Re: toroidal perpetual motion machine

["Hans G. Ammitzboll" <physics@MINDLESS.COM>]

My two cent attempt-

    According to your original post, you state that;

1) "The rubber pulls up on the water, and by the same token the water in the
meniscus pulls down on the rubber."

You also go on to state that

2) "...the length of the meniscus on the outside of the toroid is longer than
the length of the meniscus on the inside.  But the height of the meniscus is
the same everywhere, to a more-than-sufficient approximation."

You then base you perpetual motion device on the following;

3)  "So there's more total force on the outside."

Is this your mis-direction?  Kind of like the hidden division by zero in the
"proof" that 1+1=3 ?

Statement 3, claims an imbalance of force due to a longer meniscus on the
outside pulling down on the rubber (statement 2), however, the first half of
statement 1 clearly points out that the rubber must pull UP on the water to
form the meniscus.  Therefore, there is a longer section of rubber on the
outside pulling up on the water then there is on the inside.  Yet one more
unbalance set of forces.  However, it should be clear by now that when the
upward forces of the rubber on the water are compared to the downward forces of
the water on the rubber, all forces will balance out.  The result would be
that, regardless of viscosity, material of the toroid, or any other factor not
involving some external energy source, this setup will NEVER produce any sort
vortex rotation, much less perpetual motion (that is after initial microscopic
oscillations induced during the placement of the toroid die out).

This is the way I see it, but I could be wrong.  Am I?  I hope I didn't ramble
to much.  I tend to do that.

Thanks :-)


John Denker wrote:

> Off-list the question was asked:
>
> > It seems to me the height of the meniscus is not equal inside
> > and outside because of the positive and negative curvature.
> >
> > Is this the hand you have sleighted?
>
> Nope.
>
> Let's see if we can be scientific about this.  A scientific theory should
> be specific and testable, indeed falsifiable.  Let's see if we can quantify
> the foregoing suggestion, to make it more testable.  The first step is to
> write down a definite functional form indicating how the meniscus depends
> on curvature.  Then test the hypothesis.  There are two possibilities:
>
> A) Hypothesize that the meniscus-height is directly proportional to
> curvature, i.e. inversely proportional to radius.  This must be rejected,
> because it predicts zero meniscus for a long uncurved cylindrical tube,
> contrary to everyday observations.
>
> B) Hypothesize some other functional form.  This must be rejected because
> it doesn't have the right scaling properties when you consider a family of
> inner-tubes with various outer and inner radii.

--
Hans G. Ammitzboll              hammitzboll@graphnet.com
Sales Executive                      hansa@graphnet.com
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