I've had similar thoughts, but the basic problem is that all of the magnets have to be "falling downhill" in each others' fields for more than a full rotation.
That's the part being hoaxed. It ain't possible, no matter how much "regauging" is done mathematically. Eventually they get to the bottom of that hill. (Same sticking point as the SMOT- remember that one?)
OTOH you have to turn an electron through 720 degrees to get it to rotate "once". That still screws with my mind and now I'm visualizing the dingus in the video with Mobius rotors...
Sorry about that.
Oh, a lot. Getting it back out in usable form is the problem.
No, it would just be a brake that didn't generate heat. Another hint that it's a hoax.
Oh hell yes. However, somebody else would have noticed the effect and marketed it decades ago.
Watching the engineers play with the attract/repel latch gizmo makes me want one. I bet a kid given one would play with it more than a gaming tablet. I think they ought to sell them as "make your kids smarter" toys.
Working on a perpetual motion machine is participating in a fraud. Either the customer knows that perpetual motion is impossible and they would use my work to defraud others, or the customer doesn't know, and working on their project is committing implicit fraud.
So I say no.
I will admit that I did get sucked into one of these, because the customer managed to be secretive enough before the fact that I was already working on bits of it when their plans became obvious. I ended up very carefully and very emphatically explaining to the partner-with- the-money that the partner-with-the-idea was either wrong or a fraudster, and then because I'd signed up to do the work, spent another uncomfortable few weeks getting their circuits to work to spec, until it became obvious to the partner-with-the-money that he was just throwing money down a hole.
The partner-with-the-idea then went out and found a _different_ partner- with-money; at that point I made sure that the partner-with-money understood that (A) I wasn't going to work on the project at all, (B) I deeply regretted being sucked into the thing in the first place, and (C), perpetual motion machines simply do not work.
--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
I'm looking for work -- see my website!
The fun bit is generating the magnetising pulses. Coercive force of NIB is up around 2000 kA/m, and you need ideally about 5 * that for full magnetisation. Thats a serious field to generate in a small space when doing multipole on one surface of a magnet.
We used to do such things on ferrite magnets ( coercive force about 300 kA/m ) using copper strip around 20 * 3 mm shaped into the pattern wanted. And current pulses up in the 20,000 amps range driven through the strip.
Smaller field patterns need thinner copper, and 8 times higher coercive force means currents 8 * higher. Gets interesting.
2-D linear motors are old hat. Our printed circuit layout photo-plotter at Cambridge Instruments in the 1980's was a 2-D linear motor floated (or rath er hung) on an air-bearing, which scanned a tightly focussed light-spot acr oss a flat sheet of photographic film that was vacuum clamped underneath.
When we started shipping out printed circuit board layouts in digital form, that photo-plotter got junked.
Do you mean they *literally* ask you to work on a perpetual motion machine? Free energy or something like that? Or they want to build something that ends up being like that but is not obvious at first look? The former would be a fraud, the latter maybe, maybe not. If they just ask you to do design work, you are under no obligation to analyze their likelihood of success. If you reject them out of hand, you might be selling them short.
I think you did exactly what you should have done. You did what they wanted until you found out what it was, then you explained your thoughts and finished the work.
I know there are people who believe this stuff can be done because they don't know much about science, like the partner-with-the-money guy. But don't they ever consult with someone other than the person with the idea? I know I would. A friend wanted me to invest in a bank once. He assured me it was a great opportunity. I don't know how it turned out but I know I know nothing about investing in banks and I don't know anyone who does.
It's usually some technique that's not obviously perpetual motion at first look.
As far as rejecting things out of hand -- if someone thinks they can generate energy out of nothing, rather than converting some form of energy into some other, more useful form of energy, then they're violating the laws of thermodynamics. At that point it's my job to tell them -- for free -- that it ain't going to work, and to not take their money.
Nope, since when we have a spinning flywheel, even strong magnets on the rim will have little effect on average, other than huge vibration from "cogging." If every magnet was "falling down" as you say, the thing would immediately speed up to dangerous RPM, like releasing a powerful spring.
In other words, the effect in many crackpot videos, if it's not just a hoax, must have a constant-RPM signature, rather than producing a constant-force, and so only delivers a tiny average torque.
Note the result: it would act exactly like there was a hidden motor driving it. (So, when they see the device in operation, everybody just laughs.)
We just need to have one or few magnets getting very slightly weaker, just enough to counter the bearing friction (or a small generator's drag.) They would "fall downward" on average by first falling WAY down, then falling equally far back up. But if each succeeding energy-hill is very, very slightly shorter, the flywheel won't slow down from bearing friction, because the trajectory of the magnets would cause the magnetization of the entire array to slightly reduce, on average.
"Hurricane Balls" toy behaves like that. It spins for an extremely long time because one of the balls has been lifted above the table, and is being lowered very slowly. The balls spin at a constant rate for half a minute, then suddenly brake to a halt. It's a flywheel with an internal source of energy.
No regauging crap. Just slightly demagnetizing one of the magnets by forcing one of the alike-poles too close together, but done at the time that the rest of the rotor is at the
*bottom* of the average energy-hill (when most of the repelling poles have moved far apart.) That's the trick. All the magnets have to push far apart, *then* one of them must somehow weaken.
You can grab a full glass of water and rotate it completely around without letting go, and without spilling. But your arm only returns to the starting position after TWO rotations,
720deg.
A generator is a brake which doesn't generate heat. So is a wind-up motor. When we see such things, we don't yell "obvious hoax," first we assume that it's storing energy. (Then take it apart, and see if it conceals a simple explanation, such as a hidden DC motor and a tiny lithium cell.)
Doubt it. Crackpots are all the same, and every single one will insist that their discovery PROVES EINSTEIN WRONG, rather than actually being caused by progressively-weakening magnets. Someone looking directly at the magnet-weakening phenomenon driving their flywheel, would simply never see it, much less try to develop it into a conventional product. The inventors are self-selected to be unable to go in that direction.
And, any normal person would never take "FE devices" seriously, so never would have a chance to stumble onto a genuine anomaly.
(((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) )))))))))))))))) William J. Beaty
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beaty, chem washington edu Research Engineer billb, amasci com UW Chem Dept, Bagley Hall RM74 x3-6195 Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700
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