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Yet Another Perpetual Motion Device
The Star reports on this inventor breaking all the laws of physics as far as free energy goes. It even provoked interest from "esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Markus Zahn". I would like to know how this seemingly backyard enthusiast's experimental set up has not been tried a million times over the years. It seems so simple and too good to be true. The article has links to a multi-part video demo of the device accelerating an electric motor under load for free!
I tried to find an instance (via googling) where his device was left at a lab where scientists spent some time on it but I cannot find such a thing. I would think they would be curious enough to at least try. I think that because his device does the "impossible" than there is no sense looking at it? It probably isn't a perpetual energy thingie but how does it do what it does? Remember when it was impossible for the human body to sit in anything that accelerated as fast as 60mph?
http://www.busyweather.com/
The problem is the magnetic field degrades.
The people involved are going out of their way to say it's not perpetual motion; rather, the experiment is not working as predicted. There are many explanations for that. The guy involved has basically wrecked his life over tinkering with it.
And the articles don't give enough details to judge much.
But so far, slashdot is the only article that talks about perpetual motion.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Yet another Perpetual Motion Device, brought to you by Slashdot, the perfect Perpetual Immobility Device.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Connect the corpse of Beethoven up to a generator. Generator provides electricity for CD-player. CD-Player plays Britney Spears songs over and over. Beethoven spins in his grave providing mechanical energy to generator.
White paper or GTFO
FTFA:
There's no talk of perpetual motion. No whisper of broken scientific laws or free energy. Zahn would never go there - at least not yet. But he does see the potential for making electric motors more efficient, and this itself is no small feat.
Why the headline, Taco?
WQAT
That remembers me of all those movies, where somebody meets an alien, zombie, whatever, and nobody believes them, because that is the kind of story, that you usually hear from nut jobs.
I'm not saying, that he has, what he claims. I just find the idea interesting, how hard it would be to convince people, that you actually have something like this.
He also says it's *NOT* a perpetual motion machine. He's asking experts to explain him why that happened, and if it could turn into a way to make electrical generators more efficient.
There are never any numbers or real mathematic mentioned in TFAs about perpetual motion machines...that said...i want my zed pm (zpm) NOW!!!!!!
I really wish that, instead of running "person claims they can do the impossible" stories, newspapers would run exciting stories explaining the basics of thermodynamics, what energy is, and nuclear physics and the background behind Boyle's gas law.
These days, we're wondering when the oil's going to run out, and we need to look to how we get the most energy out of our Sun and gravity - the only real sources of energy on this planet, all other sources being derivatives.
Why can't we have a more intelligent public? It wouldn't hurt for them to have an understanding of the world around them, maybe they'd be less likely to fall for scams based on breaking the observed laws of physics.
Does my bum look big in this?
...that this inventor ISN'T American.
But if the invention ever gets anywhere, he will immediately be granted citizenship, because everyone knows that Americans are the best inventors in the world...
It's really, really simple. He has a spinning magnet and metal bars with coils of wire wrapped around them around the magnet. What happens when it spins? That's right, you induce AC current. What happens when you induce a fluctuating magnetic field through a metal? That's right, hysteresis drag. So, he's basically built a magnetic brake. Then he shorts out his coils, and what happens? Sure enough, it accelerates; he's shorted out his brake!
Nothing to see here, move along.
Margaret Thatcher died the other day. It was a sad day, but I like to think that she's looking up at us right now."
Heins has an even greater uphill battle. He isn't an engineer. He doesn't have a graduate degrees in physics. He never even finished his electronics program at Heritage College in Gatineau, Quebec. "I have mild dyslexia and don't do well in math, so I didn't do very well in school," he says.
I get the impression that this one is not a charlatan out for a buck, but simply confused. Don't be too hard on him.
At best he invented a high efficiency electric motor/generator.
He is obviously trying to avoid this tautology. Even still you use it against him. Obviously it is early and the project needs peer review. Heck, a project that basic, you could build one in your garage and see what happens. The video doesn't give enough info. The thing could be plugged into the wall for all we know. Or sucking juice out of the attached instruments. Anyway, whatever the truth is, it will come out. It either is a cool new thing, or it's not.
electric motors rely on rotating magnetic fields. if you have permanent magnets attached to any supposed "perpetual motion" device, there will be a source of rotating magnetic fields somewhere which require power (and yes, this makes any such thing a hoax).
Energy in == energy out with no known exceptions.
Thermodynamics just says you can't win when you're talking about the whole Universe. Once you start to get into smaller sections of it you can increase organization locally but it is always at the expense of more global energies. Life here on Earth is an example of this - we're more organized but the Sun pumps out a lot of wasted energy to feed that organization. It's entirely possible that some kind of machine could be built to extract energy locally which ultimately has a global source but that does not mean its perpetual, the Universe will still wind down total energy wise in the global space.
Shh.
I'm skeptical that the prof. really said "But I saw it. It's real. Now I'm just trying to figure it out." If he did he's a jackass.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
He has a series of Youtube videos where he shows it off and attempts to explain it.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I will assume that the motor is a common DC motor with field on the stator, armature on the rotor. If the flux from the magnet he's holding near the shaft is canceling some of the flux from the field, then the motor will naturally speed up. The opposite effect is when you increase the flux from the field... the motor slows down.
The whores get mad when the sluts give it away for free.
I don't know what you just said, but it sounds good. Could you tell me how I can short out the brakes on my car?
Very interesting. Hope it works out for the inventor and BillyG doesn't try to steal his idea.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
So, if this is yet another crack pot with a perpetual motion machine then why post this to slashdot? Further, why did slashdot accept the article? Doesn't this just encourage news sources to print garbage science? I think we should be working to increase the scientific integrity of popular science articles rather than giving the bunk ones creedence.
...clearly the remaining component which he needs to make it complete is a flux capacitor (and perhaps a deLorean).
It's hard to tell exactly what's going on-- the first thing I'm wondering about is whether he's collecting stray fields (the modern world is full of electromagnetic fields)-- but I am, in fact, impressed with the fact that he's actually going to MIT and showing it to people asking for an opinion from people who have a good understanding of science. That's the right step; good move.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I knew about a guy who had invented a "zero bandwidth transmitter" 40 years ago. When I saw it 20 years ago, he was very bitter that no one would even look at his invention. He could demonstrate voice communication over miles, with official FCC interference monitoring equipment showing "zero bandwidth". A friend of his showed me the basics of how it worked. It was actually a "spread spectrum" transmitter. He actually had a useful invention (same principle invented since by others). But he insisted on calling it "zero bandwidth", and mocked the experts who explained the mathematical impossibility of such a thing - because he had working prototypes, the experts were clearly deluded in his mind.
This violates the Buy-our-oil law, and may result in spontaneous appearance of WMDs and/or Wait-for-Hydrogen-cell factors.
Wow, slashdot good at computer but bad at physics?
1) you don't accelerate at "60mph" 60mph is a speed or velocity, not an acceleration.
2) If the system heats up at all, even a little (like from friction), it 'looses' energy to that heat. Since he claims it is perpetual motion, he is not adding any energy to the system (its not plugged in right?) therefor it must slow down.
3) One thing to watch on AC systems - voltage and current are not always in phase - so you need to consider the power factor when you calculate how much energy is going into a system and how much you are getting out.
4) To the idiot that said something about 'disconnection brakes', in this case the brakes were effectively electro-magnets. By shorting the coils, they became lumps of copper. No more electro-magnets, no more brakes.
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
Wow, I'm almost cautiously excited. Call me stupid but I want to know more.
My work here is dung.
I think, you shouldn't, use so, many commas, as it, makes it hard to, understand what you're, saying.
Does he ever disconnect the input to his induction motor? Just because the motor doesn't normally bring the system to an super-accelerated state, doesn't mean that it can't pull in extra energy to cancel the induced magnetic fields within the motor. He needs to have an amp meter on the input to the motor to see if he's pulling additional power into his system while it accelerates.
...While Vista is indexing. :/
I have devices branded "Green Plug" for our refrigerator and washing machine. These devices modulate the AC waveform fed to the motor. The result is quieter operation, and measurably less power used. It works because the magnetic fields in the motor store energy, causing the power draw to vary over each cycle. The device feeds only the power needed. Without the device, the excess power is dissipated as noise and heat. These devices are no longer sold, because large motors now typically incorporate the technology internally.
If we're being pedantic, it's a speed, not a velocity. Velocity is a vector, speed + direction.
William, Shatner, is, that, you?!?
Let's see, scholar.google.com shows Markus Zahn wrote a book "Electromagnetic Field Theory: A Problem Solving Approach" in 1979 (the first item in many publications); he is a professor at MIT - part of the Lab of Electromagnets and Electronic Systems. Gee, I wonder if he understands motors and magnetic brakes.
Clearly the professors (Markus Zahn and at least one other) have studied the invention and cannot explain the result. You, on the other hand, based on cursory information, understand every little detail. So typically slashdot: I took a course in university on the subject, so my opinion is better than the professors.
DirtyHerring (635192) == William Shatner.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Don't forget we live inside of one gigantic electric motor like device. The spin of the earths core generates a magnetic field which shields us from solar radiation. Someday we are going to tap directly into the power of the earths magnetic field.
That would not be "free energy". The consequences of totally sucking all energy out of the earths magnetic field make, aside from a really bad movie, global warming look like just another day. And while there is an awful lot there, there are no 6e9 or more of us on the planet who could go wild with consumption given "free energy".
It doesn't do the impossible. It uses magnets to make something spin round. I thought of a similar machine when I was like 6 years old. The process works, but the energy you are getting out comes from the magnet, which will lose its charge over time, and would take more energy to recharge (if you can even do that) than you get out. No magic here, nothing to see, move along..
which is totally what she said
I'm glad you've got it all figured out, not actually having seen the device yourself. Meanwhile, a professor (which is something you are not... correct me if I'm wrong...) has actually seen the device, and is apparently unable to come up with any explanation of what occured, at least not for the time being.
But hey, I'm sure the 30 seconds you spent thinking about it, combined with the high probability that you are actually completely unqualified to offer such an opinion, are more than sufficient for everyone to draw the correct conclusions. Maybe you should ring the professor and tell him how obvious the answer is - why, someone of your calibre and with your impeccable detail and indepth analysis must surely get a job at his college.
This is not new. A Japanese inventor, whose name I cannot remember, developed a similar motor with magnets inside of it some two years ago after two decades of work. His design was able to develop the stated horsepower using one tenth of the electricity. Not perpetual motion exactly, but a considerable leap in efficiency. That makes two independent sources verifying the same phenomenon. The least we owe ourselves is to investigate these claims carefully. A large portion of our nation's electrical load is made up of motors.
No, I don't. Can you cite who is supposed to have said this and when? Sounds rather like an urban myth to me.
And even if there was someone who was foolish enough to have said that, so what? It's one thing to say something is fatal, a quite different thing to be impossible by the fundamental laws of physics.
You win.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Why is it that Science is always trying to keep up with the inventors and then "explain" how it works when previously they (the scientists) said it was impossible and would violate all the known laws of "whatever"?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Perpetual motion I don't know about, but if this device can be kept going for a longer time without too much energy input, then it might have application in transportation.
I remember sitting in those college classes and most of the future Slashdot types had that attitude before they took the course.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
>The interesting concept here is that he's using a property known as Lenz's Law that creates something called back EMF through those coils of wire that used to have energy running through them. Lenz's law simply states that, like Newton's law of an "equal and opposite reaction," there's an opposing force counter-acting the force in play. It's like the opposite reaction of an astronaut falling towards a planet: inertia. Neither force is created, nor destroyed. All energy is conserved. Idiot troll.
apparently unable to come up with any explanation
"'Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect.'" - Jack Handey
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
There may be more to it than that. He seems to be using iron core coils, and channelling the magnetic flux through the drive motor. If it were as simple as you say, then it wouldn't make any difference whether the drive motor coupling was brass or iron.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It's powered by the hopeless optimism of journalists when confronted with something that defies the laws of physics. So it's not exactly a perpetual motion machine, but I don't think the fuel supply will ever run down.
Yes, but he's one upping the system. Rather than placing a label on his claim, he's (effectively) challenging the brightest minds to explain its behavior. A wise way to defeat the free energy stigma.
Indeed, but what is strange is that the 'mag brake' effect behaves differently wether or not there is a magnetic coupling between the motor and the generator...
(I.E. in his first video, the system oddly slowed down when he shorted the coils -- WTF?)
What I find odd, is that he says the system is under load.
Shorting out the generating coils means the current will take the path of least resistance (the short-circuit) and the 'load' is no longer under power.
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
Only laws we have failed to properly describe. "Broken laws" are the domain of religion.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
If you watch all four parts, it seems that once the generator reaches a certain speed, it does not slow down when he cuts power to the system. Instead the two coils are still generating electricity from the magnets flying by them
Actually, he never does cut power to the induction motor. He shorts or re-connects the electromagnet coils (that are part of the generator assembly).
What he demonstrates is that for the same or less power (Volts*Amps) of input to the motor driving the generator, he can cause the whole assembly to accelerate while using less power.
That is the interesting part (one more time): He can cause acceleration of the motor, while under a constant load, using less power.
Not a perpetual machine, but rather a really unusual way to get higher efficiency from a motor-generator assembly.
My concern is that in one of video parts (three I think), he shows a graph describing what he is doing in his experiments, and he shows a chart that has the constant speed/power line, a decelerating line (disconnected electromagnets) and the exponential acceleration line. He never tests it far enough -- and in the last part (or second last) he shows a plain split-phase induction motor and puts a small set of permanent magnets next to it. Notice that when he puts the small magnets next to the shaft of the motor it accelerates, but he keeps shutting the motor off to "prevent the shaft from getting magnetized". That may be the ultimate problem here, it might just be a short-lived affect from magnets. Once the whole assembly is magnetized, you don't gain any more from this effect.
If perpetual motion or free energy was easy, nature would have found a way to exploit it in the billions of years this universe has existed.
Parts 1 and 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
So odds are that at some point this effect will be explained using the known principles of energy and magnetism to everyone's satisfaction.
However I'm finding it interesting that there are so many people willing to reject upfront the very notion that this machine can do what it appears to do. While I can definitely appreciate the posts saying that we should be investing our energy to better understanding the known principles of science to build better machines; I would think we'd also want to keep an open mind to the possibility that our understanding of some "known" principle of science is not entirely correct or incomplete. These are after all detailed models, in many cases built on top of each other; that we have created ourselves based on the scientific method, and not some absolute fact that was written somewhere in a universal reference guide. In other words no one left us the schematics to the universe, we are attempting to reverse engineer it as best we can.
Many of the great inventions and discoveries in history have come from "left-field" or as a result of some serendipitous event. If everyone at the time would have simply thrown them out as being in violation of the known "laws" of science prior to their discovery then we wouldn't be where we are as a civilization today.
I think, you shouldn't, use so, many commas, as it, makes it hard to, understand what you're, saying.
Yes, I think, you, are right, I, am starting, now at exactly this point in time to shift my role model from william shatner to james joyce that should work out ok what do you think yes that feels much better
No, I don't remember that, especially because "mph" is a velocity and not an acceleration.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Agreed. What happens when he removes the coils from the system entirely? Does the motor spin slower or faster than the test with the back EMF? That question is so obvious that I would have expected it to be addressed at the very start of his video.
Vonnegut was right: Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been."
I like this one more:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/08/video-of-yapmm-yet-a.html
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Without seeing diagrams and all, it's very hard for me to guess what is going on. It's entirely possible that it's not really a novel phenomenon, just a novel setup. We've had things like that happen before in the labs; its explainable with current physics, just too complicated to explain within the same day you discover it. I suspect you are correct in that this machine is not perpetual motion, but could very well be an interesting device for other purposes. I'm actually curious to see it work!
The text of the article really bugs me though. Almost no information is provided about anything except this guy's background, and it's very careful to point out that he lost his wife and his dog died and he lives under bridges and eats garbage and stuff. It almost seems like a sympathy article, like they want you to believe he's the underdog fighting for truth against the tyranny of scientists that are just out to destroy all inventions from the little guy that would help humanity.
Which of course is hardly the case; if more people knew just a little more about science, they would understand why most are skeptical.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Isn't this just a flux-capacitor?
I found this when I was actually searching for the version that I had heard; during jet engine testing it was debatable whether man could travel faster than sound.
One would think the next logical step would be to close the loop, if more energy is being generated than what goes into the device, to loop some of the output energy back into the input, and take the excess and make it drive a load of say 50 or more watts, say a lightbulb, and therefore a self powering closed device that can do useful work without requiring any external energy source. That is the ultimate test that can prove with a shadow of a doubt that it is free energy. It would seem illogical to stop before reaching this point just because it is said to be impossible by the dogma. We go where the evidence leads and regardless of what a theory says, we can test it, either confirming or it or finding it incomplete. Most scientists refuse to even consider that their sacred theories are not infallible and refuse to even look into the possibility. This is not the way of real science. Real scientists, would be trying to find ways to break these theories, especially COE, which if a way could be found to circumvent it we should be happy since it would lead to a solution for global warming, peak oil, supply cheap clean energy to everyone on the planet, end poverty and so on. It was once said to be impossible to build a flying machine, for a human to travel faster than 60 mph, or that if one travelled to far from the coast one would fall off the edge of the world and be eaten by monsters waiting in the abyss. Today, our present scientific "laws" of conservation of energy are little more than assumptions, since while they are proven to work in some cases, it is only an assumption that they apply in all cases, since there are many cases where they have not been tested, there are millions of possible configurations of magnets and not all have been tested. So you see, how this part of modern scientists is based on dogma and belief, rather than proven evidence.
The grandparent poster said, due to the brake being "on" first, the motor is limited, then the brake is turned off, so the motor accelerates. Duh.
If you want to understand why perpetual motion (or free energy) devices can never work just do this thought experiment... THINK. Energy can only be derived from a difference between two states, or radioactive decay. That's it. Period. People don't understand this, so they imagine energy as being some kind of special "thing" that comes from "somewhere else". So if they could only "tap" that "somewhere else" energy then it would flow like manna from heaven. Well that would be the world of Alice in Wonderland where things can come and go willy nilly.
No the energy laws derived from physics are NOT just some physical law just waiting to be overturned. If the universe is to make sense at all (not Alice in Wonderland) then it works according to symmetries of logic and reason, hence mathematical in structure. A given mathematical equation won't spit out one stream of numbers today, and a different stream of numbers tomorrow. That would go against reason, yet this is exactly what people who believe they can "tap" free energy believe. They believe that the numbers change if they just insert the right value. Bullocks. That would be so wrong as to make me insane, because if I can't think through logic and reason, then I might as well be using hallucinogenic drugs every day.
Take a spent paper towel tube, and a few marbles. Count your marbles. Now put each marble throught the tube. Now count the marbles that came out the other side. The number should be the originally counted number. If it isn't, call me and we will watch some tele with some hard drugs.
"but... but, if I just add this magnet to the paper towel tube I'll get seven marbles out instead of six"... morons.
"Does this scale up?"
Exactly what I thought, this kind of thing needs to be able to drive generators big ones that power cities. Then after that use it to sling shit out into space really fast.
Stupid.
j/k I also want to know more =P
wow! How brilliant you must've been when you were 6.
What happened after that? All downhill?
Give the man in the TFA some credit- he's trying, you're not.
-anon
But it, helps, make the, text more, readable, for, people like, Christopher, Walken.
No formal education or training: 'Heins has an even greater uphill battle. He isn't an engineer. He doesn't have a graduate degrees in physics. He never even finished his electronics program at Heritage College in Gatineau, Quebec. "I have mild dyslexia and don't do well in math, so I didn't do very well in school," he says.'
Enlists help of notable expert in field: 'Zahn is a leading expert on electromagnetic and electronic systems. In a rare move for any reputable academic, he has agreed to give Heins' creation an open-minded look rather than greet it with outright dismissal.'
"Average Joe" angle: 'He'd be happy if somebody did, even if the news was bad. His wife has kicked him out. He doesn't earn an income. He can't pay child support. The certainty would be welcome. "I've tried to quit many times, and thought if I could just be a normal guy I would have a normal life ... But I had this idea and I believe it works."'
All we're missing is a direct accusation against the government or big corporations, who are always crushing the "little guy" who brings us these innovations.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I think it's the opposite. When he shorts the coil, this has the effect of acting as a load (breaking the system) because the current can now flow through the coil and dissipate in its resistance.
The way I think the observed effect could be explained is that when he puts the ferromagnetic rod in the shaft, it somehow changes the impedance of the system such that there is an impedance missmatch between the shorted coil and the rest of the system. This inhibits the breaking effect of the coil since current doesn't flow in it as much.
Somewhat he might have managed to make energy "resonate" between the different par of the system in such a way that it is transfered pretty efficiently instead of being lost quickly in the resistance of the coils.
From what I can see he doesn't create energy but prevents it from being dissipated as quickly as you would normally expect when you put a shorted coil in front of the magnets. I only watched the first video but I think it is a little misleading that in the first demo he turns the machine on, lets it accelerate just a bit (not a lot), then shorts the coil to slow it down. I'm guessing that if he would have let the machine accelerate without the break it would have gone as fast as in the later tests were we are witnessing the supposedly unexplainable effect. The fact that he didn't show us how fast the motor goes when it turns freely somewhat leads us to think that the machine is going faster than normal when he puts the rod in it when really it's probably just going (almost) as fast as if he was running it without a shorted coil as a load.
What I'm trying to say is that the effect is probably not actually accelerating the machine to a faster speed than it would go without a break. It's just inhibiting part of the breaking effect of the coil.
Okay, let's suppose that he is getting free energy, but it's not perpetual motion. For example, suppose that he is somehow drawing energy off the rotation of the earth through the Sun's magnetic field? Of course, the Sun's magnetic field is so small, I'd be surprised if he could get enough energy to counter the drag, but I could see it happening.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
- Move to a state where power companies have "buy-back" requirements.
- install device effectively taking you off grid and turning your home into a mini-power plant.
- profit.
Then slowly ramp up your basement power production until you're putting so much electricity back out to the grid that state regulators come to investigate you. If they never do, you can just use the profits to build ever larger plants until you ARE a power company, and then you'll have to talk to the state regulators whether you want to or not.Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If it was legit, all he'd have to do is hook it up to a conventional generator, from there to a grid-intertie unit and then to the local power grid. Then start selling electricity to the power company. Take the revenue from that and build another, and another.... They'd eventually notice and *boom* he'd have all the fame and support funding for future development he can handle.
He does not need "peer review" by scientists or any academic scrutiny to *prove* that it works.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
His design uses an exotic material known as "light inextensible string"
I would like to see more schematics, plans, independant verifications for this. The inventor needs to subject this to scientific scrutiny by providing the plans and publishing papers on it to see if it can be duplicated. If it could act as a PMM, why not use it as such. Why stop at making motors more efficient. The question here as to whether this is real is not whether or not it is politically accepted or not, or politically correct, but what the physical evidence shows. I am sick of the political correctness and dogma in science today, where scientists are ridiculed and ostracised if they even dare look for possible ways holy, sacred cow scientific laws can be broken, which either can assert their validity or show they are not entirely complete. It also does make it at least look like there is a conspiracy to try to cover up free energy by reprimanding and attacking anyone who dares look, so scientists are too afraid to look or they may lose their careers, etc. Science is about looking not ridiculing and attacking those who look. It is about testing and trying different things to find what works and what doesn't, and not refusing to test or look into something because a theory says it is "impossible". Science is about testing and retesting, and also not making assumption, there might be some peculiar case where one of these theories can be circumvented, such as conservation of energy. With the oil companies likely hell bent to maintain their power and control, it makes one wonder if there is such a conspiracy involving the scientific establishment, that is perhaps reinforced with research grants from these corporations, which could be pulled in an instant if you dare begin to take the forbidden fruit and go beyond the box of what is sanctioned by the corporate/political/mainstream establishment, even if it might lead to discoveries that lead to saving millions of lives or fixing global warming and the energy crisis. I wouild not put it past the powers of greed and arrogance to supress technologies that could save lives and alleviate the ever impending doom of environmental damage and depleation, peak oil and economic collapse that results from fossil fuels, in order to assure the profits of a few wealthy elite. Scientists need to ask themselves, what is more important, their sacred dogma or finding the truth, corporate profits of a few wealthy elites or technologies which will provide cheap, free clean energy to all of humanity? Theories are meant to be tested and ways found to try to break them, not become a box where no one is dared to try to find a way out of that box. If you dont even look for a way out of the box you wont find it. And it can can shown with conservation of energy there are plenty of places there could be a way around it hiding someplace, some particular configuration of magnets perhaps out of millions of untested configurations.
That scientists would refuse to consider that this device could be PMM and actively test to confirm or deny that shows how far so called scientists have come from real science. True there are theories such conservation of energy, but there is still an open possibilities that there may be certain circumstances where this may be able to be circumvented that remain unidentified. It is not proper scientific practice to assume a law is absolute and refuse to test and try to violate and break it. Such is rather the domain of religions. Instead of refusing to even consider PMM, if we had real scientists today they would be testing their theory and trying to find ways it might be broken. If the theory could be broken, great as well, I cant imagine someone not wanting to find a way to violate it, since it would solve all of the worlds energy problems, solve global warming, end poverty, etc. The question is whether it puts out more energy than is put into it. So following the spirit of science we would want to confirm that or rule it out, and then try to think of other ways the COE might be violated. If it is confirmed, and replicated, then it is obvious the experimental evide
No! I'm! Over! Here! Singing! Lucy! In! The! Skies! With! Diamonds!
How does your comment deserve a +5 Insightful?
WTF?!
How about if "energy reporters" (sic) tried tapping the mysterious truths of thermodynamics instead?
I build residential, commercial and industrial power factor correction devices. I've seen some large water treatment plant motors operating at below 50% efficiency. Before we start blowing money on free energy we should look at how much is wasted right now. As a test I went to a local applicance store and tested five identical EnergyStar refrigerators for the efficiency of the compressor motor. Every one of them was less than 95% efficient because motors must be sized larger than the actual load to account for loss over time. I had one Subway restaurant save about forty percent on their monthly electric bill due to increase in inductive energy efficiency. For whatever reason we can't seem to see the forest through the trees.
> Give the man in the TFA some credit- he's trying, you're not.
Why should we give credit to a deluded man who doesn't understand what he's working on?
Yes, he came up with something interesting. The odds are HUGELY against it working the way he thinks it does.
Does blind persistence deserve more credit than ingenuity?
Judging by how the rig bounces about when spinning at high speed, I don't blame him for not pushing his luck. I agree though, as a layman, it looks like he has a more efficient motor.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
If it could act as a PMM, why not use it as such? Why stop at making motors more efficient? The question here as to whether this is real, is not whether or not it is politically accepted, or politically correct, but what the physical evidence shows.
I am sick of the political correctness and dogma in science today. Scientists are ridiculed and ostracised if they even dare look for possible ways holy sacred cow scientific ways can be broken, which either can assert their validity or show they are not entirely complete. It also does make it look like at least there is a conspiracy to try to cover up free energy by reprimanding and attacking anyone who dares look, so scientists are too afraid to look or they may lose their careers, etx. With the oil companies likely as hell bent to maintain their power and control, it makes one wonder if there is such a conspiracy involving the scientific establishment. That is perhaps reinforced with research grants from these corporations, which could be pulled in an instant if you dare begin to take the forbidden fruit and go beyond the box of what is sanctioned by the corporate/political/mainstream establishment, even if it might lead to discoveries that lead to saving millions of lives or fixing global warming and the energy crisis. I would not put it past the powers of greed and arrogance to supress technologies that could save lives and alleviate the ever impending doom of environmental damage and depleation, peak oil and economic collapse that results from fossil fuels, in order to assure the profits of a few wealthy elite. Scientists need to ask themselves, what is more important, their sacred theories or finding the truth, corporate profits of a few wealthy elites or technologies which will provide cheap, free clean energy to all of humanity?
That scientists would refuse to consider that this could be PMM and actively test to confirm or deny that shows how far so called scientists have come from real science. True there are theories such conservation of energy, but there is still an open possibility that there may be certain circumstances where this may be able to be circumvented that remain unidentified. It is not proper scientific practice to assume a law is absolute and refuse to test and try to violate and break it. Such is rather the domain of religions. Instead of refusing to even consider PMM, if we had real scientists today they would be testing their theory and trying to find ways it might be broken. If the theory could be broken, great as well, I cant imagine someone not wanting to find a way to violate it, since it would solve all of the worlds energy problems, solve global warming, end poverty, etc. The question is whether it puts out more energy than is put into it. So following the spirit of science we would want to confirm that or rule it out. If it is confirmed, and replicated, then it is obvious the experimental evidence speaks louder than the theories, that there must be something wrong with the theories if they can be consistantly shown to be violated.
Unfortunately it seems many scientists and many here, are interested in answering this question and feel afraid of violating their sacred scientific theories, and feel it is more important to protect them than to discover the truth. Many scientists just assume that these theories apply the same way in all cases, without even testing all cases. You cannot find PMM if it existed unless you are looking for it, and most scientists are not. But their notions that is impossible is not based on evidence, it is based on assumption. So we see that this is more of a religion than science, based on faith rather than evidence. There are billions of possible configuration of magnets that are untested, one cannot say free energy is impossible in those configurations until they have been tested. It is easy to prove a positive, that something is possible in a certain condition, but hard to prove a negative that is impossible under any circumstance, when all of the circumstances have not been tested.
After watching the videos (whew!) here's what seems to be happening.
The setup is an induction motor driving a magnetic brake. The brake has both permanent magnets and coils. With the coils unloaded, there's some braking effect, as you can see when he turns the magnet wheel by hand. With the coils shorted, the braking effect decreases. This seems backwards, because, usually, shorting a generator increases the mechanical load. That's why this guy thinks he has something.
There's a classic Physics 101 demo where you have a big conductive disk rotating between the poles of an electromagnet, and when you short the electromagnet, there's a huge drag on the disk and it stops. That's an eddy current brake, and it's the analogy this guy is depending on.
But, in fact, he's re-invented a known type of magnetic brake. This isn't an eddy current brake; the addition of permanent magnets makes it something else. A known something else.
Here's an example of such a permanent magnet brake. Note that "the brake is applied when the coil current is zero", just as with the "Perepiteia" device. This is backwards from most magnetic brakes. Here, the permanent magnets are providing the field for braking, and current in the coil overrides the permanent magnets. In the "Perepiteia" device, the coils act as generators and have current through them the magnet wheel is rotating and the coils are shorted. This effect requires a nonlinear magnetic steel, so this is non-trivial magnetically. But commercial electromagnetic simulation software can simulate this effect, so it's well understood physics. It's a rare enough technology that there's no accepted name for this type of brake.
Note that in the Perepiteia videos, he has to hand-start his wheel, even though it's being driven by an induction motor. That's because, with his setup, the brake drag is at max when the wheel is stationary. With the wheel stationary, there's no current in the coils, so there's nothing to override the permanent magnets. Once the wheel is turning, the coils generate some power and reduce the braking effect.
There's even a patent on the application of this principle to powered window blinds. See U.S. Patent #6,967,418. There, it's used to hold the blinds in place with power off.
Um, to nitpick your nitpick, 60 mph is a speed. It would need a directional component to be a velocity. Speed is to scalar as velocity is to vector.
"Can he produce energy from the closed system and charge a batter? " Usually the batter charges the pitcher.
could either deflate Heins' heretical claims or add momentum to a 20-year obsession that has broken up his marriage and lost him custody of his two young daughters.
Sounds like he'd make a good slashdotter.
Table-ized A.I.
WE FINALLY GET FLYING CARS?!?!?! Seriously. I'm tired of the laws of thermodynamics, Higgs field manipulation, etc. I WANT MY GODDAMN FLYING CAR!
This has been done before and experimented with. Plenty of kids have tried this in their science classes in grade school and junior high. I know I did. Plenty of teachers have failed the students for doing this because, "Perpetual Motion is Impossible, you cannot explain whaty ou have done, you have learned nothing." I know mine did. [note, yes, bitter]
;). But, the gyroscope would reduce the chances of a car tipping or flipping and the platter would keep it going for quite some time. It could run and charge batteries when the car is idle and it could add energy to the system while it is going. But, eventually, the magnets would wear out. The car would then have to "refill" by making it to a station before the batterie
Skipping past the bitterness.
What is occurring here actually does make sense. There are several arrangements that can be used to make it occur. So far the pattern I have seen is the mere circle with an outlying magnet. Another option is made up of 15 magnets spaced inside the wheel instead of outside of it. They accelerate the outer wheel rapidly - much quicker - and make the entire unit easier to suspend within a vacuum between two plates. You can then place a coil outside the vacuum encased box, that is passive and generates electricity through the changing interior fields. The inner system is started by placing a single magnet briefly on the outside to start movement - after which the interior cascades out of its initial stability. The other magnets prevent it from finding stability again and the system accelerates until it instead reaches the next state of field stability at a set rotational speed.
A fun side effect is that the system also operates as a gyroscopic platter.
But, what happens after significant time? In the exterior-to-wheel scenarios the magnetic field eventually stabilizes. Outside of a vacuum it generally fails to stabilize because of minimal drag forces that cause it to essentially overheat and stop. This is a case of mechanical fault. Mechanical fault does not bar it from being "perpetual motion", but does reduce the long term functionality.
However. What happens with the interior-to-wheel scenarios? They also stabilize. However they stabilize within a rotating field. The EM field actually slows - but does not stop - and continues to rotate around the exterior generating energy through the coil.
--------------
So why is this not perpetual energy and where is this energy coming from?
Magnets. It is a straight forward answer. It takes a lot of energy to polarize a magnetic material. Rather, to magnetize it. Magnetic materials over long use lose their polarization. Ultimately they neutralize or become very weak.
When you create a system like this the magnets are under constant force. After enough time one or more magnets depolarize and the system returns to static stability. However, because of the nature of magnets, this can take a significant amount of time.
Magnets store a lot of energy in an alternative form. They, rather efficiently, release that energy. Unfortunately, they do obey the basic laws of thermodynamics. Thus, less energy comes out of them than what went in.
You can think of a magnet like a funky capacitor. You can put a lot into it and you will get most of that back out, but you will not get all of it.
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So, what is the use of these systems? Stored energy. The problem is that magnets with sufficiently strong fields are not cheap and do not come readily. We could produce them, but we would be returned to the same problem of where do we get the original energy from to "charge"/magnetize the magnets.
How could we use this stored energy? Well, using the gyroscopic nature of the spinning platters, one option would be to place them within vehicles and use them for electrical charge to power the vehicle. Of course, you would have to shield the EM field to keep from having two cars snap together like a couple of magnets
I mean no offense; your comma usage is really the only thing wrong with your posts. But it's very very wrong, and I agree that it's a little distracting. They don't just hang out where there's a pause in conversation or thought!
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
> blind persistence deserve more credit than ingenuity
Ingenuity does not fall into one's lap from the skies- a lot of hard work usually goes into it. Daring to do it in the face of ridicule is even tougher. If you read the article he seems to have risked it all in his pursuit- that's rare courage in my opinion.
As far as the 'blind' qualifier you add with persistence- it is largely a point of view, nothing more. Which effort is worthwhile is a deep question, not to be resolved on internet forums.
-anon
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
Humans discover a source of unlimited energy, but in a roundabout way through a parallel universe it is sucking energy out of the sun.
DirtyHarring is probably a German speaker, since in German all the commas would have been right.
What this man has done is to seemingly bypass Counter EMF (generator action in a motor). I really wish I could see this guys setup, their description of it all is lacking in a lot of detail.
I mean no offense; your comma usage is really the only thing wrong with your posts.
That's totally cool. If the only thing that's wrong with my English is my punctuation then that's actually quite flattering.
(This post contains intentionally no commas. But I'm sure there should be some)
Shatner! speaks! with! exclamation! points! Not! commas!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
but he keeps shutting the motor off to "prevent the shaft from getting magnetized". That may be the ultimate problem here, it might just be a short-lived affect from magnets. Once the whole assembly is magnetized, you don't gain any more from this effect.
Aren't there alloys that resist lasting magnetization?
Table-ized A.I.
"...in this house...", awww skip it!
That's a book about how the pyramids were a nuclear power weapon or some such gibberish. Still waiting for a real citation. I looked for a while and found nothing, I suspect it is just an urban myth.
Nice post. A++++++. Mod up for Interesting OR Insightful! Would read again.
Well yeah. If it works it will be useful. Duh. I don't think the problem is figuring out ways it would be useful.
I just find the idea interesting, how hard it would be to convince people, that you actually have something like this.
I had a similar thought, immediately followed by "How would I prove this tech?" My solution, I would hook it up to a dynamo and start selling power back to the electric company. I would use the profits to build more and more invention+dynamo, until I could sell back enough power to pay my mortgage. Then I would have a talk with my local power company about how I am able to make such a nice profit selling them electricity. Because while careful scientific review certainly adds validity, proven profitability adds a very different kind of validity.
We are all just people.
I think you're missing an important part of the puzzle.
When I watched the video, I was struck by how the coil on the right doesn't have a pole piece on its far end to take the magnetic flux back to the permanent magnet wheel. Then I saw him demonstrate the difference between having a brass motor shaft and a steel shaft, and I had an inkling of what was going on.
An induction motor is a very complex device whose complexity is masked by its physical simplicity. The induction motor builds a rotating magnetic field in the rotor by inducing current flow into the aluminum rotor windings from the AC stator coil (as any power transformer does). The interaction between the induced field and the stator field causes the motor to turn. The rotor has specific requirements with regard to the shape of the windings to achieve maximum efficiency. Understanding the current flow and the magnetic flux is a job for theoretical experts (which I'm not).
Notice that the apparatus is mounted on a steel table. This provides a flux path from the motor housing to the black coil at the right end of the machine. The addition of his steel shaft has "completed the magnetic circuit" between this coil (an AC generator) and the induction motor rotor, which will do very interesting things to the magnetic field on the rotor! Especially since the field he generates is an AC field with what, 16 poles? I think he has a four pole 1750 RPM induction motor.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
"How this magnetic brake works (Score:4, Interesting)"
Very, very informative -- you have actual hard-to-find knowledge and you are sharing it without arrogance and without parochial agenda. Thank you, Animats.
---
Interestingly, if you Google "non-linear magnetic steel," you get exactly one entry (and if you Google "nonlinear magnetic steel," you get zero -- oddly).
That entry is precisely the reference you made to the simulation site.
So I have been thwarted in understanding what "non-linear magnetic steel" is.
Can someone help?
There's a huge difference between your example and perpetual motion. Before cars and trains it was UNBELIEVABLE to travel at such accelerated speeds, but it was not impossible. There were no well tested scientific laws that would need to be broken for someone to travel 60 mph.
Something that really bothered me in the article was the way the author spoke of the scientific community. He mentioned the guy last year who claimed to have a perpetual motion machine but went out of business. His mentioning of the company felt like he was implying that his failure was because of the criticism rather than the fact that perpetual motion is impossible.
>> This post contains intentionally no commas. But I'm sure there should be some)
> Nope. It is correct as written.
Oh, he could definitely use a comma between "punctuation" and "then."
He should have used a comma in the sentence above, in order to avoid starting the second sentence with a conjunction.
"This post contains intentionally no commas, but I'm sure there should be some."
He also forgot the period at the end.
Thus endeth the lesson!
I kind of doubt any of us match the minds at MIT that are reviewing this, so your speculation is about as valuable as mud... the recipe seems to be, spout some wikipedia pseudo physics stuff so you sound intelligent and then get modded interesting by people not smart enough to google... clever, but hardly intelligent or interesting.
Democrats and Republicans are like AIDS and Cancer, I want neither!
It's certainly true that we can suck energy out of the quantum superstrings that underlie all matter. Researchers have proved that souls work in this way: ESP is possible because E=mc^2. It's well known that ghosts are made of energy particles that are creeping into the visible Universe through holes in the superstring fabric of space-time. All we need to do is find a way to harness this cosmic consciousness energy and we will have access to all the power we'll ever need: just do an astrological survey to find the nearest leyline, plug in your ectoplasmic polter-generator and there you go! Additionally we'll be able to communicate faster than light and possibly open up doorways to other worlds including Heaven. Given an impossible premise, the possibilities are limitless.
Unfortunately mainstream scientists look down on this sort of research even though it would solve all our energy problems. There are lots of parapsychotic researchers but scientists refuse to listen to what they say. Millions of people can't be wrong. Why are "scientists" so closed-minded to ideas? They laughed at Einstein, you know! And he turned out to be right, which proves that all crazy ideas are right or at least worth spending $millions on just in case.
http://www.tpub.com/content/neets/14177/css/14177_51.htm
;-)
The less current you put into a series wound DC motor, the faster it goes. The faster it goes, the less current it takes. The result is that a series wound DC motor accelerates as its current decreases. This continues until the motor flies apart. Sounds like perpetual motion to me.
I'd be willing to bet that if you asked the professors off the record they would give you an explanation in the line of what the GP did, but they have to be more restrained in their public declarations. They are careful not to make public guesses about how it works, because, inevitably, they would be wrong about some small detail and the "inventor" would be able to say the scientists know nothing.
Or do you think scientists are so stupid that, after more than a hundred years of research, they would have overlooked a basic principle that a dyslexic cook can discover by himself? The scientists have not studied the invention at all, the only reason why they cannot explain the result is because they have insufficient information. It's not as if this guy had published the plans for his machine, all the professors could see was a demo presented by the inventor.
This guy seems to be crook who tries to do his job by letting the victims read between the lines. He has *wink, wink* NOT invented a perpetual motion engine, and he is *wink, wink* NOT after investments for "further development".
It wasn't even unbelievable - all you had to do was time a downhill skier. They can easily reach 80 mph.
If you read the "holy crap" link http://www.thestar.com/Article/300041 it basically describes it so you can do your own experimenting......
Magnets, steel axel, "back emf", and viola.
Layne
*With hands out, palms up*
I. Thought. William. Shatner. Talked. More. Like. This. See?
Ahem.
DirtyHerring (635192) == William Shatner
Well...does he or not?
INPB (I'm no physicist but) it looks like a simple positive feedback loop to me. Positive feedback happens all over the place. Audio feedback is the most widely noticed - a sound goes into a microphone, microphone is connected to an amplifier, the amplified sound is picked up by the microphone and repeats until it quickly becomes an awesome screech.
I see no logical reason why a positive feedback loop couldn't exist in an electro-magnetic system and no reason why one would have to be in the violation of any physical law. As hinted at above, the problem is that positive feedback loops are usually unstable and are halted by some part of the loop breaking down or reaching capacity - like the inability of the amplifier to produce a louder sound - or the amp just blowing out. On the other hand, positive feedback used in controlled doses can be a very powerful tool, as in Jimi's version of the National Anthem. It seems to me like this could have the equivalent effect on electric cars.
Therefore, I think the first car using this engine should be called the "Hendrix". Honda, Toyota, are you listening? I demand royalties!
First, allow me to correct you. Radioactive decay is also a state transition.
But, here's the thing. The law of conservation of energy is derived from the inherent symmetry of the universe. Any system that live in a universe where the laws of physics are the same for left/right/up/down/front/back is doomed to be governed by fixed amount of over all energy.
But these are not absolute laws. If you manage to devise a pair of rings where what goes into one pops out the other with no change in temperature, you CAN create energy out of nothing. In fact, merely placing the rings at different altitudes will cause air pressure to generate a wind from the lower ring to the higher ring. You can easily use this wind to power a turbine, and you WILL get free energy.
Is the law of conservation of energy being broken here? No, it's just being subverted. The rings create asymmetry.
Of course, the opposite is also true. So long as symmetry was not broken, it is not required to delve into the details of the machine in order to conclude that it does not produce energy.
Shachar
Its easier to blanket dismiss all such inventions out of hand than even bother reading TFA. I will only believe that it works when one of these devices powers my house.
If your device really works and is useful find a local machine shop or local college to help you produce a few working prototypes and use the momentum to get someone to mass produce the damn things for you on a profit-sharing basis. You *do not* need to get MIT professor approval.
Acadameic approval is only required to scam VC money.
Are not that it's a "perpetual motion machine" but that he may have found a way to make electric motors significantly more efficient. This by itself is an entirely believable claim, and I think worthy of further serious investigation.
+++ATH0
Hmmm... Motors...magnetic flux... capactitors... A little plutonium & a Delorean and he's got a time machine.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
> Could you tell me how I can short out the brakes on my car? ...with a magnet??
Every single device that has ever claimed perpetual motion has been discredited. Many have improved efficiency yes, but why even report "perpetual motion" machines as news unless they have already been tested and determined to be such?
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
A few pounds of plutonium a few pounds of c-4 and who knows.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
he is going to let the motor accelerate ....... until it explodes....
Then everyone will be convinced...he's done something unusual.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
I can do the same, by applying a brake for the first case, and not applying it for the second case. Now, if he shows that the first case's efficiency is close to 100% (with the brake), then we've got something noteworthy.
We've been doing that for a quite a while. We use this energy to move metal. Specifically, we use it to move magnetized metal needles so they'll point north.
Although there's a lot of energy in earth's magnetic field, it's spread over a really large volume. The energy density isn't all that large, and you can't use it for much more than powering compasses. We're not going to stop the earth's core from spinning anytime soon by "tapping" into that. We're definitely not doing that before the earth's magnetic field flips again. When it does that, it's going to temporarily collapse, and all the bad things you're afraid of are going to happen anyway.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
eom
Website Hosting
I just had this scary vision of a slashdot where moderators were prohibited from ... err ... "leaving negative feedback".
Just saying
He doesn't only get his physics wrong, but he even named the device erroneously. There is no greek word "perepiteia" (it might sound greek to you, but it sounds just silly to Greeks), instead he wanted to say "peripeteia" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripeteia). It could be his "mild dyslexia" at work, however he uses the "dyslexia" excuse for his bad performance in math - although all the dyslectics I have known don't have a problem with math (feel free to enlighten me on this, it is just my personal experience). Anyway, I just think it boils down to him not doing his "homework"... Personally, I wouldn't invest on his startup...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Around the time of stephensons rocket it was commonly believed you would die if you went that fast, but not I believe by scientists, but by the general public.
It's an interesting footnote to history, commonly mentioned in history programmes, but not in itself interesting.
As for the speed of sound.. try http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/sound_barrier.html
I wonder why the notion of a Perpetual Motion machine survives and continue to attact new generations of believers when other fanciful beliefs like invisible fairies appearing only in photographs died out as people became more familiar with new technologies? There's probably something to be discovered about human belief systems there - someone should do a sociology/psychology paper on it.
Same old incompetence and stupidity. As a scientist, I would not even look at this anymore. It is just a waste of time. There must have been millions of these by now. Nothing ever pans out. True, in the early days of physics, occasionally these devices would use an, at that time, unknown effect. But the last candidate for that was radioactivity, almost a century in the past. This is a pure, simple waste of energy and possubly incompetence on the side of the ''inventor'' that may actually believe he has something new. Happens all the time, but only these "perpetual motion machines" get any manistream attention. Still too much.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That would be biology, not physics.
You make my head explode. Acceleration is measured in speed over time, rather than just speed as you wrote.
It would be more succinct to say "Remember when it was impossible... to sit in anything that [travelled] as fast as 60mph?" or "Remember when it was impossible for the human body to sit in anything that accelerated as fast as 60mph/h?"...
but the answer to both questions would still be know. I'm only 24.
I don't think that word means what most people think it means. People always call these kinds of machines "perpetual motion" machines, and say that it is impossible because of the law of thermal dynamics.
Whether this guys machine works or not, it is in no way a "perpetual motion" machine, or "free energy". It is about as "perpetual motion" as a Hummer. When you take a substance that is oozing with easily accessible energy, and put it into a motor as a way of making the motor run, it is certainly not "perpetual motion". Just because a lot of people make motors that don't work when trying to make a magnet powered motor, doesn't mean that it is inherently impossible.
By claiming that powering a motor with magnets is "perpetual motion", a person is inherently claiming that magnetism is not energy.
There are a lot of "energies" around us. A simple AM crystal radio circuit can generate power from existing electromagnetic fields. Solar batteries generate power from light. I would not be surprised if an electromechanical process were to be discovered that generated power seemingly for free. People have been looking for it for centuries and while it is sort of mythical unicorn of physics. The earth is a magnet, the moon has a magnetic field, who knows? We derive power from wind, water, light, volcanic energy, etc.
Take, for instance, the sterling engine, this device creates rotational energy out of a mere differential of temperature. I don't see how it would be impossible to harness the varying magnetic fields around us in some way. Now is there enough to make it worth while? That is the interesting question.
I think it is too easy to dismiss these things, because, well, though the law of thermodynamics remains intact, there is always the possibility of harnessing untapped energies.
All that being said, I'm always skeptical and there is a difference between a nice parlor trick and a science.
you reverse the polarity and route the energy through the EPS conduit?
Evil Alternate Universe time, I bet.
So I have been thwarted in understanding what "non-linear magnetic steel" is.
There are whole families of non-linear magnetic devices. Non-linear magnetic effects are used in saturable reactors for motor control, magnetic amplifiers, and other AC electrical devices. You don't see those things much any more, because power semiconductors are now used instead, but the physics still works. Also see this explanation of magnetic hysteresis, which is a related non-linear magnetic effect.
Consider a permanent magnet brake that relies on hysteresis effects to absorb energy. Reversing magnetic domains requires energy, which comes out as heat. Look at the figure "Variation in hysteresis curves" in this article. Maximum braking is achieved when the magnetic field is near the middle, wide parts of the curves. If you use a coil to apply a magnetic field that forces the material closer to saturation, or to cancel out the field from the permanent magnets, the braking effect decreases. That's probably what's going on with the "Perepiteia" device. Mild steels are in the midrange of magnetic materials; they are easy to saturate magnetically, which is why they make wimpy permanent magnets, but have moderate hysteresis, so they make inefficient transformer cores. For a magnetic brake, though, you want something in the midrange of magnetic materials, where the magnetic domains resist changing direction enough to generate heat, but don't resist so strongly that nothing happens, as in a strong magnet. I suspect that the "Perepiteia" device has coils wound on mild steel, and the braking energy is dumped into heating up those metal cores. (Here's more than you probably want to know about saturation and hysteresis in magnetic materials for transformer design.).
I'm still not clear on whether the magnetic connection to the motor in the "Perepiteia" device really has much to do with this. But there's nothing mysterious about an electromagnetic brake that turns off when you short the coils. It's unusual, but known.
This isn't really my field, but I do have a classical EE degree, so I had to learn this stuff once.
First, the universe is not symmetrical. If it were, there would be just as much antimatter around as there is matter... and there simply is not. This very asymmetry is still one of the major mysteries of the universe. So any argument based on "universal symmetry" is flawed from the beginning.
Second, your ring example is also incorrect. You did not even state whether the rings are charged (or supposed to be generating current). Actually, a simple wire taken aloft by a balloon will produce a substantial charge, and if you had a ball of streamers at the top (like those metallic Christmas tree "icicles"), you will generate that much more charge, which is proportional to the number of points on the wire.
You might gain energy, but it is very high-voltage and carries little current. Benjamin Franklin experimented with motors that were powered by this very phenomenon.
However, this does not "generate" electricity, nor does it get its electricity "for free". It is simply tapping the natural voltage potential between the high-altitude air and the ground. You are tapping an existing "pool" of electrical potential, and depleting it by the small amount that you use. Rather like oil... though I daresay it replenishes itself faster.
The same is true of conventional wind power: You can turn wind energy into mechanical or electrical energy, but it isn't "free". In doing so, you rob the wind of the natural energy that it was already carrying. You slow it down. It may only be a small percentage, but it is real.
None of this has much to do with universal symmetry or asymmetry.
Having stated all that, I would like to add two things:
As far as I know, it is still at least theoretically possible to generate "free" energy by finding a way to tap the "zero-point energy" that exists everywhere. It may well turn out that this also taps a finite "pool" of some sort, but if so, that pool is as large as the universe, so I wouldn't worry about depleting it anytime soon.
The second point is that I agree with your conclusion: One need not prove that something works (or HOW it works) in order to observe it working. It took something like 50 years before scientists discovered the real reason why the vanes of a glass-bulb radiometer turn when exposed to light. But turn they did, for all of those 50years.
ALL major scientific breakthroughs were made possible by breaking (or at least bending) scientific "rules" that were "known" before. So ignoring a possible invention because it "breaks the rules" means that scientists are probably missing out on some major discoveries.
Although not a physicist, I do not agree with that statement. From what I've seen, from what the MIT scientists have seen, this merits further investigation. I have many questions: Does this scale up? How strong are his magnets? Do the magnets depolarize over time?
Yeah, that's the catch. His thing might be very-very-very-long-low-energy-motion, but it's not perpetual if it deals with magnets. Magnets have stored energy. Eventually they use it and become hunks of unmagnetized slag. It may take a year, or two, or 100, but it's not perpetual. Not to mention, things like this need oil for the bearings, which has to be refilled every-so-often, etc. Perpetual motion is a non-possibility.
Same thing with any invention requiring water. What happens when the water evaporates? Keep it in a climate controlled environment? How do you control the environment? etc.
Still, I'm intrigued by this, and would subscribe to his newsletter, etc.
~W
sig?
Can you write without using the letter "e"?
Just let it run for a week in a sealed room far from any electrical outlets. Looking at all the shaking and rattling it produces, any hidden duracells will be drained in no time.
No sig today...
Why it isn't possible to build a machine that would suck energy from the earth's magnetic field. That's always the first thing that occurs to me when I hear about these devices ... I have a compass, the field is strong enough to turn the needle, why can't I capture that energy. If it is small, you build a huge array of compass needles. This would not be perpetual motion (eventually you would kill the dynamo), but that would take a long, long time.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Well, everyone seems to be missing the fact that he's using AC current from the outlet to supply the power. How exactly is this producing free energy again? I can hear the buzz when he switches it on, it's the classic hum of AC power through an electric motor. Just because it spins up to 100 RPM means really nothing. The videos do not lend to any anything except speculation since we can't see this unit doing this in a middle of a large area with no power cords running up to it.
I don't think it's a hoax, per se, but it's not true perpetual motion either. It seems to use some effect involving the permanent magnets on the wheel for its "perpetual motion"; but "permenent" magnets aren't truly permanent, and will gradually de-magnetize over time. At best, this device is simply a way to draw out the energy already present in the magnets and harness it.
Sig? What's that? Oh, 'signature'...and it's supposed to be witty? Right...
Heins' claim is trivially easy to test: Put the device on a dynamometer and measure power out vs. power in. If holding a magnet a few centimenters away from the drive shaft increases the efficiency of the motor, then Heins may have something worth investigating.
IMHO, there are many other possibilities here that must be ruled out before Heins can claim that he's increased the efficiency of the motor, let along make a claim to perpetual motion:
1. The hand-held magnet may alter the back-EMF waveform in such a way that it allows more current through the motor windings for a given supply voltage.
2. The hand-held magnet may be changing the commutation of the motor, effectively adding phase advance. Again, this would allow more current through the motor windings for a given supply voltage.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
The quote is rather (in)famous.
"Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."
Dionysius Lardner, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London; 1830
He authored early works on the steam engine, amongst other things, and many people then would have though he knew his stuff. See the ususal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Lardner for more details.
Bear in mind that in those days, "high speed" would have been taken to be "faster than a horse" (say 30mph) - as that was the fastest transport available then.
You're missing the point. In any generator system such as his, there are physical costs: bearing friction and air drag, to name two primary sources. They require a continuous supply of energy to be overcome.
Stupid-simple equation: startup energy - (drag + friction) = net system energy
His claim is no different from all other perpetual motion contraptions, that his technique will take the startup mechanical energy and use it to somehow generate additional mechanical energy. Meanwhile, the friction costs are removing energy from the system. To avoid that downward energy curve, it will require additional energy input to continue spinning. Where will that energy be coming from?
Answer: his butt.
We've got chemistry here! You feel it? I felt it!
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
Just one more point, the original post also uses 'remember' instead of 'remind' (not being a nazi, this is just pedagogical).
If you did that you'd have the swat team down there and they would shoot you on orders, then your machines would disappear and they'd feed the media that you were running a meth lab. Probably blow up your house for you as well, but you'd still be dead. Anything this radical that works, even if it is only say a 5% improvementm is such a world changing profit dropping *thing* that interested parties affected would just get you offed. It's cliched but think about pissing off some hard core billionaires.
What the inventor is doing is correct, be as open and public as possible, don't hide a thing.
Let me guess, the people who killed Kennedy and orchestrated 9/11 are the same ones who are denying us free energy. It must be the the oil companies! They did it, along with Cheney! The only thing I can't figure out is where Roswell and the faked moon landing come into this.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Read some history. For just one example, it took inventor Stanley Meyers a full 15 years before he could get someone from the known scientific community to even look at his prototype.
Yes, a great many of them ARE that stupid. Or arrogant. Maybe not all, but far too many in recent years.
"Lenz's law simply states that, like Newton's law of an "equal and opposite reaction," there's an opposing force counter-acting the force in play. It's like the opposite reaction of an astronaut falling towards a planet: inertia. Neither force is created, nor destroyed. All energy is conserved. Idiot troll"
So how hard were these laws faught before it was the common standard taught to us?
These laws do not address where forces like magnets and gravity come into play and if they could ever be tapped or not. Just because they haven't been made into laws before doesn't preclude them from ever being added to the established laws as footnotes. If we discover that the magnet like the sun degrades over time because it uses stored energy this would be all common place in a few generations and magnetic generators would be standard. If we learn to tap the constant pull from magnets and use them to create work but at the cost of the magnetic pull over time, this would stay within the "laws" and everybody would be fine with it. You use a resource until it's depleated and no one argues over it and claims that they are the greatest scientific voyer ever and can prove the underpinnings of the universe obey their assumptions and not the theories of others. Until ot was proven imagine someone claiming that they could take a gallon of liquid and move an object 30 miles. The energy stored in gasoline just had an easier method of extraction and left a more altered residual. Now take a rechargable battery in the tesla raodster that can move a vehicle a couple hundred miles and doesn't leave an empty tank, but a depleted battery that can be recharged with invisible electrons and go again without adding an observable amount of mass. This is no fantasy of the loose minded but a natural extension of the valid science applied in the persuit of extracting energy from material properties and interactions, fusion, nuculear reactions, charged states, magnetism. Just because we understand some part of our environment doesn't mean that we know the rules of the whole game. Black holes that have been discovered still don't follow the rules of thermodynamics since they absorb energy and do not release it in the same amount unless you count gravity as energy, which it that case you can't say that gravity will never let us convert it back to energy that we can use. The "Laws" don't address the one way principle that people like to use against these kinds of ideas to dismiss them. And just because poeple haven't done something before should be no excuse why some shouldn't try. Remember that every major scientific advancement was not done in the past, but the present for the experimenter. Before it was known and accepted. Not after everybody thought it was allowed.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
That is how the brakes on electric model cars work, for example. Short the coil (through a resistor) and the magnets experience resistance to motion.
So you're saying he's indirectly tapping wall power?
http://stopgeek.com/richard-boxs-light-field.html
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
It is amazing how you managed to misunderstand every single one of the points I tried to raise.
Well done!
Just a pointer:
Hope this helps.
Shachar
Not sure that that would work. Most states that have buy-back ( or meter roll back ) is just a credit issued to your account for 12 months, the best case is that you never owe them, and have energy credit to your account only for 12 months ( the credit expires afer the 12th month. )
if you see me, smile and say hello.
No, I can not.
---
Rob Flynn
Pidgin
And the articles don't give enough details to judge much.
True, but they do give a hint. He mentions using a permanent magnet. One good way to fool yourself is to power the device from the slowly decaying field of a permanent magnet.
And if we're being REALLY pedantic, it's:
position = x
velocity = dx/dt
acceleration = (d^2 x) / (dt)^2
And if we want to achieve an even greater level of pedantry:
We don't care if it is a vector or not, because we haven't specified a direction.
You can have vectors with unspecified directions. For example I could define a vector in 2 space as follows:
v= , |v| = 60 mph.
This would define a circle of directions on a Cartesian plane with radius 60t where t is time. Provided we were working with hours and miles on our plane.
Cheers!
A coil of wire with 90 volts induced in it and open-circuited (0 amps) will dissipate 0 watts.
Assume the coil has an resistance of 1 ohm. When he short-circuits the coil, it looked like the induced voltage dropped to about 10 volts.
10 volts / 1 ohm = 10 amps
10 amps * 10 volts = 100 watts
Suddenly adding 100 watts of load to a motor should slow it down.
Damned slashcode stripped out my vector:
v=(x1,x2)
Also, for clarification, the plane's dimensions 2 space would be in distance and you would have to take level curves to see the circles because time would make it 3 space.
This issue was addressed in excruciating detail in the course of the Steorn debates. Using the magnetic field of a "permanent" magnet does not -- in general -- degrade the magnet over time. This may be true of magnets made of, say, soft iron, in which the atoms can re-align easily. But in the harder alloys, which have a crystalline structure that does not allow such movement, the magnets are truly "permanent". Their field does not degrade to any appreciable degree. Definitely not by "using" or "resisting" their magnetic field.
Since you gave no link, I had to google that name. Here's a good tip: when you read about an inventor who has trouble getting someone from the scientific community to look at his prototype, google on his name plus the word "fraud". Failing to do that, you risk being part of a notice like this:
Homer: Lisa get in here!... In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Right, it's so simple that you understand it, yet a professor at MIT is having a hard time explaining it... FUCK YOU - YOU ARROGANT FUCKING FUCK!
That wouldn't be a vector. That would be uncountably many vectors.
Yeah, but try getting your thermodynamic primer linked on Slashdot. Same reason that "psychic detectives" shows keep showing up on channels which should know better.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
My God, and I thought the first dickhead was pedantic. Fucking uber geeks. No wonder why you can't get laid.
In that case, we must build a shaft of wood! SHAFT! He's the man, like no other man.
Many people seem to believe that, but it's not how science works. (Or even art, for that matter, Picasso took extensive training in classical art before he started his revolution in painting, for example...)
Look at any big breakthrough in science, it has never, ever, been done by an outsider. Big fundamental changes in the current thinking process always come from a scientist, usually young, who has thoroughly studied the subject before concluding a change is needed.
It's not that there is a "box" limiting scientific thought, but theories are created for specific sets of circumstances. When science and technology expands beyond those circumstances, new theories are needed. However, when you are creating new theories, it's never helpful to be ignorant of the current theories. You cannot circumvent the limitations of current theories if you don't even know those theories.
The demo's shown on the home page don't show a load. http://www.g9toengineering.com/backemf/demonstration.htm Its all talk about acceleration but not under load. As long as you apply a minimal force, a motor with hardly any friction can be accelerated enormously. Back EMF or no back EMF. Maybe the back emf changes the phase of the force applied so that it applies more efficiently. With only the friction to overcome this doesn't mean much. I'd like to see the same effect on a system under measured (non inductive) load.
Not necessarily.
Consider this: with the coil opened the current in the coil is 0, true, but the passive, fixed-magnet "manetic break" attached to the motor puts a load of, say, 100 watts on the motor by capturing that energy and dissipating it as heat. Then you short the coil which due to a clever arrangement disrupts the magnetic break effect of fixed magnets via its own induced magnetic field due to the current that flows in it. The current in the coil results in, say, 20 Watts of power being consumed by the coil, but the gain from the coil disabling the magnetic break is 100-20=80 Watts total. The motor speeds up under reduced load.
Hans Reiser, is that you?
That's what it looks like to me as well. It's like the old generator-based lights you would mount on your bicycle. If you add more of those generator lights, your legs don't have the power to keep up and your RPMs go down while the amount of energy you have to expend increases until finally you can't move the bicycle anymore. Short out the generators so that they produce zero volts and it doesn't suck as much power, so your RPMs go up while the amount of energy you have to expend drops.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Soooo....any guesses as to why he isn't doing this?
brake?
Well the grass-roots effort still works, just slower. Wire your house up. Then your neighbor's for free (in fact, pay for the electrician that wires the generator into the grid, too. Your neighbors might be skeptical, but at least one will be willing to gamble some basement space on free power forever) after you've saved enough, under the condition that he helps pay for the next neighbor with the money he saves. Continue until your entire neighborhood is clear of the power company. By then, someone will have taken notice.
Obviously, you'll have to continue working a day job until you reach critical mass. Then, profit!
If you really have a perpetual motion machine, it'll pay for itself very quickly. You don't really even need recognition.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
More importantly for shooting down the 'perpetual motion' crap is that from his description, the base configuration has the wheel of magnets inducing current in the coil placed at the rim, thereby dumping energy into the coil that is wasted. Then he connects the coil back into the system, essentially dumping the induced energy back into the motor to strengthen the field in the motor's coils. Yes, the motor will speed up; the system is recovering energy that was lost into the coil, which overall reduces the load on the motor, allowing its speed to increase until the load again matches the energy being put in. But the speedup is no different from the speedup you'd get if you simply disconnected the wheel of magnets entirely, taking its load out of the system, except that you'd get a larger increase in motor speed, because you have inductive losses in the coupling of the magnets and the coil, and resistive losses in the coil and the wires back to the motor. So all he's demonstrated is "If I take a load off a motor, its speed increases." Definitely an earth-shattering discovery, fully worthy of high-school freshmen.
>>Hedy Lamer is famous for being the woman who more or less invented and patented an early form of CDMA in 1940.
:-)
... you really are of no help to anyone."
Hedy Lamarr, actually. Wow, cool. I'm a huge aficionado of classic film and I never knew that about her. Would that other actors actually contributed something worthwhile to society (or at least *realized* that they aren't.)
Jerry O'Connell's recent spoof of Tom Cruise was priceless in that respect
"It's a great privilege to be an actor, because you know that
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Person who didn't properly study physics misunderstands nature of electromagnetic fields, thinks he invents perpetual motion device. Media makes it into a story about how big, bad "established science" laughs at him for claiming to violate well-studied principles that he assuredly does not violate.
There's a company called Aperture Science that has already done this. It ended in disaster.
I was smart enough not to include the products we are testing in our research and development laboratories. To be honest there are products we are testing right now that will knock the socks off the scientific community. However smart researchers wait until they have all of their ducks in a row before releasing their products and associated data. When the top physics professors of the Wright Brother's day heard of their successful flight, it was considered a scam, a fraud and a complete attack on known physical laws. The bottom line is that more damage has been done in the progress of science by arrogance then ignorance. Fortunately the smart researchers wait until they can send the supposed brilliant minds of Academia back to there mommies crying that we made them look bad before we release our products. Long Live Tesla and Death to Edison!
As far as I followed the videos (yawn) he never let the motor and the wheel rotate with the coils far, far away.
Only then we would know if he produced a brake which he switched off. What I mean is:
if( speed_with_coils_and_back_EMF > speed_with_coils_far_far_away ){
printf( "Forget the magnetic brake theory as explanation, look for a better one.");
} else {
printf( "Nothing to see here, move along.");
}
-- You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do
It's a Well Known Fact that there are far more research grants for proving already-known scientific laws than there are for efforts to find out things we don't know. Plus, look at what the Nobel prizes are always for: the 2007 prize in Chemistry was for a demonstration that NaCL dissolves in H20, the one in Medicine was for a proof that the ankle bone is connected to the leg bone, and the prize in Economics was for a treatise on how buying low and selling high makes one wealthier. The key to fame and fortune in research science clearly lies in defending the status quo.
OK, but sarcasm aside, there is a tendency among those who teach science to put the Known Laws on an unassailable pedestal... largely in reaction to the rebellious students who refuse to believe anything they say.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I did for a bit, but I had to stop. It was too difficult talking about what's past.
Energy can neither be created or destroyed. However there is a lot of it, perhaps more then we could ever imagine using, and there is a lot of new room for finding ways to turn it into a useful form. The question we need to ask our self is what is the real energy source, and is it something that we want to feed off of? I'm sure that someone who was very clever could setup a contraption that the earth's magnetic field kept rotating. However this would over time diminish the earth's magnetic field which apparently protects us from harmful radiation, so I don't want to diminish it.
Wow, yourself. That is pretty interesting.
Quote: "The law of conservation of energy is derived from the inherent symmetry of the universe. Any system that live in a universe where the laws of physics are the same for left/right/up/down/front/back is doomed..."
You say that is NOT a claim that the universe is symmetrical? (Of course I did not mean physically symmetrical everywhere... that would be ridiculous.) But... "the inherent symmetry in the universe"?? And you claim that all the laws are the same "left/right/up/down/front/back"... but they are not. There are left-handed molecules (and I mean pretty simple chemicals, not proteins) that, despite being chemically identical, do not chemically react the same as their right-handed cousins do. (Examples are dexro- and levo-cocaine.) Entropy is not "symmetrical", it is one-way. The "arrow of time", when it comes to certan physical and chemical processes, is one-way. There are an ENORMOUS number of documented processes and phemonena that are anything but symmetrical. AND -- though you misunderstood me -- the fact that there is NOT as much antimatter in the universe as there is normal matter, DOES prove that the laws are not and have not been "symmetrical"!!
And then you try to cover up by saying that is not what you meant at all. Sheesh. Could have fooled me. But I don't think you did.
Quote: "The rings do not transfer current, they transfer matter. It's a portable worm hole, if you like. As such, their charge is irrelevant."
REALLY? You mention two rings and I was somehow supposed to ASSUME you were talking about "portable wormholes"?? Where would I get that idea? And by the way: wormholes are nothing more than hypothesis so far. There are no observations that provide direct -- or even indirect -- support for their existence, since the observations can be explained just as easily by other means.
Your third point is correct; I misread the sentence. However I disagree with it. If you observe something that appears to break known laws, and it is not a street magic trick, then you might do well to investigate its operation. Because, as I stated earlier: ALL major scientific breakthroughs violated previously "known" laws. While it is not likely to happen, it DOES happen. And when it has, we have all turned out to be better off as a result.
By your logic, the phenomenon of "cold fusion" should never have been investigated, because it was "obviously untrue" on its face. Even though subsequent investigations (by reputable, University scientists) HAVE repeatedly encountered anomalies that COULD BE fusion, though of course nobody has produced it in a strongly verfifiable, sustainable manner. So nobody has proven that it exists, but saying that it "could not", because it breaks "known laws", is putting the cart before the horse.
Newton's laws violated "known laws" of the time. Einstein's discoveries violated "known laws" (Newton's, in fact) of the time. Curie's discoveries violated "known laws". And so on. If you think you know everything about the Universe, and therefore you don't have to investigate it further, then... well, I just feel sorry for you, because you do not understand what you think you know.
I am aware that the last part is not what you wrote. However, it is what you strongly implied.
To ensure the profitability of existing power generation schemes, the government would pay you more not to generate electricity than the revenue you could extract by operating such a device and selling the electricity on the open market. All perpetual motion machines have this problem.
Sounds awesome. Can I use it to power my flying car?
The complicated contraption of fixed magnets attached to the motor might be what is known as a "magnetic brake", a system which uses the magnetic forces of fixed magnets to offer a resisting force opposing any attempts at rotating the thing. The same kind of idea is used extensively in excercise equipment where sets of fixed magnets offer resistance to the person excercising on the machine. Look at any excercise equipment catalogue with fixed bicycles or rowing machines to get an idea.
This effect is called back emf, we already have back emf in every motor already made. If we didn't have back emf then the motor would draw on average 5 times it's notmal running current (locked rotor current or start current).
Nothing new here.
Adrian
Thing is, I don't care. Until I see a schematic of how its hooked up, and am able to do it under controlled conditions, I don't care.
If this thing was so damned important, he'd have patented the design and put up the drawings for the world to see by now. Then the world could test it, approve it, and beat a path to his doorstep for licensing.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
My BS-ometer is giving me a reading of 100,000 Mega-Nixons!!!!
Isn't what he's doing effectively returning the power from the drag brake, the generator, into system? It's just a form or hybrid motor and the only net affect would be increasing the motor speed not the output energy. Stick another drag brake/generator on the system and see what happens. Does it produce more power than the first generator or as I'd bet less? Conservation of energy says inspite of the speed he's loosing energy somewhere. Remember it's not the speed of the motor but the torque that's going to generate the electricity. You can have a 20,000 rpm spinning device that can't generate enough power to light a light bulb if there's so little torque that a small generator can slow it to a standstill. This almost seems like a magic trick more than a perpetual motion machine. The genius of magic tricks is they are often so obvious no one sees the trick. Gee feeding the power back into the motor makes it go faster, but they are missing the point that you are loosing torque in the process so the potential power generated is being cut not increased.
Yeah, this is an old trick.
What actually happens is that they get the opportunity to speak with a Professor. The professor holds his tongue and laughs when the man walks out of the room. The man can now say that the Professor couldn't seem to explain how it works(because the professor didn't want to waste an hour explaining electromagnetic theory to an idiot)
I actually knew an EE professor who was familiar with this scam.
He told me of one 'invention' that was exceptional.
A man claimed that he could 'rewire' motors so as to produce TWICE the output. A friend of the professor(name withheld for obvious reasons) finally begged him to watch a video of the 'inventor'.[The professor refused to meet with the inventor for reasons previously mentioned].
Here is what was happening.
The 'inventor' was rewiring the motors so that they were running at half the normal voltage. Anyone who remembers basic electricity remembers that P=VI. Guess what? They were drawing 2 times as much current. He was basically converting a 24V motor to a 12V motor.
The professor told me that he laughed so hard that the friend showing him the video wouldn't speak to him out of shame for a month.
So, whenever you see a professor's name attached to something like this...check to see if the Ph.D. actually wrote anything. Typically the crackpot is simply using a brief meeting with the professor to give his lunacy some weight of authority.
I am sorry I only watched the first 3 parts. But I noticed he talks about voltages about 70V and currents about 5A which makes me beleive this is a 300-500W motor... the coils he has there will in no way produce 300W. Thus it is not a machine that will run on its own. In my pessimistic opinion the motor has a heavy rotor which has a lot of inertia continuing the spinning. Also notice the rather large wheel with magnets - also contributing to inertia.
Showing the world that a perpetual motion machine works is actually easier than it looks; it only takes two steps.
Step 1: Make enough noise for there to be some publicity about you and your invention, (which it seems that this guy has already done).
Step 2: Release, for free, to anyone who is interested, detailed instructions on how to make your device.
Lots and lots of free energy inventors seem to have no problem with step 1, but they always seem to avoid step 2. Sure, just telling everyone how to make it for free would make it much harder to patent or profit directly from the invention, but being world famous as the person who invented free energy will get universities and corporations deluging you with funding for your next invention and offers of employment. Plus there would be that good fuzzy feeling of helping humanity.
Actually no. "That remembers me of all those movies", is not well written English.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
I am pretty certain that this is not a perpetual motion machine, but I did find the movies quite enjoyable. Obviously a lot of effort went into making a concise and transparent presentation.
Without having direct access to the machine it is hard to investigate the details, but two likely effects suggest themselves:
Get a Haircut and Get a Real Job. Your kid and the taxpayers will thank you.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I know you're all like "bullshit!" by now but this exists in nature. Ever heard of a tornado? It would be kinda like how a tornado gets so much energy. There are opposing forces caused by air pressure that should just about cancel each other out and do nothing. But the energy of Earth turning and air's resistance to turning with Earth because of its gaseous state combined with the fact that the inertia isn't in a straight line causes more rotational energy in the opposite direction than would be exerted if Earth wasn't there. The air draws power from the Earth's rotation by resisting wanting to turn with Earth, just like I mentioned how a generator could work.
None of this makes any sense. You're confusing energy with momentum. Air simply doesn't have "resistance to turning with Earth because of its gaseous state" and has no problem turning with the Earth.
These storms get their energy from the sun. In the more straightforward case of a hurricane, the sun is causing northward/southward movement by heating air at equatorial latitudes (and charging it with water vapor) more than the air closer to the poles (which stays cooler and drier). Due to the increased pressure the equatorial air moves toward the poles, and displaces colder air which moves toward the equator. (The water's heat of fusion helps maintain the pressure gradient by buffering thermal energy- it continues to heat the wet air as it moves poleward, and keeps the dry air cool as it crosses warm water which vaporizes and robs it of its heat.) The "Coriolis force" appears to cause circular motion, but it's a false force that's an artifact of the rotating coordinate system we like to use. In a non-rotating coordinate system, the air is retaining the linear easterly momentum that it had at the equator, so when it reaches higher latitudes it appears to be moving east, and the air that reaches the equator is now moving westward there simply because it had less easterly momentum to start with. Note that the Coriolis "force" does no work here since it applies itself in a perpendicular direction to the air's movement so the dot product is zero. Gravity, a real force, is doing no work here either for the same reason- even though it flips the sign of all linear momenta every 12 hours. All the work is being done by the pressure gradient.
The net effect is that the storm has had solar energy injected into it, which enables it to extract angular momentum from the Earth's rotation. When it reaches land and throws your stuff around, the Earth gets all its angular momentum back since the wind and debris is moving sideways with respect to the ground. The energy is dissipated in all the collisions into the form of heat, but the system's total angular momentum never changes.
Tornadoes are a bit more convoluted but essentially work the same way. Just like when I stir my coffee. I borrow angular momentum from the earth, with energy that originally came from the sun via the food I ate. As my coffee slows down, the earth gets its angular momentum back (transferred through the mug, through the table, and into the ground) and the energy I put into the coffee heats it and the mug it's in a tiny little bit. That energy came from the sun, not from the earth's rotation. I can't "draw power from the Earth's rotation" to stir my coffee unless I somehow hook my stirrer up to tides crashing at the beach. Those DO extract potentially useful energy from the angular momentum in the Earth-Moon system, since the Moon is available as an anchor and momentum can be dumped into it until the Earth and Moon eventually become tidally locked- analogous to the situation when a hurricane, tornado, or coffee stir is finally dissipated. At that point the angular momentum will be useless for extracting further energy.
Basically, you can't stick a generator axle into the North Pole and generate electricity by spinning the rotor. You have nothing to anchor the stator against.
Ummm, no. When was that?
There's a bit of folklore that says scientists in the early 19th century predicted that railroads would be unfeasible because the human body couldn't withstand 20 mph...and I suppose you could buy that story if you thought horses were a modern invention.
rj
When I was 6 my dad explained perpetual motion to me, my other idea was to generate electricity with a wheel but also push the wheel with the power it generated, but obviously it would lose energy overall due to friction. Thinking back on it, my magnet idea would have worked, but few years ago on /. I read how loads of people make perpetual motion machines with magnets. They do in fact 'work'. But they're not doing anything magical, the energy provided is from the magnetic force, which takes more energy to create than you get out of it. Renewable sources of energy are a much more worthwhile field to explore and make inventions. What this guy has done with his life is ridiculous. He lost his wife and kid for a concept that is known to be false, and there is not going to be a happy ending.
The only confusing bit in the article is how the professor at the university considers it novel how the magnet creates acceleration from the position that it's in (though to me it seems pretty obvious as I said, I though up a wheel that is kept in motion by using magnets at a young age). The rest of it reads as a sad tale of obsession - the guy has ruined his life over nothing (in fact something that he clearly says he does not understand, which shows he must have a pretty low level of intelligence, though the article doesn't give much detail on the device). In my opinion it would have been much more valuable to look after his family. My dad was a pretty smart guy but I wish he'd spent more time with us - he died unexpectedly when he was 42 and I was 17, and it made me radically rethink my attitude on learning, study and so on, it was just 6 weeks before I started University. Anyway, he was always studying and learning, for example I found a 'teach yourself Hebrew' book next to his bed after he died, but then I was like what was the point? All the work that he did (and I have his job now, except I usually keep my coding and work restricted to working hours) just kept him from spending time being a husband and a father. I respect those that dedicate their lives to their work, but even more I respect those that put in all the hard work involved in keeping a happy family, bringing up your kids in a happy and positive environment. Being an inventor is piss easy compared to that. Learning is a noble pastime, but it has to be balanced with other things, as does everything in life.
which is totally what she said
"But these are not absolute laws."
Just how naive can you get? You are so wrong. They are not "laws", they are absolute truths. They are absolutely absolute. The word law or rule implies that it "might" can be broken. That is not the case. Even a GOD cannot violate logic. Doing so would end with the destruction of the universe.
"If you manage to devise a pair of rings where what goes into one pops out the other with no change in temperature, you CAN create energy out of nothing. In fact, merely placing the rings at different altitudes will cause air pressure to generate a wind from the lower ring to the higher ring. You can easily use this wind to power a turbine, and you WILL get free energy.
YOU CAN'T DO THAT! Any creation of such "rings" (or their operation) would require the same amount of energy that you get out of them. YOU LOSE! If such rings were created they would neccessarily only work along the space-time geodesic along which all gravitational forces were equal, so you get NO NET ENERGY.
THE CREATION OR MAINTENANCE OF ANY STABLE ASYMMETRY BY A BEING WITHIN THE UNIVERSE NECCESSARILY REQUIRES ENERGY EXPENDITURE EQUAL TO THE AMOUNT DEVISED FROM IT.
again... morons.
I'm a rocket man.
It took me a bit to figure out what was going on here, but it's all explained by the most basic rule of electronics.
V=IR, or resolved for our particular case, V/R = I
Once he "shorts" the coils, and closes the loop, the voltage drops 0.
The resistance is also 0, or functionally close enough, because there's a piece of copper wire connecting the ends of the coil.
So, 0/0 (Bottom 0 is infinitesimally greater then 0 so the division is legal) ~= 0
I ~= 0, so there is no current flowing and no resistance presented to the motor which is why it accelerates.
Without the "short" in there, the meter itself is providing the load.
Normally, a meter wouldn't be enough load to appreciably slow a generator, but this is a special case.
His generator is so grossly inefficient that any electrical load at all is enough to affect it's speed.
I can't believe they need somebody from MIT to figure this one out. I took basic electronics back in high school, slept through most of it and figured this out in less then 10 minutes.
Note: For the EE's in the crowd, I know that I should have used V = ZI and RMS values for Voltage/Amperage and impedance instead of resistance. I figured more people would remember V=IR though.
If there is a contributor of added energy in this system I think it is his mouth.
I don't want an MIT physics professor, except as a consultant. I want James Randi, the stage magicion who's now debunking psychic frauds, to look at the apparatus and make sure there's nothing strange going on.
For example, most voltage and current meters do no measurement of phase delay between the curent and the voltage. A bit of odd impedance in a motor can often affect its performance considerably by drawing more of the current when it's at the highest voltage and the maximum power is delivered to it, rather than wasting energy in conductive losses at low voltages. And oddball impedances can cause surprising loads to the sources of electrical power, which are not noticed unless you look carefully at the fuel consumption for the upstream generator or examine the electrical load with better instruments. The relevant phrase to look this up is "power factor correction".
You couldn't be more wrong about... well, everything.
We physicists are most excited when there are EXCEPTIONS to well-proven theory. Case in point, Einstein's General Relativity rapidly gained momentum when it was introduced, and now it is considered the leading theory.
The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is a particle physicist's dream because it tests a high energy region that has never been seen before. Everyone (except the theorists, who are few and far between) wants to see new physics happening there. It's generally dubbed "beyond the standard model" but that's just fancy wording for "The standard model suddenly doesn't work in this high energy region!"
I can think of countless other examples when a prominent scientific theory was quickly abandoned in favor of a new, better theory. Rutherford's gold scattering experiment, Einstein's relativity, ALL OF QUANTUM PHYSICS, etc.
Sadly, scientific funding is not determined by scientists - it is determined by politicians. Scientists are on the boards that assign the grants, but the actual funding is handed down by politicians. If the politicians don't like the kinds of projects that you're supporting, you'll either face a budget cut or you'll lose your seat on the board.
However, your last line certainly has some truth - I encounter students who refuse to believe in the Coriolis effect, inertia, Gauss' Law, and countless other well-proven laws. It's not that they can come up with counterexamples, it's that they just don't want to believe in the billions of experiments that have confirmed previously known results. Would you agree that this is quite a different circumstance? The students who display disbelief often do so without reason (gut instinct). These students fail. I will happily give bonus points to students who can think of counterexamples to famous theories and laws - they can have the A, I'll take the Nobel Prize.
I have a model train on a long stretch of track (nearly infinitely long).
I have a strong magnet (an electromagnet if you will).
When I place the magnet in front of the train, the train accelerates forward.
If I keep moving the magnet away from the train (with my hand) then the train continues accelerating. Hooray, the train is accelerating without using any source of power except the magnet! It's perpetual motion! IT'S PERPETUAL MOTION!
This guy has, sadly, not created a perpetual motion device. He has transferred energy from one medium to another (and rather inefficiently at that). If you believe this is a perpetual motion device, then I've got a few other handy devices to sell you (tiger-repelling amulets, oil that is guaranteed to increase your natural lifespan, etc.)
Does the sod's backyard look like Saruman's orc factory?
I was thinking it could be used like a flywheel to store energy almost like a battery, though flywheels are typically capable of storing more energy than batteries. You just have to be comfortable having a disk rotating at ungodly high speeds, which if it was made of a brittle material you might not be.
If it can store energy without really using up much energy to keep spinning (i.e., if the laws of thermodynamics are still okay and we don't need to rewrite them all), it could effectively be used in this manner. If it's as compact as it is when it's adapted for that purpose, it would take away the scary downsides of a flywheel (super high moment of inertia objects spinning REALLY fast and possibly flying apart).
"Such an unbelievable invention would challenge the laws of physics, a no-no in the rigid world of serious science" this is retarded. good science does not include "no-no's" when it comes to the laws of physics. when something of this nature is found, it is rigorously tested, and either accepted or disproved. saying that there are hard and fast laws that we must not break in serious science is stupid. science is about breaking what we think we know, and finding out why we could break it in the first place.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
- Move to a state where power companies have "buy-back" requirements.
- install device effectively taking you off grid and turning your home into a mini-power plant.
- profit.
you forgot the ???Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
Carpet Magnetic Factor (CMF). It is the somewhat esoteric force that attracts organic materials to floor coverings. It is measured in Armstrongs. Depth of the pile and color of the carpet can have a large effect on the CMF. Low levels of CMF have been documented in linoleum, but it is not as well studied as in carpet. The density and 'sloppiness' of the organic material has a large impact on the attractive force (this is why the buttered side of the toast is more strongly attracted to the floor covering).
No just build the thing into a desk fan, build a million of them in China. Sell them at cost and then sell a solar panel to run them on that is actually just a wire that shorts the circuit appropriately to activate the perpetual motion device and make the fan run forever.
According to the article he's specifically not claiming anything. What he is claiming, is that he has a device, that seems to accelerate a motor using magnets in a way that hasn't been explained yet. He's actually more interested in if it can make current electric motors more efficient, not if it's some magical "free energy" device. It will be interesting to find out what's behind the apparent effect of this thing. At this point there's really one of three possible outcomes. One, it could be some error in his test setup, it follows all the rules, he's just measuring wrong. Second, it follows all the rules, but exploits some new principle we were unaware of till now. And lastly it breaks current rules and we need to make some adjustments to them. I'm betting one is most likely, although the second is a strong possibility as well. As for the third outcome, I'd give it a 0.0001% chance.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
So how do we get from that statement to the slashdot headline?
Too much crack? Had a bad month in ad revenue?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
And, of course, you snipped out the bits about the Nobel Prize winners.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Yeah, as you said -- "Do the magnets depolarize over time". I think that's the big secret here. I'm almost definite I heard of this from my (now retired) engineer grandfather, who while being a genius, has forgotten some basics at the age of 75 and I'm pretty sure has been duped by a 'real looking' documentary on this crap.
His explanation to me was that the magnet somehow increases the speed of the motor ; ergo its free energy.
Whatever his explanation was of how it works (since this article doesn't show anything) -- I asked the very simple question, "Does the magnet depolarize? Because all magnets, unless they're powered electro magnets, lose polarity and that's why.... when you suck up a coin with a magnet - you're not violating the laws of physics. It's not 'free energy', it's stored energy.
blah blah blah. My point being, with magnets involved, and this guy running around going, "I'm dyslexic and I have no education! LOOK AT ME!"... it's likely he's just using magnetic energy on a small scale and he can't find an energy loss because his test involves watching it a lot and going 'wee, it's accelerating!'
There have been a *lot* of free energy machines that accelerate. It's pretty much a basic tenet of a 'free energy machine'. If it doesn't accelerate, it's obviously not gaining energy. Because it accelerates doesn't mean the system is gaining energy either. But I seriously don't understand why anybody takes this seriously just because it accelerates.
They all accelerate, that's why people show them off. "Look I broke the laws of physics! It's accelerating!"
I honestly don't even think this guy has come up with an improvement to electric motors. You're going to find, when all is said and done - the acceleration comes from a magnet which, as complicated as the setup may be, requires more energy to polarize than it actually puts into acceleration. It may only have to be charged once every 5 years, but he's also (likely) only accelerating a wheel that weighs 20 grams with a lot of powerful magnets.
This is bunk. And the real test is this:
Make a second, identical device.
Start it running.
Let us know when it flies apart.
If it *ever* reaches a constant speed, and the magnets don't start sucking iron from the blood of passers by 10 miles away -- it's not gaining energy.
If it reaches a constant speed and then (as I suspect) stops when he leaves it there for a few hours or days (long enough that the casual observer wouldn't want to wait for when he's on tour with it) -- then it's a very obvious piece of crap.
If it reaches a constant speed, and you slow it down, and it stays slowed down.... same story.
The ability of this machine to generate energy can be disproved easily in so many different ways.
Tell him to make his spinning wheel charge a battery, and then hook that battery to his home electrical grid. It would cost him a couple hundred dollars to get the equipment to do it from a solar panel manufacturer. In most states the utility company pays you for power you generate. If he's getting free energy, he can get rich without our help.
Seriously. He's had years and his wife left him, but he never thought of that? that's like finding a genie lamp and never thinking of getting a tonne of money. That only happens on the x-files. And this demonstrates the other basic tenet of free energy machines:
2) They can't ever be hooked up to a generator.
They can do all sorts of nifty things, but for some reason getting rich by selling that free energy in the easiest way possible - to a utility company - just can never happen. You have to get millions from investors even though (here in Canada) Ontario Hydro would pay you indefinitely just to have your already created prototype running a generator.
Douginadress.com
Ace
Right, because Einstein wasn't just a math-loving, nobody patent clerk when he published some of the most important papers in the history of physics.
Beware of making universal generalizations.
Eyes rolling...
We posted a feature page about this here: http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Perepiteia_Generator_by_Potential_Difference_Inc#In_the_News
The following are a couple of the better comments we received.
No Useful Output
On Feb. 6, 2008, Peter Lindemann, DSc, writes:
I have reviewed all seven video links. In all fairness, I would like to say that Thane has built some nice demonstrations and spent a lot of time running experiments. That said, the films show nothing important. First of all, the films do not show enough detailed information to evaluate the demonstrations. Second, no free energy is shown. In fact, the generators are never shown producing any useful outputs. They are either shown producing voltage in "open circuit" mode, or they are shown in "short circuit" mode, where the generated voltage drops below one volt. So, ZERO WATTS are produced in either case.
The changes in mechanical drag are due to changes in inductance and hysteresis. Back in the 1980's, both John Bedini and I independently worked with "variable reluctance" generators. We both saw that these designs work like an inverse to a standard induction generator. That is, they produce maximum drag in "open circuit" mode, and minimum drag in "short circuit" mode. John found that the point of maximum benefit in this situation is to charge a battery, where the impedance of the generator "sees" the battery as a "near short circuit". Under these circumstances, the generator free-wheels and the battery charges quickly.
Unfortunately, Thane is not showing any useful benefits from the generator output. So, there is no "efficiency" to calculate because there is no output!
The real problem with these demonstrations has to do with his motor drive. The motor driving his system is a single phase induction motor. This type of motor has almost zero starting torque, and only produces its rated power at rated speed. So, the rated speed of his motor is probably in the neighborhood of 1725 RPM. Running this motor in the 100 RPM range converts 98% of the input electric power to HEAT. He says he has a capacitor in the input circuit to the motor, but this is never shown in schematic, so we don't know how it is hooked up. If the capacitor is connected in SERIES with the motor winding, it will act as a current limiter, and skew the power factor of the motor towards reactive power. This is fine, IF you want to limit the mechanical power of the motor as well. If the capacitor is connected in PARALLEL with the motor winding, it will act to produce reactive power for the motor locally, and reduce the amount of power it draws from the wall. But again, this would only be significant at rated speed.
The effect he shows when a magnetic field is applied to the motor shaft would be undetectable if he was operating the motor correctly. It is a very weak effect. It is probably caused by the external magnetic field interfering with the induced magnetic field of the rotor. This would not happen if the motor coils were not being severely current limited and the rotor was not "slipping" severely in the rotating magnetic field of the stator.
My GUESS is that the capacitor is in SERIES with the motor winding. This will limit the current to the motor to a specific maximum. At the speeds he is running these motors, the only other mechanism to hold back the input current would be the resistance of the wire in the motor coils. If that is all he had, the motor would quickly over-heat and melt the insulation right off the wire. The fact that the motor is running hot is proved in the seventh film where a large black fan is shown blowing on the motor!
From the data presented, my best estimate of the efficiency of the demonstrations is that over 90% of the energy going into the motor is converted to heat. The changes in drag of the generators is standard behavior for variable reluctance topologies
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
Yeah, as somebody said -- "Do the magnets depolarize over time". I think that's the big secret here. I'm almost definite I heard of this from my (now retired) engineer grandfather, who while being a genius, has forgotten some basics at the age of 75 and I'm pretty sure has been duped by a 'real looking' documentary on this crap.
His explanation to me was that the magnet somehow increases the speed of the motor ; ergo its free energy.
Whatever his explanation was of how it works (since this article doesn't show anything) -- I asked the very simple question, "Does the magnet depolarize? Because all magnets, unless they're powered electro magnets, lose polarity and that's why.... when you suck up a coin with a magnet - you're not violating the laws of physics. It's not 'free energy', it's stored energy.
blah blah blah. My point being, with magnets involved, and this guy running around going, "I'm dyslexic and I have no education! LOOK AT MY MAGNET FERRIS WHEEL!"... it's likely he's just using magnetic energy on a small scale and he can't find an energy loss because his test involves watching it a lot and going 'wee, it's accelerating!'
There have been a *lot* of free energy machines that accelerate. It's pretty much a basic tenet of a 'free energy machine'. If it doesn't accelerate, it's obviously not gaining energy (and I'm counting circular motion here as acceleration too physics gurus). Because it accelerates doesn't mean the system is gaining energy either. But I seriously don't understand why anybody takes this seriously just because it accelerates.
They all accelerate, that's why people show them off. "Look I broke the laws of physics! It's accelerating!"
I honestly don't even think this guy has come up with an improvement to electric motors. You're going to find, when all is said and done - the acceleration comes from a magnet which, as complicated as the setup may be, requires more energy to polarize than it actually puts into acceleration. It may only have to be charged once every 5 years, but he's also (likely) only accelerating a wheel that weighs 20 grams with a lot of powerful magnets.
This is bunk. And the real test is this:
Make a second, identical device.
Start it running.
Let us know when it flies apart.
If it *ever* reaches a constant speed, and the magnets don't start sucking iron from the blood of passers by 10 miles away -- it's not gaining energy indefinitely.
If it reaches a constant speed and then (as I suspect) stops when he leaves it there for a few hours or days (long enough that the casual observer wouldn't want to wait for when he's on tour with it) -- then it's a very obvious piece of crap.
If it reaches a constant speed, and you slow it down, and it stays slowed down.... why isn't it accelerating again? It can only get 'free energy' when you first turn it on?
The ability of this machine to generate energy can be disproved easily in so many different ways. The biggest, easiest way to disprove this is to ask a very obvious question:
Can his spinning wheel charge a battery?
It would cost him a couple hundred dollars to get the equipment to put this free electricity into his electrical grid. He could buy it from any solar panel manufacturer or store. In most states the utility company pays you for power you generate. If he's getting free energy, he can get rich without our help. He should have done that already if he's getting free energy.
Seriously. He's had years and his wife left him, but he never thought of that? that's like finding a genie lamp and never thinking of getting a tonne of money. That only happens on the x-files. And this demonstrates the other basic tenet of free energy machines:
2) They can't ever be hooked up to a generator.
They can do all sorts of nifty things, but for some reason getting rich by selling that free energy in the easiest way possible - to a utility company - just can never happen. You have to get millions from investors even though if you never told
Ace
Well, Einstein was an outsider to a point, but he was one who actually went to college and had a degree in physics.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I can't. Maybe that guy can. It's a fascinating conundrum.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
"but with gravity energy cannot be created, only destroyed."
So where are your laws of conservation now?
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Uh actually, most scientists (indeed anyone) with a PhD thinks highly of him or herself.
---even if they only really know their little area of expertise and are really bad
at the much less interesting duty of teaching. In fact I know one student who was
shocked at how her teacher told the class "they were the elite" now, when much of
stuff they are learning in class is memorization or meaningless gibberish that they
will forget anyway.
These are not the people who will usher in the next pivotal invention...sorry.
Quote: "Look at any big breakthrough in science, it has never, ever, been done by an outsider."
Ever heard of Fermat? Or is mathematics not a science?
Still no citation. Second or third hand. Thus remains in the category urban myth.
Kudos. Well put. In my experience, this 'most scientists' crap is a phrase uttered by people that have no training and unfounded contempt for science or education or both. I work with one now that claims his dad invented a 'better' way to do calculus, that college is a racket to take all your money, and etc.
And of course, these folks usually don't know beans about logic, scientific method, or any other way to convince them they're wrong. Dissuading them takes MUCH longer than ignoring them, I've found.
The only remotely feasible way I've found to fix their boats is to ask them for written examples of their claims, then send 'em back repeatedly saying stuff like 'what about Lens' Law?' or 'Hmm... that looks like a geometric solution. Technically, that's not calculus. Still, can you ask your dad to show how this method handles 2nd or 3rd order Differential Equations?' The goal isn't to win the argument -- it's TROLLING them (with questions that aren't threatening but make them waste much more effort than you do) so they stop spewing this happy horseshit.
OK I see he shorts the coils, big deal!
I want to see him hook a heating element to the outputs and show that when the motor is magnetically coupled it is capable of raising the temperature of water by x degrees kelvin against the control with the brass shaft installed.
Then I want to see this tested with different motor/generator combinations, especially against the most efficient motor/generator combinations out there, I would be willing to bet his setup is a low-efficiency one, and he is simply making it slightly more efficient, but still less so than a commercially designed motor generator set. This is the same as taking a performance tuned car engine and attempting to make more power without forced induction, you simply have made the engine as efficient as possible, and any additional gains are hard fought for.
Additionally, if no additional power is generated from this setup, there are a limited number of applications which can benefit from this increase in efficiency.
There is a potential for something else here I thought of, but it would only provide for a slight increase in efficiency on motors and generators, and not perpetual motion.
I keep reading mention of these mythical 'most scientists' who are close-minded, stubborn, and obtuse. I wonder where in the world you find these people. -SNIP- So where are these 'most scientists'? No matter where I look, I can't seem to find them!
I tend to find these "most scientists" in the minds of close-minded, stubborn, and obtuse people. Usually these people have some ax to grind, or snake oil they want to sell you, like your local chiropractor who wants to "cure" your blood sugar problems with reflexology.
Remember, people see in others what they see in themselves...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The number of potential dupes is directly proportional to general knowledge of electricity, magnetism, and first-year chemistry and/or physics, both of which include the Law of Conservation of Energy.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
The first comma you mention is unnecessary, and the only people who hold prohibitions against starting sentences with conjunctions are grade school teachers, uptight prigs, and other folk with no functional knowledge of English writing.
You are correct indeed: you used the word "maybe", which contains an "e".
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
> The first comma you mention is unnecessary
He said he thought there *should* be some. That's one place where it would be appropriate.
> the only people who hold prohibitions against starting sentences with conjunctions are grade school teachers,
> uptight prigs, and other folk with no functional knowledge of English writing.
Nice. Are you always so polite when you're being condescending?
True, there's general acceptance that you can begin a sentence with a conjunction, but it's still poor style. The real problem isn't the conjunction, it's putting that period in prematurely!
The usual argument against "perpetual motion" seems to fall under conservation of energy. You can't get power from nothing, and some is always leaked. However, my thoughts tended to follow that - while you cannot magically create energy - you can pull energy from a hither unknown source, thus improving the efficiency of a system or providing new ways to juice. So a real "perpetual motion" machine may still follow C of E, but might be pulling energy from some weird and wonderful way that hadn't previously been realized.
Now if they harnessed the power of conservative talk radio, they'd have something approximating perpetual motion if not a perpetual energy source.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
...and for non-believers who deny the existence of a Force that attracts the buttered side of the toast to the ground, well... what about taping two cats together, back to back ?
Just put on your leather jacket and gloves before attempting to do so... (shhhhhh ! DO NOT WANTZ !)
Siamese Twins?
Ahhh. A very good explanation. Gotta admit that this one had me stumped until you flipped my thinking around to realize that the motor starts out inhibited and he just removes the EM brake when he shorts the coils. He could do the same thing by just moving the coils away from the magnets. I can't believe in all the years he has been working on this and testing it he never bothered to measure RPM with no coils anywhere near the spinning magnets - which would have clearly indicated what was happening.
But wait - this just struck me as I was congratulating you on your perception... why doesn't the motor speed up when there is a non-conductive section in the shaft? If you remember from the video, shorting the coils had no effect on motor speed when there was a brass coupling in the drive shaft. If it were just a matter of removing the EM brake on the spinning armature, the conductivity of the shaft should not have mattered. Someting else appears to be going on here.
That's totally cool. If the only thing that's wrong with my English is my punctuation then that's actually quite flattering.
(This post contains intentionally no commas. But I'm sure there should be some)
That's pretty funny because it didn't need any commas.
The article introduction reads like a lolcats quote.
I can has free energy?
Einstein worked at the patent office because he couldn't find a job teaching. He worked at the patent office as a physicist; as you said he had a degree in physics. I'm not sure calling him an outsider is really valid in this context.
Think about it practically: scientists have HUGE incentive to discover some big fundamental change in the current thinking (superstar status, Nobel Prize, really cool things named after you, etc.) finding out new things is their JOB. Tons of scientists do what they do because they love it--they dedicate their lives to it--and it's very common for a researcher to work over 80 hours a week.
Unfortunately it seems the public at large does not realize how creative science is. Scientists are trained to do things that have never been done before--to discover new things--and so far they've done an unbelievably good job at it. If you study physics, and you understand it, and you understand how accurate it's predictions are--there's no way you won't be in awe of it. Who is more likely to make a huge discovery like this, some guy in a shed on the weekends who doesn't know what he's doing or ten people who dedicate their lives to science? I know who I'd bet on.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Been a scientist myself, as I mature in my research field, I tend to agree with him. However, at the same time I still remember the advice of a senior scientific and professor: "making relevant scientific advances requires a lot of arrogance to deny the common wisdom". So I suppose there must be a balance: neither blind reluctance to consider challenges, nor blind faith on "counter examples".
Electromagnetic fields are only mysterious to hacks and quacks. However, understand them and being able to work with them does require a certain level of skill with maths, which this particular aluminium haberdasherer freely admits he doesn't have:
How bad are we talking here? Are we expected to believe in a breakthrough in our understanding of electromagnetism from someone who gets frightened by cross products?
But pay no mind to me, I'm part of the evil mainstream scientific establishment trying to keep this invention secret and maintain the big lie of thermodynamics.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Homer: [scoffs] I know. And this perpetual motion machine she made today is a joke! It just keeps going faster and faster.
Marge: And Bart isn't doing very well either. He needs boundaries and structure. There's something about flying a kite at night that's so unwholesome. [looks out window]
Bart: [creepy voice] Hello, Mother dear.
Marge: [closing the curtains] That's it: we have to get them back to school.
Homer: I'm with you, Marge. Lisa! Get in here.
[Lisa walks in, chuckling nervously]
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Who needs perpetual motion machines. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney just acquired the Subtle Knife and are, at this moment, preparing to invade thousands of alternate-Earths and pump their crude oil to our USA.
If you want to test a perpetual motion machine, here's a good place to start:
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/TestPerpM.HTM
True, true. But in the last video we see that even permanent magnets can accelerate that motor with no other coils included.
So in my way of dissecting the problem I have to ask: Is the Iron bar he inserts into the shaft magnetized by any chance ?
Or does it 'optimize' the motor's own magnetic field so it runs faster ?
Would the motor run faster with the coils far, far away AND the iron bar (magnetized or not) inserted ?
-- You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do
Ok This is a lot cooler looking example, but it is old news Dr Stefan Marinov allready showed us a Dark energy harvistor It's called Ball-Bearing motor.
This thing and the BBM don't violate entropy law.
The second, or entropy law, places a restriction on the kinds of energy transformation that can take place. It states that there is a quality of energy that places a limit on the transformation of that energy into useful work.
The resoan these work is that the spining isn't useful work. It's cool looking work but the 2ed law doesn't say anything about cool look it says useful.
But what about conservation of energy?
The apprant conflict with the conservation of energy is is that you only mesured the useful energy you at the start and mesured the useful plus the non-useful enery at the end.
If this guy was serious about proving his idea, he could just publish a detailed design of the machine (after patenting it to protect himself) and let other people verify it independently. It sounds to me like the same old hoax.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The correct spelling is Hedy Lamarr. See http://www.hedylamarr.com/about/biography.htm. Gorgeous and technically brilliant (typical /. gearhead and ultimate electrical engineer!).
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
That's asy. Why should on lttr mattr anyway?
Generally if your model does not comply with what is accepted you won't get funding.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Using a standard stepper motor which is essentially what he has here, the stepper motor can be timed to hit the Back EMF pulse in a position where it becomes a propulsion pulse. Typically the Back EMF pulse is proportional to the load on the motor. The result is that a forward kick equal to the RMS of the Back EMF pulse can be achieved. Since the motor rotated with force equal to the induced coil current less some losses like friction etc, the motor without the Back EMF pulse would be almost 100% efficient. With the Back EMF pulse normally timed symmetrically such that it occurs on exit from a magnetic field the resulting Back EMF works against the rotation of the motor essentially presenting as the "Load" on the motor because it is proportional and appears in the current phase load. Because this phase load can be timed to mismatch by many means, it can appear as an attractive load as one enters the adjacent field for action. Such a motor rather than Braking as is presented in discussion accelerates. The limit of this device is about 140% of line load current in torque.
If you subsequently place magnets in the coils you can also take advantage of a maxwell equation reduction which is F=B^2. This allows one to drag by at 1/2 magnet force losing 1/4 the force with magnetic induction equal to 1/2 the driver force. At the same time adding 50% to the magnetic B field is possible using only 1/2 induction. The resulting 150% B field accelerates with Force of 2.25 times the induction giving a drag of .25 netting for induction a gain of 2 times rotation force. This actually can be asymmetrically powered giving a real gain against induction. This is why the device accelerates given the resident field of a magnet near the device.
The problem most physics types have in seeing this is that they don't follow their rules which include displacement in time and space. As to the claims of energy coming from the energy which cause the magnetic field in the magnets that is just funny. The force to magnetize a magnet is trivial and a time transient. Surely the field is very intense for a moment but that hardly includes any significant energy. Modern magnets are for the most part immune to the demagnetization issues that are discussed in such arguments.
The real issue with this guys device is to give it like all discoveries, or claimed discoveries, a fair, open and decent respectful examination and conclude according to the facts. The argument that it is "impossible" or etc is the argument of an unscientific person. If I told you that a block of metal could emit massive amounts of heat to destroy or power cities in 1930, I would have been decried as a fool and an idiot. It would have been argued to violate the laws of Physics. By 1945 2 cities had been destroyed by the heat from such an impossible event. Try shutting up the arguments and start looking. This might not be a working device and it might be one. A fair hearing is what is called for.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Mind, that is mostly a phenomenon of public school and high school. Oddly enough, those teachers aren't scientists :)
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
This is not perpetual motion nor does it break any laws of physics. He has cleverly found/stumbled on a way to gather energy from a second set of magnets setup around the steal drive shaft. Where previously we have found only a net loss of energy he has gathered to impeding factors and redirected them. This talk about perpetual voodoo is just for publicity, I'll grant the man deserves a huge amount of credit for his discovery but the implications being made are intimidating those that would give it to him. Remember ALL of us nerds have one thing in common, when on the web or at work/school we talk a big game because we know what we know but, put a nerd in front of a spot light with a million ignorant and skeptic people and we shrink; we over analyze until we don't know what we are looking at. This is why we don't know what our most brilliant minds today look like outside the jacket to their latest book. Cleaver but not earth shattering
Fusion/Nuclear Reaction is the break down of matter into energy. Albeit a unique process in it's own right it still yeilds a by-product. Also there is no universal theory of gravity both Newton and Einstien struggled with it for years but have never said they understood it, so your implication that laws of conservation were made to explain gravity is a low blow to get your point across. But kudos on the dirty politics! On a helpful note if you want some of your questions on gravity and black holes answered check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory
Note to self - avoid slashdotter's kitchens.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
Those who can't do teach. This is why I challenge my teachers until the day I pass.
Ever heard of Fermat? Or is mathematics not a science? Context, man, context. In this context he is using "outsider" to mean "one ignorant of, and uneducated in, the field in which the breakthrough occurs". Fermat was something of a recluse, but he was still a mathematician well versed in the science of the day. He corresponded with Blaise Pascal, so he couldn't really be called an "outsider" in the field.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
So if I was to build a bigger version of this and stick in in my car, in the space where my engine would normally go, and get it up to speed by peddling frantically for about ten minutes, you're saying there isn't enough torque to actually make the car go forwards?
Seems to me that the device is running on it's own, speeding up in fact, so maybe turn the acceleration into torque. Use a gearing system to keep it running at the same speed while producing usable energy.
Or is that where things break down. If it isn't able to accelerate it stops working?
The setup is basically:
1) They failed to use RF shielding (thin aluminum sheet metal) to prevent RF input power. (Unlikely, to be the problem.)
2) They failed to use magnetic shielding (thick silicon iron/steel) to shield from the 60 Hz electro-magnetic field from the power lines in the building. So even if the line power is cut to the weak motor, it may not be an isolated system.
3) Coils windings are not designed to minimize the inter-winding capacitance. (Minimizing capacitance would use a "ball of string winding".)
4) Coils are attached to a resistance load.
5) Rotor with permanent magnets is spun up.
6) Current is induced in the coils storing energy in the coils.
7) The resistance load is shorted which also shorts the coils.
8) Shorted coils lose energy due to I^2*R copper loss possibly oscillating due to interwinding capacitance.
9) First possible explanation. Rotor speeds up due to the energy stored in the coils being transferred back to the rotor.
10) Second possible explanation. Due to lack of shielding the 60 Hz electro-magnetic field from the building power lines may be coupling into the rotor. Shorting the coils causes them to resist changes in the magnetic flux going through the coil core. A significant amount of the 60Hz flux may go between the coils thus driving the permanent magnet rotor with a 60Hz magnetic field.
But I am only guessing with the limited information available.
It's a Well Known Fact that there are far more research grants for proving already-known scientific laws than there are for efforts to find out things we don't know. Plus, look at what the Nobel prizes are always for: the 2007 prize in Chemistry was for a demonstration that NaCL dissolves in H20, the one in Medicine was for a proof that the ankle bone is connected to the leg bone, and the prize in Economics was for a treatise on how buying low and selling high makes one wealthier. The key to fame and fortune in research science clearly lies in defending the status quo.
I realize this quotation was said with sarcasm, but you're missing an important point: Nobel Prizes in the sciences are given many years after the initial discovery because the discovery has to be demonstrated to have deeply affected our understanding of the particular field. In other words, the Prizes are given for discoveries that create dogma. So, by the time a Prize gets conveyed, many of the ideas have achieved, "well, duh," status. And is a good thing, not a bad one, that we recognize them.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
...usually a young scientist...
Arthur C. Clarke said something to that effect, so it seems that older scientists are either thinking within the box, or not doing science (spending their time looking for funding, maybe).
ACC's words were roughly, if a distinguished but elderly scientist tells you that something is impossible, he's probably wrong, if an unknown but young scientist tells you that something is possible, he's probably right.
"This post contains intentionally no commas, but I'm sure there should be some."
The awkwardly placed adverb would sit more comfortable in front of the verb, lest additional commas be required: "This post intentionally contains no commas, ..." rather than, "This post contains, intentionally, no commas, ..."
I'm no physicist, but Dan's explanation here seems to explain it all, and make sense -- the motor draws more current, so it's not really being more efficient at all -- in fact, it's probably *less* efficient if anything.
Anyone care to comment?
I'm always amused when I see books or manuals with a notice saying "This page intentionally left blank."
It doesn't seem to occur to the authors that it's not blank!
Did you even read the post?
"Also there is no universal theory of gravity both Newton and Einstien struggled with it for years but have never said they understood it, so your implication that laws of conservation were made to explain gravity is a low blow to get your point across."
When did I even come close to saying that?
I said specifically:
"The "Laws" don't address the one way principle that people like to use against these kinds of ideas to dismiss them." Stating that something is not addressed is a far cry from implying that they were made to explain it. Kinda opposite if you ask me.
Next time read the post before hitting the submit button.
Oh, and when you addressed the higher matter to energy conversions did you forget about the battery example I made so you wouldn't have to explain that one either? What's the by product of using a battery? A rechargable battery that you can then restore to working order with power input. So if this is possible with a chemical process why not with magnetic? How hard do you have to twist your brain to avoid the similarities between energy storage and retrieval with a battery and a magnet. Just because some say that magnets cannot store and dispense energy doesn't work with the fact that they can produce work by themselves. And just because we cannot currently extract that energy in a slow/continuous enough process to draw out the fundamental nature of its stored energy doesn't mean that it cannot be done and still be within the "laws" that we all believe in now.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Looks like the inventor may have stumbled upon the so-called "Newman Machine."
A more detailed analysis, including a DIY kit (several of which are shown built on YouTube), was made in '98 for your review. Testing on one variation, schematics provided, resulted in an apparent measurement of overunity.
Both inventions may actually have been anticipated by US Patent 2928959 granted to L. M. Christian in 1956. See http://www.google.com/patents?id=JDlIAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#PRA1-PA3,M1
Newman's videos are linked from his website.That's right!
All I was doing was replying to someone else who was spouting obvious nonsense. I have not been "drawing" the conversation anywhere at all; I have simply been replying to others such as yourself, who have decided to put in their own two cents. If anyone is "drawing" the conversation anywhere, it is those people (including yourself). If it were not for them, I would have dropped the subject about 4 indents ago.
I can't believe that folks have forgotten about saturable-core reactors. BEFORE we used triacs and SCRs to vary AC (AC = Alternating Current, so "AC current" is redundant) going to things like stage lights, there were (and still are) saturable-core reactors.
In the case of stage lights, these "reactors" are large, iron-core coils (inductors, which possess 'inductive reactance,' hence the name "reactor") with a second winding connected to a variable DC supply (need I explain "DC"?) which, when cranked up high enough (i.e., more DC out), 'saturate' the coil's magnetic capacity by "locking up" the magnetic domains of the iron core (you know. steel is kinda like iron). Since the current is "one-way," the magnetic field is one-way, also. With no domains left to "react" to a varying (alternating) current, the impedance of the coil drops radically, allowing current to flow through it and to the lights. (On the way to saturation, the reactor loses impedance in proportion to the DC being fed in. That's how stage lights used to be dimmed and brightened.)
Now, TFA says the guy held a magnet near the STEEL shaft of a motor (that was running already) and it went faster.
Well, DUH!!
Yes, it's true - Shatner is afflicted with a debilitating speech defect, it's technical name is Pausenia. Victims of Pausenia uncontrollably pepper their speech with pauses that don't belong there. Unfortunately for Shatner, there is no known cure.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
That is my thinking. To hell with trying to prove it to anyone. I don't understand why these crackpots keep trying to do so anyway. Just build the fucking thing and start using it. If it really works it will generate it's own press. You just don't tell anyone how it works until you get a patent for it, if you can get one. If you can't just sit back and enjoy the free power.
Personally I think this guy is a whack job and anyone who says they have perpetual motion machine. But hell, there have been other whack jobs who have been right. Best to keep a semi open mind about these thing.s
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
If one concedes that in an isolated, perfect system, a perpetual motion machine could be constructed (with magnets, or gravity, or whatever method you choose), the point is that you cannot withdraw any energy from the system, or it will fail. "Free" energy has to come from somewhere. It cannot be created or destroyed. Somehow I bet no one reads this.
You are Alex Chiu, and I claim my five dollars!
He should also consider collaborating with Joseph Newman. I believe that the two of them can produce something that will be truly radical -- a machine that produces free energy over unity.
Even Galileo said, "a telescope is useless if your eyes are closed".
So for you blind hecklers, I would suggest that you go to youtube.com and search on the term "Joseph Newman Energy Machine". Thanks to the internet, this kind of innovation can no longer be easily dismissed and supressed by the 21st century inquisition flunkies.
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Talk:Directory:Perepiteia_Generator_by_Potential_Difference_Inc#Improper_use_of_an_AC_induction_motor
On Feb. 11, 2008, DMBoss added:
There is one thing I neglected to mention in the above commentary. That is this Heins fellow may also get this apparent anomalous rotor speed up entirely due to the improper use of an AC induction motor.
His related demonstration of putting a strong NIB magnet near the steel shaft of this induction motor, with said motor's front "C" plate removed and having it's speed increase is telling.
That is removing the C plate leaves the AC motor's fields rather open to external influence. And it's steel shaft is magnetically connected to the AC rotor, comprising steel laminations and several heavy turns of short circuited windings.
The AC induction motor [in this case a split phase motor] works by making the stator fields produce a rotating field, which induces currents and then fields in the rotor windings/core. These rotor fields try to couple to the 60Hz stator field rotation, and tries to synchronize with them. An AC motor never completely syncs though, and some rotor "slip" occurs. The more the slip the more current the stator coils draw, and this tries to lessen the slip this it automatically "throttles" the current to meet the drag torque causing the increased slip.
Anyway these things should never use an AC motor as they are inherently unreliable and non linear regards their power signature vs the output torque. But this chap is going wildly out of the normal operating envelope for an AC induction motor on top of that.
That is a 2 pole AC motor tries to run at 3600 rpm, and a 4 pole at 1800 rpm. And he is running at 50-200 rpm. So he has massive slip between rotor field and stator field. (you can allow a split phase motor to run at low speed by simply plugging it into a Variac and turning down the voltage after the rotor's turning, or give it a shove by hand as he does)
Now the force/torque on the rotor is proportional to the B^2 in the air gap. Yes it's alternating, but it is still proportional to the square of the flux density. Adding an external magnetic field from permanent magnets could very well provide a DC offset in this magnetic field - as a path is formed from the motor case to return to the magnet, and from the magnet's other pole to the shaft, through rotor, across air gap to stators, and into the motor case. (C plate is removed so you can make a complete flux path out to the magnet)
This small change in flux levels would make no difference if force was proportional to flux density. But it is proportional to flux density squared. So it is plausible that this small offset, applied to the motor in this very unusual running mode of extreme amounts of slip - has caused an imbalance in the amount of rotor torque.
In a sense this addition of external flux has made the coupling coefficient of the rotor to stator higher due to the DC offset and squared condition. No absolute power gain has occurred, but you have gotten more of the power applied to make rotor boost torque.
His own numbers belie this - his AC motor if the two stacked power meters are to be trusted, is drawing some 250 watts to run at this low speed. While the shaft friction of such a sized device is reasonably estimated to be below 20 watts, probably below 5 watts of shaft power to meet friction etc. So his coupling is below 10%. Adding the magnetic path from external magnets to the AC motor system, could cause say a 15 or 20% coupling to occur. Making the shaft speed up, but this is NOT a gain in energy!
My initial comments are correct - you can engineer a system which produces a shaft speed up when you have massive core loss and you short the generator coils - as this negates much of this core loss - so if the coil heating upon shorting is low, then the rotor can spe
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
Comma abuse... isn't nearly... as bad... as ellipsis... abuse....welcome datacomp
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Black holes probably DO decay over time; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
"This page accidentally left blank. This sentence, however, was intentional."
In the case of stage lights, these "reactors" are large, iron-core coils (inductors, which possess 'inductive reactance,' hence the name "reactor") with a second winding connected to a variable DC supply (need I explain "DC"?) which, when cranked up high enough (i.e., more DC out), 'saturates' the coil's magnetic capacity by "locking up" the magnetic domains of the iron core (you know, steel is kinda like iron). Since the current is "one-way," the magnetic field is one-way, also. With no domains left to "react" to a varying (alternating) current, the impedance of the coil drops radically, allowing current to flow through it and to the lights. (On the way to saturation, the reactor loses impedance in proportion to the DC being fed in. That's how stage lights used to be dimmed and brightened.)
Now, TFA says the guy held a magnet near the STEEL shaft of a motor (that was running already) and it went faster. Lock up some of the available magnetic domains and inductance is diminished. When inductance is lower, counter-EMF is lower; when counter-EMF is lower, self-braking is lower,... and the motor speeds up,.. DUUUHHHHHH!!
Is everyone here too young to remember Joni Mitchell?
I might have some of the words wrong but:From "Big Yellow Taxi", by Joni Mitchell
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,4047.135.html Here you can see more details on the experiment.
BOTTOM line we are all seeking same goal. As close to 100% effieciency from a moving object. If a pen is thrown it will simply come to rest. However, our idiotic notion of a combustion engine burning fuel, a alternator that stops usefullness after a battery is charged is just plane stupid. It was propaganda when it overtook electric motors in the 1900s and it is propaganda you pay for to this day. You can either keep making others rich and yourself controlled or work as a unified team and find a solution. If a pen is thrown it stops. Simple however, if you were to capture all energy the pen transfers till stopped to a useable use of additional propulsion the pen would simply go farther. If you bring in natural resources for additional energy for propulsion it will go even farther. When i say outside i refer to solar, magnetic, friction, molecular and other non CARBON BURNING. That being said LOOK OUT YOUR FRONT DOOR AT THE DUM MACHINE YOU DRIVE! If you drive it every day and come on here looking for answers? Well looking is good what have you built lately? As you drive notice the surfaces, the wheels in motion, the air flow, the sun, the magnetic plausiblity. You have spent the engine to gain speed what can you do from there? TO say energy in = energy out is to look at a 100% closed system. If you live in a vacuum bubble that is great. If i have a armeture turning it is even getting drag from air not just internal friction. Is it not fair to look at external addional feeds of energy that can be put in the circuit at cost of natural energy? As far as law of physics and other such garbage it was written and spoken by humans and it is not perfect. The language we converse in can not even communicate the exact realities of what we live in. currently i am at 500 mile range :) no gas. I will achieve cross country driving with in year or so with out need to stop.
gl
Dave
admin@carlotmanager.com
'Many people seem to believe that, but it's not how science works. (Or even art, for that matter, Picasso took extensive training in classical art before he started his revolution in painting, for example...)'
First, science and art are not special exceptions. The same principles that apply to every other topic known to man apply to them. Ninety-nine times in a hundred a new discovery will come from someone well versed in current theory. Someone well versed in current theory is certainly more likely to come up with an Einstein-like vast and complex theory of relativity.
A fundamental discovery that runs contrary to what every expert knows to be fact is more likely to be discovered by someone who is ignorant in some respects, for example a student. Complete ignorance is unlikely, someone who is completely ignorant is unlikely to know they have discovered something in the first place. Students will challenge things BECAUSE they are ignorant, in almost every case the proof they are ignorant of is accurate and students beat the same dead horse again and again, if not there would be breakthroughs every day. But every so often a student (or a young scientist who is new to the field and therefore ignorant in respects) challenges a principle that is thought basic successfully.
Most scientists I know wouldn't argue with what I've just said, but they fail to realize that a classroom isn't the only place to learn. There is nothing taught in a classroom these days that can't be learned from self experimentation and books. A student can be found in a garage just as easily as classroom. A self-taught student will have holes in his education but he will also have covered some material more thoroughly than regimented formal education. The problem with scientists is that they believe they are open minded and that they question and challenge everything and so are not subject to the problems of the stuffy unenlightened arts. At the same time most of those scientists will say things like "Scientific theories are really more like fact." nonsense, the distinction is made for a reason yet scientists often think of that distinction as mere lip service to satisfy the anal.
Just take a section out of that little tube that goes from the brakes and disappears into the engine compartment. Just an inch or two, nobody will notice it's missing.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear