Help with a perpetual motion machine

[Jrrarglblarg]

Let me guess- it stops running when the battery runs down?


Okay, so here's the set-up you'd need to see: Battery #1 attached to the PM machine, which is attached in turn to both a battery charger that is charging Battery #2, and a light bulb. No other attachments.

When Battery #1 dies, you swap #1 and #2, and run the device again. If it's really producing power, it should run indefinitely, while lighting the light bulb, without introducing any new batteries. If they can't, or won't, create this set-up, they're full of crap. Anything less is insufficient.

The problem with this plan is, it's a test that might take a long time to run, depending on how large the batteries are. You might be able to speed things up by measuring how much charge goes into the batteries each time you swap them - in reality, we'd expect it to be less every time. But doing an accurate measurement of that might be difficult, so consult a good electrical engineer or technician.

ETA:





What you should really be looking for is two-fold: hidden sources of extra energy beyond the battery they've told you about, which would be how you'd do this as a scam, and improper methods of measuring power in vs. power out, which would likely be what you'd find in someone who is honestly mistaken or deluded.

Even easier, one should be able to replace the battery with current generated by the output stage once the device is up to speed. I've seen reference to any number of devices like this one over the years and the inventors always keep the battery on.

Similarly, "water-fuel" guys discharge deepcycle lead acid batteries while cruising down the road -- never showing how much recharging the batteries take.

 

[Phi]

There's a company in Dublin, Ireland called Steorn who made a device very similar to the type you are describing and asked for people to test their claims.

Steorn Ltd is a small, private technology development company in Dublin, Ireland. It announced in August 2006 it had developed a technology which provides "free, clean, and constant energy" in violation of the law of conservation of energy,[3] a fundamental principle of physics.[4]

Steorn challenged the scientific community to investigate their claim[5] and, in December 2006, said that it had chosen a jury of scientists to do so.[6] In June 2009 the jury gave its unanimous verdict that Steorn had not demonstrated the production of energy.[7]

Steorn has also given two public demonstrations of their technology. In the first demonstration, in July 2007 at the Kinetica Museum in London, the device failed to work.[8] The second demonstration, which ran from December 2009 to February 2010 at the Waterways Visitor Centre in Dublin, involved a motor powered by a battery and provided no independent evidence that excess energy was being generated.[9]

See their entry on wikipedia under steorn

 

[aggle-rithm]

Preemptive explanation: Yes, science can sometimes be mistaken or inaccurate. That is the point, after all.

Yes, but toppling one of the basic axioms on which all of physics is based is EXTREMELY unlikely.

If the laws of thermodynamics are wrong, then EVERYTHING is wrong.

 

[Horatius]

Even easier, one should be able to replace the battery with current generated by the output stage once the device is up to speed. I've seen reference to any number of devices like this one over the years and the inventors always keep the battery on.

Similarly, "water-fuel" guys discharge deepcycle lead acid batteries while cruising down the road -- never showing how much recharging the batteries take.

Problem with that is, he's already got his woo end-run for this suggestion, in that the battery is needed "to stabilise the power" (see OP). If you suggest this, he'll probably make some claim like, "The output of the generator is too dirty to let the system work". Hence the use of the battery charger in my plan. We already know that battery chargers work, so swapping out the batteries should allow him to use his "stabilized" power without any input other than the PM device.

Of course, this lets him claim that all his free energy is being wasted in the inefficiencies of the charger, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it!

 

[Complexity]

Please don't waste your time on this nonsense.

 

[fuelair]

It's a magnet that scouts ahead for potential trouble.

As a scientifically trained medium (*) I see exponential trouble in someone's future if they invest in this device.




















































*Actually an XXL

 

[Horatius]

Please don't waste your time on this nonsense.

What should we waste our time on? Pretty much everything we discuss on this forum is "nonsense", so why discuss anything at all? The fact that people still keep coming up with the same notions for producing PM clearly shows that lots of people still don't understand the basics of thermodynamics. Why should we stop trying to educate them?

 

[DC]

There's a company in Dublin, Ireland called Steorn who made a device very similar to the type you are describing and asked for people to test their claims.



See their entry on wikipedia under steorn

lol souds like Perendev.
anouncing demonstrations then canceling it do to tech, difficulties.
they canceled it because their scam is actually not working.

 

[ben m]

Ask him to isolate the component that does the actual violating-Newton's-Laws part of the job (as opposed to the translating-that-violation-into-rotational-motion part.) Ask him to devise a physics experiment that demonstrates the violation all by itself.

 

[patchbunny]

It's a magnet that scouts ahead for potential trouble.

*********** scouts, how do they work?

 

[Complexity]

What should we waste our time on? Pretty much everything we discuss on this forum is "nonsense", so why discuss anything at all? The fact that people still keep coming up with the same notions for producing PM clearly shows that lots of people still don't understand the basics of thermodynamics. Why should we stop trying to educate them?

I was intending that comment for the writer of the OP.

By all means chime in, mock, educate, or babble as you wish. I was merely hoping that the OP writer wouldn't waste too much of his life on perpetual motion.

 

[quarky]

I think it's time to give a name to the cognitive illusion that seems to be behind this and similar PMM schemes. The illusion is the unstated and almost subliminal implied claim that a large, heavy, or fast-moving machine necessarily needs considerable power (say, more than could plausibly be supplied for a long duration by a small battery) to keep it moving. Call it, perhaps, the momentum-power fallacy.

There are toys with swinging pendulums or spinning tops, powered by a small battery in the base, that run for months on one battery. A typical battery powered clock or watch runs for two years on one battery. A drinking-bird toy keeps moving for days on the miniscule amount of power released by evaporation of a little water. But no one (okay, hardly anyone) seriously tries to pass those off as perpetual motion machines. They're small, and move relatively slowly, so they don't give the impression of requiring much power in the first place.

With good bearings, and very smooth surfaces (or spinning in vacuum), a spinning flywheel or cylinder doesn't need a whole lot more power than the desktop toy spinning tops or pendulums do. But unlike those other items, those can be made large and heavy, and spun really fast. That conveys the subtly false impression (probably rooted in people's experience with motor vehicles) that a lot of internally self-generated power, rather than mere momentum, is involved in keeping it moving.

When orbiting planets are mentioned as an example of naturally occurring perpetual motion machines, in support of the plausibility of a PMM, it's almost certain that the momentum-power fallacy is being invoked.

Respectfully,
Myriad

Good call.

There's another one I often encounter that needs a name:
A person will see something in motion, say a pin-wheel, and assume that the system has some excess to be tapped, when, often, there is just enough energy to spin the thing and any attempt to load it will cause a stall.

I had to try hard to save a good friend from trying to tap into the flow of the river where I live. He reasoned that the current at the surface could spin a drum-like obstacle; cabled to the sides of the river. The gradient is about 6"/mile. I explained 'head'. I hinted that, with the load on the spinning drum, the river would merely move around it, like any other obstacle.
He was ready to spend some serious money, before even wanting to learn more about hydro power.

Magnets are perhaps the most enticing unit of those in pursuit of a ppm.
They can feel the power available in their fingers. Just try holding the magnets together in repulsion; surely that can be tapped!

Well, no.
My personal favorite concerned the crushing force of the deep ocean, and a device that could bring it back to the surface. It made me giddy to ponder the details. It was a crushing blow to comprehend my fundamental error in thinking, but I'm glad I did.

 

[Sabretooth]

Serious question...

I'm not familiar with PMM...is that the same thing as trying to get, say, one electric motor to run another electric motor in series so that they, in theory, could run each other indefinitely?

 

[rjh01]

Serious question...

I'm not familiar with PMM...is that the same thing as trying to get, say, one electric motor to run another electric motor in series so that they, in theory, could run each other indefinitely?

A PPM machine is any machine that gives out more energy than what is put in. It generates energy from nothing. This is impossible.

 

[Dr. Keith]

I was intending that comment for the writer of the OP.

By all means chime in, mock, educate, or babble as you wish. I was merely hoping that the OP writer wouldn't waste too much of his life on perpetual motion.

I agree that it is huge waste of time to pursue a PMM, but I got the feeling the OP was just going out to have a gander and wanted to be well prepared. I support that.

 

[Horatius]

I agree that it is huge waste of time to pursue a PMM, but I got the feeling the OP was just going out to have a gander and wanted to be well prepared. I support that.

Exactly. We see these things all the time, all over the place. We had one here in Ottawa a few years ago. If we're going to make any difference in helping people not waste their time pursuing nonsense, we need to be prepared with some knowledge of the most common errors (and scams) that lead people into believing PM might possibly maybe be possible this time.

That's what this thread is for.

 

[akama1]

I have been reading Feynman's lectures on physics, and in the section on friction he talked about some of the pitfalls of trying to minimize it. He said that if you got two blocks of copper, made them perfectly smooth, somehow removed all contaminents from the surfaces so they were absolutely pure copper, then tried to slide one against the other...they would stick together, because the atoms would have no idea which block they were supposed to belong to.

which is part of the principle behind Gauge blocks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_block . Was amazed by these in high school, Our physics teacher had a set.

< edit to add > I remember one ppm that on investigation, was found to be generating power when not running at all, on investigation, multiple AA batteries were found hidden in the support structure

 

[DavidS]

Any quantitative electrical measurements on the running device (e.g. ammeter on the battery connections) to demonstrate the device doesn't work will just invite counterarguments of exactly the same sort as one would use against accepting such measurements as proof the device does work (e.g. measurement bandwidth, RMS power calculation errors, etc.).

Modifying device internals (e.g. replace the battery on the running device with a charger) invites awkward and tedious counterarguments that those modifications actually prevented the device from working.

Take a page from Randi's challenge and cut to the chase: The device is claimed to run perpetually, possibly with the additional claim that it simultaneously outputs useful work. Most of us are confident that would violate a law or two, but the task is to validate his claim rather than to confirm our established thermodynamic beliefs.

If useful work output is claimed, insist on a demonstration run to output useful work, in agreed unambiguously measurable form (e.g. volume of water lifted some height by a driven pump, or boiled away by electricity either directly connected or from a driven generator), comfortably larger than the total of startup energy input and the battery capacity. Those energy inputs should reasonably estimable within adequate lagniappe from simple observations of the device and its startup procedures.

For example, if startup and "stabilization" are provided by the same, typical 110Ah marine deep-cycle battery, you'll want to see it do something like 200%*13.2V*110Ah > 3 kWh of useful work... boil about 6 quarts of water away from a kettle with a small spout to minimize convective evaporation.

If no useful output work is claimed, it might be a little tougher to estimate an appropriate free-running test duration. On the other hand, such a device offers little more to mankind than the joy of watching it run... who cares?

 

[KingMerv00]

If the laws of thermodynamics are wrong, then EVERYTHING is wrong.

Incorrect. Michael Bay is and will always be the worst director of all time.

 

[Brian-M]

A rotor which operates continuously (takes 10 minutes to get up to 3000 rpm speed and then indefinitely runs at that speed). The rotor can be encased in a stator and generate electricity.

The setup is said to incorporate a small battery in the stator circuit "to stabilise the power". The rotor incorporates "advanced magnets"

Sounds a little like the Bedini machine to me...
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=166843
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115210

Any quantitative electrical measurements on the running device (e.g. ammeter on the battery connections) to demonstrate the device doesn't work will just invite counterarguments of exactly the same sort as one would use against accepting such measurements as proof the device does work (e.g. measurement bandwidth, RMS power calculation errors, etc.).

Of course, if it's outputting AC or pulsed DC and the current is not in phase with the voltage, simply multiplying voltage and current to calculate power output will get a reading that's far higher than what it really is. Even standard watt-meters often won't give accurate results.

This can produce the illusion that it's putting out far more power than it's consuming, unless you use very sophisticated meters. Or are savvy enough to use the output for the input once it's up to speed to see how long it lasts.