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Marvin
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[*] posted on 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.
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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...'.
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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.
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[*] posted on 29-10-2003 at 23:26
MEG


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...

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[*] posted on 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]
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[*] posted on 16-11-2003 at 21:38
Some more points of view...


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 :P, 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.




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[*] posted on 16-11-2003 at 21:59
Based on this thread i would like to point an idea of my own.


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.




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[*] posted on 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.
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[*] posted on 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]




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[*] posted on 21-11-2003 at 08:46
Thermodynamics


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.
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[*] posted on 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...?
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[*] posted on 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.




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[*] posted on 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.



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[*] posted on 22-11-2003 at 04:22
entropy


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

Schwartzschild effect? (Sp?)

tztz.....




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[*] posted on 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.



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[*] posted on 25-11-2003 at 20:43
Back to the Meg and other stuff...


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.




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[*] posted on 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.......




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[*] posted on 26-11-2003 at 11:02
Puzzeling.


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.




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[*] posted on 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]




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biggrin.gif posted on 27-11-2003 at 08:54
LOL


"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.......




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[*] posted on 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!
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[*] posted on 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.
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[*] posted on 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.
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[*] posted on 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.
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[*] posted on 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?




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[*] posted on 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]
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Geomancer
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[*] posted on 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]
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