Would this work? (zero-gravity perpetual generator)

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: blahblah99
Hafen is right, you cannot create or destroy energy - only convert from one form to another, whether its mass, light, potential, kinetic, or heat. Comon people, don't tell me you forgot Einstein and his E=mc^2 already

If you REALLY want to make money, do some research on how to turn a mass of water into energy

And for the zero-gravity perpetual generator, remember the high school physics law, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. So if you get punched in the face, the nature of physics will predict that you will punch the person back in the face.

So if I was punched in the face, the assailants energy would be transfered to my head. I could then, if by some amazing technique, control my neck to store the energy and use it to 'nut' the perp in the face, returning the energy back through my forehead and into their nose.

Excellent.

 

[iam]

Speaking to a physics teacher the other day...

He seems to think perpetual motion can be achieved if the following happens:

Say an object the size of a grain of sand, with a density so massive that it exerts such a force on the ground, that it ploughs straight through it. Gravity pulls the grain into the centre of the Earth, but the speed of the grain means that once it reaches the centre of the earth, it passes out of the other side. The process then repeats, with the grain being pulled back towards the centre.

I do realise that energy is lost through heat/friction etc. But the teacher said that it is possible that if it's density was just right the energy/forces lost/exerted would be in balance, and the motion would go on forever. He said if it wasn't perpetual than it was very near.

I may be completely wrong

/this is my first post, please be kind

 

[Ipno]

ANY friction, no matter how small, negates perpetualism. It can't just ignore it because of great mass, unless of course the object has infinite mass, which creates a whole other batch of problems.

 

[DynaOne]

ATTN: Forum editor/moderator - I thought the HT forum was supposed to be clearly HT topics. Perpetual Motion??? Free Energy?? re-route to off-topic please

 

[PIMPBOT5000]

Motion always stops due to friction. Our planets rotation is a good example, our planet might eventually stop rotating because of magnetic fields(magnetic friction caused by other magnetic fields "rubbing" our field). Remember, there is no such thing as "zero-gravity"... anything that has mass exerts magnetic force. Of course the smaller the matter the less magnetic force it exerts. Every piece of matter in the universe exerts a magnetic force on the earth. A good example is the difference between a refridgerator magnet vs. a black hole. The farther away from the matter also determines the degree of its magnetic "pull". This is known commonly as gravitational force. This is why we appear weightless in space but not on earth(actually in orbit you dont float, A combination of the height and lesser gravity cause you to fall around the earth).

 

[nater]

Incidentally, if anyone likes Science Fiction books, I would suggest reading More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. It deals a little with the idea of an ant-gravity machine.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: DynaOne
ATTN: Forum editor/moderator - I thought the HT forum was supposed to be clearly HT topics. Perpetual Motion??? Free Energy?? re-route to off-topic please

what the hell are you talking about? you think the average joe would have a clue what these guys are talking about? go away

 

[DynaOne]

Dudeman - no offense, but this line of thought has no serious basis in science - just because it is "out there" doesn't make it "highly technical". There is no sense in leading someone who is unfamiliar with Physics or Thermodynamics down a "dream path". I got frustrated (thus my post yesterday) as what started out as a very cool forum has gradually decreased in "technical" quality - please accept my apology.

I quote (the moderator):
Welcome to the Highly Technical Forum! This is a place to discuss the latest issues and technology in the fields of computer architecture and engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, and other sciences. It is meant as a forum where people who are serious about technology can share ideas and thoughts without concern for product and brand loyalties. We welcome a wide range of technical topics, from "How does a CPU work?" to "Which cache mapping policy offers the best trade-off in terms of hit ratio and access time?"

Questions regarding troubleshooting, technical support, and product advice belong in other appropriate forums such as General Hardware, Networking, Video, etc. They have more traffic and, they are visited by knowledgable, enthusiastic members eager to share good advice and help troubleshoot problems.

Flame wars and personal attacks are strictly forbidden, and off-topic posts are likely to be moved or locked.

Have fun, as you use this forum as a place to learn, teach, and discuss these topics (but don't rely on it to do your homework).

AnandTech Moderator

 

[PIMPBOT5000]

Originally posted by: DynaOne
Dudeman - no offense, but this line of thought has no serious basis in science - just because it is "out there" doesn't make it "highly technical". There is no sense in leading someone who is unfamiliar with Physics or Thermodynamics down a "dream path". I got frustrated (thus my post yesterday) as what started out as a very cool forum has gradually decreased in "technical" quality - please accept my apology.

I quote (the moderator):
Welcome to the Highly Technical Forum! This is a place to discuss the latest issues and technology in the fields of computer architecture and engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, and other sciences. It is meant as a forum where people who are serious about technology can share ideas and thoughts without concern for product and brand loyalties. We welcome a wide range of technical topics, from "How does a CPU work?" to "Which cache mapping policy offers the best trade-off in terms of hit ratio and access time?"

Questions regarding troubleshooting, technical support, and product advice belong in other appropriate forums such as General Hardware, Networking, Video, etc. They have more traffic and, they are visited by knowledgable, enthusiastic members eager to share good advice and help troubleshoot problems.

Flame wars and personal attacks are strictly forbidden, and off-topic posts are likely to be moved or locked.

Have fun, as you use this forum as a place to learn, teach, and discuss these topics (but don't rely on it to do your homework).

AnandTech Moderator

You must really want to be a mod???

If the mods have a problem with it they will move it. I notice it hasn't been moved yet so lay off.

 

[FishTankX]

I think you can create a form of perpetual motion by spinning something in Helium2. Once you get helium2 cold enough doesn't it become a perfect lubricant with 0 friction?

 

[PIMPBOT5000]

Its not possible to have zero friction.

 

[TSDible]

Originally posted by: FishTankX
I think you can create a form of perpetual motion by spinning something in Helium2. Once you get helium2 cold enough doesn't it become a perfect lubricant with 0 friction?

But to expand on what PIMPBOT is saying...

The friction between two objects is dependant on two things really... The force with which the objects are pressed together, and the smoothness of the surface.

In "theory," the only way to have a frictionless surface would be if the surface were "perfectly" smooth. If you are talking about matter, this is a physical impossiblity.

Let us take FishTank's example of Helium. If you think back to your early classroom experiences, you will remember that all mater is made up of atoms. Atoms are basically spheres in their simplest form. The cloud of probablity where you would find an electron orbiting around a Helium nucleus is an S orbital which is esentially a sphere.

As long as you have spheres to construct any surface or object, it will never be perfectly smooth. Since He is so small, you may have a very smooth surface, but not perfectly smooth, and there will still be friction. To see this for yourself, pick any smooth ball, and line them up in a row and look at them from the side. No matter how close you pack them together, there will always be change in the surface.

No matter how much you cool a group of He atoms, they will never be flat.

 

[FishTankX]

Sorry. It seems I was slightly wrong. Helium 3 (thought it was 2, heh.) is zero viscosity. Not zero friction.

But if this were true, couldn't helium 2 flow inside helium2 with 0 friction? This would be a sort of perpetual motion, as long as it had nothing to crash into.

link to my source

 

[TSDible]

Originally posted by: FishTankX
Sorry. It seems I was slightly wrong. Helium 3 (thought it was 2, heh.) is zero viscosity. Not zero friction.

But if this were true, couldn't helium 2 flow inside helium2 with 0 friction? This would be a sort of perpetual motion, as long as it had nothing to crash into.

link to my source

No, the atoms would still bump in to each other, and thus create friction.

 

[f95toli]

You are thinking of Helium-4 (two protons and two neutrons) which becomes a superfluid at 1.7K. He-3 (two protons and one neutron) also becomes superfluid but at a much lower temperature). And yes, the friction in a superfluid is zero.

 

[FishTankX]

F95 toili, if that's true would a Helium4/3 whirlpool sustain itself as long as helium managed to remain at this temperature? Couldn't Helium3/4 flow 'Inside' itself, as long as it was a superfluid, and generate a sort of perpetual motion?

 

[f95toli]

I guess so. However, the problem is that the He4 has to flow inside something, there will still be some friction with respect to for example the walls of the pipe it is flowing in. My guess would be that this would generate some heat that would raise the temperature over the critical temperature unless you were activly cooling the liquid. In reality you of course have to cool the He at all times.
The normal way of cooling He from 4.2 K(when the He becomes a liquid) to 1.7K is to pump on it which means that you are consuming some of the He, in a normal cryostat with say 4 dm^3 He you can only keep the temperature at 1.7K for about 4 hours before you run out of He.

Superfluid He behaves exacly the same way as a superconductor, if you make a superconducting ring and inject some current into it, that current will flow forever (or as long as the superconductor is cooled below Tc) , in Japan they have tried to use rings as big "batteries" to store energy, it is not as strange as it sounds and it is possible that this will be used commercialy.

 

[Era]

Japan they have tried to use rings as big "batteries" to store energy, it is not as strange as it sounds and it is possible that this will be used commercialy.
-------------------------------
Now where does that energy to keep the system cool come from? I see no perpetuality there.

 

[f95toli]

You do not need energy to keep things cool. in fact you only need energy to heat things.
The reason there is no perpetuality here in reality is simply that you can not complely insulate a cryogenic vessel from the enviroment, some heat will always "leak" in. Hence, you still need some cooling power.

If you could put the ring where there is no heatload the current would flow forever.

 

[FishTankX]

The rings, they're merely superconductor rings, right? And they're burried in concrete. The thing about those superconducting rings is that it gets to the point where if you put enough current into it they'll try and tear eachother apart. But it's actually very good. THey built one in America so that they could have smoother transmission between peak demand and normal demand and not loose so much money. It actually worked pretty well.

And when I was talking about the HE4 I was thinking you could have this HE4 blob in space (Held together by it's own gravity (Liquid giant)) then having this current moving around inside it. Out in deep space is 5K all the time so cooling it wouldn't take all that much energy and I bet a whirlpool could go for millenia without stopping. I guess you could call this a 'Super hurricane' as it would never stop and would need no energy to sustain itself.

 

[Era]

FishTankX, how about the heat of the sun and the the other stars and galaxies and the bursts from black holes etc.?
Where will you get that nice enviroment for a perpetual machine?

 

[Shalmanese]

You can't havea system without friction? WRONG!

If that were correct, the universe would have ended around 10^-17s after it was created due to the electrons spiralling into the center of atoms.

He as a superfluid actually acts as ONE single atom rather than a collection of seperate atoms. Thus, it has no internal friction.

As I said before, Perpetual motion isn't actually hard at all, its the MACHINE which makes it impossible.

 

[f95toli]

True, as I wrote in my post above the problem is that the superfluid has to end somewhere and touch the walls of the vessel (cryostat), hence, there will be some friction.

Superfluids have some very strange properties and are really non-Newtonian below the lambda point (2.17K). The Rollin-film phenomena is pretty amazing. The ability to "creep" through very thin cracks is another fun property. Unfortunately, these properties can also be pretty annoying when you just want to use the helium to cool something.

 

[Shalmanese]

Super cool some He3 and shoot it out into space. No friction.

 

[f95toli]

He4 is much better, the lambda-point of He3 is much too low, 2 mK and about the preassure need to be about 20 Bar, it is to warm even in space...