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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."
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.
In this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics!
> scientists have been getting it wrong ever since.
No. NON-scientists have been getting it wrong.
My nomination for the museum of unworkable devices is DRM
The quest for perpetual motion has been going on since at least the 11th century
Without ever stopping!
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 wonder which way (physics or perpetual motion) your interest swings. The Carnot cycle places a limit on even ideal circumstances for the thermodynamic production of Work from Energy.
For a typical steam power plant, (800K hot, 300K cold), the maximum theoretically possible efficiency is ~60% for a 100% reversible reaction (hint: these don't exist in power plants). I seriously doubt it is possible get anywhere near 98% efficient without some new ground-breaking physics in the same vein as Newton -> Einstein.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!