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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.
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."
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.
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?
That's doesn't make it a "perpetual motion" machine, but it could still be enormously useful.
Off the top of my head, I could imagine that the earth's magnetic field might be used as an energy source. Some unknown affect might convert subatomic particles to energy in special situations.
The bottom line is that this device should be easy to test. Either it puts out more energy than is (apparently) put into it, or not. If it does, then begin looking for non-apparent sources of energy.
Yeah... then we will have Micro$oft Motors. I can see it now wile driving down the highway -- we will have to spontaneously close all the windows and restart the car to keep driving!
Cuz we all know that REAL scientists dismiss out of hand anything they don't already understand and expect?
Cuz we all know that REAL scientists immediately understand something the moment they lay eyes on in?
Cuz you assume that the "prof." got scammed and is foolish for even entertaining the idea someone might have come up with something new?
Seriously, I don't get it, what part makes him a jackass?
Hey, don't knock accidental discoveries. Both the slinky and silly putty were created by accident IIRC.
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.
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.
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!
You need the input amps and volts of the motor, as well as the amps and volts of each coil to really see what is happening in terms of energy.
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.
If the prof is a real scientist, his reaction is completely appropriate. Did he say anything about buying the idea that it's perpetual motion?
Sorry, but a jackass is someone who would dismiss an observed phenomenon out-of-hand without attempting to discover what's really going on. Remind you of anybody you saw in the mirror this morning?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Wrong and wrong again. Your device causes the "measured power" to be reduced only, by adding a large capacitance to the largely inductive load of your appliance. This is effectively lying to the power meter, as your device actually has leakage power associated with it in itself. So you are literally STEALING POWER, and as such, those devices are no longer sold because they were made illegal.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
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.
But it, helps, make the, text more, readable, for, people like, Christopher, Walken.
In the video linked to from TFA he shows the ammeter on the motor displaying decreasing values while the tachometer shows increasing values.
- 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?!
No! I'm! Over! Here! Singing! Lucy! In! The! Skies! With! Diamonds!
A quick google search confirms that the Green Plug is no longer made because electrical motors produced in the last five years or so have been redesigned and now incorporate the same features as the plugs. Not because they didn't work on old motors.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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
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."
Nice post. A++++++. Mod up for Interesting OR Insightful! Would read again.
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.
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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?
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.
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".
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
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
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.
I just had this scary vision of a slashdot where moderators were prohibited from ... err ... "leaving negative feedback".
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
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.
Can you write without using the letter "e"?
Real scientists insist on reproducible, peer reviewed results. Not a hand waving demo where they can't even make their own measurements. Maybe this guy found a way to make a generator more efficient, but from the video it looks to me that he isn't measuring all of the inputs and outputs of the system.
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!
"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.
No, I can not.
---
Rob Flynn
Pidgin
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.
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:
RTFA, he doesn't claim that it is PPM. The journalist and submitter seems to think so, but if you watch the videos he makes about it you'll see that he's trying to explain why it accelerates. He is also desperately trying to get some scientists involved who would understand a little better what is going on. There is always some applied voltage to the machine, what he's done is increase the efficiency of it immensely. Give the guy a break, he's found a very interesting phenomenon and is doing the right thing by seeking outside expert verification of it. Let us know when you've done something nearly as interesting as this guy with even half the potential usefulness. Now, since all he has done so far is increase the efficiency immensely wouldn't you want something like that on say an electric car? Maybe a car that can go thousands of miles on single charge? Maybe a house blower for your furnace that uses less power than a LED lightbulb? There are many applications of this, think of it as it currently stands as Alpha software. He has a working model that he has shown to the world and is seeking help to perfect it and make if Beta then a final product. He could use a little help since he's actually showing something that works vs. the other clowns out there that claim they have something but won't actually show it to anyone.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
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.
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.
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!
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/
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.
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.
That was the problem with my PMM, I'm still cashing the gov t checks every month... But Im not really sposed to talk about it.
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".
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.
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?
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.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
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.