I've had many discussions with a friend of mine about this topic. I have a desire to create a perpetual motion machine [and I pause to allow the laughter to subside]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anyway, I have attempted a few experiments and have yet to achieve my goal [I pause again for more laughter and statements such as, but not only, "Well, duh!"].
I have one final hypothesis to experiment on, and [barring any future insights] should this one fail, I will bow to the god of physics. I'm obviously not going to say what the mechanism will be, but I just need to get some needed parts before starting.
Yeah, I'm sure it won't work, but it fun experimenting on it!
While we're on the topic, has there ever been a PMM constructed? I'm guessing no [Of course, there's the old urban legend of someone creating one, then he 'dissappears' under some sort of "Big Oil Conspiracy"]. Has anyone produced a 'near perpetual motion machine'? Something that appears to have continual motion, by the perception of it's slow rate?
There has never been a true perpetual motion machine constructed, due to those pesky laws of thermodynamics. There has been some claims of other types of machines, which used vacuum energy to seemingly get free energy, so they are called Free Energy Devices. Most famous is Thomas Bearden's MEG thing (motionless electomagnetic generator) and Tesla's black box. As far as I know, the MEG has never been proven conclusively to work, and, as per usual, no-one has been able to reproduce Tesla's invention.
I tried making a perpetual motion machine as a school project once. Although, I never intended it to be really perpetual motion (just perpetual enough to impress the teacher), the capacitors my school had were too crappy, so I made a normal electric motor out of it instead. Got an A for it anyway (well the equivalent of an A, anyway)
"Nippon ichi, bitches! Boing-boing." Mai smote the demonic fires of heck...
So ... what? This thread is just to announce that you're undertaking a fool's errand and to demonstrate that you insist on the overuse of brackets in place of proper parentheses?
Damien Sorresso
"Ever see what them computa bitchez do to numbas? It ain't natural. Numbas ain't supposed to be code, they supposed to quantify shit."
- The Onion
Durandal wrote:So ... what? This thread is just to announce that you're undertaking a fool's errand and to demonstrate that you insist on the overuse of brackets in place of proper parentheses?
Probably. I read this book once covering 500 years of attempts to create one. The closest anyone's gotten would be ones that work on barometric pressure. But they get "recharged" by the environment, so they aren't exactly PPMs. There is one that has run continuously for ~200 years in the UK.
As Black Adder once said, "The fact that this knowledge has escaped the most brilliant minds of the past millenium, does not dissuade you?"
Probably. I read this book once covering 500 years of attempts to create one. The closest anyone's gotten would be ones that work on barometric pressure. But they get "recharged" by the environment, so they aren't exactly PMMs. There is one that has run continuously for ~200 years in the UK.
As Black Adder once said, "The fact that this knowledge has escaped the most brilliant minds of the past millenium, does not dissuade you?"
Yeah, it sure does. . . . . . . . but I'll attempt anyway. It's fun, all the same. I'm quite sure that my attempt will be fruitless, but nevertheless I press on.
How about the question of the Earth. Surely it is slowing in speed of revolution. I wonder how much it has in it's life span?
You can't make a perpetual motion machine because it would require you to get energy from nothing. Basically the way you should think of it is that the universe contains a certain amount of stuff. The amount of stuff doesn't change, only the form of the stuff changes. It's actually a very common-sense principle if you think about it.
The closest thing that you could get to a PPM is something that takes energy from the quantum foam (ZPE) or from some kind of other dimension (like the Culture's hyperspace taps). In both cases though the energy is, of course, still coming from somewhere.
Junghalli wrote:You can't make a perpetual motion machine because it would require you to get energy from nothing.
Leap in logic.
The design could "merely" violate entropy by converting ambient heat into something useful; still impossible, but not, technically, "something from nothing".
AMX wrote:The design could "merely" violate entropy by converting ambient heat into something useful; still impossible, but not, technically, "something from nothing".
I thought a perpetual motion machine meant one that required no power source. If it takes energy from background radiation it still has an external energy source.
BTW doesn't a steam engine turn heat into kinetic energy?
Junghalli wrote:
BTW doesn't a steam engine turn heat into kinetic energy?
I think that a better way of looking at it is that it uses heat to increase pressure, which drives motion.
The heat isn't actually harnessed, it still leaks out through the metal and is lost.
I expect you could come up with an engine that was driven directly by heat, but it would be very inefficient.
As an aside, the OP has another thread where he credits creationtheory.org for brushing away the cobwebs from his eyes where it came to Christianity. Makes me wish that DW had a website for physics kookery as well.
And probably one for Hollow Earthers while we're at it.
Junghalli wrote:I thought a perpetual motion machine meant one that required no power source.
You're thinking of a PMM of the first kind; there's also "second kind", which, put bluntly, has a negative amount of waste heat. It "only" violates the second law of thermodynamics (entropy), not the first (conservation of energy).
You should have a look at the model Lisa Simpson once made to give. Sure, it sucked since it increased in speed but it should give you a few tips to improve the design
Attention SD.net: I would like to announce that I intend to fly, by grabbing my own bootlaces and pulling upwards really hard!
If Religion and Politics were characters on a soap opera, Religion would be the one that goes insane with jealousy over Politics' intimate relationship with Reality, and secretly murder Politics in the night, skin the corpse, and run around its apartment wearing the skin like a cape shouting "My votes now! All votes for me! Wheeee!" -- Lagmonster
Attention SD.net: I would like to announce that I intend to fly, by grabbing my own bootlaces and pulling upwards really hard!
What happened to the tried-and-true method of flapping your arms? Hell, it worked for me for a few seconds, at least. I just gave it up because it makes you look dumb as hell.
Pcm979 wrote:I'm afraid the Physics Police crack down on that sort of thing pretty hard. You could get up to 20 years on a 'No fucking way' charge.
Especially now, when they're still trying to save face from that whole Pons/Fleischmann debacle.
"Stop! No one can survive these deadly rays!"
"These deadly rays will be your death!"
- Thor and Akton, Starcrash
"Before man reaches the moon your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missiles.... We stand on the threshold of rocket mail."
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(well the equivalent of an A, anyway)
Yeah, it sure does. . . . . . . . but I'll attempt anyway. It's fun, all the same. I'm quite sure that my attempt will be fruitless, but nevertheless I press on. 
