Originally posted by LordBucket
reply to post by rickyrrr
I am resisting my urge to dismiss the idea entirely
I notice you're replying to my first post. I'll answer your questions, but after some additional thought I'm less certain the idea would work for
reasons described in this followup post. Please forgive my intial
enthusiasm if this proves less than useful. I prefer to keep my mind open to testing new possibilities rather than simply accept truths and "laws"
simply because somebody else said so.
are the cylinders mounted on shafts so that they
can only rotate?
There are many ways it could be built, but here's one possibillity:
Generally speaking, the cylinders need to be able to move towards and away from each other. This is, after all, a
piston. Imagine two cylinders with their flat edges facing each other. Both cylinders are speared
through their center by guiding rods running through them. One is allowed free motion back and forth along the cylinder, the other is allowed to
Posistion 1: Magnets attracting
Posistion 2: Magnets repelling:
Note that the guiding rods are not one solid piece all the way through. One cylinder must be able to rotate, while the other must be mounted so that
left-right motion is unrestricted, but it cannot rotate. In the above, the cylinder of the left rotates, the cylinder on the right moves back and
forth. Since the one on the left only needs to rotate, it can be mounted exclusively by the guiding rod. Since the one on the right doesn't need to
rotate, you can cut a length along its underside and attach it to the frame on something that allows it to slide.
However, the particulars of the physical construction aren't really important. Again, it could be built in any of several ways. For example, you'd
probably want to rotate the entire thing 90 degrees to reduce friction from the guiding rods. The important question to answer is whether overcoming
the repulsion necessary to rotate the cylinder costs more energy than the piston can generate. Which, the more I think about it, the more I think it
how exactly do they attract?
Imagine the "coins" in the video as being a "slice" of the above cylinders. Looking directly on to the flat edge of a cylinder, alternate magnetic
poles every 15 degrees or so. In position 1, the cylinders are rotated such that every south is next to a north in the other cylinder. In position 2,
the cylinders are rotated such that matching poles are in line.
When you rotate one cylinder, the two cylinders will alternately attract and repell one another.
I am not sure how they will make it past 360 degrees.
Same way the wheels on your car do?
If energy cost of rotating one cylinder is less than what you can generate from the back and forth motion of the other cylinder, you have a free
energy machine. If it isn't, you have a linear actuator.
It appears like what you are describing is equivalent to a cam and a cam follower. So in that sense, I guess it is a legitimate application for those
magnets (with its own limitations and advantages) less friction due to lack of contact and less accuracy due to lack of rigid connection. But I did
not see any part where this would produce free energy.
When I questioned the device's ability to make a full cycle I don't think that I meant ability to rotate 360 unrestricted, but ability to rotate 360
while producing a net energy output. so it's not exactly like the car wheels because they rotate at a net energy *expense*.
When dealing with potential fields (such as gravity and magnets) and ignoring relativistic effects, basically you have the ability to convert kinetic
to potential energy, and vice versa. No configuration of magnets, even with the ability to program them like this can result in a field whereby one
can find a cyclical path that would result in a net production of energy.
For free energy to result from potential fields, what would be needed is a discontinuous field, literally having an object attracted to a magnet, and
repelled after moving it *losslessly* at 90 degrees with respect to the vector of attraction. Such a contraption could be, for instance, a perfectly
defined antigravity zone, where if you put a vertical wheel straddling its edge, the side that is directly over the antigravity zone is more
lightweight than the side that is directly over the normal zone, and a torque would cause the wheel to rotate. But because discontinuous fields have
never been found thus far (and even if antigravity were discovered and harnessed, there is nothing to indicate that a discontinous field would be the
outcome, so there is no indication that they might be found in the future) by its very definition, any lossless path at 90 degrees with the vector of
attraction cannot exist if that vector is changing its direction, because then it is not at 90 degrees and is not lossless. So the mere fact that a
field has continuity in space will kill any free energy mechanical device attempting to exploit the potential field.
I am sure that somebody with a better math background can explain it better and in a way that is much harder to understand, but this is my basic
Now, I can't really say anything about what would happen outside the realm of what is known, say, at relativistic speeds, or under the influence o
something yet to be discovered. I know that in relativity there are provisions for conservation of energy.
In short, I can pretty much guarantee that free energy is not hiding inside a machine that arranges in complex ways energy conserving elements,
because any combination of energy conserving elements will produce a more complicated energy conserving device. Potential fields fit in this category,
whether they are gravity, electrostatic, hydrostatic (gravity really), inertia, inductance, charge, magnetic, momentum, and so on.
In my opinion, free energy, if and when discovered, will be literally a thing that produces energy from nowhere or from ambient heat, no less,
probably due to a quantum effect or some yet to be discovered nuclear effect.