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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!
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?
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.
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."
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.
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:
A much more informative article is at http://www.electro-tech-online.com/chit-chat/36096-another-perpetual-motion-machine-mit-professor-stumped-one.html
Some quotes:
"they have demonstrated the Perepiteia to a number of labs and universities across North America, including the University of Virginia, Michigan State University, the University of Toronto and Queens University."
Prof. Habash of University of Ottawa looked at it: "It accelerates, but when it comes to an explanation, there is no backing theory for it. That's why we're consulting MIT. But at this time we can't support any claim."
Prof. Zahn of MIT: "It's an unusual phenomena I wouldn't have predicted in advance. But I saw it. It's real. Now I'm just trying to figure it out."
What I infer from this is that competent people have looked at it in some detail and were surprised, so it is possible that a new more efficient motor has been invented (it is also possible that some old forgotten motor is now more efficient because of new material, or any of a million possible outcomes.)
It is even possible that the professors forgot about magnetic brakes and other basic undergrad stuff; but I would not bet on that. It is also possible that this is a "con" but I also would not bet on that.
Some people seem very sure that this is non-sense. Would any of them like to give me 10-to-1 odds? That is, if turns out to be non-sense, I lose $1; it it turns out to be a more efficient motor, I win $10. (I will ignore the vanishingly small probability that it actually is revolutionary.) This means I am offering free money to people who are 100% sure. Even if you are only 95% sure, you still have positive expected value. On second thought, I have no desire to be jailed by some over-zealous police or DA when I am flying somewhere; so the bet will be for bragging rights only - no money.
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.
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.
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
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