Joseph Newman's free energy generator

My first job out of school was some basic design engineering, which was mostly sizing pipes and pumps for chemical plant designs, so I took that approach.

Best I could find that clearly showed head, flow, and power requirements was this, which will actually do >6 gpm (8600 gallons per day) at 5 psi (11.5 feet), drawing 5 A at 24V (120 W)

http://www.clarksol.com/html/UP6_Pump.cfm

What I like best about this claim is the 4" inlet and outlet, for 3.5 gallons/minute. If you go looking at pumps in that flow range, you'll notice they're generally under one inch. I'm thinking they're trying to keep friction down as much as possible.
 
dasmiller said:
I'm getting more like 0.8 m3/hr.
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Oops. Right you are! I multiplied GPM by 4.4029 rather than divide.

So we're looking at about 6.5 watts? If it takes 120 watts to power, the efficiency of the pump is <5.5%. Hardly anything to brag about!
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Me too. A little under 0.8m³/hr. But that would be an average figure and I don't suppose the solar panels are a lot of use overnight. :)
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Good point. That boosts his overall efficiency to nearly 3%. Like, wow.

Monza said:
So we're looking at about 6.5 watts? If it takes 120 watts to power, the efficiency of the pump is <5.5%. Hardly anything to brag about!
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Actually, the claim is ambiguous on that point. It's not clear whether he means four solar panels, each of which can produce a maximum of just under 120W, or four solar panels which together can produce a maximum of just under 120W. If it's the latter, then accounting for the diurnal cycle by assuming an average output of 25% of maximum we get an efficiency of more like 22%, which indicates that his pump is towards the lower end of the normal range for efficiency. So it seems that there is nothing extraordinary whatsoever about this claim, and it certainly doesn't imply any additional source of energy.

Dave
 
Whenever I see the phrase "450-lb flywheel", I think of one of the other tricks these charlatans use. They plug a powerful electric motor into a wall socket and use that motor to get the flywheel up to speed. They then disconnect the motor and attach their "miraculous box" to the flywheel and plug a 9-volt battery into the miraculous box. That's when they unveil the mechanism to the rubes investors. They then claim that 9-volt battery is both making the flywheel turn and is powering a generator within the miraculous box which is recharging the battery.

Most people would see through something like that pretty quickly, so folks like Newman give four-hour lectures about God, conspiracies against Christians, the history of power generation, the usefulness of revealed Truth, etc. After all that most people are too tired to think straight so the whole shebang looks pretty impressive.

Is Newman the one with all the outstanding warrants from different states?
 
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Dave Rogers said:
I'm left wondering how he manages to make it so inefficient.
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I think the flywheel is probably the heart of it. The flywheel will be used to do all the actual pumping, and he's simply plugged the solar panels into it to keep it running, rather than going with the old "charge it up then unplug it" scam that Ladewing mentions. Presumably there's a simply regulator on the flywheel/motor assembly to keep the rate of pumping at the specified level, and any additional power generated by the solar cells is simply lost since there's no use for it.
 
This reminds me of the amazing electric car that went 40 miles per hour for an entire hour while running on "just 9 volts, the same voltage that comes out of a small radio battery". Of course, the car's batteries could produce an awful lot more current and had an awful lot more power capacity than your radio battery.

But, I don't know, 5,000 seems like such a big number and 120 seems like such a small number.
 
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Either Mr MacGregor is new to the internet and is thus unaware of how daft it is to put your email address openly on a forum, or someone really doesn't like Mr MacGregor and is hoping to get him a lot of spam email and possibly some rants from forum dwellers. I wonder which it is? Over to you, macgregors2.
 
sts60 said:
Robert Park's Voodoo Science has a rather withering critique of Mr. Newman's "free energy" machine, with some useful insights into why and how people buy into such beliefs.
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In that same, and excellent book, Park talks about Newman trying to get Congress to force the US Patent Office to give him a patent on his "free energy machine". Only one senator seemed to be wearing his skeptics hat and that was John Glenn, who said something to the effect of, "It's really simple. You measure the energy needed to run Mr. Newman's machine and you measure how much energy it produces. If it produces more than it consumes he can have his patent."
 
Hamradioguy said:
In that same, and excellent book, Park talks about Newman trying to get Congress to force the US Patent Office to give him a patent on his "free energy machine". Only one senator seemed to be wearing his skeptics hat and that was John Glenn, who said something to the effect of, "It's really simple. You measure the energy needed to run Mr. Newman's machine and you measure how much energy it produces. If it produces more than it consumes he can have his patent."
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So did they do it? Did a measurement take place?
 
MortFurd said:
It would have been Newman's job to provide proof. Since he didn't get a patent, I don't expect he tried to prove it works.
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Newman (or his followers) presents his take on things here:

http://www.josephnewman.com/History_-_Patent_Battle.html

Not very useful. But Wikipedia has this:

"When the rejection was later appealed, the United States district court requested that Newman's machine be tested by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS). The consistency checks done by NBS allowed it to conclude that the input power, equal to the product of the average voltage and current from the batteries, was greater than the output, equal to the product of the average voltage and current leaving the Newman machine. Newman denied this and said it was due to the tests being conducted with the motor grounded, which dumped the excess energy."

My question is: was there a test after this done by the NBS or others in which the motor wasn't grounded?
 
Sati1984 said:
My question is: was there a test after this done by the NBS or others in which the motor wasn't grounded?
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My supplementary question would be: supposing there was another test; when it failed again, what excuse would he come up with next?
 
UncaYimmy said:
Third, you build enough solar panels to build and power a time machine. First you use the time machine to travel back with the solar panels to right before you started building the machine to build the solar panels to power the time machine.
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You've forgotten your physics. You wouldn't get far with just the power from the solar panels. You'd get a fraction of a nanosecond back in time before the time machine ran out of power, and then where would you be? Tangled up with yourself, two time machines and two sets of solar panels, that's where. Then a fraction of a nanosecond later, the whole lot would be sent a fraction of a nanosecond back in time to join it's earlier duplicates, the process would repeat, and within a nanosecond the universe would be full to bursting of exponentially multiplying copies of you, the time machine, and the solar panels. Where's all the energy coming from to do that, Einstein, eh? Answer me that, if you can :p
 
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