The narrator is actually taking the free energy people seriously... it's kind of sad. So far, I've seen two devices that would actually work; one was something that stores energy from lightning, the other was a big wheel that uses gyroscopic effects to steal rotational energy from the Earth. Hardly "perpetual motion" or "free energy" or whatver idiotic thing there people are trying to get.

God dammit, why can't they understand the laws of thermodynamics? It's not that hard, really.

Also, if I hear them claim to be able to "harness magnetic energy" one more time, I'm going to scream. MAGNETISM IS A FORCE. IT IS NOT AN UNENDING SUPPLY OF ENERGY! Well, I guess the fact that they're all going to die, broke, and broken because they've never achieved their inane "dream" of breaking the second law, is good enough for me. I just wish I could be there to laugh at them for being stupid.

And a force can not be converted into energy?

Where do we get kinetic energy from?

I've built a device that will perform nearly one full turn on an alternator using the repulsive forces of neodymium permant magets. That's not enough to generate electricty...and certainly not a way to sustain it. It's not the use of magnets that's the problem. It's finding "overunity." Rather it be from a Magnetic-Mechanical/Rotational relationship, Back EMF from an Electro-magnetic/Permanant Magnet relationship, etc.

I've got several designs on the table for 'bypassing' overunity. I think that's where everyone else has gone wrong. Some people try to make it over the hump (which I also tried with using duel and tri-cycle configurations), where as I've come up with some designs that temporarily remove the hump by using the rotational motion in the half-cycle to machanically remove the stationary magnet long enough for the rotational maget(s) to complete one full turn at which time a spring is then tripped which causes the stationary maget to return to it's original position and once again using it's repulsive force (plus the spring-kinetic force) to push the rotational magnet(s) on it's next round, which causes the stationary magnet to be temporarily removed once more, and so the cycle continues.

I'll loose some of the rotational energy that would be used to turn the alternator that would generate the energy to working the mechanical action that temporarily removes the stationary magnet, but that's okay. There's enough energy generated in a single-cycle configuration to accomodate that, so a tri-cycle configuration would be more the then enough.

I completely agree, but for some reason people just don't get it. My guess is that entropy confuses the heck out of people, and because its hard to relate entropy to something physical, people have the tendancy to believe it doesn't exist, and its kinda important.

I took Thermo I this last semester and several people asked me about free energy when I told them I was taking it. I've given up trying to explain.

Sweet Jesus you should spend some time away from making up physics and learning how to bloody well punctuate. That's impenetrable for all the wrong reasons.

... jsut go away. everyone here already knows that you are completely inept and intolerably stubborn in the area of physics, and any small credibly you had left was jsut destroyed by that paragraph, which unless you jsut had really, really bad explainatory abilities, explains how you think you can break the laws of thermodynamics by making a device which creates more energy then is put into it.It can't happen. The laws of thermodynamics say the absolute best engine that could ever be created would convert energy completely from energy to work exactly, not create energy out of thin air, and even that is impoosible through the second law of thermodynamics, which say at least some energy is always lost to entropy. it can't work. go home.

Again, unless you're explaination is simply horrible, in which case i suggest you clean it up.

Maybe it's just me being incredibly stupid when it comes to science and such, but I have a hard time laughing at people who try to make perpetual motion devices. It makes me think of all those videos of pre-Wright Bros. airplanes that look so ridiculous and crashed/fell...

A force is a vector; magnetism is a vector field, so they're not entirely the same thing. Magnetism has some similarities with forces, but more with electricity. And magnets, much like an electric power source, eventually wear down in time. It's just often a really, really, long time for high end magnets.

Neodymium magnets are pretty good, but you should also look at Samarium Cobalt. I was working on a project awhile ago with a few SamCo's that were powerful enought taht if you were to put your hand between the N and S and let them come together it would likely crush all the bones in your hand. Fun stuff. You could also mess with people's computer monitors...

But to your main, point. Although I agree there is no such thing as free energy, we can learn how to design systems more efficiently by studying supposed "free energy" concepts.

The difference being that none of those people were trying to defy the laws of thermodynamics. I realise that we live in a culture that values the loud and idiotic more than the scientists and intellectuals, but trust me on this, it isn't going to happen.

The only 'perpetual motion' machines that are even going to function at all are the ones that aren't really perpetual motion machines at all (the ones that are instead ridiculously inefficient solar-powered machines, or similar).



No, no we can't. The only thing these concepts are going to produce are hideously overcomplicated and inefficient machines seeking to exploit gullibility and ignorance to make money.
Real scientists are pretty good at science too, you know.

Mort: I think most people just have a thing for "dreaming the impossible dream" being, you know, human and all...

There is no virtue in clinging stubbornly onto that which has already been proven false a thousand times over, like JFK assassination nuts, flat earth-ists, creationists, moon conspiracy theorists or geocentrists.

I want to create a spaceship made of peanut butter. Let me dream my impossible dream!

Yeah, mort's right. These guys aren't able minded inventors but quacks. It's like the healing by magnets people. Nuts, all of them.

These guys... like, don't exist anymore, right? I hope?

Oh... they do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society

I never meant to imply that they were right, or that such a quality couldn't also be a terrible aspect or "anti-virtue."

"And the perpetual motion machine Lisa constructed just goes faster and faster.
Young lady, in this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

Oooooh good god.

Sometimes, Discovery Channel runs programs that are quite stupid. I hate when they talk about ghosts and the paranormal like if it's some sort of science.

i think this organization has been defunct for a while:

"There is a Web site devoted to the Flat Earth Society, ostensibly owned by "Flat Earth Society, Inc.," though it is clearly a hoax. Its slogan is "Deprogramming the masses since 1547" and various tongue-in-cheek explanations of the flat-Earth position are featured. There is also a page devoted to "current events" with a list of unbelievable, undated items."

- Wiki

Right below what you posted :p

hilarity = in this thread.

It always happens when Captain Beryl makes a forward lunge into pretend physics.

For anyone that may have been interested. Here is a diagram of the first device:


This is a one-cycle configuration without the planned modifications. A duel-cycle configuration with the above diagram only gives nearly a half-turn and a tri-cycle configuration only give nearly a third-turn of rotation. Once the modifications are made to the one-cycle configuration and I run some test, I'll make the same modifications to the duel and tri-cycle configurations.

Mort-Hog, a magnetic motor such as this one would not violate the second law of thermodynamics. This device does not produce "free energy" out of thin air. Instead, it taps into the potential and kinetic energy of the repulsive force of two or more magnets. The devices design enables this by forcing the magnets to do specific work when the repulsive forces are applied. It is not "free" and would not last forever...but it could potentially last for about 2000 years (when the permanent magnet properties wear off).

The term "free-energy" has caused an uproar in the scientific community and to which end they immediately dismiss such claims. They fail to realize that the people calling these devices "free-energy" do not realize that they are mistakenly labeling the device as something it is not. This also applies to "Over-Unity" devices. The term is often misused or used in such away that a slightly different definition applies. In the way I used "Over-Unity" in my previous post, I was referring to over-coming the "Unity" (equal) magnetic forces.

I would appreciate any input or suggestions anyone might have. Rather it is from experience with working with magnets or otherwise.

...

I made one of those in sixth grade for a project, with two neodymium magnets. It didn't work that well.

So, CaptBevvil, where does the energy come from? I'm looking for an answer that doesn't use the word "magnet" in it anywhere.

Actually, magnets can be used to do work. This is evidenced by the loss of magnetism (order) within the magnet.

Unfortunately this work can be expressed in nanowatts, and remagnetizing/remaking the magnet requires an order of magnitude more energy. Making this retarded-as-hell experiment about as efficient as burning wet logs to power a car.

Dam the mississipi river lots o energy there

*runs*

I heard something about things they put in the waves to harness the energy of waves created by the gravitational pull of the moon on the oceans...

And it supposedly powered entire towns in Spain or some such thing.

So... um... yeah.

You make it sound like this crap is taught to ever child in pre-school.

i dont have a clue what it is, sounds hard.

The important and easy part is that you can't make something out of nothing. Easy enough concept.

perpetual motion is one thing, but if you're looking for free energy, there are a lot of ways to get it. Only problem is that they all suck and cost so much to set up that no one's willing to go through the trouble. For example, you can actually gather power from radio waves. But you need like 50 meters of free space to set up antina wire and a $40 kit just to light a light bulb.

[QUOTE=Victor Van Dort]You make it sound like this crap is taught to ever child in pre-school.[/QUOTE]

You may not get any more energy from a system than you put into it.

ENERGY CANNOT BE CREATED NOR DESTROYED

That's not hard to understand if you're past grade school reading level.

Well then it's not free. By definition "free energy" is energy obtained at no expense. The computer used to type this post is being powered by electricity when is drawn from an induced EMF, which is created by something having kinetic energy, which is being powered by exothermic reactions. The electricity made is at the expense of the chemical energy in coal, gas or nuclear energy.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]
ENERGY CANNOT BE CREATED NOR DESTROYED
[/QUOTE]

where did the universe come from?

Apples and Oranges--he's talking about free monetarily, you're talking about created.

The only way you could harness "free" energy is delved DEEP into quantum physics and is subject to much debate.

[QUOTE=Mr. Stafford]where did the universe come from?[/QUOTE]

Something we're trying to figure out right now. :p

As far as theories go, the big bang really isn't TOO bad of a theory, though there's others that trump it I suppose.

[QUOTE=Victor Van Dort]You make it sound like this crap is taught to ever child in pre-school.[/QUOTE]

No, but if you're working with things that involve the laws of thermodynamics (like building any type of machine), you need to understand them.

Anyways, the Mythbusters did a segment on "free energy" machines; one was a crappy solar powered wheel, one was the thing that draws energy out of radio waves (really not that hard to do; just need a bunch of wire and some diodes, hah), and one was this weird arrangement of resistors or something that didn't work at all (obviously).

Yes, you can steal energy from the Earth's rotation, or the orbit of the Moon (which is slowly losing energy anyways), or the sun, or radio waves, or really any number of things. But you will never be able to create energy from nothing. Zero point is beyond the pale. And then there's antimatter... if you could "flip" matter somehow to be antimatter, you could generate an incredible amount of energy from it. Unfortunately we don't know how to do this. But it's still getting energy from somewhere.

And let me reiterate: magnets do not produce energy. It does take energy to set up a magnetic field, and you can get energy from destroying it (the basis of inductors), but a static magnetic field does not require or produce energy. Trying to make a perpetual motion machine by having "inertia overcome magnetic repulsion on part of the cycle" or whatever is as silly as exclaiming that you've discovered perpetual motion by throwing something at a gravitational field and having it miss. Congratulations, you've invented the satellite. [interesting sidenote: Space probes doing a slingshot manoever around a planet actually steal energy from the gravitational field; it changes to kinetic energy that makes the probe go faster. But this won't work forever; eventually the planet runs out of energy to give]

Pre-emptively, I'd also like to say that any entropy-reducing machines won't work either (the kind of thing where they use parabolic reflectors and such to redirect radiant energy so the hot thing gets hotter and the cold thing gets colder) because this would also constitute a free energy machine.

An anti-matter reactor would be, by far, the most efficient form of generator power (to which we know of). When matter and anti-matter collide, they annihilate completely into energy (gamma radiation?). The hard part is creating anti-matter in large quatities, storing it, then finding some way to convert the released energy into electricity. So...basically we have to figure out everything still.

They're called 'tides'..

And yes, renewable energy sources can power entire cities at low expense and no carbon dioxide emissions.



Like... what?...




No, conservation of mass-energy (or rather, conservation of information) still applies in quantum mechanics.

In summary, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. However hard you may look.

(Most people's concept of 'free' energy is taking it from places where the potential supply far outweighs consumption, such as borrowing gravitational sling-shots, harnessing solar power etc. Such things are not 'free' but more like taking teaspoons out of various oceans.)