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Japanese Inventor's Motor Uses 80% Less Power
novakane007 writes "A Japanese inventor named Kohei Minato has created a new kind of motor. It uses magnetism to perpetuate the motor motion. As a result the motors uses 80% less energy than a conventional motor, while still maintaing the same horsepower. "Minato assures us that he hasn't transcended the laws of physics. The force supplying the unexplained extra power out is generated by the magnetic strength of the permanent magnets embedded in the rotor. 'I'm simply harnessing one of the four fundamental forces of nature,' he says."
On top of the energy savings the motor runs cool to the touch and is significantly quieter than a tradtitionally powered fan. Sound to good to be true? Well he's already started selling the fan to a chain of convience stores in Japan. Hopefully soon the design will make it in to your home PC, allowing them to run much quieter."
"Hopefully soon the design will make it in to your home PC, allowing them to run much quieter"
What? I wasn't quite aware that computers generated their own power yet... Also, the article says the engines are quite large- probably impossible to be able to use them in a laptop setup. Plus, anyway, power supplies are quite quiet anyway, and they don't generate their own power. The problem with the noise from computers these days is unbearably loud hard drives and harsh fans.
Uh, no thanks. :)
Heh, This guy will soon end up in the oil company holding cell with the guy trying to make a porcelain engine that runs on water.
"9.144 volts and 192mA output. 1.8 x 0.15 x 2 = 540mW input and 9.144 x 0.192 = 1.755W out. "
So there's nothing real to be seen here. Move on.
Evil people are out to get you.
Hopefully soon the design will make it in to your home PC, allowing them to run much quieter."
The noise in your pc is caused by air turbulence caused by the fan blades. Even if the motors inside your fans were 100% efficient, your computer would not be significantly quieter.
Life is too short to proofread.
Magnet power cars are a threat to national security.
Cheers,
Justin
question: wouldn't the magnets de-magnitize after a while? isn't that what physics would predict? good business opportunity tho. exchange the cost of electricity for the cost of buying a new motor, when the magnets stop working any physicists out there who can comment?
As opposed to what? Oh, wait, the ones that are in there are ALREADY magnetic. How do you think normal electric motors work?
Heh, This guy will soon end up in the oil company holding cell with the guy trying to make a porcelain engine that runs on water ...down the hall from the vault containing the Skynet microchips from the future, all those Tesla inventions that the government has been sitting on, alien car motors from Roswell, turbines that run on Orgone energy, and real working cold fusion.
By the way, the porcelain engine with water? I've got one in my bathroom. It turns on when you flip a metal lever.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It'll need a big case, in any event.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
"Mention of Over Unity devices in many scientific circles will draw icy skepticism."
Hmm.. Simple reason why. If you supply power to the motor using a carnot engine
and use the power from the motor to drive a carnot refrigator.
Then there will be an overall flow of heat from cold to hot..
Breaking the second law of thermodynamics..
Bullshit is word of the week.
Simon.
Search for "over unity motor" on google , you'll find a heap of these.
I always get suspicious when those sites say, "and my motor/generator at full load begins to get cold"
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Amazingly enough, if you had read the article before posting, you might have gotten your answer:
That alone makes it sound fishy to me, but IANAP.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Either the proponents of this device are complete incompetents, or they are complete frauds. I'm inclined to believe the latter, as incompetents tend not to have the sales skills evident in the article
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
The next few sentences after the one you posted cast even more doubt on the claim:
Minato says that average efficiency on his motors is about 330 percent.
Mention of Over Unity devices in many scientific circles will draw icy skepticism. But if you can accept the idea that Minato's device is able to create motion and torque through its unique, sustainable permanent magnet propulsion system, then it makes sense that he is able to get more out of the unit than he puts in in terms of elctrical power. Indeed, if the device can produce a surplus of power for longer periods, every household in the land will want one.
Is everybody here retarded? What did you think made your existing fan motors spin, Space Pixies? No, it's a freaking electromagnetic motor. Every single one of them. And there's that PC speaker up front with a big magnetic coil on the back that beeps everytime you turn your PC on, too.
I though you were supposed to be nerds.
16 watts driving a 35 kg load. Thats the equivelent of a couple of C cells driving a golfcart around.
;)
Which is entirely possible - what they don't say is how slow it goes
What would be impressive is getting that golfcart from 0 to 100 in 6 seconds.
This would not work in a traditional cumbstion motor but im sure there are was to implement it into large electric ones...imagine a fully electric car with 4 of these (one for each wheel) about 25 hourse power each and have them cmputer controlled for traction...imagine the performance ...and this type of car would probly run 3 times the distance of current electric cars ...then maybe alot of people would consider replaceing there current cars.
There are thousands of people sprinkled over the web who claim to do things with magnets that violate the laws of themodynamics; this guy is just one more.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence: this guy provides none.
<voice style="scott-evil">
Ripoff! Magnetrons are what make microwaves work! What'll they do next--put a "laser" on the moon and call it the "Alan Parsons Project"?
</voice>
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Still incorrect though. Using this logic, you could hook one motor to another, using one as a generator. Take the power from the generator, and use it to power the first motor, which makes more wattage than you put in, which spins the armature faster, which makes more current... Until you have an infinitely fast spinning infinite energy generator.
It's fake if this is true, I can't get to the article to verify myself.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
What will come next, dogs mating with cats?!?!
Venkman: "Or you could accept the fact that this city is headed for a disaster of Biblical proportions."
Mayor: "What do you mean, Biblical?
Ray: "What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor. Real wrath-of-God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky. Rivers and seas boiling."
Egon: "Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes."
Winston: "The dead rising from the grave."
Venkman: "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
didn't I read back in 1993 that we'd all be using solid state hard drives by now??? Guess that was a sure thing in the days of $600 hard drives.
Pricewatch.com tells me I can get a CompactFlash card reader for USB for under 20 USD and a 2 GB CF card for under 200 USD. There also exist adapters to plug CF cards into ATA cables. It seems that the desire for more capacity in a 3.5" desktop HD enclosure has outpaced the desire for larger persistent solid-state memory in desktop machines.
What's to say it isn't powered by giant invisible lamas?
There is no "interesting anomaly", there's just a claim phrased in the language of junk science. We don't find new models for physics on the basis of undocumented, unreviewed, unrepeated claims.
motors uses 80% less energy than a conventional motor
A conventional electric motor motor uses at most 1.6 Joules of electric energy to produce 1 Joule of motion energy (German Wikipedia). If you reduce that by 80%, you use only 0.3 Joules to produce 1 Joule... nice perpetuum mobile.
I have seen a few posts about "basic physics" and how the magnets would have to "demagnetize" to do work. But in actuality, basic physics says that magnetic forces can do no work. Why? Force = v x B (velocity of charged particle cross magnetic field) and work is the integral of Force dot dr. v cross B dot dr is 0 (because v and dr are in the same direction and the cross prod. of v and B will be perp. to v).
So the permanent magnets don't do ANY work. They can accelerate charged particles by changing their directions, and maybe they can increase efficiency by reducing friction somehow (like maglev trains). But they are not putting work into the system.
Greg
The Toyota Prius already gets 60mpg in the city. Imagine the gas mileage these cars could get if they used one of these motor
If I calculated correctly, not a Toyota Prius outfitted with one of these motors would excrete 1.3 litres of gasoline every 20 miles. (it is beyond a matter of getting "great gas mileage": the car would put out more gasoline than it takes in).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Ok, if the input is less than 1/3 of the output, then he just discovered a machine that, if the output was looped to the input, would create infinite energy in theory. That is obviously impossible. It sounds interesting, that input and output ratio is not possible. Just because the guy gives you a reason why it's possible doesn't mean that it's true.
... on April 5
I worked as a patent consultant briefly and in a short time saw a couple of perpetual motion schemes. The most elaborate was proposed by a bank security guard and involved a hydraulic pump and motor combined with an electric motor and generator.
I explained that energy in a system worked like a bank account (bank guard -remember?) You put energy in and you can take it back out, but you can't get quite as much back out as you put in because there was a service charge in the form of friction. He begrudgingly understood. I complemented him on his nice drawings.
"In this house we obey the law of thermodymanics" - Homer Simpson
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
It's not violating any laws of thermodynamics, it's violating the law of conservation of energy.
If you attended college, I'd ask for a refund. The first law of thermodynamics *IS* conservation of energy. Check out this.
That being said, this device definitately violates it.
Cheers,
Justin
This is the exact same argument every peddler of perpetual motion machines uses to claim that his invention is not a perpetual motion machine, but is somehow harnessing external power which is just hanging around out there to be used.
The Earth's electromagnetic field is a popular choice among these hucksters. With this guy, it's magnets.
The very fact that this showed up on the front page of /. shows that they've given up all pretense of caring what they publish here.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You can get them at Radio Shack.
They are on the same shelf as the Flux Capacitors.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Is everybody here retarded?
You're new here, aren't you?
Cthulhu loves you.
Why the fuck is this crackpot on slashdot?
The claim that the extra energy is coming 'from permanent magnets' is risible. It's like claiming to extract energy from the gravitational field of the earth.
MAYBE he has a very efficient motor (though I haven't seen any independant evaluation of that claim). But he certainly doesn't understand how it works, and his claim that he can extract more energy from a motor-generator configuration than he put in is obvious fraud.
I'm not sure what's worse, that the journalist who wrote the article is so credulous, or that the people here (who should damn well know better) are.
Wrong, you need to review your physics a bit more. Work is defined as force times distance, W = F * d. Since the levitating magnet is not moving, no work is being performed. A levitating magnet is simply a balance of forces, nothing more. It is exactly the same as putting the magnet on a table (gravity provides a downwards force, the table exerts an equal force upwards).
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
1. Conservation of energy is not true. Highly unlikely.
2. The energy stored in the permanent magnets is being used up. This is the most likely (and probably actual) phenomenon. Any magnetic field has stored energy. You can get this energy out by demagnetizing the magnet. I don't know how much energy is in these magnets, and as I can't read the article I can't see if there are any comments on the longevity of the magnets. My guess is these motors would "work" for a while, then suddenly drop down to worse than normal functioning electromotive devices (due to adverse effects of eddy currents, etc). I'd put my wager here. (Especially since it sounds like it only works with large (i.e., lots of stored magnetic energy) magnets.
3. The device somehow draws energy from the environment in some new, undiscovered manner. The combination of moving electromagnetic fields could somehow convert some other energy source (i.e., background radiation) into mechanical forces. Highly speculative and unlikely. If the device were really "creating" energy from the magnets, you could start one up, turn a generator, start another one up, then chain the output of the generator to the input of the motor, then keep them going forever. That would be a neat experiment.
In summary, there is probably a well-understood phenomenon here, and it's nothing out of the ordinary. I applaud the marketing prowess of the "inventor" here, in any case. If the device does work, I look forward to seeing the interesting results as the basic conservation laws are reexamined and we end up neat things like warp drives, levitation, and all the other stuff I've wanted since I was 4!
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I suppose that if he's quickly depleting the stored magnetic field on the permanent magnets that he could get out more electrical power than he put in, but that would only work for a couple rotations of the ol' motor. Aside from that, it don't matter which of the "four fundamental forces of nature" you harness, there ain't no cheating the laws of thermodynamics, even in convenience store cooling fans...
I'll take you to the ball, Barbara Manitee!!!
US Patent 4,751,486
US Patent 5,594,289
Note that I'm not speaking for or against his claims, but if you want to see how it works, there you go.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
This sentence pretty much tells you this is another perpetual motion hoax:
With the help of magnetic propulsion, it is feasible to attach a generator to the motor and produce more electric power than was put into the device. Minato says that average efficiency on his motors is about 330 percent.
Wooo-Hooo we can replace coal, oil and nuclear by just string these things together like Christmas tree bulbs!
The other clue that this is a scam is the entourage of bankers and investors to the demos, not physicists and engineers.
Joining us are a middle-aged banker and his entourage from Osaka and accounting and finance consultant Yukio Funai. The banker is doing a quick review for an investment, while the rest of us just want to see if Minato's magnetic motors really work. A prototype car air conditioner cooler sitting on a bench looks like it would fit into a Toyota Corolla and quickly catches our attention
Letter To Iran
4. Someone doesn't know how to measure actual power correctly.
5. Someone is deliberatly measuring actual power incorrectly so he can sell crappy motors for more than they are worth.
Magnets, to many people, can explain anything, becuase they do not understand them properly. Just as you can not construct a perpetual motion device using magnets, however, you cannot raise efficiency using magnets as an energy source. Magnets can only raise efficiency by acting as frictionless bearings, but that is not the case for these motors. This is blatant fraud, and I cannot believe these people fell for it.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Or they think that pointing out incredible claims for scrutiny is a good way to test them. Note the "from the skeptical-eye-on-the-science-guy dept." tag on the article rather than, say, "from the holy-shit-give-this-guy-a-Nobel-quickly dept."
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
You can get out more than you put in. Maybe this new motor works like a savings account. (Yeah, I know, the "extra" comes from somewhere else!)
And for this you got +5 Informative?? Are there actually that many people on /. that would for even one moment believe that this device actually does what the "inventor" claims.
There have been hundreds of these bogus devices trotted out in the past. They never quite seem to work, but the inventor always promises that it just needs a little more tweaking, once he gets enough investors lined up. Not one has ever accomplished anything beyond emptying the wallets of the suckers that invest in these scams.
Minato doesn't sound like he's just made a measurement error, he sounds like a fraud. The fact that he fooled the reporter doesn't make his invention any more real.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
You're mistaken. Most of the Space Pixie Smoke is actually inside capacitors. You typically only get to see it released when the electrolyte is crap, or when you wire things up wrong.
Computer chips contain very little space pixie smoke, and must be heated to staggering temperatures to get it released. I did, however manage to make a UV-erasable PROM glow (UV erasable chips have a little window in the top so you can see the actual chip through the case, and thus expose it to UV) once by accidentally connecting the power supply to one of the data pins. Just like a little lightbulb, all those tiny circuits worked nicely as a filament.
Slashdot insults Einstein's memory by regularly posting junk science articles with his image attached. But of course, they don't actually write the articles .. or submit them .. or proofread them .. or fact check them ..
What do they draw a paycheck for again?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> What's to say it isn't powered by giant invisible lamas?
Llamas as in the South American camel?
I've been in South America for 5 years, and if there are any invisible llamas here, I certainly haven't seen them.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Erm.... the word you're looking for is fallacy. I suppose your invented hybrid word might mean "mistake with a penis", as in "Bill Clinton commited lots of phallacies".
But then, you are an AC so maybe it was on porpoise.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
"and that caroline let frank feel her up in assembly"
Man, you had to do that in assembly? I would think a compiled language would be easier, but still not as easy as just using your hands and the more traditional analog interface.
Raser Technologies recently (ie within the last year) introduced technology to convert existing electric motor designs to run not more effeciently, but more powerfully. Their patented (with a real US patent) design allows a motor to produce up to three times as much power than previously achievable. All electric motors can be "overdriven" to provide more power in short bursts. This technology (which they dub Symetron) allows the motor to run at those higher powers at a sustained rate without burnout or explosion.
Unlike Kohei Minato, Raser Technologies has been to various trade shows, hosted several demonstrations and posts results done by 3rd party test facilities. Also unlike Japan Magnetic Fan Company, Raser Technology is a publicly traded company under the stock symbol RSTG.OB.
Although not as revolutionary or jaw-droppingly-fake, this new technology does have a huge amount of practicle applications. For example, currently to run an electric car you need about a 50-HP motor. Here's an example of how big a motor that's rated for 50 horsepower continious usage can be (610 lbs). A counterexample would be this video from a trade show where Raser Tech runs a bus on 500 horsepower motor that is noticably smaller.
Yes, these motors still have the same efficiency rating as the motors without the Symetron adjustment, but they are extremely small for their power ratings. The key is truly the power density.
><));>
Additionally, the metal case of the PSU acts like a Faraday cage and keeps most of the magnetic fields inside the PSU, but it is mainly there to keep you from electrocuting yourself (PCs are one of those few items of consumer electronics that the consumer is expected to open up at some point).
You'll note that all of the coils in a transformer are wound together closely - this is due to the strength of magnetic fields decreasing rapidly (faster than the inverse square law) as you move away from the source. You can't seperate the coils by much distance and "transfer all the hundreds of watts your PC needs through the air as a magnetic field". It just doesn't work like that.
There is some electromagnetic noise from the power supply, but not very much really. Open up a piece of consumer electronics (like a Tivo or CD player for example) and you'll note that they didn't even bother to put any shielding around the PSU, because the magnetic field strength coming from it is really weak. How do they get away with it? The fields just aren't that big that they cause any problems with modern digital electronics.
Open up a dead hard drive sometime and you'll find two really really strong magnets and an electromagnetic coil in the head actuator assembly, adjacent to the sensitive magnetic media. How do they get away with it? Simple, the field is really quite small.
Unless your power supply includes the type of electromagnet used on a scrapyard crane, I wouldn't worry about it - the field is much smaller than you might think.
Putting moderation advice in your
Actually, you're right. Simply put, (and I am oversimplifying this) the shrouds you always find around the *pairs* of magnets effectively contain the magnetic field.
Try taking the two halves of the magnetic assembly in the hard drive and putting them together like how they are when mounted in the drive. Now bring your favorite piece of non-magnetized ferromagnetic material near the magnet pair. You should notice that there's virtually no attraction.
Now, put your ferromagnetic material *in the gap* between the magnets--you know, where the head positioning coil goes--and you've got a *huge* attraction.
The field exists almost exclusively between the magnets because of that magnetically conductive shroud around the outside of both the magnets.
Magnets, particulalry permenant magnets, are indeed a reservoir of magnetic potential energy.
This energy is small. Like, really small. I'm involved with calculations on magnetic materials, and we typically use units of meV (milli electron Volts) for a magnetic interaction coefficent. That's 1.602 x 10^-22 Joules. Values are typically between around 2 up to maybe 30. Might be higher with the special rare-earths, dunno.
Iron has 8 interactions per atom. Thus, a magnetic energy of the order of 2 * 10^-20 J per atom. One mole of iron will therefore have of the order of 2 * 10^-20 * Avagadro's number = 2 * 10^-20 * 6 * 10^23 = 12 * 10^3 J. That's 12 kJ of magnetic energy, in 55g of the stuff. [0]
So, a post about says that the moter has a discrepancy of 1.2 W (can't get to the article myself). With 55g of iron permenant magnets then, that's enough to run that system for 10 000 seconds. Might sound a lot, but that's 2.7 hours. If I'm within an order of magnitude, that's a runtime of the system of around a day at most, assuming 100% conversion of the magnetic energy into rotational energy. [1]
No. There is not enough magnetic energy in the parmenant magnets.
[0] In fact, I think that you could only get 1/2 of that out. Still, I'm ignoring that, cos I think that this is only within an order of magnitude.
[1] Which I doubt. A lot. In fact, I've never seen any suggested method for doing that.
This guy is putting energy into the machine every time his magnet moves. Attach it to a fixed position say with a clamp and it would not work. Take a look at this video of Minato and then read the explanation here. You will need to search in your browser for minato because the page is long. Also you have to wait for the avi to completely download.
A U.S. Patent? Shit, I got one of those in my cornflakes this morning. :o)
Lt Col Tom Bearden (US Army, retired) has been predicting this since 1995.
It's fascinating to read Bearden's views. He claims that what we know as Maxwell's Equations are actually gross oversimplifications, made by Heaviside, of the real Maxwell's Equations -- and that a lot of amazing physics would be possible if we would go back and exploit all the possibilities in the real Maxwell's Equations. Heaviside's "arbitrary crippling" of Maxwell is basically the reason we haven't yet colonized Alpha Centauri.
There is a lot of overlap between Kohei Minato's research and Bearden's. Bearden made quite recent comments about Minato's motor.
By the way, Minato's invention is called the "MagMotor." Does anybody know whether this is related to the Magmotor Corp. of Massachusetts?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
You'll need a piece of letter or A4-sized paper and a sharp new #2 pencil to complete this proof.
Take the paper, and fold it in half lengthwise, then unfold. Turn the paper upside down so that the crease is pointing up. Rotate the paper so that a short side is closest to you (perpendicular to your eyesight). Take each of the corners furthest from you and fold them back to the crease at a 45-degree angle, leaving a point at the end of the crease. Fold the previously folded area towards you. Take each of the corners furthest from you and fold them to the crease, one centimeter shy of the point. Fold the point away from you. Turn the paper upside down. Fold it in half along the original crease. Orient the paper so that the original crease is towards you. Fold towards you on an imaginary line connecting the corner on the folded side that is furthest away from you with a point approximately three centimeters away from the original crease on the unfolded side. Flip upside down and repeat. Pick up the paper and relax the last two folds to a 90-degree angle.
Throw gently.
Eat the pencil.
Oh, you wanted a mathematical proof? You should have presented a mathematical assumption.
We know something you don't know
&
Yes, but we'll sue them
What worries me are phrases like "proprietary design innovations", "proprietary scientific principles", "strict confidentiality agreement", etc. I read their Press Briefing, which left me more and less satisfied. The best i can piece together is that they've got better cooling, some special design tweaks and a "means for increased magnetic energy storage" The deeper you go the curioser it gets...
Just for shits and giggles they make almost the same claims as our Japanese friend. "300% more power" anyone? Their SEC filings make for veryinteresting reading. they've only spent 600K on R&D since raser's inception, they haven't obtained patents yet (only applied for them), "Raser's auditor's report contains a "going concern" qualification", "Our officers have no long-term experience with electrical motor sales"... I just can't understand... If their tech is so mindblowing how come it isn't everywhere?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Of course there's always a change something we don't know is going on, but the unfortunate fact is that 999999 cases in a million it's a crook. Besides, it's very easy for this guy to prove his claims.
If he hooks up the miracle motor to generator and uses that generator to power up the motor and it keeps running (should be easy with 330% efficiency, you can also draw infinite amount of energy from the circuit while at it) then he has either found the invisible and so far unexplainable power source or has proven that laws of thermodynamics don't work and perpetual motion machines are possible, you can bet that million physicists will swarm in to observe it and everything we though we know will be turned upside down. He'll also be worlds richest person in no time.
Carefully observe how he fails to do that, and instead relies on (probably wrongly calculated or rigged) simple electrical meter. Now ask yourself why? Simple answer: because it doesn't work, and this is nothing but a con.