Working Model of Perpetual Motion

[MRC_Hans]

How long must a pmm run for before being decared "Perpetual"?
A year?
A century?
A thousand years? (I can't spel "millennium").

Is there a magic number?

Long enough to ensure that it outputs more energy than it uses. That could be a week, or a millisecond. "Perpetual" in this context does not imply "forever".

Does ball bearing failure constitute "stopping"?

No. As mentioned, it needs not run forever, it needs to output more energy than it receives.

Hans

 

[AgingYoung]

A planet moves perpetually without a power source. However, if you tried to get any work out of it, it would lose energy and spiral in towards its sun.

On the other hand the tractive force of the orbiting moon does work causing spring and neap tides with no perceptible effect on its orbit.

Gene

 

[AgingYoung]

...I was always under the belief that any machine that did not have a power source...no fuel, electricity, etc.,... even which includes existing and non-depleteable and always constant sun, water and wind sources...would qualify as perpetual motion so long as it could remain in motion. Hence, perpetual 'motion'. Not a perpetual 'work' machine. ....

Iamme,

This isn't the case. A water wheel or solar panel/heating system isn't a closed system. Here is an interesting example of how a water wheel would be a closed system and considered perpetual motion:

A perpetual motion machine of the first kind would operate by violating the first law of thermodynamics in the form of the mechanical energy balance. A traditional example is an overshot waterwheel, in which water falling over the wheel rotates a shaft. The potential energy given up by the falling water is converted into rotational kinetic energy at the shaft. Some of that kinetic energy is used to do useful work, such as to grind grain or to drive a generator of electricity. The rest of that kinetic energy would be used to pump the water back to the top of the wheel, so it could again help turn the shaft. Thus, the water forms a closed circuit.

Some attempt has been made at making an analogy between a water wheel and a gravity powered wheel. A water wheel is driven by the weight of the water turning it as gravity attracts that water. With some addition of energy that water could be returned to the level it first was and cause the wheel to continue to turn. In the case of a gravity wheel you can't restore the gravity to a former place.

I don't see a gravity wheel as being in a closed system. My contention is that gravity isn't a conservative force. I think there can be significant hysteresis between the downward and upward rotational force of a mass to the extent that the kinetic energy produced by its fall is sufficient to restore it to the level it originated from.

Gene

 

[bjb]

On the other hand the tractive force of the orbiting moon does work causing spring and neap tides with no perceptible effect on its orbit.

Gene

Wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Orbit_and_relationship_to_Earth

The Earth and Moon have many physical effects upon one another, including the tides. Most of the tidal effects seen on the Earth are caused by the Moon's gravitational pull, with a smaller contribution from the Sun. Tidal effects result in an increase of the mean Earth-Moon distance, over long periods of time, of about 4 meters per century. As a result of the conservation of angular momentum, the increasing semimajor axis of the Moon is accompanied by a gradual slowing of the Earth's rotation.

The distance from the earth to the moon is measured by the Apollo lunar laser ranging experiment.

 

[I less than three logic]

Wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Orbit_and_relationship_to_Earth

The Earth and Moon have many physical effects upon one another, including the tides. Most of the tidal effects seen on the Earth are caused by the Moon's gravitational pull, with a smaller contribution from the Sun. Tidal effects result in an increase of the mean Earth-Moon distance, over long periods of time, of about 4 meters per century. As a result of the conservation of angular momentum, the increasing semimajor axis of the Moon is accompanied by a gradual slowing of the Earth's rotation.

The distance from the earth to the moon is measured by the Apollo lunar laser ranging experiment.

It has done so quite a bit if I recall correctly. I’ll have to look for a source, but, off the top of my head, I want to say that a day is something like 4 times longer than when the moon was first formed. Going from about 6 hours to about 24 over the last few billion years.

 

[AgingYoung]

bjb,

Tidal effects result in an increase of the mean Earth-Moon distance, over long periods of time, of about 4 meters per century.

imo this isn't perceptible. Now that you mention it, that does sound familiar. If you project that loss back in time (4 meters/century) in a billion years it would have traveled 40,000 km. Tsunamis must have been real common back then.

It's also the opposite effect of ...

A planet moves perpetually without a power source. However, if you tried to get any work out of it, it would lose energy and spiral in towards its sun.

Gene

 

[Big Al]

imo this isn't perceptible. Now that you mention it, that does sound familiar. If you project that loss back in time (4 meters/century) in a billion years it would have traveled 40,000 km. Tsunamis must have been real common back then.

That assumes the rate of tidal pushing is constant. As tides are a gravitational effect, they are proportional to 1/d^2

 

[Iamme]

The claims of PM are also perpetual regardless of the friction the dreamers encounter.

Yes. You will note that inventors like Joe Newman do not have to don space suits in order to have their machines remain in constant motion.

 

[Iamme]

I think there can be significant hysteresis between the downward and upward rotational force of a mass to the extent that the kinetic energy produced by its fall is sufficient to restore it to the level it originated from.

Well...the U.S. Patent office does not believe that is possible, and you can't get a patent based on this belief. That is what Joe Newman has fought for over 25 years. He really believed his "energy machine" not only keeps on ticking but can overcharge it's batteries with the left over current. He even mystified Ray O Vac battery Corporatioon engineers, supposedly....and over 30 reknowned (?) Ph.D.'s. Yet, no patent granted.

 

[bjb]

This Joe Newman?

http://www.phact.org/e/skeptic/newman.htm

 

[Iamme]

This Joe Newman?

http://www.phact.org/e/skeptic/newman.htm

Yep.

I was on their press release list and have reams of literature, still in my closet, at home. I saw him excitedly tell Johnny Carson all about his machine, years ago, on the Tonight Show and followed him for years after that as sort of a hero image (like I have with Jack Nicklaus clippings I have saved over the years) in the fact that maybe there was indeed hope in defeating the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and coming up with perpetual motion. I started designing my own. One was a folly. I called it "Dave's Folly" after I finally figured out why it wouldn't work. It was an air/water wheel device. Then I 'invented' a rolling car that had bigger wheels in the back that would cause the car to defy gravity and continuosly think it was going downhill. LOL Then I modified this sillyness, on paper, to create a vehicle whose weight would cause the car to move forward (as you know, it only requires a small percentage of a vehicles own weight, to be able to make the vehicle roll. That is why strongmen can pull locomotives in their teeth!) by lifting leverage bars under the track that would raise the track just behind the rear wheels to propel the vehicle around a hard track. Stuff like that. I was in my late 20's at that time...with an inflated ego, I guess. (That is what Joe Newman probably has) Then I worked on laying out magnets on a disc and thought I actually came up with a way of causing the momentum of the steel that followed the magnets, to fly past the last magnet. I excitedly showed my cousin who scoffed at me and thought I was a kook and said nobody like me would ever come up with a perpetual motion device when even physicists hadn't stubbled upon one yet...and he accused me of "uncle Joe-ing it", (Uncle Joe from Petticoat Junction 70's? sitcom tv, who always was trying to come up with something). (I did come up with an absorbancy weights and measures contraption though that I am convinced will work like the drinking bird can work.)

 

[Iamme]

This Joe Newman?

http://www.phact.org/e/skeptic/newman.htm

I then started reading your link (thank you!) and grinned from ear to ear reading some of the sillyness...like him wanting to beat the hell out of people...flunking out...not ever taking a science course...etc.

 

[marting]

When I first went to work as an engineer fresh out of college the chief engineer told me of an earlier job of his. Seems the company's owner had been enamoured of a net free excess energy motor and had hired him to help the "inventor" construct the device. Needless to say, the job didn't last long.

I'm not absolutely certain but I believe Edwin Gray was the guy:

http://www.rexresearch.com/evgray/1gray.htm

 

[AgingYoung]

Well...the U.S. Patent office does not believe that is possible, and you can't get a patent based on this belief. That is what Joe Newman has fought for over 25 years.

I'm sure you can't get a patent on a belief. A working model of a gravity wheel would be different.

I looked at the different Newman links. At first I was very impressed with the ford demonstration. Then I thought that you really can't tell much about a battery just by looking at the voltage. You need to test them under load. Also Newman took quite a pause before he took the voltage reading. And finally you can get a meter to give you any sort of reading you'd like with a shunt around the probes or a 'spurious' voltage inline with them. I think his claims are dubious.

I'm going to review a description of his theory by Tom Napier.

The early models of the Newman Energy Machine consist of a rotating magnet placed near or inside an air-cored solenoid. A commutator attached to the magnet shaft switches the current from the battery through the windings of the solenoid.
The principle of the motor is that the interaction of the field generated by the current flowing through the coil and the field of the permanent magnet causes the rotating part to make almost a half turn. By reversing the direction of the current flow at the end of the first half turn one can cause the rotor to make a second half turn. The current is then switched back to its original direction for the third half turn, and so on.

It doesn't make much sense right now.

Gene

 

[Nathyn]

The original post of this thread can be summarized as:

"Tell me how you're going to test perpetual motion machines. And, if I figure out how, I'll show you how I can cheat the test."

 

[Big Al]

Newman claims to get round it because the machine, somehow, is eating itself up and helping itself to some mc^2 energy in the process.

So we have a man who takes pains to point out that he's just folks, an uneducated pioneer who gets by on good old American know-how, invoking the ghost of Einstein to try to stave off his critics. Seems even Joe has given up claiming that his motor is innately over unity by its very construction.

Handy that the mass converts to energy in tiny little amounts too small to see, and only as useful electrical energy. I'd hate to think the whole motor might disappear in one go - the results would be disastrous!

Joe Newman has the only TC device in existence! This week, anyway. Next week, he'll probably say it works off the clean, natural energy of good old Mother Earth.

 

[AgingYoung]

Nathyn,

It would help if you could quote whatever helped you come to that conclusion. Actually, the way I see it, any and every thing that would need to happen to exclude any fraud would take place.

An accurate summary would be...

What would be the criteria of a pmm

There was some discussion as to work and useful work.

I don't think what I'm attempting is a pmm as much as it would be a proof that gravity isn't a conservative force; but I'm repeating myself.

Gene

 

[Nathyn]

The definition of a perpetual motion machine is relatively simple: A machine which powers itself; any machine which runs on "free energy."

I don't understand why you need a precise definition of a perpetual motion machine or what the point of this discussion is.

 

[AgingYoung]

Nathyn,

A water wheel runs on the 'free' energy of the water coming from upstream but it isn't perpetual motion.

Gene

 

[bjb]

No.

The energy of the water is paid for by the sun, which evaporates water and create clouds, which fall as snow or rain and create the river that drives the wheel. By that other definition of 'free', I can pick up some sticks off the ground, burn them, and create 'free energy'. The water wheel,solar power, wind power, etc. are an examples of clean energy or renewable energy, but it is not free as far as our closed system is concerned.