good, whatever floats your boat.

the real question is... what changes are you going to make to improve your design?
a perpetual motion machine is a physical impossibility, but that shouldn't stop you from experimenting. like I said, you can make it all look good on paper, do all the calculations, go over all the theory, etc....but it means nothing if you don't experiment.

here's a famous man who had a similar vision, and designed a model to fit the theory.
http://www.rexresearch.com/johnson/1johnson.htm

PM machines are a waste of time. Actually, my interest in this REALLY was to figure out WHY it was a waste of time--it took me a week to see it.

My interest now (if I were to try to investigate it) would involve capillary tubes. Simply, if you could get water to come OUT of a capillary tube at the top, you could allow it to drip down--and there would be your PM machine.

Of course, it doesn't work because the force of ADHESION is GREATER than the force of GRAVITY (which is why the water can rise up the capillary in the first place, and why it won't simply drip out the other end on its own). But whose to say one couldn't apply a SECOND STATIC force (or type of force) after a curve at the top which would FORCE the water to pull out into a droplet, where it could then fall. As long as all forces involved were STATIC, then this would indeed be a PM device...


BTW: So called "Magnet motors" are a pure farce. One doesn't NEED to examine them to easily see that they can't work: The forces involved simply have to come out to zero (in the "idealized" case). What had messed me up for my example is that I didn't RECOGNIZE the presence of the unusual air pressure force--it's a bit counter-intuitive.

You can't do anything with magnets alone: when you USE the force provided by the magnet you must then use an EQUAL FORCE to move the object AWAY from the magnet--there's no possible way to "beat that." People who try to use magnets just seem to not "get that."

i've actually worked with capillary tubes (in capillary electrophoresis).
at the micro level, there are other forces (at the quantum level) at work; it's not
just electrotatic and shearing forces.
PM is just wishful thinking.

It's also interesting to consider whether you could do the buoyancy thing with a capillary tube. Could a REALLY TINY piece of styrofoam float from the bottom to the top of a filled capillary tube?

I do know that solutes in water can move with the water up a capillary. I THINK that "macromolecular" fragments can move up a capillary tube. I'm curious to know where the cutoff is.

If a tiny buoyant object COULD move up it, then you could easily have a PM: the object moves up, you take it out the top and drop it, and do it all over again. The fact that the top of the capillary tube can be open removes all the problems with the water tube previously discussed.

Hmmm. Still, I think the basic principle of "capillary action" can be understood from purely electrostatic forces.

In principle, simple gel electrophoresis (even paper chromatography) depends upon capillary action. I say this because, as a biologist, "running gels" is (was in my case) an everyday affair.

you can think that all you want. until you repeatedly run it and observe/take measurements, you don't know.

2 um and 5 um i.d. glass capillaries exhibit different behavior with BGE than >100 um i.d. capillaries, besides the typical elecrophoretic/electrosomotic behavior.
performing electrophoresis through a glass capillary is a LOT different than running it
through an agarose or polyacrylamide gel.

I won't claim to know anything useful about quantum mechanics. But I was under the impression that it was generally agreed that there are no quantum effects seen in the macro world (except perhaps in their effects through semiconductors).

Do you have a reference discussing quantum effects in capillary tubes?

it's called the Casimir effect (quantum vacuum), and it alters electrostatic forces.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007SPIE.6800E...9V
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
http://www.nature.com/np...?WT.ec_id=NPHOTON-201104

Very interesting! Wikipedia has a good article on the Casimir Effect. Still, they say there the effect is meaningful only at the sub-micron level. But with 2 micron tubes you're getting close!

well, it's a dominating force at sub-micron levels,
but it still noticeably alters electrostatic forces at the low micron regime.
commonly observed phenomenon in microfluidics

Here's a documentary showing several perpetual motion machines & overunity motors; they all work.
Seems like the current laws of physics desparately need to be updated.
http://www.youtube.com/w...bedded&v=c6UgV3gVmd0
Enjoy!

That is...an unrealistic idea. You have to realize that, if it were really TRUE, the science world would be turned UPSIDE DOWN--thus anyone who really HAD such a device would surely want to make it known, so he could take his rightful place as the greatest inventor in history

That said, I've seen videos of the first device shown in the video, and apparently it's pretty cool. I THINK that it's accepted that it's not an outright FRAUD, but, of course, it's NOT perpetual motion. Supposedly, it seems to "run down" every few months, and has to be restarted (but the source of even that kind of information is necessarily questionable).

OTOH, net gain fusion starts to look more and more possible every day--and if/when that's achieved, everything changes. Here's an optimistic article that I just happened on today. One quote I like from it is that China plans to train 2000 scientists to specialize in fusion research. There are a lot of people who are working very enthusiastically on hot fusion--and it's absolutely not science fiction.

I was kinda playing with an old bicycle wheel I had lying around. It inspired me to build a simple magnet driven, energy-generator.

If I were to cut out a series of rectangular, styrofoam blocks and cut those in half diagonally, I'd get a series of
styrofoam triangles with 1 flat side. These could be fixed on the edges of the wheel, one after another, to form a sort of jagged
ring of styrofoam on the wheel. On the tilted plane of each styrofoam "triangle" a magnet should be fixed with the + side facing outwards.

A second jagged, styrofoam ring should be placed right under it, but fixed to a heavy, metal bottom plate. It should be heavy enough
to secure the machine and prevent the torque from moving the whole machine around.
The magnets on this ring should have the + side face outwards aswell.
The axis of the wheel should be welded stuck to the wheel and the axis should run through a shaft that goes through a round, metal plate.
The static ringd should also be attatched to this bottom plate. Perhaps some oiled, ballbearings could reduce much of the friction/resistance.

This axis should be connected to a Dynamo below the metal bottom plate, so that torque will generate electricity.
The magnets on both rings, constantly deflecting eachother, should keep the wheel spinning. With good bearings resistance may be overcome.

I think I will make a Diagram in paint and post it here as a visual aid. I don't see why this horizontal, magnet powered wheel won't keep spinning forever.
I know. It sounds far too simple to work. That's why I'm gunna give it a try and see what happens.

Here's the idea:
Whataya people say?

Well...I congratulate you for trying. But such things never work, unfortunately--always because the designers don't see that it takes at least EQUAL force to position the elements into the place where the apparatus will APPLY a force, to produce the motion. Thus, such devices get "stuck" as soon as they're started.

I'm feeling bad to think that I started you on this sort of a quest. Some people become INSANELY COMPULSIVE trying to invent "perpetual motion."

IMO, to make it interesting to discuss, one has to find a new "slant" that hasn't been thought of. Magnets (and varieties of magnetic damping) are a favorite of the obsessed. You just have to realize that there's no way to GET a force moving unless you APPLY a force equally. Initially, that didn't seem obviously true with the "buoyancy" ideas (and I still have some unanswered questions about it--I've even asked a physicist for some clarification, and have gotten only "moderate" satisfaction from the answers).

I do get obsessed with things. With Culture, History, Mechanics, Engineering, Flight..etc
But I have learned not to get lost in it anymore. I can see how it can drive a man insane, but my obsessions are sane and controlled.

I now have a new idea bubbling, combining the magnetic wheel idea with the boyant-object-in-pipe idea.
I will keep bubbling up new ideas as a creative passtime, with a potentially glorious outcome, not as a compulsive obsession.
It doesn't hurt to get a little lost in ideas. Getting a little obsessed might just be mandatory for breaking through into a truely creative space.
And who knows what might come out.

This buoyant force sending an object upward in a waterlogged pipe filled with water is magnificent.
The inexhaustable power of magnets to attract or repel eachother is also magnificent. I'll start sketching and see how
I can combine the 2. For now a vertical wheel comes to mind, with the water-filled tubes and magnets to make
the weight of the side of the wheel that's comming down allways a bit heavier than the side that's moving up.

Don't worry about my sanity. I'll keep stirring up ideas playfully and not Too compulsively.

I always used to think about this, and the only thing I could relate it to was existance/the cosmos or whatever you want to call it itself..what was the origional force applied that started what we call in our terms "everything"?..does that question even make sense?..and if so, is there a way sometime in the future for us to figure out how to harness that same force?

I remember Richard Hoagland once talking about perpetual energy devices possibly drawing energy into our dimension from another dimension..in that case it is not truely perpetual energy I guess, since the origional force was drawn from an outside source..

I always come back to the question of what that origional force behind everything that exists is. I feel like infinity makes absolutily no sense at all..but neither does the concept of a finite reality. The only way either of them make any sense is within a certain context, where we assume that the reality we see that appears to be composed of finite cycles is an adequate model for the cosmos.

I guess the real question is is the cosmos itself in perpetual motion? If not, than is the entire cosmos as we would define it simply a finite system that is a product of a larger system? If so, than that larger system would have to be taken into account in our definition of the cosmos and we are again back to that question. If not, than how does a finite system arise out of nowhere without any outside force to kickstart the whole thing?

Sounds good. But it would pay you to "get lost a little bit" in thought over the observation that you CAN'T get repetitive work from static forces (like magnets or gravity). You can get work "once," from your object starting out at high potential energy. But then you have to MOVE your object BACK to a place a high potential energy to get more work--and that will cost you all the work you got the first time. I liked the buoyancy idea because (it seemed) you could get work in BOTH directions (i.e., in a sense, potential energy was "high" at BOTH ends of the tube).

BTW, I still do think this is true--especially when you consider using a CAPILLARY TUBE in place of the closed ended tube discussed above. First, a capillary tube can lift water MUCH higher than an air pressure tube: about 100 meters vs 10 meters. And second, it's not necessary to have the top end of the capillary tube CLOSED. And it's for that reason that I have a suspicion that a tiny buoyant object (capillary tubes MUST be narrow to work) wouldn't float up to the top of a capillary tube--although a physicist I asked about this said it would...I think he may be wrong.

If you like to play with such things, why not get a capillary tube (for pennies), and some styrofoam "dust" and see what you can do. I would probably have the bottom of the tube in a bowl of water, let the tube fill, then push a dust particle down and into the bottom of the tube, and see if it will rise, and indeed practically "pop" out the top. If that really happened, as simply as that, I'm pretty damn sure that you would be "generating" net energy: buoyant force X height of tube + gravitational force X height of tube (when you drop it) - buoyant force X tiny distance to push underwater to get dust into tube.

Sorry. I don't understand how Magnetism is a static force. I see there are a number of things working against it,
but I also see enough problems with the buoyant object in tube-idea. I don't know which are easier to overcome.


Do you mean Copper capillary tubes? And why should these lift water so much more effective than other tubes?
How will the motion of the upfloating styrofoam transfer into generating electricity?
How will you take out the styrofoam at the top, without depressurising the tube allowing all water to spill out the bottom end?
Maybe a valve ontop? But then what force would turn the valve open & closed?
How will the styrofoam be brought back down so it can restart the cycle?

You could turn the tube upside down, like an hourglass, so the ball floats up again. But turning it would require energy.
Maybe for these energy requirements we could make use of magnets?

I have really enjoyed browsing this thread, and kudos to those experimenting with the idea.

Hope there is no objection to my rambling on a bit. I am not a physicist though I could play one on tv.


I think the fundamental problem with PM is that in order to achieve it, the creation would either have to

1- operate completely isolated from the outside world. By this I mean there would have to be no way for energy or even information to leave or enter the PM system. Any cross-over from the PM system into the rest of the world (including the ability to observe the system!) would result in a loss of some bit of energy.

Any uncontrolled cross-over of energy from the rest of the world into the PM would have a randomizing affect, which would eventually subvert the system and make it less efficient (like gently poking a large spinning top from random directions).

Even if successful, and the object were completely isolated (and black holes are not even completely isolated) from the rest of us, it would be rendered impossible to know if the PM even existed any more.

or

2- somehow utilize the random bits of energy entering the system to compensate for the energy/information loss of the system. The disorganized 'noise' would have to be tapped as a reliable energy source. Unfortunately, this would violate entropy, which IMHO is the most fundamental principal of the universe.


I do think striving for maximal efficiency is very worthwhile (we waste sooo much energy), and the Holy Grail of PM certainly does focus the mind.