Sciencemadness Discussion Board - perpetual motion

perpetual motion

kovalie - 6-6-2003 at 17:07

Hi, im only 15, so i really dont want a confusing explaination

, but i think about things all the time and have an amazing concept of almost everything in science, anywayz:

Imagine if you electrolysed some water and caught it in a container, so the container started to float up, but the height it gained, you turned into electricity, somehow, it doesnt realy matter how... then at a big height you sparked it with some of the electricity you made, and it turned back to water and sank again, and you collect electricty off this, and used this electricity to electrolyse more water, and so the cycle can start again.

Plz dont say you wont make enough energy to electrolyse more water, as you can just let the container float higher to gain as much energy as you want, with no loss

Everybody I have asked has just said, perpetual energy is impossible etc. I have thought of doin this underwater etc Please can some explain why this wont work

ziqquratu - 6-6-2003 at 17:27

Because there's no such thing as 100% efficiency in energy conversions and transfers and stuff in the real world. Perpetual motion is all well and good in theory, but in reality there are always losses due to things like friction, or as heat, light or sound. So what happens is basically that you pump in X amount of electricity. You use that to electrolyse the water, losing Y as heat mainly due to having to conduct that electricity through the water between the two electrodes. Then when floating your box, you lose more energy (friction the main culprit this time - friction against air or water that the box is rising through), and so on and so on. So that when you get back to do the next electrolysis, you have X-Z amount of energy (where Z is the total losses), and so you wont have enough energy to electrolyse the same amount of water as you did the first time and so the system will stop working very quickly without further inputs of energy.

Hope that doesnt confuse!

a_bab - 6-6-2003 at 22:21

This is reminding me about a friend of mine who was very excided because he considered he discovered a fortune: to power up a car with hydrogen, since he knew that the hydrogen paks lots of energy. But he intended to get the fuel in the car, via electrolysis of the water, so I had to explain him that the amout of energy spent to get the hydrogen is bigger than the amount of enegy obtained from using hydrogen as fuel, so using the car battery in this case would be better

"waterauto"

Organikum - 7-6-2003 at 08:13

Do a search for "waterauto" and see! By (ab)using some magic "orgone" a waterauto is told to be possible, buildt and running.
(Why the engine is buildt in a car and not stationary - who knows?)

It´s a pity that these frauds discredit other hard to explain phenomens. Like the Ranque-Hisch tube (vortex tube), or some of Teslas work, also Brown the inventor of the tunnel diode has some nice patents on antigravity.

And who knows? Perhaps there is a way to get enrgy out of the hidden dimensions or the paralleluniversa?

kovalie - 7-6-2003 at 16:54

ziqquratu,

I already know that, but this invention as an exeptional twist; you can make the container go as high as you like, therefore creating more electricity, with not needing to put more energy in, ie you could fill a container which is a ball size, then let it go 500 miles up, which would easily create enough electricity to start the cycle again.
Dont get me wrong, I doubt perpetual motion as much as you guys, but what im saying, is there is no explanation of why this wont work, as I can say let it fly higher, etc The only reason i have is, here goes this might be hard to explain:

Imagine you had a balloon full of, lets say hydrogen, the let it float up a metre and you created electricity off this, the electricity you created would not be enough to pull it down, because of loss etc. so its gravity that pulls it up (think about it, it is!) and its working against gravity that makes it hard to pull down.
But my invention (if i can call it that) skips out on the resisting force bit,

I have racked my brain day and night trying to prove to myself this idea wrong, but i cant, the only thing I can think of is that the container will slowly leak, but this is not an acceptable answer.

Please dont simply say, its impossible because every machine has losses, because I know this, but I still cant see why this wont work, and I will never be able to build a model!

thanks for your help

ziqquratu - 7-6-2003 at 17:59

OK, so explain what you're trying to do. Are you perhaps floating you H2 and O2 generated up, then sparking it, converting back to water, which falls down and works a turbine? You do, of course, realise, that the amount of water it would take to shift the panels would require and amazingly large explosion, no matter how high you float your gases. Not going to with stand that, and turbines are amazingly inefficient, increasing either the distance or the explosion (or probably both). Of course you could use the energy from the explosin, but that only provides you back with a certain proportion of the energy it took to electrolyse the water it came from.
Perhaps you're thiking of using some kind of static effect? probably not going to happen - the static discharges would lead to unexpected explosions and hence damage to your equipment, and are yet another source of energetic loses.
let us also consider floating the gases up. To do this, you're going to have to have, for example, a column for the gases to rise in, and this is going to have to be fairly tall. Now, this is all well and good in theory - ya can just keep building 'till it gets so high you have to put hinges on so the moon can go past!! (David Eddings quote

). But in reality, we have limits on the types of structures we're trying to build, and if you're going to use hydrogen... well, even controlled explosions arent pretty, and they add new dimensions of structural instability...
Also, whatever you have that's falling down is going to cop massive friction (proportional to the distance it falls), which can be controlled (eg. shape of falling object) but never eliminated. And if you have other things rising up in the same column, that just increases the friction problem.
In the electricity stages, there's going to be amazing loses as heat and/or light, unless of course you use superconductors, which requires the use of cryogenic liquids, which require energy and defeat the purpose also. You have to remember, if you want to consider anything "perpetual motion" it has to be a totally enclosed system - if it requires energy input in any way (be it in the system itself or in maintenance of the system) it fails. Making liquid nitrogen (say) to run your superconductors requires energy and thus causes the system to fail as a 'perpetual energy' system.
Also, what on earth are you talking about, gravity is what "pulls it up"?? Gravity ALWAYS goes down. What makes hydrogen rise is that it is significantly less dense than air, and so it rises to a level of equal density (which usally means it ends up leaving our atmosphere if given the chance). Gravity works DOWNWARDS. Of course, perhaps I misunderstand and you mean that as the gases rise potential energy increases due to gravitational effects, but that wasnt really clear in what you said.
Finally, even if we ignore the practical design problems with doing something like this, understand this - there is no chance for us to do anything except manage to follow the law of conservation of energy perfectly. Thus even one tiny loss will eventually add up and screw you up. Plus, you'd never be able to get anything out of it - even if it was perfect, it'd only generate exactly enough energy to keep itself going. so while it would be interesting, it'd be little more than a curiousity. Unless I've missed something significant in your idea, it just wont be practical.
Sorry about the length (I wanted to be thorough!). Also, I'm not against your idea and am not deliberately trying to rain on your parade, but just pointing out that perpetual energy is amazingly simple in theory, but in practice...

On a side note - a_bab, I've had that self-same idea in my time (perhaps it's a natural thing to come up with when doing a certain level of physics

)

Organikum, I have to say you're right, there's some interesting stuff in all their work. Although I must say I've never seen those Brown patents - you have any references? But doesn't current quantum theory tell us that it'd take more energy to move anything (i assume that includes energy) between universes than we'd get out of doing so? Although there are the theories on gravity moving between universes (M theory)... interesting stuff, but scary and twisted!!

Browns & Constantinescos Patents

Organikum - 7-6-2003 at 22:14

I attached one of Browns.

VERY interesting is also Constantinesco´s work on resonance.
look here
Btw. the whole fluid.power.net is a treasure box.

Found some of Constantinescos patents:

US1338676
Storage of energy due to an explosion
US1372944
Method and means for actuating gun-triggers
US1584435
Mechanism for transmitting impulses to a distance, specially applicable for actuating gun triggers

[Edited on 8-6-2003 by Organikum]

Attachment: Brown_gravity.pdf (241kB)
This file has been downloaded 950 times

Iv4 - 8-6-2003 at 02:20

You'r an idiot.Oooh look at me I'm 15 so I get to do whatever the fuck I want cause I'm too stoned to understand shit at school.The problem is completely obvious is'nt it?You can't have more than 100% even theory.

The oly thing that can come even close is some sort of generator orbiting a planet.Easier to just harness the goddamn sun.

frogfot - 8-6-2003 at 06:01

Iv4, go away, you have too much anger inside...

Kovalie, have i understood that main part of your setup goes like that:
If we attach a weight on an "air-filled" (H2, O2) baloon under water and let it go, the potential energy in weight will be gained as it rises.

If i got you right, there is one problem. The deeper in water you go the greater pressure is. This meant you have to put more energy into filling the baloon. Sure you can let the baloon go several km up, but energy gained have been already lost when you have pushed away water by pumping up baloon..

Btw, I beliave one can construct such tower under water, or? 1km isn't much for engeneering today, specially under water..

madscientist - 8-6-2003 at 11:17

Flaming is something I will not allow to become commonplace at this forum.

Iv4 - 8-6-2003 at 23:00

I'm just saying that he should'nt use that fact that he's 15 as a shield.

ziqquratu - 9-6-2003 at 00:29

Organikum - Thanks, very interesting stuff.

lv4 - lets give the youngster's a chance - we all had weird ideas when we were younger

. Besides, we learn from these things, and so it's useful. Also, if you don't KNOW that it's impossible to do something, then that's one less thing stopping you, isn't it? Two hundred (or whatever) years ago, it was "impossible" for light to act like particles. Try to keep your mind open just a little more - granted, certain things are never going to be possible, but some of them just may have a great deal of potential in the future.

frogfot - good points. espescially about building underwater - never thought of that!! But it still doesnt really solve any of the other, more significant problems.

Iv4 - 9-6-2003 at 02:51

Well maybe I was a bit too harsh.But hey I'm 15 too and I don't use it to cover up the fact that I probably have the liver of a 90 year old.

Anyways A much better source of energy would be to start fusion reactions on the moon.Their you dont have to worry about runaway reactions because there's not much up there to destroy.

BASF - 9-6-2003 at 11:08

Ok, let´s out myself ... there was a time when i was completely amazed by the thought of building a p.m.
I had a dozens of "promising" ideas...

As it is the phenomenon with all us perpetuum mobile-freaks, i was full of hope and after 100 times of searching possible problems and reciting the actual idea, i built a technic-lego-model of my "generator"...

I remember building about half a dozen of different models, and the force that kept me going ahead was the typical phenomenon of not recognizing the fact that all these models kept hiding their dependence on well known natural-laws like the 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics, because of their complexicity !

The most promising concepts always used to be the more complicated ones...

Believe me, it´s as simple as that...

Millions of human beings have thought of that problems, they got caught by the sheer fascination of the problem, and they all had something else together, they failed.

It is often the case that ppl spend their whole live searching a "fata morgana", then they die with the words "It has to work. I just don´t know how to put the things together right. I was so close to it."

But i think no engineer or scientist with real technical killer-instinct would be true, if he said "I never lost a thought on it."

HLR

vulture - 10-6-2003 at 01:59

but the height it gained, you turned into electricity, somehow, it doesnt realy matter how... then at a big height you sparked it with some of the electricity you made, and it turned back to water and sank again, and you collect electricty off this, and used this electricity to electrolyse more water, and so the cycle can start again.

Problem nr1: "somehow" converting it to electricity? conversion = energy loss, NO exception.

problem nr2: The spark. Even at 100% theoretical efficiency, the spark would have to be produced by using external electricity, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to electrolyse enough even at 100% yield and the amount of gas created would become less everytime.

Damn this is hard to explain.
That's also why people keep believing it I think, because it's so hard to explain clearly that it won't work.

BASF - 10-6-2003 at 05:13

Yep. And what adds to the problems vulture mentioned, this would then only be a p.m. of the kind from which no energy could be taken away to do anything useful. (not implying such a device could be built anyway !)

Maybe the motion of electrons around an atomic nucleus could be considered perpetual motion.

BASF - 10-6-2003 at 09:08

Arrgh...tapped into the trap

I didn´t want to express that too complicated, although you´re right, it is formally not correct.

Better i should speak of moving electron-densities then...

VdW-forces, for example are because the electron densities change and polarize the atom. This is why noble-gases can be liquefied at all. This change of electron densities is very fast and does not fade.
Maybe this was a better example...

I really wonder....

Ylang-Ylang - 8-10-2003 at 07:31

Let's think though--he might have something.

Build a balloon under water. Attach it to a winch with wire, and gear the winch to a generator. Now imagine, if you can get ~ 60% efficiency from a decent fuel cell at the top, recombining the H and O, deflate the balloon and let the winch rewind it back to the bottom. How much power can you get from a balloon trying to rise to the surface of the ocean? And how much gas do you need to do that? What we have here is a device to extract energy from gravity, in a sense. The balloon rises, because it is pushed up by the weight of the (air, water) all around it.

To be more general, if we have any device which can modulate its weight with less energy than can be gained from its falling a reasonable distance, we can make a big wheel, with one side always lighter than the other.
This could also work with a material whose density could be changed easily, because it could be packed in a circular pipe, and would always flow in circles, for a turbine of some sort to extract. In the case of his idea, that is exactly what we are doing:

electrolyse water to change its density to something much smaller.

use that change in density to extract energy from its surroundings (change potential into kinetic energy)

reconvert H & O to water (high density form), extract as much power from that as possible

return to original state without repaying potential energy taken

This is a mechanical analog of a "overunity parametric amplifier", see jean-louis naudin's webpage for plenty of stuff related to that

members.aol.com/jnaudin509

I don't think it is wise to dismiss such an idea before one has done the math on it, and even then, the math has been wrong more than once....

So study your physics, kid, and do the math yourself. Show yourself whether it will work or not, and then you can show the disbelievers with confidence.

You see, the problem is...

ziqquratu - 8-10-2003 at 17:51

all well and good, in theory. While not wanting to appear critical in an arrogant sense, let me go through all the losses that your system will suffer from.

Firstly, the winch process. Every moving part you put into the system means more losses (from friction if nothing else). A winch will be very inefficient (what I'm imagining is you have a wire attached to your balloon, so you can pull it back down much faster than if you had to wait for it to sink, correct?). Also, it takes energy to operate the winch. Plus, since your wire isn't massless, you have to use energy to lift it along with the balloon, which is another loss.

Second, the balloon itself. Try blowing a balloon up in a pool or the bath or somewhere under water. It's harder to do, becasue there surrounding medium (water) exerts pressure on it. The deeper underwater you go, the more pressure there is (it's the same with air, but because air is less dense, it isn't as obvious!! We do, of course, all know that atmospheric pressure varies with altitude, but the water experiment is entertaining anyway

). To overcome that pressure, you have to pump the gas (hydrogen and oxygen, in this case) into the baloon at ever higher pressures. If you have to pump it like this - energy useage and loss. Particularly since the pump has more moving parts, plus losses to electrical resistance...

Next, your material that can change density easily - this material wouldn't change density by heating, perhaps? 'Cause that'd be setting up for major heat (energy) losses to the surroundings, which would alter their density, which would counteract the change you had just made... perhaps you were thinking of using some sort of chemical reaction, but again, reagents would be limited (even in very simple, totally reversible reactions you would, sooner or later, get losses due to leaks or side reactions, or the energy produced in one cycle of the reaction would not be sufficient to propagate the reverse cycle - you have to take into account activation energies and so forth as well, remember).

Next, the fuel cell - assume the 60% efficiency, that's a loss of 40%... that's fairly major - granted, a lot better than some of our other technologies, but still fairly sucky. While on the electrical side of things, what about the electrolysis? Imagine your setup is perfect except for the fuel cell, which is still only 60%efficient. Say the electrolysis uses X joules to break the bonds between the H-O-H. It also requires an activation energy which will not be recovered even in a perfect, 100% efficient reaction between the formed gases. Then, when we use the H2 and O2 in the fuel cell, we must also apply an activation energy, which we again cannot recover. And, since the cell isn't totally efficient, we don't get that X joules back - we only get 60% of X.

And, of course, the points made earlier on also apply - any conversion is inhernetly inefficient (in practice, anyway - theory's all well and good, but we're being practical here... my god, practical physics? I never thought I'd see the day...). Electrolysis involves loss as heat (think of NaCl electrolysis to Na and Cl2 - once you melt the solid and get the current flowing, the resistance is so high that you can generally keep it a liquid just due to the current flow, assuming it's high enough, without any more external heating. Water gives less resistance, but it still happens. I'm sure that if you've tried electrolysis you've noticed the container heat up. And do this far underwater, where it's cold anyway, and heat is transferred much faster, due to the temperature gradients being so extreme). There are other things, too, of course, but I'm being long-winded enough as is...

And, the major killing blow to all perpetual motion styles of energy generation, as I and others have said several times above - even in a perfect system you will NOT be able to get energy out - maximum efficiency is 100%. Everything you do will require energy at some stage and, even though you would (in a perfect system) get it back at some later point... you're still only getting back what you started with. Sorry, people but you cannot cheat the laws of thermodynamics. It's kinda like saying "well, Newton was a wanker and so I don't believe in gravity". You can not believe all you want, but that doesnt mean you're gonna fall onto the ceiling! You can play around and make the most convoluted and complex system you want to, with as many steps and transformations as you want and, even if you ignore the realities and practical losses and inefficiencies, the theory is gonna tell you that you're never gonna get any energy out of your system at all.

chemoleo - 8-10-2003 at 18:01

hmm, this is all very interesting.
ylang, I had a thought about this. The problem is that the energy you need to electrolyse water at the bottom will be, if everything was perfect, exactly the same as the energy gained by igniting the whole thing at the top and extracting the radiational energy produced (heat, light). In other words, if you leave aside inefficiencies of reactions etc, you can leave out the electrolysis and combustion bit as they equal each other.
So what is left? Of course, the energy gained by releasing gas at the bottom of the ocean and harvesting the energy produced by gravitation (i.e. your idea of attaching a balloon to a winch, under water). Since the energy of combustion and electrolysis equal each other, there wouldnt be any need for them, so you could use any gas, like N2 etc.
At this point, the problem is the following: A LOT of energy is required to pressurise gas to such an extent that you can fill a balloon with it at, say, 1km down (as 1 bar = 10metres, 1km =100 bar). And this heat will be (leaving aside friction etc) the input energy that equals the amount of output energy produced by the balloon moving up; in other words, the energy required to pressurise the gas will be the same as the energy gained from the rising balloon!
Hardly a perpetuum mobile!
or am i talking bollocks?

So, are there ways to harvest gravitational energy efficiently? I am sure there are, just think of the probes they send to the planets (swing-by maneuvers), the gravitational field is used to speed up the probe to nearly cosmic speeds (like 50km/sec), while the speed of the planet is decreased marginally...

chemoleo - 8-10-2003 at 18:11

oops, that was a simultaneous reply... sorry for partial overlap...
However, jsut had this thought!
Imagine this whole balloon winch setup, and imagine 100% conversion of energy, with no losses due to friction, heat, etc, etc.
Now, we start electrolysing water at 1km depth, with the resultant H2 and O2 simply bubbling into a little collection device. This at 100 bar pressure, i.e. you would be electrolysing salt water straight from the sea. So in this case you wouldn't lose energy needed for pressurising the gases. Now, say, once the balloon device is full, the whole thing would rise up, and turn on a generator (with 100% efficiency, of course

). this energy is used to electrolyse more water at the bottom. however, at the top we ignite the whole thing, and happily harvest all the energy thereby released, using this as a generator for electricity!! In other words, you would simply harvest gravitational energy!!! cool ey? (unless I am too droopy to notice a major flaw!!)
So, shall we patent this??

Marvin - 8-10-2003 at 20:57

I was going to reply to this thread, but I thought someone had allready twigged why it wont work.

Without disrespect, if someone attacks an overunity idea with a 'losses' argument, its becuase they havnt seen the flaw. Why it wont work has nothing to do with non perfect power conversion.

As simply as possible, the voltage across a perfect electrolysis/fuel cell (and thus the energy for a given amount) depends on the pressure of the gasses

Slightly longer,
The power you extract from the rising gas, is matched by a loss in internal energy of the gas as it expands.

This loss in internal energy is matched by a lower voltage, and therfore less energy from the fuel cell than the electrolysis cell.

If you make the cell longer, the voltage you require at the electrolysis increases and the extra energy you require exactly matches the energy you get from the increased output from the rising gas.

The only people working on overunity devices are those that dont understand physics, if they did they would know they cant succeed. But in their words they 'dont have to understand something to know that its wrong'. Free energy is thus more like a religion than a science.

Type 2 perpetual motion machines are a newer idea, which also cant work and is compltetly refuted by entropy arguments. These are rather more complicated to explain, and even more difficult to visualise/properly understand than overunity (type 1) problems. So I'm greatful I dont have to explain it.

Type 2 devices (such as sucking the heat energy out of water to form ice, and using this energy to boil water) tend to be the most convincing, becuase many people educated in physics havnt learned entropy, or dont 'bilieve' ie fully understand how/why it works.

Ylang-Ylang - 10-10-2003 at 12:46

I wasn't really saying his idea would work, but the idea of extracting energy from the gravitational field of a planet may be conceivable. At least, in my mind it isn't impossible. Science has never proven anything impossible, merely improbable.
As for those efficiency arguments, come on. I am thinking of systems with the potential to produce REAL power, like 150% or something. Enough to overcome losses. No closed systems here. Give the guy's idea a chance.

Now, the electrolysis/pressure thing is very probably what would kill this thing as it is. It would be interesting to see the math on it, anyway.

The essential thing is to have a system that can change mass or density with less energy input than the comparable energy gain from falling/rising. If this can be found, then the magical free energy generator is just a step of engineering away.

Actually, I think most seemingly feasible "free energy generators" that people design are of this "assymetrical parametric extractor" type--that is, they use something usually considered conservative/reversible, like magnets, springs, air pressure, or gravity,
and have some element acted upon by this force, which can change the degree of its interaction with that force, then operated in a cyclical fashion to extract energy from the conservative force assymetrically.

Examples would include:
-flux-gated permanent magnets to circumvent back emf in the coil
-permanent magnets used to pull a ball around a ramp forever
-balloons that can be filled with air underwater to provide lift, then emptied to return them back to the bottom
-bifilar coils and other gadgetry to change the inductance of a coil on the fly
-variable capacitors in resonant circuits
-magnetic motors that operate by shielding and unshielding magnets
-a very attractive idea, if podkletnov's spinning superconductor disc does infact nullify even 2% of gravity, make a giant, heavy wheel. Put a podkletnov disk under one side. The disk will spin.

etc, etc.

Note, they all seem to work on the same basic principle.

Whether they work, I don't know
But they sure are appealing...

Science is a religion too. Placing blind faith in theories, as though the mathematical models we humans spin were inviolate and perfect. As though they actually meant something to nature. True followers of science must admit that no theory can be assumed complete, nor any inquiry fully dismissed, otherwise science ceases to work. The value of the religion of science is that it works. The pitfall of the religion of science is that it never works perfectly. "free energy people", at least the ones I respect, simply go looking for the edge of the scientific map, then keep walking. In doing so, they are performing a valuable service to science, and I believe should be respected for it. As always, there are those who make theories, and those who test them. All the greatest discoveries were precisely that great because they were thought to be impossible, or even never concieved of to begin with.

I have great respect for conservation of energy, and I am sure it is part of the underpinnings of reality. However, I don't believe it tells the whole story. The problem with most "impossible" inventions is that they do, in fact, accord with the laws of physics, but in a way that is different from what one is used to seeing.
Put another way, before nuclear science was developed, a nuclear reactor would be a "free energy" machine, and would defy any chemical analysis put to it (as well as killing the experimenters). Human theory would simply not be equipped to handle it. I think it is the height of arrogance to assume such a situation could never arise in the future.

sorry for the long words....

vulture - 10-10-2003 at 13:44

Let's just assume someone builds a perpetuum mobile. Hoooray! NOT! Why? It may be moving forever, but what happens when you start producing energy with it? The fragile equilibrium within the device is tampered with and it comes to a halt. End of dream.

Iv4 - 15-10-2003 at 22:43

The probem is always as vulture said.

If there was a massive coil of some sort on satelite it could cut a planets magentic field and produce energy.

If it were possible two counterbalancing coil/mangent around a black hole.Lots of star systes do it and ofcourse they eventually get suckedin but it would go in for millions of years.

Marvin - 16-10-2003 at 14:42

vulture, Iv4, that is not what is meant by the term 'perpetual motion machine'.

Ylang-Ylang,

Quote:

the idea of extracting energy from the gravitational field of a planet may be conceivable

Basic misunderstanding of physics, a field cant be a source of power, it can require power to create, but if you use it up, the field goes away or if the drop things down it you need the same energy to get them out, like magnets, like gravity, like electric fields. You can get energy out from potentiall energy stored this way, but you cant get any out that didnt exist before.

Quote:

the electrolysis/pressure thing is very probably what would kill this thing as it is

No, what kills it, is that its trying to produce a cycle that the end is exactly the same as the beginning except for a net increase of energy. That is impossible.
The explanation is just the human understandable reason the universe wont be fooled.

Quote:

Note, they all seem to work on the same basic principle.

Yes, they all including something to make it just complicated enough that you dont understand it.
Please dont be insulted by this, if the avarage 'free energy' person was einstein standard in physics, then the 'free energy' devices being discussed would involve effects that einstein would not have understood. Having said that it would be much harder to understand as much physics as he did without understanding how the conservation laws fit in and this is cheifly why its people that dont understand physics that think it can be wrong.

Quote:

Science is a religion too. Placing blind faith in theories

Nononono, thats not how it works at all.
Religions work by trying to make people bilieve what they cant see, cant understand and what cannot be shown to be true. No effect in science is accepted unless anyone can repeat the experiment and get exactly the same result. No piece of theory is accepted unless it can be mathmatically derived (and therefore proved) from *existing* science. The ideas of how to go forward may change how people think about science, but the mathematics follows exactly.

Unfortunatly physics is frequently taught in such a way 'this is what happens, this is the equation that describes it'. Particulaly in early years and particulaly by lousey teachers. Later on the emphasis is much more on the proving this is why it is and showing how it is built upward from its foundations. The same is often true of parts of mathematics and a good example is calculus. If its taught in the style of 'this is what it does and this is how to do it', it seems like magic and not at all based on what youve learned before. The way it should be taught though, should start from how calculus is built up from plain algebra and showing that its just a shortcut to doing what you can do allready - if you have a lot of time to spare.

Quote:

I have great respect for conservation of energy, and I am sure it is part of the underpinnings of reality. However, I don't believe it tells the whole story.

You dont have any respect for conservation of mass/energy. You just think you do becuase you see everything aparently obeying it. The reason you dont have respect, is becuase you think it can be tricked. If its to be valid at all, it needs to be valid for everything not 'almost everything except for...'.

Quote:

The problem with most "impossible" inventions is that they do, in fact, accord with the laws of physics, but in a way that is different from what one is used to seeing

But all of the 'impossible' inventions youve listed for producing free energy would not be obeying the laws of physics if they worked. This would not be a minor violation, it would be a situation where if true all of physics would be wrong, every single scrap of it would need to be rewritten. As Ive said there are a few rather more plausable ideas called 'type II' perpetual motion machines, but those you realise cant work after studying entropy, usually as part of a degree.

Quote:

Put another way, before nuclear science was developed, a nuclear reactor would be a "free energy" machine, and would defy any chemical analysis put to it

No, it would not. They would study the machine, they would marvel at how much power it produced, but they would notice that it did consume a tiny amount of fuel for its power and produced a tiny amount of waste. This would not be new, if you mix chemicals you get a change in energy as heat and you get waste products. Theres nothing in science that would forbid the machine from doing what it did, even with no knowlage of nuclear technology. They wouldnt understand how it worked, but nothing in the mathmatics/science of the time would have proved that such a machine could not exist.

Trying to end up with more net energy than you started with is like telling someone that you have a special way of putting gold coins into an empty box, giving them a shake and having more coins at the end than when you started. While it might be possible to trick a large number of people into thinking it can work, ultimatly the method cannot make gold from nothing. You cannot describe the experiment so other people can repeat it, and if you are honest, your experiment cannot work at all. People wouldnt try this becuase people know gold coins dont apear from nowhere. But people will try to get energy from nowhere becuase people cant 'see' energy so its not 'real', gold coins are 'real'. The big joke here is that the gold example is less solid than the energy one, becuase you can make gold from other things, and mint it into coins. You cant make energy from nothing though.

A few basic reasons for the other devices,
Gating a magnetic field involves collapsing it or sqausing it and this requires an input or output of energy depending on which you do.
Using magnets doesnt work, as you are just swapping potential energy from the magnets for kinetic energy of the ball and back again. You cant even use the idea that the ball is a magnet itself and neer to you turn it to repell, becuase the energy you require close to is less than the energy you get back far away and exactly balenced by the energy you get from it being pulled towards/pushed away from the main magnet.
The balloon idea is a variation on electrolysis idea. You need a higher pressure of water at the bottom, than you get out at the top when the air is released. This energy is exactly balenced by the energy you get from the balloon rising. Increasing the depth of water increases the pressure of air you need at the bottom to fill the balloon and the energy still balences.

Shielding and unshielding magnets is exactly the same as gating magnets. You need to put in energy to squash the magnetic field, or take energy out to short it/collapse the field. The energy required for the reverse of this process depends on the magnetic core you are trying to drive with the 'free' energy and the energy difference is exactly the same as the energy you removed from the system. It balences. Let me expound a little. Say you have a magnet, an iron bar, and an iron sheild for the magnet. The bar is attracted to the magnet giving out energy. The sheild is attracted to the magnet, covers it, shorting it, the bar drops away from the magnet to start another cycle. But the sheild now requires more energy to remove it than it gave out by covering the magnet, and this energy, though tiny, is exactly matched by the energy the system gave out with the iron bar moving toward and then away from the magnet.

Ok, so what if you use a superconductor, or better a 'perfect' box that simply blocks magneic fields. You will still have a force when you try to cover the magnet becuase you are compressing the external field and this time its in the other direction, you need energy to get the magnet covered. This energy will be greater than the energy it gives out with the iron bar out of position (furthur away). You arnt gaining anything, just swapping one form of potential energy for kinetic, and back again if its to keep moving. You take any out and it stops working.

bifilar coils. The idea you can change the inductance of a coil by switching in a back winding, and thus use less energy to charge it up than you get out. Doesnt work becuase the energy you get from a coil is done by collapsing a magnetic field. The coil in the back wound position has a much lower inductance, and so for a given current takes much less power to 'charge' but its not generating the same magnetic field it would do in the high inductance state. So when you transition to the high inductance state and drain, you dont get the energy out you think you should get based on the math for the high inductance, and the max current for the low inductance state when it was charging. You just get the power in the magnetic field out that you put in during charging. In other words you can only get out of the coil what you put into the magnetic field and yet again the universe isnt fooled.

variable capacitors in resonant circuits. Behave exactly as expected. You can transfer energy resonantly, but thats all it is, transfer. If you change the value of a variable capacitor while charged that takes energy, or gets energy back depending on if you are increasing the overlap of the charged plates (energy out) or decreasing them (energy in). If the plates are uncharged at the time, no energy is needed. This is basic physics, seperating + and - charges takes energy, Two basic errors tend to go on in this sort of thought experiment as well as practical attempts, the fact that people forget that things like altering vapiable caps changes the energy in the circuit, and like the last one, they think that can make a change and use the new maths for that changed circuit with the numbers they calculated for the old one. For example, If I have a cubic tub of gold, and I squash it flat and I measure this value of the area it takes up to be 1 meter cubed, then I make it really really thin and measure the gold reaching 1 meter high, then according to my maths 1 * 1 = 1 meter cubed of gold. What would I have forgotten? By stretching and squashing the box IVe altered the dimentions of the contents and the two measurements arnt valid at the same time as the maths is. The bilfilar coils idea has exactly this problem in theory, and virtually all reports of 'free energy on paper' have this sort of problem as the root of the practical measurements. e.g. they measured current and voltage at seperatly becuase they only have 1 meter so they get 2 values that are both 'correct' but arnt valid at the same time.

Spinning disks by nulling gravity. Nulling gravity is another fringe science idea, but even if nulling gravity with supercondctors works - or any other way - the disk will not spin. You cant create a region where gravity simply stops applying, you can only alter the potential energy something has in that region and watch as it changes when things enter/leave. Your region of 2% less gravity will have a step into it, and a step out of it and when the circuit is complete the forces, and the energy will exactly balence so the disk does not spin. Its a lot like trying to build a rollercoaster that gives out more energy than you put in. You can make it as complicated as you like, but as soon as you connect both ends you find out the energy exactly balences when you do a complete lap. In the disk circuit each atom is doing its own complete circuit and gains no net energy so the disk as a whole gains no energy and doesnt spin.

Gravity and fields in general just dont work like you want them to to generate power. An object in gravity is falling from a high potential energy area towards an area where it has a lower potential energy, to get it back to the area of high potential energy you have to put the energy back. So there is no way of bending, warping, blocking, nulling areas of a static gravity field to spin a disk, nomatter how clever the idea is. Fields are not simply 'regions of space in which things accelerate'.

Objects accelerate from areas of high potential energy toward areas of low potential energy - thats where the force comes from and thats all a field really is - a slope between areas of high and low potential energy.

MEG

PrimoPyro - 29-10-2003 at 23:26

Ever read about the MEG? Very controversial, many people don't believe it works even with poor efficiency, but many scientists believe that the principle is sound enough to warrant experiments to improve it.

Does it work? Who knows, build one and find out. I say, personally, that research is always good, even on seemingly impossible inventions. They say necessity is the mother of invention. I disagree: The "whoops" and the "wtf is that" are far more responsible for the majority of what we as a species have done for our udnerstanding of the universe.

The best discoveries are always the unexpected ones.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8...

PrimoPyro

Marvin - 1-11-2003 at 18:55

The names of the inventors change, the names of the devices change but the story as ever is the same.

"I plug it into the mains, I measure the power going in, I measure the power coming out and its greater"

And yet every time they try to power the input from the output it stops working.

In one example on a detailed page the output power "as measured" is over double the input power. If the device really was working then powering the input from its output would be no problem, in whatever form the energy ended up as.

The missunderstanding here in the explanation of how they think it should work is the difference beween force and energy. Because its magnetic force and magnetic energy the mistake is less obvios than it would be if the device was built of springs and levers.

Laws of physics : n+1
Free energy : 0

[Edited on 2-11-2003 by Marvin]

Some more points of view...

Carburo - 16-11-2003 at 21:38

First of all i would like to say how happy i am about finding this site. Secondly i ask you guys to excuse my English errors, tho i was born in england I cant write in english as good as i wish. I Study Engeniering on the construction at the "Universidad Catolica", Its not a highly rated cientific career but i still have lots of classess with scientific subjects in them. Calculus, Physics, Algebra, Statistics, Chemistry etc. This is my first of many posts (I Hope) on this board. Here it goes.
I, as many other ppl out there, am bombed with this super i deas about how things work. Some of them, because of the scientific knowledge i have, I can prove to my self that can work and how. Others, Mostly the weird ones

, i have just never been able to causei lack the knoledge, or simply because they are plain imposible to be acomplished.

The theme you are discusing abount energy, i think was not the one Lvl4 ment. i think what he ment was to build a device that needs very little amount of extra energy, and can lift huge amount of weight with the same energy loss (proporcionaly that is.).

(Unfortunatly physics is frequently taught in such a way 'this is what happens, this is the equation that describes it'

... they way that physics are tough may be those, but students, at least good physic students dont understand it like that, i personaly cant aficiently aply any formula i cant figure out my self, by just thinking about the parts that compose the ecuation.
The idea of gettng more than 100% energy eficiency is imposible. to me at least because of the natural laws this World (Universe) is sustained. Everything is part of a proces that came from a single source and will eventually go back to it, (Take the big bang for an example), the resulting energy from that explotion should be 0 loss, 0 gain. And i think its the only one i know. So no matter what we do, we can only get 100 percent out of something. and 0 gain with 0 loss.
That gives me the thought about no matter what we do it will always tend to go back to where it was. Everytyhing is just transformation of energy. I could try to explain my theorie for hours but its hard for me in this language. please if someone feels he understands what im trying to say explain it, And perhaps give another point of view?.

Very happy that i found this forum. nice work and keep it up.

Based on this thread i would like to point an idea of my own.

Carburo - 16-11-2003 at 21:59

Perpetua motion can be obtained tho;

not by recyblind all of the energy but by getting more from an infinite source.

And ballon that could be lifted and put back on the ground could be acomplished like this.

Consider a baloon, half filled in an hermetic chamber with constand pleasured hydrogen (Even helim, depending of the size of ballon you want, or can afford). The other half of the ballon its an hermetic chamber where the Fluid (Hydrogen, helium, any fluid lightier than air will do actualy) can be increased or decreased with a pump from the compartmend from below, this will ensure vertical movibility. All this with a cost on energt that can easyly be obtained by the sun, with solar panels that can charge a battery to make the pump work. this way we can go up or down as we like, as long as we have power, when we dont well just go up till we pass the clouds and get it from the sun.

Some one prove me wrong please, maybe its omposible to do, but i find it very apealing cause for stratosferic balloning it should be interesting having no need to buy a new Hydrogen gas container each time they want to go up, instead of using the same one over and over, maybe with a small loss due to material unpermeability.

Is there a thread with nothing else but whacko ideas? if so name it please.

Marvin - 19-11-2003 at 12:28

The term 'perpetual motion' is usually appied to the idea of a system that will continue to move - even when you take energy out of it. Hense, if you take energy out of it and it stops, then its not perpetual.

Thats exactly what the thread is about, and you are right. It cant work. You cant create energy without using up something, so a cycle that gives you everything you had before and more energy than you started with is impossible.

The ballon idea would work, but you would need a lot of solar power. Enough for example that you would be able to lift the whole mass of the baloon (not weight, the mass) several km into the air in a reasonable period of time becuase thats the power you need to completely compress the gas after a flight. Thats a lot of power. If you leave the gas perminatly in bags in the balloon, that would help a lot power wise, but it will leak slowly however well its contained.

Hydrogen is banned in most countries for airships I think, helium is the only real option and its rather costly. Small wonder most people just use hot air baloons and have done with all these problems.

vulture - 20-11-2003 at 08:30

I suggest anybody who's got yet another idea about a perpetual motion thingy reads up on the three fundamental laws of thermodynamics.

And yes, they do apply to physics.

[Edited on 20-11-2003 by vulture]

Thermodynamics

Carburo - 21-11-2003 at 08:46

Please enlighten us with the three escencial laws.
Give a link to refer to or just print them here.
And explain why they are so important to perpetual motion.

Blind Angel - 21-11-2003 at 09:35

We know that perpetual motion doesn't exist, but why doesn't a long lasting motion wouldn't exist...?

vulture - 21-11-2003 at 14:31

If you don't know the three fundamental laws of thermodynamics there's no use in speculating about energy devices!

1) You can't make nor destroy energy. All energy in the universe is finite and remains constant.

Note that "energy loss" by friction/heat/whatever is actually an incorrect term. The energy is less useful to us, but it isn't gone!!

2)The entropy of the universe always increases. More simple: Every transformation of energy causes irriversible chaos.

Entropy is a measure for the dissapearing potential to provide work.

Example:
1l of water at 300K is separated from another liter of water at 350K by a perfectly isolated container. Once you open the barrier between the 2, they will mix and form 2 liters of water at 325K. However, the internal energy of the system has not changed, but it's ability to perform work is gone.

3) This one seems to be wrong. It originally stated that entropy comes close to zero at the absolute zero, but it has been proven wrong by quantum theory.
Now that I think of it, I've never used a third law of thermodynamics.

Carburo - 21-11-2003 at 16:40

i know those laws, but my point about the universe was that no matter what we do, what we change or not change, all the chaos wil eventually return to what it was, and thats my point for perpetual motion cause its a perfect system where nothing enters nor gets out. There is a finite amount of energy (mass) that wont change, unless we take the postulate that the universe is infine and so will mean that there is a way to create mass and energy from scratch.

entropy

Organikum - 22-11-2003 at 04:22

Dear vulture, if this would be right what you say there would be no life possible at all.....

Schwartzschild effect? (Sp?)

tztz.....

blip - 25-11-2003 at 06:27

Life is certainly possible in a universe where entropy must always increase, just it takes life forms some extra energy to "drive" away some of the entropy in their bodies to the environment. This would make the required low entropy system required for life, but it would also further increase entropy in the surroundings. An analogy is a refrigerator where energy must be input to cool the inside, meanwhile the surroundings are being heated. Normally the reverse would occur, but with the proper application of energy, entropy can be "moved" around while still allowing it overall to increase in the universe.

Back to the Meg and other stuff...

Carburo - 25-11-2003 at 20:43

The 2 ( I know them by the way ) laws are based on what we 'belive' is reality. there is no real proof about they being true. Lvl4 was speaking about that no matter how much we study somthing it will always have something that we dont know. "Like a universe Law". Entrophy is a law aswell, or maybe more like a theory, thats even worst. so we could say perpetual motion is not posible because we can always find another way of mesurement that it is not.

lvl4, please send me a mail with more information about the Meg. if there are any books about it please, or who ever has any, im not sure he brought it up first. i bet in some more time it would be prooven to be wrong and someone would come up with another machine using the latest knoledge about it.

Organikum - 26-11-2003 at 08:34

So the thermodynamic laws would apply to the universe as is but not to the makro and mikrokosmos we live in, say the laws of thermodynamics do not apply to us here and now - perpetual motion should be possible then.
And there is such a thing as a free lunch also.
Ha!
Perhaps in Belgium.
Pfffffff.......

Puzzeling.

Carburo - 26-11-2003 at 11:02

http://www.fuellesspower.com/engine.htm
Any1 knows if this engine actually works?
if so on what principies, and where can i get the plans for free since i dont have a credit card to buy it.

Blind Angel - 26-11-2003 at 14:47

this sound like scam to me, dont go near this

EDIT: It also sell "plans" for a miracle chemical that turn Iron Oxide in Iron...

[Edited on 26-11-2003 by Blind Angel]

LOL

Organikum - 27-11-2003 at 08:54

"It does not use oil, it only uses the atomic atoms from the oil "

The atomic atoms. Hey, thats fine!

whatta a shit.

SCAM AS SCAM CAN BE!
sell it to vulture.......

Geomancer - 27-12-2003 at 12:08

I'd rather not get involved in discussions of the philosophy of science, but perpetuum mobile do provide fun excercises. For example, imagine a tank of water, with something dissolved in it. If one were to place a tube of pure water vertically into the tank such that the upper level of the water in the tube is equal to the water level in the tank, capped at the bottom by a semipermeable membrane, there would be two forces acting across the membrane: the downward osmotic force, dependent on the concentration of the solution, and the upward bouyancy force, dependent on the depth the tube is submerged. For a long enough tube, then, the bouyancy force would be greater than the osmotic force, and the water in the tube would rise above surface level. If it were allowed to overflow, it would do so continuosly, generating energy.
Explain, engineer style (not using the first law), why this won't happen.
If anyone knows other such puzzles, post them!

Marvin - 28-12-2003 at 13:38

The same energy that forces the pure water up the tube would cause the salt solution outside to 'settle', ie become very weak at the top, and more concentrated at the base where the membrane is. The increase in concentration happens until, surprise surprise increased osmotic pressure balences the force due to the difference in gravity.

More interestingly this would work in the ocean becuase tidal energy from the moons orbit prevents the salt from settling.

Geomancer - 29-12-2003 at 08:10

I had hoped you'd wait long enough to give others a chance to solve it on thier own

. Seriously, your point about seawater is an interesting one. All the other techniques I know to extract energy from a water column rely on the lack of mixing to create a thermal gradient. It should be possible to build a Slocum glider type device that relies on changing baroosmotic potential. This could be usefull in environments where an appropriate thermal gradient can't be relied upon (e. g. Europa). Moreover, the device could use electrochemical techniques to generate electricity. Which brings us back to where we started: the pressure dependence of electrochemical potential.
BTW: many organisms in the ocean travel between deep and shallow realms on a daily basis. It would be interesting to find out if they exploit these ideas.

Geomancer - 23-3-2004 at 20:16

Here's an interesting one:
When you place a sheet of stuff (assuming it's not absurdly hydrophobic) into water, it pulls up a small amount of water. Clearly, for a linear sheet of sufficient length, the amount of water lifted is proportional to the length of material. Consider a belt of perfectly elastic stuff, running between two pulleys. Contrive auxiliary devices to stretch one half of the belt widthwise. Now lower one pulley under water. By the previous observation, the wieght of water on the wider half of the belt will be greater than that on the unstretched half, causing the device to be perpetually unbalanced.

Ramiel - 23-3-2004 at 22:00

Okay Vulture, hero of thermodynamics... why can't I do this:

construct two adjacent containers - a closed system - joined by a 'gate' which lets only one particle through at a time. If i let only the low energy particles through to container 1, and the high energy particles through to container 2 (ie. creating order). Why is this not a decreace in entropy? or not possible?

t_Pyro - 25-3-2004 at 11:02

That last question wasn't meant for me, but I'd like to answer it, anyway. The idea of the hypothetical "gate and container" system is absurd. You're just conveying an idea that you wish you could implement, but without any explanations as to how. For starters, how would the "gate" distinguish between the particles? Or were you actually thinking of manually controlling such a "gate"? Also, for the gate to separate the particles, its size would have to be comparable to the size of the particles. Hence, while the particles passed through the gate, the uncertainty in their position would be very low, which would result in a very high uncertainty in their momentum, hence their energy. In other words, the very act of trying to segregate the particles into high energy and low energy ensures that the particles' energy cannot be measured. This is like the "True Observer" paradox.

Regarding the conveyer belts:
While stretching / shrinking the conveyor belt, the size of the capillaries in the material will change, causing a difference in the capillary height of the water. If, however, by some means, you could restrict the changes in the size of the capillaries, the cross-sectional area of the belt would remain the same, ensuring that the same amount of water is absorbed. Finally, if all the other parameters are somehow maintained constant, the conveyor belt would soak up water when submerged, and as the belt approached the other end, the water would be squeezed out of it, and would roll down again. I don't quite understand how such a device could be called a "perpetual motion" device...

Like others have already stated beofre, the idea of a "perpetual motion" device, capable of producing energy from nothing is a myth.

[Edited on 25-3-2004 by t_Pyro]

Geomancer - 25-3-2004 at 17:00

t_pyro: You misread my post. The machine "works" based on the changing perimeter of the belt. On the ascending side, the rubber is unstretched, and so has smaller perimeter than on the ascending side, where it is stretched parrelel to the plane of the water's surface. Since, as observed, the amount of water lifted by a sheet entering it perpendicularly is dependent only on the length of the sheet and its material, the ascending side will always be overbalanced by the descending one.

I think your uncertainty based solution to the earlier problem is incorrect, since the density of the working fluid can be arbitrarily low, and therefore the amount of positional precision needed is also arbitrarily low. You are right, though, that the solution depends on the quantum properties of the gate.

[Edit: Note that only my scheme claims to produce energy from nothing. The other scheme produces work from heat, i. e. it is a PM of the second type.]

[Edited on 26-3-2004 by Geomancer]

Ramiel - 25-3-2004 at 23:13

Mine was a hypothetical question t_pyro, I asked it for fun, to see if anyone could find it's solution - for fun, not as a "practical" solution to perpetual motion... the solution to this problem pretty much proves the whole theory's impossibility.

Jeez, calm down a bit man. ; )

[edit - "t_flex" changed to "t_pyro"]

[Edited on 28-3-2004 by Ramiel]

t_Pyro - 26-3-2004 at 02:23

Geomancer:
Sorry, I don't think I'm visualising your machine correctly. I don't quite get what you mean by saying that the "ascending side will always be overbalanced by the descending one". The ascending side will have more water in its capillaries than the descending side, hence will be heavier. Work has to be done to raise the water against the force of gravity, and this water, once "squeezed out" at the highest point, falls back. How is energy being produced from nothing?

Regarding the uncertainty principle, it is incorrect to speak of "density of the working fluid". What we're talking about here are discrete particles, not a homogenous accumulation of particles. In order to separate the particles in the manner described, we have to analyse the particles individually, not as an accumulated "fluid". For example, an electron cannot be confined within a volume equal to that of the nucleus of an atom. To prove this, we consider the mass of a single electron, not the "average" mass density of an electron cloud.

Ramiel, sorry, I think I got carried away... I think the heat's getting to me!

Geomancer - 26-3-2004 at 13:55

It seems that we are having difficulty communicating. I'll try to draw a picture of my device and post it later. Capillaries tubes are not involved. Since you like the things so much, though, try this:
Two identical beveled wheels, like the cutters for a can opener or a pizza cutter, are placed so as they are free to turn on an axle. The axle is bent slightly so as on one side the two wheels are very close together, almost touching. On the other side, then, they are more separated. Submerge the device halfway in water, with the axle in the plane of the liquid. Due to the close proximity of the plates one side, the fluid will be drawn up between them by capillary action. On the other side, the wheels are far apart, so this won't happen. The weight of this fluid will then unbalance the wheels.

If I understood correctly, your arguement from uncertainty went like this:

You need to determine the energy of the incoming particles to whithin some precision, say m
By having the particles pass through a gate, you determine the position to a certain precision, p
It is impossible to satisfy both of these precision requirements

Clearly, the conclusion holds for certain m and p. What you fail to realize is that m and p are completely arbitrary. Let's say the size of your gate gives you energy uncertainty of m. All you need to know about the particle's energy is whether it is greater than the average energy (E) in its pool. But, under thermal equilibrium, eventually you can find particles of arbitrarily high energy; in particular, you can find particles with energy greater than E+2m. Similarly, with very low density working fluids (like a soft vacuum), you can safely make the gate quite large.

Try thinking from the standpoint of microscopic reversibility instead.

axehandle - 26-3-2004 at 17:00

Aren't we violating the 1st law of thermodynamics here?

Geomancer - 26-3-2004 at 17:18

My devices, if they were to work, yes. Showing why these machines don't work is still an instructive puzzle.
Ramiel's demonic contraption, OTOH, does not violate the first law. The problem is, what stops it from violating the second?

t_Pyro - 27-3-2004 at 02:56

I was not talking about any capillary tubes. I said that the water would rise up the capillaries of the material. Without any such capillaries, the material would be entirely solid, hence would not absorb any fluid.

Regarding the uncertainty method:
I'm not sure whether I conveyed my argument well enough. What I said was that during the fraction of time dt, while the particle is passing through the gate, since the gate itself is of a comparable dimension as the particle, the uncertainty of the position of the particle is limited to the diameter of the gate, which is very small. Hence, the uncertainty in the momentum will be very high. Mass and density cannot be arbitrary. Mass is quantised. You can have a particle of 1 amu, 2 amu and so on, but not 0.231 amu or 0.1 amu. By my calculations, if the particle is a proton for example, the uncertainty in its velocity while passing through a gate twice its diameter is approximately 15.7623x106 m/s. The corresponding uncertainty in energy is very high.

Geomancer - 27-3-2004 at 09:55

Partially submerge a metal spoon in water. Observe closely, it does lift a small amount of water.

I dont trust your calculation. My body has quite a few gated proton channels in it, and I seriously doubt that it has that many protons moving at millions of m/s.

Also, you arbitrarily assume that the size of the gate must be twice the particle diameter. In a vacuum (or even a gas), you could get away with much larger gates. Moreover, you falsely assume that it is impossible to find very high energy particles in your system. It's only extremely unlikely. Wait a few billion years.

[Edit: I never wrote that mass was arbitrary. I was using the symbol m for permissible energy uncertainty. The density of a gas is is arbitrary (more precisely, it is a natural multiple of (particle mass)/(container volume); I suppose there is an upper limit, but that's not important here).]

[Edited on 27-3-2004 by Geomancer]

t_Pyro - 27-3-2004 at 17:52

What you're talking about regarding the spoon is due to surface tension, whereas the belt concept uses the ability of water to rise up fine capillaries. Although the basic reason for the phenomena are the same (surface tension of water), the former method cannot be applied to your first gadget, since then the "squeezing" of the belt would have no effect...

I arbitrarily chose twice the diameter of the proton as the gate size since any gate larger than that would not be able to allow specific protons to pass without other protons being able to pass through, also. No, there are no vessels/gates/openings/pores which have a diameter comparable to that of a proton, at least none that I'm aware of. Hence, the idea of any particle in your body having the stated velocity is absurd.
I did not say that it is impossible for particles to have such high energy. I said that if the particle does have such a high energy, it's defeated the purpose of segregation by the gate on the basis of energy. The energy of the particle while entering the gate, and while passing through the gate are therefore worlds apart.

If you want to check my calculations:
The diameter of a proton is approx. 10-15m.
Mass of proton= 1.67262x10-27 Kg.

Therefore, dv=(h/(4pi))/(1.67262x10-27 * 2*10-15

=15.76226x106 m/s.

[Edited on 28-3-2004 by t_Pyro]

[Edited on 28-3-2004 by t_Pyro]

Geomancer - 28-3-2004 at 15:52

Quote:

Originally posted by t_Pyro
What you're talking about regarding the spoon is due to surface tension, whereas the belt concept uses the ability of water to rise up fine capillaries. Although the basic reason for the phenomena are the same (surface tension of water), the former method cannot be applied to your first gadget, since then the "squeezing" of the belt would have no effect...

Where did you get this squeezing out stuff stuff from? Take a solid strip of rubber, partially submerge it in water. It will lift a certain amount. Take a strip twice as wide, and it will lift about twice as much. Take the first strip, stretch it to be twice as wide, and it will lift a similar amount to the second one. To make the PM, partially submerge a loop of rubber, with one side stretched and one side not. I've included a drawing.

Quote:

I arbitrarily chose twice the diameter of the proton as the gate size since any gate larger than that would not be able to allow specific protons to pass without other protons being able to pass through, also.

I really don't see why you need the gate to be so tiny. If atoms naturally got anything like this close, fusion power would be no problem. As I've noted, the human body contains plenty of gated channels that seem to work just fine.

[Edit: You also seem to state that the energy of the particle entering the gate and the energy of the particle in the gate are different. What do you mean by this? PS, sorry about the svg, it's the only format my program would output.]

[Edited on 29-3-2004 by Geomancer]

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Marvin - 1-4-2004 at 19:14

The answer to the first problem is that the surface gives out a different amount of energy when it relaxes than it required to stretch because it is displacing molecules of the liquid from its surface.

The second problem is instantly recognisable as the Maxwells Demon problem, in which a very small demon opens and shuts a small gate to collect fast moving molecules of a gas in order to create a thermal difference from a boltzman distribution of molecules in a gas at a 'constant' temperature. The thought experiment lead to the development of the concept of Entropy.

Ultimatly the answer to the second problem, is that for an active system, however well we build the gate system with its sensor/gate open/close mechanism we cannot make a machine that requires less power than it can produce from the thermal difference. The mathematics for this is based entirly on the 'information' the system requires to work, and the unavoidable power cost of this.

Ramiel - 2-4-2004 at 07:15

Okay, kudos to Marvin and Geomancer.
It is in fact an adaptation of the <html><a href="http://www.maxwellian.demon.co.uk/">maxwelian demon</a></html> problem... (don't ask me what the naked demons are all about, apparently the author was big on them)

Quote:

Posted by Geomancer:
"demonic contraption"

I had a laugh when I saw that.

The answer is pretty obtuse if you ask me. Another reason it won't work is the demon must "see" the particles with photons in the system. And you know what THAT means.

Geomancer - 2-4-2004 at 15:22

Quote:

Originally posted by Ramiel
The answer is pretty obtuse if you ask me. Another reason it won't work is the demon must "see" the particles with photons in the system. And you know what THAT means.

It's pretty simple if you take microscopic reversibility to be axiomatic. Consider making a movie of the demon at work. When running the movie backwards, consider a place where a high energy molecule approaches the gate from the high temperature side. In forward time, this could have arisen in one of two ways: either the particle was originally on the hot side, and bounced off the closed gate, or it was on the cold side, and went through the open gate. In order to retain microscopic reversability, then, the demon (in reverse time) must have a way of distinguising these two conditions. In other words, the forward demon must have a way of remembering every decision it makes.