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Re: perpetual motion ahoy!



On Thu, 22 May 1997, Doug Craigen wrote:

On Thu, 22 May 1997, William Beaty wrote:


Anyone interested in "PM" machines? A hobbyist in Australia has managed
to make a steel ball roll up a magnet-lined slope, then fall over the edge
and roll away!

Does anyone have opinions on how this could occur without violating
conservation of energy?

I personally take an interest in perpetual motion machines. Assuming this
machine does what is claimed it would be interesting to see the design.
It is not hard to imagine designs that would genuinely accomplish the
claims without violating energy conservation. For example, consider the
following sketch:
N

/|
/ |
/ |
O/t |R

Yes, like this, but with only a few degrees incline, and ceramic magnets
lining the entire slope.

the steel ball O (use mumetal for a better demonstration) rolls up a
gentle slope at small angle t, pulled by the north end of a long magnet.
Before it actually reaches the magnet pole, the slope becomes a dropoff.
The magnetic force which was sufficient to overcome a small vertical
component of weight due to gravity is not strong enough to support the
whole weight of the ball, and it drops to its final resting spot R. All
of this is easily accomplished and there has been a net expense of
mechanical energy which could be converted to useful purposes...

To the non-technical, it may be believed that this has demonstrated a
violation of energy conservation, but that is because they don't realize
that all energy has been kept track of very handily and they will have to
use up all the excess they had gained in order to get the ball back to its
starting position at the bottom of the ramp.

If the magnetic design of the Australian hobbyist is more complex than
this it is just bells and whistles rather than real substance. The thing
that he will have to demonstrate to show that his device violates energy
conservation is not that it rolls away, but that if appropriate tracks or
grooves are put in place to guide it, that it can go rolling back to the
starting position and arrive there with a speed > 0.

I agree that "closed loop" is required. But unless the table is slightly
tilted, the ball cannot roll away to any great distance, especially if
the ball is released somewhere other than at the start of the slope.

More claims: if several magnet-ramps are connected in series, the steel
ball is claimed to traverse all of them without slowing. And now, the big
one: he says he has build a *circle* of many of these ramps, and the steel
ball continued to move for 3.5 days before the continuous vibration moved
one of the magnets and the ball stalled. Now THIS is interesting.

He's got GIFs on a website at
http://members.aol.com/overunity2/html/smot1.htm
and is giving aid and advice to any who want to replicate his device.

The only serious explanations I can come up with are: it's demagnetizing
the magnets somehow, using energy in domain alignments as "fuel." Or it's
extracting energy from some very strange source (direct conversion of
mass? Intercepting the Vacuum Fluctuations?) That, or it violates 2nd
Law of Thermo, or Conservation of Energy!

I'm looking for proper magnets, and several hobbyists are also attempting
replication. We'll see what transpires! ;) At the very least I'll end
up with a very strange toy.

......................uuuu / oo \ uuuu........,.............................
William Beaty voice:206-781-3320 bbs:206-789-0775 cserv:71241,3623
EE/Programmer/Science exhibit designer http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/
Seattle, WA 98117 billb@eskimo.com SCIENCE HOBBYIST web page