David B

Thanks that is a very interesting machine by Wolfgang von Kempelen. hoaxe or not, people probably had allot of fun thinking it for real, kind of like an 18th century video game. But lets look at the possibilities of a programmed clock mechanism. If the peaces of the person had different type of inserts for the pawn or knight that fit into the board, it could give a timed reaction to that design of insert. A great clock makers could have done it in that manner, but I don’t know. So that is what I think and it sounds like a cool idea anyways.

Remember, this was only 50 years before Babbage’s first designs for the Analytical Engine, a mechanical, programmable computer.

Babbage’s Difference engine (#2) has now been built, though it wasn’t at the time for various reasons. Someone has even managed to build one out of Meccano! While a team from MIT built a tic-tac-toe playing computer our of tinkertoy.

So surely the Turk’s magnetic pieces might have lifted steel pawls from brass rods, enabling the pattern of the board to be read, and a series of drums and pegs to calculate the appropriate response? Perhaps this is a mystery waiting only for a talented basher of metal to look at it? Who knows?

David B.

One miracle at a time please.

I should point out at this point that I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t try to build a PMM. It’s your time and you can spend it how you wish. What I’m a little narked about is comments like “it doesn’t break any physical laws” and “the math says it should work”. If you have done the maths right, it should not say anything but that it won’t work. Dynamics is built on the laws of motion, and they say you can’t get more energy out of a falling weight (in a static field) than it took to raise it. I’m also not saying a PMM is absolutely impossible. Physical laws are subject to revision just as much a legal ones, though usually on the basis of better evidence.

But it is clear that if you build a working PMM, particularly of the overbalancing wheel sort, you are breaking the laws of physics, and the normal mathematics of motion will not work for your device; which is, of course, the scientists problem, not yours. This is why saying it should work is like saying if you close your eyes and wish for it real hard, Sarah Michelle Geller will appear in you bedroom wearing nothing but pop-socks and a big smile. Yes, it’s a nice thought (hmm, it’s a very nice thought… *private reverie* ...and I’m back), but I’d like to see some pretty convincing demonstrations before I’ll believe it!

Perhaps worst of all, overbalancing wheels are a dime-a-dozen. There are literally thousands of designs for OBWs out there, and none of them work. Here’s one that took me 1 minute to think up and 5 minutes to draw.
[IMG]http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s308/CrustyBear/Perpetual_4.jpg[/IMG]
That some tiny little tweak here, some extra spring there, is going to convert a piece of amateur kinetic art into the solution to the world’s energy needs is looking more than a little disconfirmed.

If you do ever think you’ve got a perpetual motion machine, here’s a couple of hints.

1) Attach it to an archimedian screw and make it pump water for a month; if it can’t run continuously under load, it ain’t no good.

2) Mount it on a fixed gimbal like an old mill wheel and film it rolling with constant (or increasing) speed in a circle, preferably against an obviously stationary background; rolling in a straight line is easy, it’s called a gradient.

[IMG]http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s308/CrustyBear/Perpetual_5.jpg[/IMG]

Neither of these remarkably simple demonstrations has ever (to my knowledge) been done. Even Bessler’s wheels either ran under load or for a long time, Perhaps he knew their energy source wasn’t quite as perpetual as he made out?

Talking of revisions to the laws of physics, you might want to consider what effect special relativity would play on a device such as my OBW above. If it were rotating very fast, so that the outer rim was moving at, say, 0.5c, then the weights further from the centre would be moving faster than those closer in (their speed being given by ωr, where ω is the angular velocity and is common to all the weights).

SR says the faster you move the more massive you get, hence the actual mass of the weights is greater when they are at the right side of the diagram than at the left, hence they really would be heavier on the way down than on the way up.

Ta-da, free energy!

Greetings David B.

The one you did has been done hundreds if not thousands of time and even 2 versions have been patented as gravity devises. Most of us who do this know that any thing with a stagnant ramp is high friction and can’t work.

You quoted

you can

AB Hammer - 21 January 2008 01:48 AM

The one you did has been done hundreds if not thousands of time and even 2 versions have been patented as gravity devises. Most of us who do this know that any thing with a stagnant ramp is high friction and can’t work.

None of them work, AB.

And friction isn’t a problem if the round bits on the end of the rods are cylinder bearings. Also you’ll note that as the spinning bearing gets closer to the centre, its linear velocity results in a greater angular velocity[*], hence it actually pushes up on the wheel. So rather than being a drag on the wheel, the ramp acts as an extra propulsion.

That is such a limeted view of math.

Yes, it’s limited to being correct. Nice as it is to suddenly decide 1=2 and make your household budget balance, the real world isn’t going to go along with it. And if you perform a path integral of an object in Newtonian motion, moving in a cyclic manner in a static gravitational field, and determine the work done, the answer is 0. Always. Always. Always.

So either Newton’s laws are wrong or calculus is. Funny how they seem to work in just about every other case they’ve ever been applied to? Apart (for Newton’s laws) from the odd relativistic one, natch.

Well it is also true if you can keep weight on the descending side and always shifting to keep it there?

Yes, if you expend energy to do so.

That is the basses of a gravity wheel/motor. No you cant lift up the same amount that is going down at the same time, it will equal out, and that seems to be the only math main steam science uses for some reason on all gravity wheels. How about the math for leverage and shift, these are what you need to look at it, not to mention rotation and centrifugal force.

Incorrect on all counts. Path integrals do not assume the same time, the law of the lever demonstrates conservation of energy, as do the laws for angular motion.

I don’t have time to teach what I know.

I don’t see why. I can’t imagine it will take long.

I’ll say something similar to what Bessler said. If you can lift 1 pound over with a 1/4 pound under in a rotation and repeat you can make a running wheel and keep it over balanced.

Except the laws of physics, specifically that leverage stuff you were just so hot about, say that your 1/4 pound will have to go down (slightly more than) four times as far as your pound went up, and what lifts up the 1/4 pound again so that you can ‘repeat’, the falling pound? Sure, that only has to fall (slightly more than) a quarter as far as the 1/4 pound has to rise, but that gets you nothing. As long as the weight weighs the same going down as it does going up (static gravitational field), there is no work done. Which is why water wheels work and overbalancing ones don’t.

I really like the laws and math of leverage. Once understood you will then see why I say, it does not break the laws of Physic.

You’re right, it doesn’t, which is why these overbalancing wheels always, eventually, come to a stop.

And if you are wondering about my Iq it is only 139. Not great, but not bad either.

And not meaningful, since IQ tests do nothing but measure your ability to do IQ tests.

As the creative writing dictum goes, “Show, don’t tell!” If you can build a perpetual motion machine, do so. Saying it’ll work is easy, and as pointless as claiming to know the formula for flubber.

[* The bearing picks up an angular velocity ω1 from it’s velocity (v) across the ramp such that ω1 = v/r1 where r1 is the radius of the bearing. But v is also given by the speed of the bearing around the wheel, determined by the wheel’s angular velocity (ω2) and radius (r2). I.e. v = ω2.r2.

However, as the bearing moves towards the centre of the wheel, it retains it’s angular velocity due to momentum, but now is only a radius of r3 from the wheel’s centre. This gives an angular velocity of ω3 = v/r3.

So, along the path of the ramp, the angular velocity of the bearing around the wheel changes from ω2 to ω3 = ω2.r2/r3. As r3

ω2 and the bearings act to accelerate the wheel as they move inwards.]

AB Hammer - 21 January 2008 01:48 AM

Most of us who do this know that any thing with a stagnant ramp is high friction and can’t work.

This is a very telling comment. Despite the innumerable ways of reducing friction in the device (I mentioned one), this is advanced as the reason it won’t work. Perhaps that is why PM maniacs (in the nicest possible way) tinker for years at a time on their pet devices. They permanently believe that they are ‘just that little bit of friction’ away from making them work!

(Mind you, if someone ever did eliminate all the friction in a device, then they probably would have created perpetual motion. It’ll still do no work, but it would at least run forever.)

David B.

Let

AB Hammer - 21 January 2008 02:48 PM

You will see soon enough, my best wheel design looks like I can keep 75% of the weight to the descending side according to the math and should have this design built in a couple of weeks.

Excellent. But let’s call it a round month, to give you some time for testing. Be sure to come back and tell us all how well it works before you catch that plane to Stockholm to receive your special one-off Nobel Prize.

Just remember for when it is said it can’t be done, there is someone out there doing it or will do it. Proven over, and over and over again.

XKCD puts it quite well…

(Source: http://www.xkcd.com/373/)

Substitute ‘perpetual motion’ for ‘supernatural powers’, and we’re right smack in your own ‘field of expertise’.

So when is the na-say ever going to stop? Without the people to buck the na-say we would still be in the stone ages.

Actually, most human progress has been made by great men of science and reason. Strangely, Bessler is not among them.

And who’s nay-saying? I’ve already pointed out that no-one’s going to stop you if that’s what you want to do. I’m even ready to admit that it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility to build one. Knock yourself out.

I just wonder if all this talk of “the math” working, and “not breaking the laws of physics” is just a prelude to the usual cash-call. You’ve made a big thing previously about stuff fitting with your experiences, well in my experience an awful lot of cons rely on the big score being just round that next corner, and needing just one more injection of cash. Lead them “down the rabbit hole” and skin ‘em at the bottom. SOP.

As long as perpetual motion is your hobby, fine. But try to make it your business and it becomes everybody’s problem. Of course, when you turn up at the patent office with your working model, that’ll cease to be a concern.

AB Hammer - 21 January 2008 02:48 PM

Let