Perpetual motion machine examination rules, please.

[Skiltch]

Okay, I apologize in advance if I sound especially ignorant:
I've been doing research on 'fast breeder reactors.' These are nuclear reactors that were proposed to solve the nuclear waste problem, and suspended in America by Hazel O'Leary, Clinton's energy sec.
The two premises of breeder reactors that I've seen are that they :
1. Theoretically can produce no waste, although in practice they produce very short-lived radioactive waste.
2. Put out more energy than is in the uranium used to fuel them.

Don't these things violate the laws of thermodynamics? Wouldn't this count as a perpetual motion machine?

 

[Almo]

BUT we have measured the holy living crap out of that 2 in the r^2. It is so close to 2 that we can't distinguish it from 2, with loads of decimal places on the measurment.

If it's 2, it's a conservative force. I find it highly likely that it is in fact 2, since the other major forces we know about fall off as 1/r^2 as well. We're just more certain (not saying much) about the other forces since we know they are propagated by a particle.

 

[ben m]

Okay, I apologize in advance if I sound especially ignorant:
I've been doing research on 'fast breeder reactors.' These are nuclear reactors that were proposed to solve the nuclear waste problem, and suspended in America by Hazel O'Leary, Clinton's energy sec.
The two premises of breeder reactors that I've seen are that they :
1. Theoretically can produce no waste, although in practice they produce very short-lived radioactive waste.
2. Put out more energy than is in the uranium used to fuel them.

Don't these things violate the laws of thermodynamics? Wouldn't this count as a perpetual motion machine?

To fuel a slow reactor, you have to take a big pile of natural uranium, separate out the rare easily-fissioned U235 from the abundant hard-to-fission U238, and arrange for most of the U235 to undergo the reaction U+n --> (light stuff), which turns some rest mass into thermal energy, which ultimately drives a turbine.

A fast breeder reactor takes the U238 and allows it to fission via an intermediate step: U238+n->239Np->239Pu, and then you arrange for 239Pu+n --> (light stuff), which turns some rest mass into thermal energy.

In both cases, all of the thermal energy comes out of the heavy-element mass-energy reservoir stored up in the uranium mine. The breeder reactor does some manipulations which make it practical to extract energy from U238, while ordinary reactors can only extract the energy from U235. The breeder reactor does "manufacture" fuel, in the perpetual-motion sense---it just just catalyzes the conversion of an impractical fuel into a practical one. If you stop feeding freshly-mined U238 to a breeder reactor, it will stop running.

 

[ben m]

If it's 2, it's a conservative force. I find it highly likely that it is in fact 2, since the other major forces we know about fall off as 1/r^2 as well. We're just more certain (not saying much) about the other forces since we know they are propagated by a particle.

Hang on, Dodge69 earlier was correct---it doesn't matter whether the force law is F=1/r^2 or F=1/r^2.0001 or F=1/r^3.1415. Any force which a) is always "central" and b) depends only on the object's separation (not the path taken, or the velocity, or the time) is conservative. Formally speaking, for static forces, if you can write the force as a vector field, and the vector field has zero "curl", then the force is conservative. (The converse is also true: any vector field with a nonzero "curl" is a non-conservative force.) The exact proof of this is about three lines of multivariable calculus.

Perhaps what you are thinking of is the following: many central-force laws (i.e., force laws other than F=1/r^2) do not allow stable circular orbits. For example, if the force law is 1/r^4, then an initially-circular orbit will, under an infinitesimally small disturbance, "fall away" from circularity and become chaotic. There is, again, a very precise mathematical way to tell whether a given force law allows stable circular orbits, but it's a bit more complicated.

 

[Skiltch]

Thanks, Ben M.

 

[Simon Bridge]

If you don't understand how it works--the science and math behind it--you are using folklore and mythology. Making pretty pictures.

This is a sensible observation: when I suggested simulation, I was thinking more of numerical than an actual cad system. That way you know the intended physics has gone into it.

It is not possible to know if what Gene sees is in he real world or an artifact of the program he's using.

However, I don't understand all this discussion of screen resolutions ... the way I'm reading this, gene is primarly interested in the numercal results rather than the "pretty graphic" produced by the program.

Considering that the wheel in question involves materials that are admittedly non-physical... I don't think we should be surprised at non-physical results.

I've had a play with this kind of thing, in my case: simulating an antigravity feild over half a wheel. This is tricky at best - if anyone want' to have a go. (I was using octave in double precision to generate the numbers.)

The usual problem with undermining "robus" laws is that so many things are contingent on them. Remove the conservative nature of gravity, and a lot of ther things break too. One needs to demonstrate not only the correctness of ones own idea, but also why all these very bright people have got it wrong all these decades.

Usually, one attempts to say that we could not expect them to notice (a la Relativity ... the effects are very small at the kinds of scales we are used to, though it is useful for very fast phenomina.)

Which leads to the other part - one usually has some special need to introduce a new theory ... the motivation here is to play around. Well, that is fun, and can be enlightening, but there is no reason, a priory, to suppose that the gravity wheel will work.

It is a bit like speculating on the inverse square law for gravitation. OK, it is pretty good, but what if it weren't exactly inverse-square?

One could try suggesting that it is inverse cube... or linear..., however, this is not very useful since it is clear that gravitation must be at least aproximately inverse square. If it was linear or inverse-cubic, surely someone would have noticed?

Another approach is suggest that the discrepancy from inverse-square is so small that exactly inverse square is a good approximation for everything to date. The next task, then, is to attempt to discover exactly how big a discrepancy from inverse-square will still be undetectable by all experiments to date. (A bit like how we still use Newton's Laws for mechanics, even though they are wrong...)

Gene has suggested that gravity my not be conservative. His wheel suffers from requiring gravity to be very non-conservative in order to work. Again, surely someone would have noticed?

Perhaps he is better advised to direct his energies to finding out how non-conservative gravity can be without being noticed. (Though I submit that any closed system whose total entropy "oscillates" is non-physical ... or not actually closed.)

 

[Simon Bridge]

BTW (&OT):

I hope you're OK. Was it a Dell?

Thanks, and I am OK and it wasn't a Dell.
It was a custom machine I used for (ahem) physics simulations for my thesis some decade ago ... damaged in a series of rolling blackouts around here. I press the power stud, I get a loud bang and a jet of flame and a small amount of smoke. I hope my data is OK ... otherwise it was due an upgrade soon anyway

Have I expounded on the "blue smoke" theory of integrated circuits?

The little box with all the legs is filled with blue smoke. The blue smoke makes the IC "work". Let the blue smoke out and the IC stops going. QED.

Likewise, the propella on the front of a single-prop aircraft is to keep the pilot cool: see how he sweats when it stops going!

 

[TjW]

Okay, I apologize in advance if I sound especially ignorant:
I've been doing research on 'fast breeder reactors.' These are nuclear reactors that were proposed to solve the nuclear waste problem, and suspended in America by Hazel O'Leary, Clinton's energy sec.
The two premises of breeder reactors that I've seen are that they :
1. Theoretically can produce no waste, although in practice they produce very short-lived radioactive waste.
2. Put out more energy than is in the uranium used to fuel them.

Don't these things violate the laws of thermodynamics? Wouldn't this count as a perpetual motion machine?

No. Remember that thing Einstein became famous for? E=MC2?
That basically says that mass is equivalent to energy.
Fission converts a small amount of mass into energy.
More energy comes out because more mass is converted.

 

[nathan]

However, I don't understand all this discussion of screen resolutions ... the way I'm reading this, gene is primarly interested in the numercal results rather than the "pretty graphic" produced by the program.

Gene posted a screen shot of a beam that had supposedly been rotated from horizontal by some 10^-19 radians. However, that screen shot showed a beam that was not horizontal, and back-of-envelope calculation showed it to be about 1/250 rad. It seemed to me that this was an indication that Gene was operating his CAD package outside of its design criteria. Gene, however, chose to question whether my rough calculation was valid and suggested numerous other causes of the jaggies seen on the rendering. I kept trying to convince him that those other reasons did not invalidate my analysis.

If the rendering is out by some 10^16 orders of magnitude, what's there to suggest that the physics simulation does not suffer similar range problems?

IIRC this 10^-19 rad rotation was the point at which 'something interesting' started happening in his simulation. Smaller:there was nothing happening. Bigger:Newtonian physics happened. These are the classic signs of a precision limitiation and the strange rendering seemed to be a visible artifact of this. Gene chooses to ignore it.

 

[AgingYoung]

• IIRC this 10^-19 rad rotation was the point at which 'something interesting' started happening in his simulation.

you don't recall correctly.

• Gene chooses to ignore it.

The pixel distortion was more severe than the distortion of the proportion of the body yet both were distortions that I think

1. point to an output problem
2. I'm certain that without knowing how wm2d is structured (program flow) there's no way to know if this output distortion also effects values in the simulation or the model (ie position)
3. considering the magnification of the model (to the atomic level) I suspect the the magnification feature is the one being driven beyond it's limits to calculate.
4. I've since looked at the magnification feature and this distortion begins to appear around the angstrom level of magnification; above that there is no distortion.

I would question any calculation when a calculation made in another manner produced different results. Its good to have an answer but it's much better to have the correct answer. I don't think enough is known about how wm2d works to come to any valid conclusion.

I'm certain I recall correctly that simulations of perpetual motion are produced by 'lack of friction' most always and I've never heard of a simulation of perpetual motion based on

1. lack of precision (significant digits used)
2. or a model's inability to track the decimal point or to float (use of scientific notation)
3. or because of error induced based in the idea that Newtonian physics are an approximation.

After careful consideration I can see this isn't a point. Initially I thought it might be.

My initial question was to what extent did wm2d simulate reality in both the making of the model and the simulation of motion of the model. I decided to see how a beam would change if it were rotated a very slight degree. I've since found out that at less magnification yet more distance that a very slight rotation is perceptible. Although I can magnify a beam and put pivot points an angstrom apart I still am not sure if those positions register with wm2d. I am still curious but realize it isn't a factor in how I'm using wm2d.

Gene

 

[AgingYoung]

I can imagine all of the components of this build although I'm not sure about some of the details (dimensions and position) of the entire assembly. I sometimes use wm2d to see how those components act and interact.

I've started this build. As far as I can tell the ideas I'm attempting to model are a step beyond anything I've ever considered but more importantly they're at the limits of my imagination. If they won't work I have no more ideas about a gravity wheel to try. Also this isn't a single idea; there are several.

Gene

 

[Simon Bridge]

Gene posted a screen shot of a beam that had supposedly been rotated from horizontal by some 10^-19 radians. However, that screen shot showed a beam that was not horizontal, and back-of-envelope calculation showed it to be about 1/250 rad. It seemed to me that this was an indication that Gene was operating his CAD package outside of its design criteria. Gene, however, chose to question whether my rough calculation was valid and suggested numerous other causes of the jaggies seen on the rendering. I kept trying to convince him that those other reasons did not invalidate my analysis.

Thanks for that. It was getting tangled and I couldn't link to the image.

One would hope that a cad system would present images which bear some reasonable relation to the numbers put into it. However, all the sloping image tells us is that the graphic is incorrect. Unfortunatley it is not so uncommon for "cheapo" cad systems to use a "representation" and the software may only be trying to indicate that a rotation has occurred at all ... and less than some minimum threshold. Without access to the software, there is no way to tell.

However, it is possible to check the numbers presented by the system to see if they make sence. (Though this would have to be a special definition of "make sence" since perpetual motion would normally be treated as a sign of nonsence.)

I concur, however, that gene has not said anything to invalidate the original arguments ... need to go with the numbers gene - try a math script system like matlab or octave to produce your simulations, then you can post the script and everyone can see what has happened. This will make sure that anything you find is not a bug in the software.

 

[Simon Bridge]

I'm certain I recall correctly that simulations of perpetual motion are produced by 'lack of friction' most always and I've never heard of a simulation of perpetual motion based on

1. lack of precision (significant digits used)
2. or a model's inability to track the decimal point or to float (use of scientific notation)
3. or because of error induced based in the idea that Newtonian physics are an approximation.

Gene: I've use all of these ... I actually built a machine which I claimed was an over-unity generator, then exploited 1 to prove it, and 2 to demonstrate it in a model. I understand that Einsten
, Bohr and (later) Feynman have devised a perpetual motion machines (usually expressed as some sort of violation) which only work in a newtonian universe. This takes care of 3.

In fact there are several esoteric ones exploiting the assumption that experimental uncertainty is always gaussian.

 

[AgingYoung]

Simon,

Well, you're an exception. That's probably not news to you. Speaking of 'not news' I've been goofing off quite a bit lately and am building pretty slowly. I'd like to apologize to everyone for my slowness; everyone that is who's clock I'm punching. I'll know who that is when the check comes.

Gene

 

[ben m]

I can imagine all of the components of this build although I'm not sure about some of the details (dimensions and position) of the entire assembly. I sometimes use wm2d to see how those components act and interact.

AgingYoung, I'm glad to hear that you've imagined your way through your components list. Have you imagined your way through the forces? Specifically, do you imagine that one of your components does not obey F = ma? Do you imagine that one of your components has an action without an equal and opposite reaction?

 

[AgingYoung]

ben m,

do you imagine that one of your components does not obey F = ma?

Actually there is no way I could see how to make an out of balanced wheel if I didn't see how to have a force or reaction that wasn't greater than the force or action that caused it. So, yes I do. I've looked at the idea with excel and have modeled it in part with wm2d. I've done everything but get off my butt and try to make it.

I should probably stop goofing off and get to work. I've further reduced the mechanical parts of what I first thought would make the model but I haven't taken the first step to build it.

I do goof off too much.

Gene

 

[AgingYoung]

I've begun to cut the parts to model the compound that I've designed. I'm measuring them with a kd tools 2963. So far it looks like there are going to be a little over 200 components in this compound. I'm naturally trying to make them as accurate as possible so that it has the fluidity that I think it needs.

I've decided to name this compound ThaNg²³² because of it's reverberating pugnaciousness. Also it's very energetic. I'm done for the night.

Gene

 

[AgingYoung]

94 parts assembled. Maybe one quarter or a third of the way finished.

Gene

 

[illuminatedwax]

ben m,

Actually there is no way I could see how to make an out of balanced wheel if I didn't see how to have a force or reaction that wasn't greater than the force or action that caused it. So, yes I do. I've looked at the idea with excel and have modeled it in part with wm2d. I've done everything but get off my butt and try to make it.

Gene

I apologize if bumping this thread is keeping it unnecessarily alive, but I wanted some clarification on some things (this thread seems to have gotten a bit muddled).

This is a question for you, Gene:
You seem to have planned the device out very carefully, and modeled it to a good deal of precision. You seem to know that it will work, exactly how it works, and, more importantly, why it works. So please, pick one:
A) Your device obeys all of Newton's laws of physics
B) Your devices does not obey all of Newton's laws of physics
C) You don't know if your device will obey all of Newton's laws of physics
D) None of the above

If your answer is C) or D), please explain how you know your device will work.

 

[AgingYoung]

I apologize if bumping this thread is keeping it unnecessarily alive, but I wanted some clarification on some things (this thread seems to have gotten a bit muddled).

This is a question for you, Gene:
You seem to have planned the device out very carefully, and modeled it to a good deal of precision.

1. You seem to know that it will work
2. exactly how it works
3. ...more importantly, why it works.

So please, pick one:
A) Your device obeys all of Newton's laws of physics
B) Your devices does not obey all of Newton's laws of physics
C) You don't know if your device will obey all of Newton's laws of physics
D) None of the above

If your answer is C) or D), please explain how you know your device will work.

There are two sorts of people. Those that want things and those that know how to design a process to produce things. A lot of times the sort that want things don't understand the time component of the creative process nor do they understand the sequence of the process.

There seems to me to be a paradox in Newton's third law that although there are equal reactions produced from actions that at times those reactions are synergistic. I will know a little more once I finish the model. At the present all I see is that gravity might not be a conservative force. I'm not at the point in the process of that proof to offer much of an explanation.

All I'm willing to say right now is that if you have a good handle on the idea that gravity is a conservative force you might take another look at it. I think a lot of people are content with the conclusions of obviously brilliant minds yet don't have a very good understanding of how the conclusions were arrived at. I'm not talking to that sort of person.

At this point in the process I'm not sure I can model that synergistic reaction. Although I don't know it will work right now I'm persuaded enough to attempt a model. I've never said, 'I know this will work.' To paraphrase Plato knowledge has more force than belief. Right now I believe I'm looking at something significant. If my belief is true I'll move from belief to knowledge and the wheel will speak for itself. Then the brilliant people can explain it and all the folk that are satisfied with the explanation of brilliant people will have an explanation. If you want an explanation before I have a proof you'll have to review what you think you know and try to 'see' what I see. For now that's as good as it gets.

Gene