I was younger, in early high school, I discovered that my father was trying to build a perpetual motion machine in his basement workshop. It was a rotating wheel with slots that contained ball bearings. The idea was that the bearings would roll in the slots in such a way that the wheel would constantly be unbalanced, causing it to rotate forever. He hadn't quite gotten it to work, of course, and was concerned about the angle of the slots and friction at the hub. I had taken some physics by then, and tried to explain to my dad about conservation of energy and how his machine, in principle, could never work. Maybe he was already discouraged by then, but he quit working on it shortly after that.
Make a difference: move to a swing state.
I have a design for a perpetual motion machine that almost works.
It was cool !! Metal wheels and magnets to pull itself along !! Never figured out how to stop it though.
Why isn't the Earth's revolution around the sun an example of a perpetual motion machine? I'm sure it isn't, but I can't see why not.
Well, generating tidal energy is like perpetual motion. The Moon orbiting the Earth causes the tides to move, and there are even power plants that generate power from that.
By far the biggest flaw in all of the perpetual motion machines is that they assume a closed system. In reality, there is no such thing as a closed system. The Moon orbits the Earth, the Earth orbits the sun, and the Sun orbits the Galaxy. Now only if there was an effecient method to take adavntage of the ever changing gravitational changes without relying on an ocean.
because you suck energy out of the gas to turn your wheel.
thats like saying that sometimes my cars pistons get pushed down by gas and so its a perpertuall motion machine.
Sorry, I've already solved it. Take two bodies, put them in a vacuum with no other external forces, and have them orbit each other without decay. There. Perpetual motion.
The closest thing we know to a perpetual motion machine is a super conductor. A superconductor is a material that offers no resistance to electrons which freely move about. It's not quite perfect because there is no such thing as a perfectly closed system.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
The problem with your idea is thermodynamics. Thermodynamic analysis will tell you the maximum efficiency that an engine can acheive. Look up the Carnot engine (or cycle) for a good discussion. A Carnot engine is the most efficient engine possible, nonetheless, the thermodynamic limits are a killer. Throw in friction, realistic melting points for materials, etc. and the world is a dreary place. Engines will NEVER approach 98% efficiency.
You take 2 cats (which can be found as strays or free from kittens) and then tie them them back to back then drop. Tost cost money cats are inexpensive.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I feel like (as a non-scientist, non-physicist) that I have an intuitive understanding that all self-contained devices relying only on their own mechanics would never attain perpetual motion due to the dragging forces of gravity, friction, and other forms of external resistance.
But I don't have such an intuitive understanding that a machine that takes advantage of outside consistent forces as a source of energy (like gravity) could not attain perpetual motion. Especially if we loosen the definition of "outside consistent forces" from the scientific definition (those natural forces that always balance themselves) to the practical definition, like those forces that aren't naturally occuring but happen all the time anyway, like the directional airflow in a building's exit corridor, or the vibration of a dance floor, or all the other places in the world where energy is being expended and not captured. If we made machines that were built to rely on those forces always happening, and capturing them to convert them to energy, wouldn't that be generating more energy than is expended to run it, considering that the expended energy it depends on would be happening anyway? I know it's mathematically lazy but there's no reason why we can't double-count that stuff.
skkkoooonnnggggkkk ptui
In elementary school I came up with the idea of a submarine that powered itself by hooking its propellors up to a generator.
It's not quite perfect because there is no such thing as a perfectly closed system.
Except Dubbya's mind.
Obviously it has been proven it cannot work, so why argue that it will?
I dont like it when people think about what I think (say). Rather I try to make them think like I think.
In 1999 a few of my friends at Georgia Tech got this guy to come and talk. If I remember correctly, he got highly irritated when he failed to convince us.
Yes , i am one of those that thinks its posible. . ,
.
But NOT in the way everyone has been conditioned
to perpetual motion. Everyone needs to realise
that you need to be more open to things.
Yes i do understand that perpetual motion
is posible in a closed system , and it can't power
excess loads ( its closed ). But there can be
open systems which are just as good
It can't be that fision is the most effective
way of generating energy . For instance
can someone explain why static electricity can't
be used to fuse atoms at very very high potential
where they can overcome the repulsion forces
and the energy release be direcly converted
to electricity . Fusion can have extremely
negligible amounts of radiation
and fuel consumtion would be extremeley low.
One in each car woul be less dangerous than
a gass tank. And please say no to this crazy
idea of creating the sun here on earth
(the curent fusion research).Even if they do
make it , they will still hold a monopoly
on the energy , its not like you will be able
to buyild one in your garage.
Or how about electrolysis of hydrogen from
water with a cheaply atainable catalyst of sorts ?
But then again , i dont think we can have any of
this untill we grow up as a species. Just imagine
free clean unlimited power in todays world.
The polution would go through the roof
from the careless ways we would use it
Unlimited power weapons that could basicaly
split the earth in half or better yet
blow up the whole solar system.
I get extremeley scared thinking about tesla
conspiracies and such . And our governments
having those kind of weapons etc...
Lets try to wake up first
I got the page to load before it got slashdotted, and it looks like these are all perpetual motion machines of the first kind. These machines violate conservation of energy.
Perpetual motion machines of the second kind don't violate conservation of energy, but they rely on a decrease in entropy. With a machine like that a ship could run an engine that extracts energy from the ambient water temperature to do work, leaving a trail of colder seawater behind the ship. That doesn't violate conservation of energy, but it does cause a global reduction of entropy.
It takes more cleverness to come up with a machine of the second kind, and it's usually less obvious why they don't work.
Here's a machine like that. Assume we have a propellor made of some heat resistant material like ceramic, inside a larger ceramic housing in which it is free to rotate. Stick a big permanent magnet around it so that there is a magnetic field running through it, parallel to the propellor axis. Now inject a hot plasma of some sort into the device. Electrons in the plasma move in tight little counterclockwise circles because of the field. Protons move in much wider clockwise circles (they're heavier), so they hit the propellor blades preferentially in one direction and make it rotate.
Of course the plasma is going to cool down quickly if the protons in it are imparting kinetic energy to the propellor. So as a perpetual motion machine of the first kind, it's obviously going to run down and stop. But take the whole machine and drop it on a planet where the ambient temperature is high enough to keep the plasma hot. As the propellor extracts energy, more heat flows into the machine. What's wrong with it now?
There is no such thing as perpetual motion. All things are transitory and finite (infinity is an illusion much like time itself). There is a finite amount of energy in the universe (the universe itself is a closed system). How about a finite-perprtual motion machine, one with frictions reduced to the point where it would run 'perprtually' until there was no more energy left in the universe. Oh, wait, it already exists.
is the people in the movie The Matrix. What a crock! They somehow pump out more energy then they consume in "food" (nutrient solution or whatever). Perhaps it makes sense if you're taking one of those pills (what happens if you take red and blue at the same time?), but not in the real world.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
They think that perpetual motion is impossible, but I'm almost there!
There's just one small problem with friction in the defrobnication rotor. All I need is some funding to fabricate a new one out of frictionless unobtainium, and then we'll see who's laughing!
I'd be happy to demo the system to anyone willing to make a nominal million dollar investment. Second Law, make your time!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
You just haved to transport energy from the past or future. tom Bearden has invented it here. Of course, we know it must work since it got a patent.
As with perpetual motion I think that young folk interested in what science is supposed to be all about should first learn the basic laws of nature regardless of what name (as in Newton) or number is applied. After all, unlike Bugs Bunny cartoons you do not have to understand details and actual mathematical relationships regarding gravity simply to be a victim of it or use it to your advantage. Provide them with the will to learn, do not just sit them in front of a boring book and say MEMORIZE THIS OR ELSE, TEST IN TWO DAYS. That sets them up for failures (either by becoming adademicians or loosing interest)
One cannot expect to use permanent magnetism as a source of perpetual motion because when a permenant magnet does work, it loses a certain amount of its magnetism in the process. This phenomenon can be seen directly with the following simple home-science experement: Place two magnets side by side, such that like poles are adjacent to eachother. Let go of one and note how far it gets pushed away. Now in a PM device, the magnets will obviously have to be brought back together at regular intervals -- so tape them together so that you effectively create an environment where the repulsion action is perpetual (which is what you are trying to achieve). Leave it alone for a few weeks. Come back after that time and remove the tape. Repeat the experiment that you did at the beginning and you will notice that the free magnet gets pushed quite a bit less than before -- sometimes not even at all! What is of particular interest is the stronger the magnets were originally, the more pronounced this loss of magnetism is, so powerful magnets quickly become weak magnets, which are capable of doing less work, and therefore require more time to lose a measurable amount of their magnetism.
tanstaafl
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
with the immortality device!l ?sid=01/0 6/07/1421238&mode=thread
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.p
Slashdot really ought to set up another interview like that one.
There isn't more energy coming out than put in because the "baseline energy" is the energy put in.
You're sort of mixing up what you're talking about, but mostly, you're on track. It's trivially easy to cause something to obtain perpetual motion - as many other posts have pointed out, just toss something into space. Odds are it'll keep going forever. Perpetual motion isn't hard at all (after all, Newton's laws effectively demand that it be possible). A perpetual motion MACHINE, on the other hand...
:)
As for weather, the problem is you're relying on an external power source - the sun. Turn that off, and boom, no weather (well, eventually anyway). You are correct though, we can use this energy that's just sitting around and gain more than we put into something. In fact, this is how our entire planet survives - both its organisms and our modern society. Think hydroelectric damns and wind turbines - they're just using something that's there anyway. And plants take advantage of the ever-present sun to store chemical energy within themselves, which other organisms then use when they eat said plants, etc.
The problem still lies in self-contained systems. A friend of mine took years to believe me that you couldn't run a ship (assuming no wind outside) with windmills powering a motor that actually powers the ship. Friction is a bitch
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
10 PRINT "Here I Go"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
Superconductors can offer no resistance whatsoever to electrons moving trough the material because the electrons gather in pairs and can avoid the large molecules in the material. The only problem is that the closest to room temperature we can get is 120 Kelvins if my memory serves me right. One resercher I saw used that YBrxCuy something cooled by LN2 in a small wagon oven an oval track ~ 30 cms wide made of magnets. Once the material is cooled, the electric current inside it creates an electric field that makes it levitate over the track. Said resercher pushed it slightly and it kept on turning on the track pretty fast for some time, slowed down only by air friction. That is where the laws of thermodynamics kick in.
Oh, and feel free to corect me, I'm only in college but have a facination in the things
In Canada, we don't fancy things like socks
Isn't weather kind of a perpetual motion machine?
:)
No, the weather is driven by solar energy. When the sun runs down, weather stops. It's no more a perpetual motion machine than a battery-operated car is - it just has a "battery" that's going to last a good long time.
Two people have replied to this thread with comments about how 98% efficiency is impractical with carnot heat engines. What about other engines? Electrical, gravity (hydro), or other solutions are all possible and can achieve MUCH higher efficiencies.
On another point, if you lower the cold-sink of a carnot engine to almost absolute zero, you can achieve extremely high efficiencies, though again the practicality of this is dubious.
Who is John Galt??
Weird News
It consists of a closed system that never gains nor loses energy. It has existed since the beginning of time, and it has never stopped! There is of course only one of them in existence.
Beyond that, I can't give any more details...
solar powered sidewalk lights.
This space available.
the nights when timothy get bored and posts like 20 worthless stories in a row. What a worthless wanker. Timothy, go read comics on the internet. I heard of new invention called usenet where assholes like you can waste each others time. Fuck you. Goodbye.
The Bible DOES talk of "FOUR CORNERS" of the earth. If this guy had read the Bible he might have known that. His religious ranting may be for naught. The greater question becomes could this be on to something (however skewed his particular ranting is)
/ edn-c017.ht ml
Check it here:
(from Google) - I don't know how to hyperlink
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden
Don't forget war... the perpetual motion of sticks, stones, sabers, bullets and missiles throughtout history of Man... (and the sentient black goo used in the Gulf war)
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I was interested when I saw the headline "The Museum of Unworkable Devices" so what the heck, I clicked Read more... funny I got the HP ad though :)
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
"Digital Rights Management"
--
est modus in rebus
theyre named ididntdoit (3) and where did he go? (6) they never run out of energy (just ask my wife!!!!)
Regarding perpetual motion, however, the US has a strict patent policy. According to federal statute, 35 USC 101, perpetual motion machines are explicitly unpatentable as inoperative.
atoms seem to be stable. electrons are moving. Isn't this perpetual motion? I know it's not the same but i've never heard a good reason why.
This way to the Copy Protection gallery!
I suggest a new button on all keyboards:
The "Forward E-mail" button. Whenever my "friends" decide to forward the newest chain e-mail to me, they can simply hit the "Forward E-mail" button, which will generate a small electric current (think small perm magnet moving wrt conductor), which can then be harvested/stored for future use.
I if they feel they have to e-mail me junk, they could at least power my house.
So how about it? They have a kinetically powered watch (shake your arm->charge your watch), so when can I have a "kinetically powered" PDA? Oh wait, I spend most of my day not moving...
There is enuf energy in a booger to destroy a small town, yet no known way to harvest that energy without tons of radiation. Too bad there is not a way to slowly release that energy in a safe way. The universe is teasing us. However, if there was an easy way, I suppose terrorists would have already blown us all to peices using it. Thus, perhaps there is an anthropic barrier going on.
Table-ized A.I.
Most weather is due to the heat from the sun causing things like water evaporation and air currents due to warm air rising. If you put Earth out in the middle of space with no nearby star you would pretty much not have any weather.
"Without ever stopping!"
And... without ever actually getting anywhere. Stevin's principle applies! Give the man a cigar!
Now there's been a fair bit of scoffed at yet strenuously researched scientific endeavour in this area, but all the successes seem to be in the snake oil category, though there are some humble curiosities like John Hutchison's work. Still, we don't understand dick about it: it doesn't really fit into the currently popular physics models, it is beyond the reach of our current instruments, and so any use of it, if it's really there, is either impossible or really dangerous.
So what's the point? We aren't ready.
Damn those pesky terrorists
The real funny thing is how people will (on many forums and I have heard this in real life) start out with a "its JUST a movie, get over it... however, if you analyze the angular coefficient of hydrocarbon potentials against..." They then proceed to try to explain it away to say that "well they obviously can't burn plant materials since nothing grows now from the lack of sun." I suppose the concept that these humans still need adequate substinance and any form of that is burnable. More importantly, the process by which that food is created (whether through conversion of the dead humans or other any other breakdown/growth) there is either a very efficient method of producing the food or one that is the usual inefficient method. WHy not skip the human factor and just burn the food some other way? For that matter, why not utilize metalic based batteries? Yeah its all silly fiction but lets not purposely keep the bar low.
Here are my views on suspension of disbelief (in a nutshell and by example). Given a scientific or biological (discovery of new chemical or lifeform) discover/advancement that allows anything from FTL spacetravel to regeneration of cells after injury (after being implanted with some funky gland) I can say, "sure." However, people are still people. Rosy views of a utopian future where suddenly people are not greedy assholes is unrealistic and unless we are having a "future of some other race" then it is foolish. Given the ability to regenerate the laws of physics still apply (unless that too has been augmented somehow by perhaps having a region or field that can punch through to another universe or other such scifi fodder). Therefore an organism cannot simply grow from the size of a grain of sand to that of a 10 foot giant in a span of 90 seconds, much less without some nutrients (energy source and building blocks). Bolts of highly charged photons travel at or just under the speed of light... they can not be just cool looking bolts otherwise we are talking the expulsion of matter (atomic and larger sized) and not particles. I can sort of buy the undead thing... but if they are undead then that means they have no metabolism and some other force animates them. Therefore vampires can't simply get drunk as that requires a metabolism, circulatory system and a normally functioning central nervous system. That means that if you pop a cap in their ass they die... period. Oh yeah, I guess they can regenerate... but if you loose your heart from a shotgun blast (or a .45 hollow point) then you are gone. If your head is hit then if you can somehow slowly grow back then I am betting that you are no longer you.
As for FTL... well I think the whole idea is that these craft somehow go outside the boundries of our energy/matter system of constraints. If you buy the idea of wormholes then you buy the idea that a sub/super "level" of the universe exists that if you can punch through as a flying fish jumps through the air temporarily then you can achieve higher velocities relative to normal space motion.
Ah crap, I am doing it too now... geez
Barring widget failures and the eventual running down of the Universe, my design will otherwise function indefinitely.
The meme about perpetual motion being impossible is based on the fact that closed systems can't carry a load. To which I quote a once popular cartoon feline: "Big Fat Hairy Deal."
The meme is designed to marginalize the harnessing of Free Energy (both in the forms described above, and through devices that exist but which the public is not allowed to know about), so that the Powers That Be can maintain their positions at the top of the food chain.
-Fantastic Lad
Other things impossible to obtain:
1: Long Life
2: No taxes
3: Red Sox winning world series
4: Getting Laid
"Peace is a cry for those who can not defend themselfs" Unknown
and failed too.
I tried to get perpetual motion out of my ass. As expected it always stops right in this very chair where it remains motionless for the vast majority of it's life.
From my point of view with the Earth spinning on it's axis and going around the sun and the sun spinning about some black hole in the center of the Milky Way and the Milky way flying through space and everything expanding or at some time contracting and all, I think a perpetual motion machine would be just about any kind of machine imaginable, including the basic wheel or wedge.
Now a machine that was not in perpetual motion, that would be an amazing thing!
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
Take a box, paint the inside black,and out a glass wall down the middle. Put a pocket of vacuum inside the glass. Now neither conduction of heat nor infra-red can cross the barrier. Figure the whole thing's room temperature.
Note that each region is filled with IR black-body radiation, but it gets re-absorbed and turned back into heat and everything's in equilibrium -- and nothing crosses the barrier.
Now stick into one side of it a IR photocell wired to a capaciter which discharges once a second through and LED. Now we've got a little visible light being generated from the IR on one side.
This light can cross the barrier -- we have a one-way transfer of energy (which will promptly become heat as the visible light hits the black paint).
Now rig up a traditional thermal difference engine, and exploit!
I haven't been able to find a flaw here. My guess is that I'm misunderstanding black-body radiation, 'cause it sure seems anti-entropic to me. Maybe someone else here can get it.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
When you talk about efficiency of most energy conversion processes, you are talking about the percentage of energy which is not lost to heat. A 35% efficient gas engine, for example converts 35% of its liberated energy into work, and the other 65% into heat. In some sense, all of these processes are 100% efficient at converting energy into heat. (i.e. the work done by the afore mentioned gas motor is eventually 100% converted into heat). When we talk about the 97% efficient furnace, we are using the term efficient in a different sense. We are saying that of the chemical energy available in the gas, 97% is released, with the other 3% remaining trapped in chemical form and exhausted up the flue. Of the 97% energy released, 100% is converted into heat energy. So in the original sense of the term efficient, all furnaces are by definition 100% efficient. It can also be said that given enough time, all engines (or at least all engines on Earth) are 100% efficient at converting energy into heat.
I read a good book on this a long time ago, Tapping the ZPE by Moray B. King. The idea is that there are a set of circumstances that can cause a random system to move toward order. The work was based on the 1977 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, who discovered the circumstances that can cause that to happen. This was done without violating the second law of thermodynamics, and is probably why the guy got the Nobel Prize. I don't know his name.
If I remember right, the circumstances were that the system had to be non-linear, far from equilibrium, and energy had to be expended to maintain that state.
The question is if you can build some sort of device to make the ZPE less random and extract energy from, literally, nothing. Just to say that "that's impossible" discounts the fact that we realy do not have a unified theory of everything, and there is likely a long way to go before we do have a GUT. I would perfer to keep an open mind about these things, and look for results. It is especially difficult to attempt to apply science - engineer a device - when the science is a great unknown to even the best minds on the planet now. Nothing is impossible, and everything in the universe came from nothingness originally!
One problem of any device like that is the energy density of the ZPE is absolutely insane. You could make a very deadly weapon from it. Nikola Tesla, one of the oldschool proponents of ether theories oft noted that unlimited energy would not be a good thing for mankind. He was probably right.
We don't need a free energy device anyhow. There's a huge ball of free energy 93 million miles away. We just need to engineer better ways to use that "free energy", first.
..don't panic
Everything ever sold At Radio Shack Should be feature at this Museum!!!!
>The quest for perpetual motion has been going on since at least the 11th century
>Without ever stopping!
By harnessing the kinetic and thermal energies of perpetual motion researchers who will be working in perpetuity trying to create a perpetual motion machine we have in fact created a perpetual motion machine.
I bet I could patent that.
...everything is invested in helping a destitute royal from Nigeria. As soon as I get the millions promised in the email, I will invest in your project.
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What proof of perpetual motion would physicists accept?
The answer to that question is this: none.
If someone were to build a working perpetual motion machine the response of physicists would be "That is impossible so he must be running a fraud of some type. We don't know what the fraud is but we know it is impossible."
Physics is the study of the real and the possible. It is not the study of the unreal and the impossible. Because of this when ever a physicist says "That is impossible." He is talking about a subject he has never studied, and about which he quit literally knows nothing.
I know that mocking people is considered great sport in today's society, and that physicists have been mocking inventors on this subject for at least 150 years; but there is great risk in doing so. If anyone should ever succeed - all of that 150 years of mockery would be paid back with interest.
Taken to its essence the law of conservation of energy says "To an infinite number of decimal places the sum total of the mass and energy in the universe is a constant value." I don't know of any other law of physics that everyone accepts to an infinite number of decimal places without question. In other words: the law of conservation of mass - energy is a statement of physical perfection. We all know that we live in a perfect - flawless universe.
Instead of mocking inventors - physicists would do well to spend their time trying to find out if there are any bugs in the algorithms nature uses to calculate energy.
One place that bugs appear in algorithms is at singularities. For example: The laws of physics predict that when a star collapses to a singularity during the formation of a black hole that an infinite amount of energy is released. Is this a problem?
Here is the physicist's response to that question: "Everybody move along, nothing to see at this train wreck.", "La La La I can't hear you.", and off in the background I think I hear Sgt Schultz: "I zee nothzing!"
If I were a physicist I would be very careful who I was mocking; pay back is a real bitch.
My father didn't understand why you can't build a car that ran forever off battery energy forever replenished by an electric generator on each wheel, more wheels added as needed.
QUESTION:
"Atoms seem to be stable. electrons are moving. Isn't this perpetual motion? I know it's not the same but i've never heard a good reason why"
ANSWER:
The electrons in an atom are in "orbitals"; but they are not moving in an orbit - they are not orbiting - they are in fact not really even moving.
Visualize bb's as neutrons and protons glued together in a mass, and cotton balls representing electons glued to the bb's. The elecrons just sit there. No orbiting.
So what is an orbital? Sort-of kind-of it is a 3D map of probability of interacting. Its shape is exactly predicted by quantum physics and looks like a sphere sometimes, a hollow sphere sometimes, a donut sometimes, a set of symetric teardrops sometimes, and so forth. These shapes change as the atom interacts with other atoms. the shapes have names like sp3.
Any university chemistry text book will have pictures of these orbitals.
Again: electrons don't orbit; they just sit there.
CATCH: the waste heat from Carnot 1 is lower grade heat. As the efficiency of Carnot cycle 1 increases, the exhaust temperature must fall, so the efficiency of cycle 2 must decrease. In effect, it does not matter how many stages you use to reduce the temperature of the initial hot fluid to the lower temperature, you can never extract more energy than you could from a single stage engine doing the same thing. And that energy is still governed by the T1/T2 rule.
The killer for the Scott-still engine is that turbochargers extract energy from the exhaust quite efficiently, and in doing so reduce the exhaust temperature.
Multistage steam engines have been around for over 100 years, but they are basically a workaround for the design limitations on practical steam engines.
Who said that people who do not know history are condemned to repeat it?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
There is only one printer with NT 4.0 which can print to the darn thing, and it has hardware problems. Litterly, even with the initial install disks and every driver I can find that has anything to do with the HP photosmart lines, it will not work from any other windows box. And, to make matters worse, it completely ignores any printjobs which come accross the network via windows shares.
It's got to be aprotptype of some sort.
-=fshalor
Seeing some of the dopey ideas posted here reminds me of an idea I had as a small child. I noticed that my bicycle pump got warm as I pumped my tires. I think I thought it would be possible to use heat that came from compressing air to power a steam engine or something like that. I thought I'd discovered something really useful, too, and swore my mother to secrecy before I told her about it.
You have set up here a classic Straw Man argument, in which you pose a question, provide a flawed response, and then proceed to tear down the flawed premise as "proof" of your assertation.
A debate tactic as old as the hills, but no more effective today than it was in ancient Greece.
The crux of your straw man is this - the assertation that any attempt at presenting a perpetual motion machine is de facto rejected by "physicists" by virtue of the nomenclature "perpetual motion".
This is in error.
The reason why every single claim to date of the creation of a "perpetual motion" machine has been refuted, is because every single one of them has been deconstructed, analyzed, and the flaw found and demonstrated.
If you (or any other) would-be natural-law revolutionary can ACTUALLY DEMONSTRATE a machine that taps into some yet-undiscovered law of nature, you will be lauded and celebrated, not ridiculed.
The problem is that no machine so presented has ever survived the analysis - and many of them have been outright attempts at FRAUD.
Your argument is invalid at its heart, I'm afraid.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Are you typing with your eyes shut or something?
You demand from me an exhaustively written treatise on Free Energy filled with Facts and Figures, Who's, Why's and Wherefores. --Now how is that ANY different from demanding that I, (to quote myself), "plunk a Free Energy machine down in your living room to offer a demonstration?"
Pardon the all caps bold italics here, but it seems you need it: THAT IS THE ROGRAMMING!!!!
NOTHING I type here regarding Zero Point Energy, suppressed Tesla technology, Cold Fusion, etc., etc., is going to be convincing to somebody who has bought into the "Burdon of Proof" line of crap which has been sold wholesale to the public.
Very simply. .
Society has been programmed with this set of lies and procedures:
You don't watch CNN? You don't own a television? That's a good start. But obviously you have bought into the bullshit nonetheless, so I am guessing that you went to school taught by people who DO watch television, you socialize with drones, and unless you live on a freeking island, you are subjected to regular doses of advertising and propaganda. Whatever the vector, you have had your head filled with lies.
As I said before, Good Luck.
-Fantastic Lad
Well, it seems to me that radiated heat _will_ pass freely across the vacuum, keeping both sides in equilibrium. Why wouldn't it? Visible light and IR both travel through vacuum.
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So if your circuit did manage to pump light energy from one side to the other, it would leak back as radiated heat.
Hmm. What if you had a highly insulated box, with only an LED to pump light/energy to the outside world? Would the IR photocell inside suck up a significant amount of heat from the contents, forming a heat pump?
I had to quickly check the black box definition on http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_g
Well, I suppose it doesn't not work.