Free energy?

Dilb said:
Really? I must be thinking of something else then (or it was an oversimplification). The theory given in my high school chemistry was
1) All atoms want 8 valence electrons, except for the smallest.
2) Non metals share electrons so they increase the number around them to 8
3) Metals give up electrons so their inner 8 surround them.

Given that, P is 3 electrons short, we'd predict it would form PF3. Noble gases have 8, so there's no reason for them to form a bond.
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You have confused the octet rule with VSEPR (and in fact the octet rule does not work for all the first row elements, cf boron). The octet rule would predict that phosphorus forms a PF3 complex, and indeed it does. However, phosphorus is a second row element and can expand its octet to give PF5. There are 5 bonding pairs around the central atom, VSEPR predicts a trigonal bipyramidal geometry, precisely in accord with the solution and solid state structures of PF5. On the other hand VSEPR predicts a pyramidal structure for PF3 again in accord with actuality.

Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion theory is a very simple idea; it takes bonding and non-bonding electron pairs about a central atom, and arranges them into Platonic solids to predict geometry. Despite it simplicity, there are very few coumpounds of the main group whose structures cannot be predicted by VSEPR. Thanks to pgwenthold for the heads up about XeF3, that would be a potent oxidant, I think I'll pass on handling that.
 
Thanz said:
They are not giving it away. They are trying to get scientific affirmation of their invention, which they still own, as they realize it is worthless without it.
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Ah. My mistake. I thought the normal thing for these people was to give it away until the Evil Energy Companies send guys to beat them up or they realize what economic havoc it will cause.

I don't see why they don't put the product on the market and start selling it. Let science catch up with them. If it works, it doesn't need approval from science.
 
anor277 said:
Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion theory is a very simple idea; it takes bonding and non-bonding electron pairs about a central atom, and arranges them into Platonic solids to predict geometry. Despite it simplicity, there are very few coumpounds of the main group whose structures cannot be predicted by VSEPR. Thanks to pgwenthold for the heads up about XeF3, that would be a potent oxidant, I think I'll pass on handling that.
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Should note it is XeF3-
The structure of the XeF3- is mostly unknown, except to the people who have been studying it (that's me!).
 
Fronzel said:
I don't see why they don't put the product on the market and start selling it. Let science catch up with them. If it works, it doesn't need approval from science.
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Because they realize without the scientific stamp of approval, it will be in the same realm as magnets that improve wine, pagan power amulets and other such crap that gets sold ion late night infomercials. If what they have truly is as revolutionary as they claim, they will be rolling in it once science validates it. I think the more cautious approach makes sense.
 
Thanz said:
Because they realize without the scientific stamp of approval, it will be in the same realm as magnets that improve wine, pagan power amulets and other such crap that gets sold ion late night infomercials. If what they have truly is as revolutionary as they claim, they will be rolling in it once science validates it. I think the more cautious approach makes sense.
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Bull.

If what they have works as claimed, they will be off infomercials within a year. They'll leave wine magnets and power amulets behind so fast it won't make a difference, scinetific validity or not.

Heck, forget the science alltogether. Get corporate backing. SHow them the product. If you want a serious scientist to look at it, you don't have to say anything about it being a "perpetual motion machine" in the first place. "I've got a new, very efficient power production system. Can you examine it for me?"

All of this is ad hoc reasoning. Show me ANY consumer product where the "scientific stamp of approval", beyond the mere lip service of commercials, was a major factor in sales.
 
pjh said:
News just in .... How far over untity is it?

285%

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1858134,00.html
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So they have 3000 applicants to be on their jury, and will select the "best" 12. I wonder who'll be doing the selecting. Have they published a list of the candidates? I'd think the scientific community at large would be better at selecting the 12 best, otherwise we'll all just assume they picked the 12 they thought most likely to go along with their claims.

I'm also not surprised about how secretive they're being about their "partners", and keeping the diagram of the system away from the reporter. I think their claim to be concerned about intellectual property rights is a bit bogus, because if they've already filed seven patent applications, then they've established their rights as of the filing date, and publication now shouldn't affect the granting of a patent.

Also, if this company has been doing work on other things for as long as claimed, why don't they have other patents? On searching on the Steorn name as applicant, I've only found the one application I posted earlier, which turns out to be a part of the alleged apparatus, from what I've learned subsequently.
 
Can anyone with a physics/EE background look into what this guy is saying?

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Site:L...f_an_Overunity_Asymmetric_System_to_be_Tested

He basically says that there's been theoretical underpinnings for free energy from magnets for over a hundred years, but it was lost because Lorentz oversimplified the math to make it easier to solve, and since then all electrical generators use "symmetrical systems" based on these symmetrical equations, thereby dumping the free energy as fast as it's created :rolleyes:.

Unfortunately, I don't know about the history of Maxwell's equations, nor do I have the background to see why this is crap. The author is saying that such an unbalanced Maxwell solution is responsible for Steorn's discovery.

EDIT: The same site also claims that Skull and Bones, a fraternity at Yale, is responsible for controlling the world. http://peswiki.com/index.php/Site:LRP:The_Control_Paradigm
 
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Pakaran said:
Can anyone with a physics/EE background look into what this guy is saying?

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Site:L...f_an_Overunity_Asymmetric_System_to_be_Tested

He basically says that there's been theoretical underpinnings for free energy from magnets for over a hundred years, but it was lost because Lorentz oversimplified the math to make it easier to solve, and since then all electrical generators use "symmetrical systems" based on these symmetrical equations, thereby dumping the free energy as fast as it's created :rolleyes:.
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The majority of that page seems to be quoting from Thomas E. Bearden, who is one of the guys behind the MEG we mentioned earlier. If you look at the next post, you can see how to find a similar discussion Mr. Bearden had with an examiner at the USPTO that covers essentially the same subject matter, but in what looks like greater detail.

So all these devices would appear to be based on the same "principles", and so if one works, we'd expect most of them to work. That's how real science tends to go. Of course, have we seen anything out of the MEG since it was patented over 4 years ago? What's keeping them? I don't even expect to see a car running off the device, even a little light that runs continuously would be enough to convince the scientific world.
 
Pakaran said:
He basically says that there's been theoretical underpinnings for free energy from magnets for over a hundred years, but it was lost because Lorentz oversimplified the math to make it easier to solve, and since then all electrical generators use "symmetrical systems" based on these symmetrical equations, thereby dumping the free energy as fast as it's created :rolleyes:.
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In a word, "tosh!" The Lorentz transforms emerged as a particular case of a general class of mathematical coordinate transforms (the so-called affine transforms). The only constraint that was applied was that Maxwell's equations (a set of four differential equations describing electromagnetic interactions), when thus transformed, should retain the same form in different inertial frames of reference (i.e. coordinate systems).

To give a simplified analogy, Newton's Second Law says that a body's acceleration is proportional to the nett unbalanced external force applied to the body. A change of form would entail this law becoming that the acceleration is proportional to the square root or third power, etc., of the applied force. Without such a constraint on the form, no two observers in relative motion would be able to agree on a particular proposed law of nature, nor indeed that any such laws exist in the first place.

The articles linked to are typical of attempts to dazzle the unwary with ostensibly superior wisdom in such matters. They are as hollow as they are presumptuous.

ETA: The most telling feature that shows the articles to be frauds is the complete absence of any mathematical formulations; EM is profoundly mathematical.

'Luthon64
 
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Quoting from Tom Bearden:
“The Irish group Steorn (Sean McCarthy is CEO and head of it) appears to have stumbled into building an asymmetrical permanent magnet rotator – which is one of the huge class (asymmetrical systems) of Maxwellian systems that Lorentz arbitrarily discarded more than a century ago. The scientific community still symmetrizes the Heaviside equations and thus still arbitrarily discards all those asymmetrical Maxwellian systems today, in every university EE department and text.”
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It'd be funny if it wasn't presented as fact.

'Luthon64
 
Newest info on this nonsense here:

guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1858134,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1



It seems more outlandish the more information they release. Is anyone with a better level of physics than me able to pick apart the holes in this:

"There is a test rig with wheels and cogs and four magnets meticulously aligned so as to create the maximum tension between their fields and one other magnet fixed to a point opposite. A motor rotates the wheel bearing the magnets and a computer takes 28,000 measurements a second. The magnets, naturally, act upon one another. And when it is all over, the computer tells us that almost three times the amount of energy has come out of the system as went in. In fact, this piece of equipment is 285% efficient."
 
mattlodder said:
Newest info on this nonsense here:

guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1858134,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1



A motor rotates the wheel bearing the magnets and a computer takes 28,000 measurements a second. ..... And when it is all over, the computer tells us that almost three times the amount of energy has come out of the system as went in. In fact, this piece of equipment is 285% efficient."
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Ohhhh, 28,000 measurements a second! That's Scientific! And of course, no one in this world could program a computer to just spit out a bunch of numbers, could they?

Why do any of these guys think things like this should be convincing?

Oh, yeah....Because they do convince some people with more money than brains (MMTB).
 
Can this be anything other than a hoax?

Quotes from wikipedia:

McCarthy stated in an RTE radio interview that, "What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy, [...] The energy isn't being converted from any other source such as the energy within the magnet. It's literally created. Once the technology operates it provides a constant stream of clean energy." [9]

In a demonstration to The Guardian at Steorn's office, a computer display reported the device to have an efficiency of 285%. The article goes on to say that Steorn claims to have measured efficiencies up to 400%. The device has been reported to be an all-magnet motor, with no electromagnetic component. Steorn also claims that according to their research the device can be scaled to almost any size, powering anything from a flashlight to an airplane.

The first sentence is about travelling round and gaining energy. What other energy can be gained here apart from kinetic? So either the thing gains mass or velocity with each revolution.

A claim that it's gaining mass is clearly no use for powering flashlights, so I'll presume that it's *gaining* velocity with each revolution.

So if it is, why the hell do you need 12 scientists - you give it a gentle nudge to start it and 10 minutes later it's spinning at 1,000 rpm, and a week later it's still spinning. You know you've done it, you can prove you've done it, I really fail to see why you need 12 eminent physicists to tell you that.
 
Much talk. No show.

Show the goods, Steorn, or take a long walk off a short pier.
 
pjh said:
Quotes from wikipedia:

"What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy, [...] It's literally created. "
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So here I was, pondering the Universe, when it occurred to me: If we ran this thing backwards, would it literally destroy energy? Wouldn't it have to?

Does this mean that any "perpetual motion" machine is also, automatically, a "perpetual sinkhole", so that, if you started it in the wrong direction, you'd get different results? Would all the energy in the world eventually just disappear?

Or is my cat keeping me up too late at night?
 
Horatius said:
So here I was, pondering the Universe, when it occurred to me: If we ran this thing backwards, would it literally destroy energy? Wouldn't it have to?

Does this mean that any "perpetual motion" machine is also, automatically, a "perpetual sinkhole", so that, if you started it in the wrong direction, you'd get different results? Would all the energy in the world eventually just disappear?

Or is my cat keeping me up too late at night?
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Well, not necessarily. However, it's up in the air.

Many processes are "one way". For example, a steam engine turns water into steam. Trying to "run it backwards" doesn't really work.

However, a lot of the one-directional nature of processes is a result of thermodynamics. A free energy machine, by definition, violates thermodynamics. So, you may be on to something here.
 
the Drama on steorn forum is funny

too bad i can't post. This goes from kooks which say they have an Over Unity device in their basement and don't pay electricity since years ("then give us the plan so that we do the same !" answer "no you have to come up with the idea yourself...") to people not understanding the most basic physic on gravity, people purporting that magnetic field is non conservative (using as evidence Tom bearden) people supporting deenis lee and Magnetic Power inc, a lot of supporter, for it seems very few sceptic (if you read this pennies_evverywhere, have my moral support. And if you are a woman a few of my kiss :)). There is even an energyman8 which is worshiping steorn, and i mean that littterally. he threw all scepticism long ago away (might be because he was scammed into buying MGC stock and still believe in it). A lot of ad hominem too.

If you want a good laugh go there. Sometimes it is a bit sad too. Ah , the humanites :)
 
Kaarjuus said:
I think many scientists would readily look at a purported free energy device just for the entertainment value. I am not a scientist, but I would be delighted to see one working, even if I know it's just nonsense.
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Ya. To see if you are smart enough to figure out what appears to be working, really isn't working in the mannor as claimed.

I invented a perpetual water wheel (on paper) 25 years ago, and it took me two weeks in my spare time to figure out why it shouldn't work. i finally figured it out. I was disappointed my machine would not work. At the same time, I was proud of myself for figuring out why it can't work. But still disappointed it took me two weeks :)
 
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