BYO Free Energy Gravity Wheel Machine

[Xiaou2]

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ISTNVTVQ

Chas Campbell has made a video showing his Gravity Engine machine.

 Its 127 megs, but IMOP, well worth the weight. (pun intended )

 While you can clearly see it work, there are some flaws where
the balls fly off the tracks and needs some tweaking.   The
principle however, is pure GENIUS!

 Its also pretty artistic.

 Amazing!   

[Samstag]

It's about damn time someone finally made a free energy machine that isn't a fraud.[/sarcasm]

"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

 - Homer J. Simpson

[RayB]

There have been MANY designs like this, throughout the last couple centuries and they all have flaws or inaccuracies that make them impractical for actual energy production. And it's not "free energy" unless it outputs more energy than it requires to operate.

He's using gravity. Others have tried using magnets.


Other recent "free energy" machines:

Orbo:
http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/
http://www.steorn.com/orbo/
http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/04/steorns-orbo-free-energy-machine-demonstrated-tomorrow/
When they tried to demo the Orbo in July, it failed to work and they cited heat from the lamps as the blame. If a machine like this is so sensitive to heat, it's not going to meet any practical energy production applications.

Joseph Newman's Energy Machine:
http://www.josephnewman.com/
This guy's theory of gyroscopic particles is interesting, and he himself is entertaining in a strange way, but everything else about him and his work is fishy. He won't allow anyone to see how his machine works; He punched out a "critic" at a public demonstration; He's gone on and on about the role of god in this (the machine is his gift from god, god told him, blah blah blah). To me it looks like a finely balance device that has low enough friction to keep spinning for a long time (but not perpetually).

[RayB]

PS: The guy spends WAY too much time explaining what is essentially simple grade 7 science.

[Hoopz]

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=62961.0

 

[billf]

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=62961.0

 

I knew I remember a previous thread regarding this.  Also, check out the second reply in this thread and the one HooPZ linked to.   

[Hoopz]

I knew I remember a previous thread regarding this.  Also, check out the second reply in this thread and the one HooPZ linked to.   

So... we have some thread stalkers??    
Thought that was just CheffoJeffo with the Tommy quotes...   

[SavannahLion]

I couldn't bear to watch more than five minutes before I started skipping through the video. I know the math is hokey, but at 2AM I can't do it myself.

But I'll say this with certainty.

Even if a PMM is possible, the machine is so poorly designed, it would be a miracle in and of itself that it would even function, much less generate any electricity at all.

The ---smurfing--- balls keep falling out because he hasn't designed anything into the system to be self correcting. Why are the cups lacking lips on their bottoms? Why does the mechanism allow two balls to enter a cup and not capture it at top? Why the ---fudgesicle--- is he using billiard balls What's with the grinding ball bearings (noise == vibration == inefficiency != lots of energy)? PVC pipe sleeves on the arms? Wood spacers (did he at least remember to weigh each piece)? Did he even think to balance the wheel?

I think God must be laughing.

[danny_galaga]

I couldn't bear to watch more than five minutes before I started skipping through the video. I know the math is hokey, but at 2AM I can't do it myself.

But I'll say this with certainty.

Even if a PMM is possible, the machine is so poorly designed, it would be a miracle in and of itself that it would even function, much less generate any electricity at all.

The ---smurfing--- balls keep falling out because he hasn't designed anything into the system to be self correcting. Why are the cups lacking lips on their bottoms? Why does the mechanism allow two balls to enter a cup and not capture it at top? Why the ---fudgesicle--- is he using billiard balls What's with the grinding ball bearings (noise == vibration == inefficiency != lots of energy)? PVC pipe sleeves on the arms? Wood spacers (did he at least remember to weigh each piece)? Did he even think to balance the wheel?

I think God must be laughing.

youve sold me on having a look! i normally wouldnt bother with this crap connection ive got. but it sounds like a good laugh 

edit: changed my mind. this megasupervideothingo doesnt work straight away so i lost interest...

[patrickl]

Wow that is pathetic 

[jbox]

I don't think you've got the joke yet. The guy says it himself outright:

4:48 - "You can't build something like this and expect it to work."

                                                

[patrickl]

       

BTW I do like a game of pool, but I think his rotating pool table has some issues.

[RayB]

Well the main point the old man makes IS interesting, and that's the part he sums up on the whiteboard. By taking the balls back up closer to the center of the wheel, there is always more weight on the outer opposite side to keep the wheel going.  ...

[ChadTower]

Which I'm sure would work fairly well in a frictionless environment.

[shardian]

I'm not even going to get into debate here, but I'll say this: It sure is easy to prove perpetual motion when you avoid a few physics rules, and use mashed math.

Technically in a perfect environment you could make a perfect system that could go on forever without additional input. However, you could never extract any work from such a device, rendering it useless.

I recommend that everyone go ahead and read this:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion_machine
before doing anymore half-brained debating.

[SavannahLion]

Well the main point the old man makes IS interesting, and that's the part he sums up on the whiteboard. By taking the balls back up closer to the center of the wheel, there is always more weight on the outer opposite side to keep the wheel going.  ...

That had me stumped for a little while too. Even if you remove all other sources of energy loss, such as friction, intuitively, I know it can't work the way he describes it, I just couldn't pick out what.

Then it dawned on me. The distance he needs to pull up the balls near to the center is farther than the distance to drop away from the center. It really needs diagrams to prove the point, but I'll try my best with words. Truly accurate math involve circular functions, which happen to be one of my weaker math fields. If I can figure this out without doing the necessary math, what's that to say about his intelligence?

To make the point as succinct as possible, take a pencil or ruler or some other appropriately long narrow object (a penis won't work) and figure out the physical center (not balanced center) and seesaw it back and forth around this center. Note the distance each end travels. as you seesaw the pencil.

Now move the "center point" to about three quarters of the way to either side. Now seesaw it back and forth around this center and note the distance each end moves.

That's the problem with his logic. If we assume a ratio of 2:1, at least two balls have to travel down the far side of the wheel in order to carry up one ball on the near side the required distance. (His ratio isn't exactly 2:1. It's probably more like 1.2:1.) This is exactly why two balls sometimes gets trapped in the same cup on the lifting side. Even if he figures out the exact number of cups on both the inner and outer part of the wheel and their exact positioning to always ensure one ball per cup, he can't get away from the fact that it requires more balls going down to bring up a ball the same distance. Eventually, he'll run out of balls.

[ChadTower]

Please, please, please stop talking about this guy's balls in such detail.

kthx.

[Ed_McCarron]

Which I'm sure would work fairly well in a frictionless environment.

Not sure whether to make a joke about physics class or Jenna Jameson.  Both had frictionless environments.

[ChadTower]

When in doubt move towards Jenna Jameson.  There is light at the end of her tunnel.

[SavannahLion]

Please, please, please stop talking about this guy's balls in such detail.

kthx.

Trust me, I tried really hard not to think about his balls while writing that.

[ChadTower]

He has teabagged your consciousness.

Deep.

[SavannahLion]

He has teabagged your consciousness.

Deep.

[patrickl]

There is actually energy in the system when it starts with all the balls on top.

[boykster]

Did any of you crackpots that think this could work (Xiaou) take physics?

[ahofle]

Did any of you crackpots that think this could work (Xiaou) take physics?

You'll need to take it again now that the laws of thermodynamics are obsolete.

[Ed_McCarron]

Did any of you crackpots that think this could work (Xiaou) take physics?

You can't fight entropy.  Somehow, this still won't convice my boss a neat desk is wrong...

[patrickl]

Did any of you crackpots that think this could work (Xiaou) take physics?

No, but it's fun trying to figure out why Xiao keeps bugging us with this "wheel with the pool balls falling out".

[jbox]

Actually, the sad irony is that the wheel runs *longer* as the balls fall out, not in spite of it. I think this guy has started it running, seen it running for such a long time with all these balls falling out, and thus concluded "Hey, if I could stop the balls from falling out then the wheel would run for ever!!!".

Going Down: Ball -> Wheel
Going Up: Wheel -> Ball

The system he is talking about wont work even if it were frictionless because whenever you move the ball into a different section you either need a slope or a wedge. The slope takes a little bit of gravity to get you rolling sideways, the wedge steals a bit of your angular momentum instead. But when the ball rolls back into the wheel the energy in its horizontal velocity isn't being properly captured (because the ball gets stopped at the gate), and thus that wastes a little bit of energy through each cycle.

In the attached diagram the little red bits are energy used to move the ball between sections that he hasn't re-captured somehow, and thus the system is losing energy before you even consider friction.

[jbox]

Almost forgot...

[SavannahLion]

Did any of you crackpots that think this could work (Xiaou) take physics?

No, but it's fun trying to figure out why Xiao keeps bugging us with this "wheel with the pool balls falling out".

Because it'll ensure he never looses his high scores again.

[boykster]

Did any of you crackpots that think this could work (Xiaou) take physics?

No, but it's fun trying to figure out why Xiao keeps bugging us with this "wheel with the pool balls falling out".

Because it'll ensure he never looses his high scores again.

Shrewd....

[danny_galaga]

Which I'm sure would work fairly well in a frictionless environment.

actually, when anyone 'seriously' considers someones perpetual motion contraption, they generously allow for an imaginary frictionless environment. this is because all these ideas are flawed anyway and wouldnt work even with zero friction. but it gives the crackpots a fighting chance (",)

as shardian pointed out, there could be a circumstance where MOTION is perpetual but the moment you try and extract energy from it it isn't perpetual anymore. electrons form a 'cloud' spinning around a nucleus perpetually for instance, but you can't 'take' anything from it without either losing energy (creating a photon for instance) or using energy to do something with it anyway...

[RayB]

Savannah pointed out the flaw in the system rather well. You'd eventually run out of balls on the fall side and have a backlog of them down on the pick-up side.

'nuff said!

[boykster]

Frankly, all these model systems do for me is re-confirm conservation of energy......

[ChadTower]

...to ensure that you never run out of balls.

[danny_galaga]

...to ensure that you never run out of balls.