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Perpetual motion machine examination rules, please.

I read a bit about Bessler's wheel. http://www.free-energy.co.uk/html/why_gravitywheels_work.HTM

It's pretty funny, really. The author (not Bessler) basically doesn't believe that dE = F dX, and wants to define it as dE = F dt or something.
Do we truly believe that gravity is not expending energy just because it is not moving an object? We have been taught that gravity does no work on stationary objects because they are not displaced. Yet if gravity was not doing ‘work’, nothing on this planet would be held down and we should all fly off into space!
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Worth a laugh.
 
I read a collection of similar nonsense back in 1980 or so but it was with regards to magnetic wheels, not gravity wheels. Nearly 30 years later, we still don't have either.

One thing I've noticed is the PM guys expend a huge amount of effort talking about why their ideas work, but put forth very little effort actually trying to build anything. These days, it is very simple to make drawings on AutoCAD and send them off to a machine shop for fabrication. Instead, these people would rather write a book about the subject. Perhaps they realize this is the only way to make money from the subject?
 
Have a look at this page, which was added to the JREF site two days ago. It quotes a response e-mail to a perpetual motion claim:

"Yes, a demonstration of a perpetual motion machine would qualify as a Challenge claim. However, the machine must be built and in working order before the application can be accepted."
 
The Bessler machines look like clocks... he produced many, and they tended to different sorts of operation.

The first one:
"It was only about three feet in diameter and 4 inches thick. It would start spontaneously and slowly build up to a rotation rate of about 70 to 80 revolutions per minute and would, thereafter, maintain this rate of motion unless forcibly stopped. When a cord was attached to its axle, it could raise a weight of several pounds as it slowed to a stop. "
This sounds to me like a flywheel which is spun up with a spring. Notice that as the weight was lifted, the wheel slowed to a stop? This device stored energy.

Unfortunately the reports do not say if the wheel started again when the weight was released.

If the machine just produced a limited power output, then, indeed, some loads would make it stop. However, lesser loads would just have it turn more slowly. When something like this slows to a stop under load, it has a limited energy.

Earlier big wheels were started by a falling weight - as the weight fell, the wheel accelerated. After the weight had fallen, it maintained a "constant" rate of revolution. Again, sounds like a heavy flywheel - maybe a millstone.

The later big wheels started with a push - and a falling weight. but spectators were impressed by how little effort was involved and how light the weight. OTOH: some reported sounds like falling weights inside. Perhaps he'd just moved the weight?

Clockwork has been suggested, and there is a lot about the later designs to suggest a clock - including an external pendulum. I initially thought the wheel may have a large spiral spring inside it, and a ratchet mechanism. This would produce all the symptoms, including the noise. (The sounds of falling weights and rattling mechanism would be needed to hide the tick.) But the only actual drawings I have seen show the whole wheel+axle doing the turning. This would make rigging a spring quite difficult, unless there was a hidden fixed axis to act against.

Of course, conservation of angular momentum could be exploited if there were a hidden mass one end of the spring were attached to (other end attached to the wheel rim). Unwinding the spring would cause the hidden mass to rotate one way and the wheel to rotate the other way. If the hidden mass were sufficiently off center, it would merely rock or swing - especially with the springs energy release governed by the ratchet mechanism.

Such a device could be wound up in secret, the mechanism locked, and the whole thing transported for show. It would run for a long time as smoothly as the engineering allows.

It is difficult to imagine a wheel like this running continuously for several weeks... doable though. However, the only long-timeframe test on record has more hallmarks of showmanship than actual investigation.

The wheel was run in a locked and sealed room, in a princes palace, with guards posted outside the door. I'd have posted the guards inside the door and put the wheel in a cage. Anyone could enter the room to watch at any time. The above looks like stage magic - the kind where the chief of police examines the locks. Stagey, even for the time: where science in the court was often seen as a kind of "entertainment".

How do we know that nobody could sneak in and wind the wheel back up again? Could the guards have been bribed and the seals replaced for each visit? Or, easier, maybe the Prince was in an it? I imagine His Highness would have loved the joke this plays on all those "most learned" doctors in his court - I've been known to do the same to certain professors.

While it is very difficult to actually tell what was going on with these wheels, having produced a plausible method, it is now up to proponents to domonstrate that this could not have been the case.

In the end, though, there is just not enough information to duplicate Bessler's design. All we can demonstrate here is that what we do know of the wheels, is not good enough to conclude that pmm is possible. Similarly, demonstrating that pmm is possible, even using an identical-appearing wheel, does not mean that Bessler was not a fake. (Though it adds to the doubt.)

Following Bessler is not a good idea.
 
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"Yes, a demonstration of a perpetual motion machine would qualify as a Challenge claim. However, the machine must be built and in working order before the application can be accepted."
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Proponents may claim that they have a partially working machine - perhaps they cannot afford sufficiently low-friction bearings, so excess friction slows the thing down?

A successful demonstration could allow for a weight-driven machine (wind a chord about the axle, attach weight to chord, drop weight) to pass if the resulting energy of the machine were shown to be greater than the energy lost by the weight in falling.

Thus the machine need not be in completely working order to be scientifically verifiable.
 
You make it sound like you are already preparing your speech for why it didn't work.
 
ben m said:
The author (not Bessler) basically doesn't believe that dE = F dX, and wants to define it as dE = F dt or something.
You'll like this then:
http://www.besslerwheel.com/index.shtml
" If by "Perpetual Motion Machine" we mean a device that taps into a natural motion and does work indefinitely without human or animal assistance, the problem is not only solvable but has already been solved in a variety of ways:"
... indeed. But that is not what we mean.
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Simon Bridge said:
Proponents may claim that they have a partially working machine - perhaps they cannot afford sufficiently low-friction bearings, so excess friction slows the thing down?
...
Thus the machine need not be in completely working order to be scientifically verifiable.
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Yeah: Friction, the never-tiring enemy.

For the JREF Challenge the machine needs to be in completely working order. Build it, present it, have it examined, demonstrate it successfully: You win.
 
Simon Bridge said:
Proponents may claim that they have a partially working machine
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Proponents may, and do, claim pretty much anything. Until one of them actually produces a working machine, their claims are utterly irrelevant.

In fact, perpetual motion is just about the worst thing you could make this claim for. Partially working telepathy? No problem, maybe it's only short range or not very accurate, but it's still telepathy. Partially working dowsing? Great, you can still find something, if not all the time. Partially working healing? So you can only heal a broken leg halfway? Better than nothing. Partially working perpetual motion? That's what is normally just called "motion". It's really not anything special.
 
Cuddles said:
Proponents may, and do, claim pretty much anything. Until one of them actually produces a working machine, their claims are utterly irrelevant.
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n the first instance, all anyone can have is a "claim".

Belief in the claim may be based on testing performed in a lab with visiting world authorities, peer review papers and Nobel prizes all round. Or it may be based on a personal experience with God and a litre of Mezcal. It's still just a "claim" as far as the next test goes.

Partially working healing? So you can only heal a broken leg halfway? Better than nothing. Partially working perpetual motion? That's what is normally just called "motion". It's really not anything special.
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Yes, all right mister smarty-pants - I am being imprecise. You may shoot me now.

I had hoped that my example (need frictionless bearings to make the machine go, cannot afford bearings, therefore do not have working machine) made my meaning clear.

If I say "I missed the target" and "I almost hit the target"... these statements mean the same thing. However, there is a different sense about them. The second indicates that the shot was in some way a "near" miss.

Similarly, partial pmm, while not actually pmm, is also not a brick (also not pmm).

If the mechanical too-much-friction wheel in the example was verified to have an efficiency of 1.001, once mechanical friction is accounted for, then I have demonstrated pmm in principle. What remains is to engineer sufficiently low friction bearings (ceramic, magnetic, whatever).

Of course, I'd have to demonstrate that it is indeed mechanical friction which is slowing the thing down - like: providing full access to the machine, providing detailed math, that kind of thing - and not some fundamental limitation in nature which boils down to a known conservation law.

I don't know, perhaps you'd call that a working pmm? But it is not motion in perpetuity.

My thesis here is that: there exist circumstances in which it is possible to demonstrate the validity of a devices operation without having a working device handy.

In the particular case of pmm:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/test-pm.htm
 
Simon Bridge said:
My thesis here is that: there exist circumstances in which it is possible to demonstrate the validity of a devices operation without having a working device handy.
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In which case you're in the wrong forum. If you want to apply for the challenge, you need a working machine. If all you want to do is theorise about what might be possible, take it to a different section.
 
I think Simon Bridge is touching on a challenge issue.

It is theoretically possible that a paranormal effect exists that JREF would not be willing to test for because the effect is so small such as to make for a very difficult test.

I think this issue comes up with some Ganzfield experiments where a massive amount of very carefully controlled experiments would be required to tease out a significant result.

Similarly, here, Simon is hypothesizing an effect that would require very sophisticated procedures to measure. In fairness to Simon, this is just not the kind of thing that JREF is likely to accept for a challenge.

If one claims that one has developed a perpetual motion machine, it is a very easy claim to validate or invalidate. If one claims that one has developed a machine that can't run indefinitely but does produce an infinitesimal amount of excess energy one is making a claim which is arguably paranormal but because of the difficulties and sophistication required in the testing it would probably fall out of the range of claims that JREF is willing to accept.

Of course, it is wildly unlikely that it is possible to build a machine like Simon hypothesizes and if he were to make a claim that he had developed such a machine, the only way that he would have any credibility would be to have invested in very sophisticated testing devices to provide evidence for his claim.
 
I have a question if you don't mind. First of all, I am skeptical about the $1M. Sounds to good to be true. And as we all know, those things usually are not.
Second question is, if the working wheel is found or considered to be Bessler's, then would that be a disqualification ?
 
sailorboy said:
I have a question if you don't mind. First of all, I am skeptical about the $1M. Sounds to good to be true. And as we all know, those things usually are not.
Second question is, if the working wheel is found or considered to be Bessler's, then would that be a disqualification ?
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It's not "too good to be true". What you must realize is despite hundreds of tries, no-one has ever passed the preliminary stage, and the JREF is quite sure no one ever will.

Second, if you can produce a perpetual motion machine, then you win the million dollars, period. If the machine works according to Bessler's ideas, he can sue you, but since Bessler himself never got a machine to work, his chances of winning would be slim.
 
sailorboy said:
I have a question if you don't mind. First of all, I am skeptical about the $1M. Sounds to good to be true. And as we all know, those things usually are not.
Second question is, if the working wheel is found or considered to be Bessler's, then would that be a disqualification ?
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The million dollars would be trivial. If a person could even propose a reasonable design for such a machine they would be wealthy beyond all imagination.

Search back through the threads. Everybody "almost" has it working, and a few more weeks of effort and it should be ready. Aging Young, where are you? You told us you'd come back and admit it if you failed to get your device working. It's been years.

Nobody has even proposed anything close to a reasonable mechanism by which such a device might work. Every explanation proposed has been a variation on previously dispoven ideas. And they all violate known laws of physics. The same laws of physics that we use to design skyscrapers, spacecraft, bridges etc..
 
Yes.

D.J. Grothe said:
In the coming months, The JREF Million Dollar Challenge, one of our chief means of raising awareness about the kinds of untested claims made by paranormalists and supernaturalists in our society, and also of raising consciousness about the duty of the public to be critical and skeptical of such claims, will not only continue but be revitalized.
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sailorboy said:
I have a question if you don't mind. First of all, I am skeptical about the $1M. Sounds to good to be true. And as we all know, those things usually are not.
Second question is, if the working wheel is found or considered to be Bessler's, then would that be a disqualification ?
Click to expand...

I prefer to bang these out in order. What was your first question?
 
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