Talk:Perpetual motion/Archive 4

This is an archive of past discussions about Perpetual motion. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Cannot only? Closed cycle ... in a region of constant temperature?

The following sentence at the end of the first paragraph of Basic principles seems unnecessarily awkward. However, I'm not clear what is being said so I dare not touch it.

"As a special case of this, any machine operating in a closed cycle cannot only transform thermal energy to work in a region of constant temperature."

Please explain this so I can reword it or just edit it so I can understand it. Thanks. Joja lozzo 02:50, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

You can't put a machine in a room which is all at one even temperature "(a region of constant temperature"), switch the machine on, and have it cool the room down by it taking the heat of the room to generate electricity or do some other kind of mechanical work. (Well OK, a machine could do it for a while, if it had ice inside for example, but eventually it would run out and stop, because that's not a "closed cycle").- Wolfkeeper 05:02, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

More like "because the machine is part of the room and the ice inside it violates the condition that the room is a region of constant temperature", I think. Jeh (talk) 05:33, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

The original wording seems more to mean that the machine can't use the heat to do work. It's the same issue as Wolfkeeper mentions (executive summary: need a temp difference and have heat flow to a cold sink), but focused on the work output rather than the cooling effect. That directly attacks a common PE claim: everyone knows heat can be used to do stuff (steam engines, thermoelectric effects, etc.), so just put some sort of device in a hot place and extract that energy from it (period, without sending that heat energy somewhere as part of the process). It's also true that you can't cool a hot object without either a cold-sink (to dump the energy) or an energy input (to overcome normal heat flow), but I don't think that's as common a PE-related concern. DMacks (talk) 05:49, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

What does it mean for a machine to operate in a closed cycle? Please give me an example. Joja lozzo 15:00, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

See Closed system.Kmarinas86 ^(6sin8karma) 23:03, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I know what a closed system is but a "machine operating in a closed cycle" is new terminology. Are you saying a closed cycle is the same as a closed system? If so, why introduce new terms? If this is just really crappy writing(as I believe) then please fix it rather than explain it. Joja lozzo 01:23, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

1) Yes. See Closed cycle. 2) I have no idea.Kmarinas86 ^(6sin8karma) 11:43, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Since it seems clear that no one else can explain that sentence, I'll remove it. Really, this article needs a major overhaul. These piecemeal efforts of mine are pretty futile. Joja lozzo 15:32, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Classification of PM

The classification section appears to be someone's original research. Are there notable sources that were referenced in that section?

In at least one case, the classification appears to be incorrect: as I understand it, "free energy" folks believe there is a way to access undiscovered sources of energy in the universe (cold fusion?), not "energy from nothing". If this is so, then free energy is not a challenge to the first law, it's simply Wishful thinking. Joja lozzo 03:43, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I think you are mixing in a different meaning of "free energy entirely". Those looking for ways to tap actual potential energy sources (low-cost fuel, just don't have the ability to do it cheaply or practically now--H/H fusion starting with water) are dreamers and wishful thinkers and sci-fi writers and physicists and engineers. That's not perpetual motion though. There are alternative-energy articles, but that's not the topic here. Here we're talking about those looking to violate laws of physics (essentially lost-cost because there isn't a fuel). Really free, not just trivially cheap. DMacks (talk) 16:01, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

One of the footnote refs linked in that section specifically says "perpetual motion machine of the third kind", so there is some sort of first/second/third-kind classification. The ref itself got broken long ago, I'll fix it momentarily. DMacks (talk) 16:07, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I am not talking about alternative energy. Free energy folks work with tesla coils and talk about the zero point. Free energy machine are designed to access sources of energy that physicists don't know about, "yet". That's wishful thinking, not alternative energy. Joja lozzo 16:15, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

"Cold fusion isn't perpetual motion" is my point here. Converting H+H -> He looks like a one-way street that releases energy. It might be impossible to harness it, but it's still thermodynamically available. DMacks (talk) 16:36, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

You are making my point for me. Cold fusion is thermodynamically possible but I consider it to be an over-unity, "free energy" device in it's present state since it is not replicable and there is no accepted theory to explain it. In my mind most free energy folks are looking for new undiscovered sources of energy that conform to the first law, not trying to get around the first law. I doubt if most free energy seekers would say they were trying to get energy from nothing as the article puts it. They have an explanation for where their free energy is going to come from (e.g. H+H->He without sweat). The article wording appears to be POV hyperbole.

Try this thought experiment: if we had cheap battery-pack, household, and industrial cold-fusion, how many PM inventors would keep gluing magnets to wheels and wrapping miles of copper around mu-metal cores? What would be the point? The wish is fulfilled, the dream comes true, no? :-)

In my view, the point of PM is not to prove that thermodynamics is wrong. PM inventors are not challenging the scientific status quo; they seeking to make this a magical world where there is enough of everything to go around. If we want this article to define PM, apriori, categorically, as only those devices that violate thermodynamic theory, if we want to exclude devices that purport to tap into wishful, practically unlimited, heretofore unknown, but first law compliant energy sources, then we need to be clearer about that so those who want an article about such devices can work on other pages. Joja lozzo 22:56, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Removal of unreferenced material.

I'm sorry, but I have the right to just delete all of this. & I am... sorry, it's just a bunch of babble. IT jumps all over the place an NOTHING is referenced. The first & only reference is dead & I don't even think Encarta allows their publications to be references in this manor. I'm rewriting with dictionary references. o? I also condensed most of the information into the few sentences that close the lead. Lawstubes (talk) 06:29 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Old

Perpetual motion is the hypothetical indefinite operation of a mechanism (a perpetual motion machine) that does work, without the introduction of energy from an external source (known as perpetual motion of the first kind), or the hypothetical operation of a mechanism that would convert heat directly into work (known as perpetual motion of the second kind).^[1]

It can be shown from the laws of thermodynamics that perpetual motion devices cannot exist. Nevertheless, despite the enormous experimental support for these laws and the universal scientific view that it is impossible, the lure of perpetual motion has always attracted inventors, and many people still try to build perpetual motion machines. The most commonly contemplated type of perpetual motion machine is a mechanical system which (supposedly) sustains motion indefinitely, despite losing energy to friction and air resistance. This violates the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy). A second type of perpetual motion machine is one which produces work by extracting heat from a lower temperature source, thereby cooling them down further, and converting the heat energy into mechanical work. Such machines do not violate the conservation of energy principle, but are forbidden by the second law of thermodynamics.

Since the term perpetual motion has acquired a stigma, a number of other terms are used by current enthusiasts of this technology, such as over-unity devices (referring to devices with an energy efficiency greater than 1.0), free energy technology, etc.

The term "perpetual motion" is usually not employed as a description of natural frictionless moving systems, such as the quantum motions of electrons in atoms, the movement of light in vacuum, and other similar phenomena that involve motion without the input of energy. Devices which generate useful energy from "perpetual" external sources, such as ocean current turbines and Cox's timepiece, are also generally considered not to be true “perpetual motion devices”, as they are actually drawing in renewable energy from external sources.

Further discussion

You are mistaken. An article lede doesn't absolutely require references, as it is simply summarizing the rest of the article, where the references should be. Nor is there anything "controversial or likely to be challenged" in the lede here. And since it is summarizing the entire rest of the article, some amount of "jumping around" is expected when the article is long. Please reconsider. Jeh (talk) 10:37, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree that refs aren't required in the lead for material that's ref'd in the rest of the article. However the old lead was pretty windy and disorganized. In fact, I believe that there was info in there that is not covered in the rest of the article and would be lost if we went with a shorter lead and didn't move some of the old into the article. If that's so, then that stuff doesn't belong in the lead and requires refs when it gets moved. Joja lozzo 15:23, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree. The old intro was way too long and rambling. It reads much better now. If people think that important points have been left out, I recommend that they find an appropriate place for them in the body of the article.Prebys (talk) 19:59, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

This is reminicent of an old argument on this article: is the article about perpetual motion in general or perpetual motion machines only? The lede should make it clear what the article is about. I also think that the phrase "the allure endures" is needless flowery and not encylopedic, I suggest that it should be reworded. Voiceofreason01 (talk) 21:53, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

There's no reason why it can't be about both the concept and "machines." There is some "motion" that is likely "perpetual" (theory says that electrons in their clouds around nuclei don't stop at absolute zero) but use of the term "perpetual motion" to refer to such is not done. Properly speaking it isn't even "motion" in the ordinary sense, as I understand it; it is just ever-changing probability densities. Jeh (talk) 22:04, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Newtonian physics and therefore what we usually think of when we talk about perpetual motion machines doesn't work at the subatomic level; which is why we use quantum mechanics to describe motion at that scale. I think that's beyond the scope of this article. Why are we so stuck on trying to justify including that citation in the lede? If you like it so much find a place to put it in the body of the article. The lede still needs work(especially that last sentence), we are not here to debunk, we are here to write an encyclopedia. Voiceofreason01 (talk) 22:22, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

a) I'm lost. What citation are you referring to? b) In this case, the vast body of apparently valid theory that shows PM to be "impossible under physical law as we know it" is a completely valid part of the topic coverage. Just because something happens to "debunk" doesn't mean it shouldn't be in an encylopedia. Jeh (talk) 23:06, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

{undent} The only citation in the lede, the one for the Museum of unworkable devices. The last sentence "Despite the lack of a scientific basis for such devices, wishful inventors continue to add to the vast log of failed designs." is problematic and seems to be there to mostly as an excuse to use that link. I think it would be good to include a short explanation that perpetual motion machines are impossible, but trying to typify or describe the people who believe in such devices is not encyclopedic, that means no "wishful inventors" and no "allure". Voiceofreason01 (talk) 00:36, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Just to clarify, my positive comment above was made just before a current round of edits that made it worse (Latin derivation, word "allure", etc). I agree that the reference to the "unworkable" link is problematic. If it belongs anywhere, it's in a further reading list. I've changed the intro a bit, but I'm still not really happy. It might be better to leave the last sentence off entirely.Prebys (talk) 12:18, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

The lead - no etymology - just say what the article is about

The first sentence of the article should not be the derivation of the term - it should say what the article is about. Albeit, my version takes two sentences to say what it's about but it gets to the point quickly enough. If we want to be more succinct we can drop the original meaning and just go to the modern day over-unity sense of the term which is a more accurate description of our subject. Joja lozzo 23:07, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm liking your changes so far. Not just the lede. Jeh (talk) 05:41, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

In not opposed to your changes, but removing etymology is foolish. Starting pages with '___is' is also foolish because it is implied. All articles should begin with etymology because if a reader doesn't know what the word means, they will be reading in a state of confusion. It's basic.Lawstubes (talk) 22:35, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

FWIW you're constrained in an encyclopedia as articles are on the topic that is identified by the name, not on the name itself (unlike a dictionary, where the entry is about the uses of the entry name/term). The first sentence or so must therefore be about the topic, not the name or the etymology of the name. We're not usually that concerned about etymology that it has to be in the lead, because the primary topic is not the article name.- Wolfkeeper 23:30, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Lawstubes: It is simply not Wikipedia accepted style to include etymology of the terms, except in very unusual circumstances - and I can't remember EVER seeing a WP article where it was done in the article lede. As Wolfkeeper stated, encyclopedia articles are not about the words themselves. Encyclopedia articles are about the thing that is named by the words. There are many cases where meanings have shifted such that the etymology would actually be confusing. And there are others, like this one, where the etymology helps in understanding not at all: Since "everlasting" is about as near a synonym to "perpetual" as one will ever find, a statement (however true) that "The term 'perpetual motion' is derived from the Latin for 'everlasting' and 'motion'" is tantamount to saying "The term 'perpetual motion' means 'perpetual motion'" - a tautology, and not at all helpful. In any case, if you want to change Wikipedia policy on this point, trying to force your point upon this article against consensus is not the way to do it. Please take it to WP:MOS. Jeh (talk) 23:53, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

n.b.: Trying to force your idea about division of this article into two articles, one about machines and the other about theory, is also contrary to current consensus. You are welcome to try to make a case here for a change of consensus, but until you have done so, any undiscussed moves, renames, or splits of the material will, I suspect, continue to be reverted. The pattern is Bold, Revert, Discuss: You made a bold change. It was not accepted, so it was reverted. The next step for you is not to once again put etymology into the lede, and certainly not to split the article again - it is to use this talk page to discuss the changes you want to make, in an attempt to reach a new consensus. Jeh (talk) 00:13, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

First, we all know this but no one has said it yet: etymology does not tell you what a word means, it tells you what the roots of the word are, which can be quite obscure; the etymology of a word is not the word's definition. Second, and this has been said already but bears repeating, this isn't a dictionary. Articles here are not about the words in the title, they're about a topic that is best described (and searched for) by a given title. Joja lozzo 01:02, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Electron

Aren't electrons perpetual? If they stopped.... 72.199.100.223 (talk) 06:00, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Properly speaking, what electrons are doing isn't necessarily "moving", let alone "orbiting;" that is a simplification that dates to the Bohr model of atom-as-solar-system - a model almost a century old, and now considered obsolete. Rather it's an ever-changing probability density function. In any case it's a "lossless" environment, and there is no question that perpetual (but not self-starting) motion is possible in a completely lossless environment. The second and third laws of TD state that such an environment is impossible at the macro scale. Jeh (talk) 20:25, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

A definition of Over Unity

I have created a page under my name that defines what these guys have all been trying to get at.

Just look me up and it goes directly to that page's definition. User:Robert135

The lack of proper terminology and utter lack of consistency in presentation of this topic has hampered its proper understanding. Every reference that tries to explain what it is generally goes off the deep end and does not even try to explain things in a mathematical way.

I have worked out what they are trying to say into a simple page. Please take a look at the page and edit it there.

There are no sources because everyone of the sources I can find are hogwash.

In the end what these guys generally are trying to accomplish is relatively simple, they just don't know how to say it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Robert135 (talk • contribs) 22:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry - but no sources and all original-research means we can't do anything with what you wrote - be it right or wrong.

But aside from that, I strongly disagree with what you wrote. A sailboat is NOT an "over-unity" device - and if you think it is, you badly misunderstand what we're talking about here.

The important thing in these discussions is to place an imaginary box around your "system" and to ask whether the energy that comes out of the box is greater than the energy that goes in - paying careful attention to ALL of the energy sources and sinks. If the energy coming out is more than went in, then you need to ask whether this is merely stored energy that is being released resulting in the energy output of the system eventually running down and ceasing.

This is all about "closed systems". In a closed system, you can't get more energy out than you put in to start with - there is no free lunch - which is essentially what the first law of thermodynamics and the conservation of energy is telling us.

If you draw your box around the sailboat, then wind energy goes in - and heat and sound energy comes out while some kinetic energy is stored inside the box. When the wind energy input ceases, the kinetic energy soon turns into heat too - and pretty soon the system "runs down" and stops. It's not over-unity, it's just unity...which is boring.

You could draw a bigger box around the sailboat plus some large wind-producing weather system - but again, the force of the wind inside the box comes from the solar and tidal energy that comes in from outside the box. Still no over-unity.

Place your box around the solar system and finally, we see more energy coming out (in the form of light and heat) - than goes in (starlight, a few stray cosmic rays) but the sun's energy stores are continually being depleted and will eventually run out - so, again, not over-unity.

In truth, you can't come up with ANY valid examples of an over-unity system because the laws of thermodynamics prohibit them from existing. As our article explains "over-unity" is a synonym for "perpetual motion" (and arguably, a much better term for it)...but it's still impossible. SteveBaker (talk) 23:36, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

What, then, of winds on Jupiter, which is far from the Sun? What keeps the wind blowing there? 24.184.234.24 (talk) 17:56, 1 October 2010 (UTC)LeucineZipper

Despite its distance Jupiter still picks up some heat from the sun, and has its own (nuclear) internal heat source as well. Still not overunity. Jeh (talk) 18:06, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I applaud your attempts to get clarity on this problem but I think your definition, based on the desires and inputs of an actor, is not the common one. Your definition encompasses all sorts of mechanical advantage, leverage, any system with stored or potential energy, and, carried to an extreme, would include someone purchasing energy with money (put in a paper check with 1 BTU of energy and get back a nuclear power plant).

As I understand it, a claim of over unity requires counting all the known energy inputs (wind, BTU's of fuel, represented energy of money, etc) and still getting back more than was accounted for. Since magic is not acceptable in our modern times, most over-unity claimants explain that the device is tapping into some as-of-yet undetected energy source (i.e. copper atoms, coil field dynamics, extra dimensions, etc.) Joja lozzo 23:59, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I understand your skeptism and agree that the concept is generally spoken of within frames of reference. But it is precisely the frames of reference that are at play in my example of a simple sailboat. The laws of thermodynamics were not known at the time when sailing was invented. At the time they too would have described unaccounted for energy. When the energy is accounted for it is a known source and is put into the system, and will be accounted for as part of the system. But in the definition that I have given, you don't need to know what the source really is. You don't care. All you care about is the effect of the source and the input into the system that an actor puts into the source to generate a desired output. Once measured, is that output greater than what you put in?

Lets look at the sailboat. draw a box around the sailboat with the sail down alone. it does nothing. Draw your closed system around the boat, with the sail up. It still does nothing. Draw your box, around the sailboat with the sail down then transitioned to up and you get wasted work. No desired output. Now draw the box around the sail boat and add the sun into the system and the fact that the world is round so you get a therodynamic system... and you get a HUGELY efficient and effective system. The frames of reference you speak of can disprove something as common as sailing if you do not account for all sources.

What most of these inventors are stating is that there is a source that is unaccounted for. They don't have an accepted name for it yet, and there is no theory that explains it as well. But to define the effects of what they are talking about You or I do not need to know the definition of it either. We just need to know the effect they are attempting to attain. That is what I have described by that definiton. If we know what that effect is, we can properly define it, and it will become scientific knowledge.

Whether they can attain it using the methods they say is entirely irrelevant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.216.48.254 00:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah. It sounds like you think that inventors are really building devices that are accessing unknown, as-yet-to-be-explained sources of energy. If so, this is not the right article for you to be working on. This article is about devices that do not achieve over-unity when all inputs of known energy are accounted for. Joja lozzo 02:22, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually what I believe is irrelevant to the definition of "over unity". My issue arises that "over unity" as an effect is a definable concept that has nothing to do with perpetual motion, and when you go to "over unity" on wikipedia, you get redirected to "perpetual motion". One does not mean the other. robert135 05:19, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

It appears that your definition of over unity is something you have devised yourself, original research. I have not seen the term used except to describe devices that demonstrate effiencies greater than one when all energy inputs are accounted for - in a universal frame, irrespective of the operator's point of view, in violation of the laws of thermodynamics. I do not know of any uses of the term in the literature that differ from that common usage or any that concur with your proposal. If I am wrong about that then there could be other articles about other uses of the term separate from PM and we can add a disambiguation page. Joja lozzo 12:04, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Right. If there were some untapped source of energy - as yet unknown to science - then a device that tapped into and consumed that energy to produce some kind of output would NOT be an 'over-unity' device. Our lack of knowledge about this mysterious energy source might make it appear to be over-unity - but when we'd finally understand the processes, we'd say that this was not over-unity and not perpetual-motion. But if this unknown source of energy eventually runs out - then that would clue us into the idea that there is some as-yet-undiscovered source. We'd know that this mysterious contraption was not over-unity. Now - the tricky part: IF someone comes up with a device that emits more energy than it consumes and NEVER runs down - then you have a genuine "over-unity" device - which is capable of "perpetual motion".

Some "free energy" nuts claim to have tapped into energy sources that will eventually run down - others (like Meyer's and his water fuel cell) claim do not. The former may be wrong about their fuel source (or they may be lying, cheating scumbags!) - but they aren't claiming over-unity or perpetual motion. The latter are certainly claiming perpetual motion - even though they may choose to use words like "over-unity" in an effort to seem more legitimate - or perhaps to get around the patent department rules (which, at least in the US, prohibit the patenting of perpetual motion machines). SteveBaker (talk) 14:40, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Silly fights over idiosyncrasies such as what the word "over-unity" OUGHT to mean produce nothing, per above.Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 14:57, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

This article is not a dictionary entry

The lead does not need a definition of the words in the title. The first sentence should let the reader know what the article is about. Likewise we do not need an etymology of the words in the title. Joja lozzo 03:43, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. It is particularly silly when the "definition" says something like

Perpetual motion" is derived from words meaning "everlasting" and "movement"

It's just saying the same thing as the original term, with very slightly different words. This adds exactly nothing to the readers's understanding of the subject.

Nor does the lede need references. The lede merely summarizes what is said in more detail - with references - later on. Jeh (talk) 04:23, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Concur. Etymology was already discussed above (same editor even still trying to insert it after that?), and also concur that lede is just an intro/overview of the formal article (the support for "X is a Y and Z" is the whole rest of the page, where the more detailed discussion of Y and of Z are cited). DMacks (talk) 05:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Not just "some editor" but the same one as before. Jeh (talk) 05:40, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Disagree. It was me who originally put in the part defining the terms in "Perpetual Motion" a year or two ago. I put it something like this "The term perpetual motion, taken literally, means everlasting movement. Everlasting movement is possible according to the laws of physics, however perpetual motion usually refers to...."

Earlier in this discussion someone said that it was tautology saying that perpertual motion means everlasting movement. My point was that the term isn't self explanatory. Perpetual motion doesn't in fact refer to what you might think it does from the words used: perpetual motion , in the commonly used sense, doesn't mean perpetual motion. I think that's an important point to clarify, and it needed the words defining before someone broke it in an edit.137.222.46.33 (talk) 13:13, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Minor Edit

I made a minor edit to the first paragraph of the lead. I altered it to remove the implication that 'perpetual motion devices' are impossible in relation to the laws of thermodynamics. My edit is accurate. I hope it doesn't cause any problems with personal bias, but that is what I am about to discuss.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Lawstubes (talk • contribs) 23:44, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Formatting suggestion

Ugh. Nevermind. Sorry I somehow missed that CLEAR explanation. Apologies all around... The Masked Booby (talk) 23:48, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 75.79.21.196, 18 February 2011

Resolved

Please verify, then add " ISBN 978-0198518907 " to Note 6 - Barrow, John D. - Impossibility:The limits of science and the science of limits

75.79.21.196 (talk) 19:42, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. Rivertorch (talk) 20:08, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I need Help with a project on perpetual motion machines

Will one of you guys or girls help me with a project on perpetual motion machines EthanKid17 (talk) 16:55, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

This article makes it very clear that there is no such thing that does or even could ever possibly exist according to the fundamental principles of physics as science currently understands them. I wish you luck, but I think there's nobody that can help you do anything other than say "it's impossible and all attempts will fail or are accidental or intentional deception". An interesting project might be to disprove a commonly-believed example if you have one in mind (but I wouldn't want to give money to any of the commercial ones...again, they're only get-rich-quick scams). DMacks (talk) 17:08, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes i understand all that but what about these pictures http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/pm.gif and http://img.rlt.com/A/14100/2_perpetual_motion.jpg or http://img.rlt.com/x/14100.jpg

aren't they feasible. i only have to do it for a seminar. so i don't want to do anything to big for one person to do or create Ethan Krueger 18:35, 3 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by EthanKid17 (talk • contribs)

None of them work. Well, you can turn them and then they gradually (or rapidly) slow down and stop. There are even several similar ones diagrammed in our Perpetual motion article. Google for the phrase "overbalanced wheel" used to describe them to see lots of examples and explanations. Googling for "overbalanced wheel" explanation might help get more info about them rather than just examples of them. There are lots of similar approaches throughout the History of perpetual motion machines. DMacks (talk) 19:11, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok. Can i make one that works for anywhere between 15 minutes and 1 hour. and how big will the machine have to be to get to work for that long. Oh yea i almost forgot something DMacks there is a video i found that is somewhat a perpetual motion machine and i would like to know if it is considered to be one. if you want the video let me know i'll put in your user page that's only if you want to see it. EthanKid17 19:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by EthanKid17 (talk • contribs)

Maybe you can explain what the point of the "project" is. If the point is to build a perpetual motion machine, then it will be a failure. If the point is that you can make something that appears to be a perpetual motion machine, then it's possible and could even be educational. Nothing described here (overbalanced wheels, etc) will run for more than a few seconds. In order to get something that looks like perpetual motion, you need to have a hidden (or non-obvious) source of power. The simplest and most elegant "perpetual motion machine" I know of is the "drinking bird". Now if you made something starting with a drinking bird, but took off the obvious bird features, and perhaps hid the water in something that looked like a electrical coil - and then added a bunch of completely superfluous features, you could probably cook up something that wouldn't be recognized and would run for at least several hours. Anyway, that's just the first thing that comes to mind. Another fairly common trick is to have a "perpetual motor" that has an externally powered fan "to cool it", as is done in this demonstration of the "Newman Machine".Prebys (talk) 19:37, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec) No - they don't work anywhere near as long as that - 20 seconds - tops. The overbalanced wheels have much more internal friction than (say) a simple bicycle wheel - so they certainly don't spin freely for even as long as a bike wheel does. To get something to spin for 15 minutes, you'd probably need magnetic levitation bearings and a much reduced air pressure. If you just want something that SEEMS like it's perpetual motion, (with the CLEAR knowledge that there ain't not - nor can ever be such a thing) I would try to buy a "Crookes radiometer" (which in reality is powered by sunlight - but it looks like it's perpetual motion to people who are uninformed about such things...until you try to run it in the dark!) SteveBaker (talk) 19:39, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

SteveBaker (talk) 19:39, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Just thinking out loud now, but another really easy thing would be to use a pair of coils to inductively couple power in. Once coil could be below a table and plugged into the wall, and the second could be hidden in the base of your "device", sitting on top of the table. With that, you could power literally anything (including one of the "overbalanced wheels" in the pictures). You could do an elaborate show to prove there was no contact or connection to the table.Prebys (talk) 20:08, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

i would paste the assignment to wiki but i fear that i might get blocked for it. so if you want to the specifics i could email them to you after school when i get home. which is in like about an hour to a hour and fifteen minutes. everyone else in the seminar have groups of two and the odd number of students makes me to be the one alone. so i need all the help i can get either on building the device from the specifics that i send to you. i really think that the device has to look like a perpetual motion machine at least i think. but i will check when i get home.

BTW if you really do want to the exact specifics let me know on my user page please and i'll give you either my e-mail or you can give me yours. but i will most likely give you mine. but that will have to wait till i get home. but in advance thank you for any help that anyone can provide me. EthanKid17 20:30, 3 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by EthanKid17 (talk • contribs)

This discussion probably should be moved to EthanKid17's talk page, since it has nothing to do with improving the article. Just a suggestion. Rivertorch (talk) 21:28, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Or not on wiki at all, since I don't think the teacher will appreciate us giving substantially more help than we already have. DMacks (talk) 21:35, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, perhaps. I don't suppose what a teacher appreciates or doesn't appreciate ought to govern what gets discussed on WP talk pages. This was the proper place to ask the question in the first place, but I figured that since the discussion was already well underway it might be continued more productively in userspace. This page is already long and in need of more archiving, and this thread has nothing to do with the article. Rivertorch (talk) 21:56, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

There are an enormous number of ways to fake a perpetual motion machine demo - that's why so many frauds have been inflicted by people over the years. But basically you're either going to need:

An 'unobvious' external energy source (like sunlight in the Crookes radiometer case or one of those sterling engines that can run from the heat given off by the palm of your hand when you hold it up - or the nodding bird that's running from the temperature differential from a glass of water).
A more deliberately hidden energy source (like using induction coils below the table)
Something like a really heavy pendulum that has enough stored kinetic (or whatever) energy to keep moving for the duration of the demonstration without perceptually slowing down.

I question the value of having students do something like this though. SteveBaker (talk) 14:13, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

ok the oil pumps in texas do they have some part of a perpetual motion machine in them. I will be moving this discussion of mine to my userpage and i could use anyone's help that has knowledge in this area. and my teacher doesn't mind. EthanKid17 16:37, 4 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by EthanKid17 (talk • contribs)

NO! There are no perpetual motion machines...perpetual motion is completely impossible! Didn't you read our article? Anyway, those are "Pumpjacks" (often called "Nodding donkeys" by the locals) and they commonly powered by an electric motor, or by a perfectly ordinary internal combustion engine running on diesel or propane if they are too far from an electricity supply. Some of them in really remote areas run on the very unrefined oil that they are pumping. In every case there is an easily visible energy source. They are about as far from a perpetual motion machine as you could possibly imagine! SteveBaker (talk) 17:46, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

yes i know that it is impossible to make one the world doesn't have enough money to even start designing one. the project i am doing is more about the learning process and when i run into failures or problems how can i improve on the problem/solution to make it better. any information and facts that you guys or girls give me i will give you the credit on that information so i don't take credit for the facts you give me. EthanKid17 16:56, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

is it possible to have big super magnets attached to something circular and have a double coil turn the circular object around. how many magnets would i need to make it spin and what kind of double coils would or should i use to make it spin. i did read in the article about magnets and how scientists have been appealed by them. i also know that the double coil wil start fighting the magnets that create that spining motion so it creates electricity in the coil. right? EthanKid17 16:56, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I think its time to close this topic here and move it to your talk page. thanks Guyonthesubway (talk) 16:58, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 175.180.185.43, 4 March 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} please add the text below to the section

Thought experiments

........

Techniques

Another thought experiment that yields a perpetual motion machine of the second kind: Take a resistor which generates Johnson–Nyquist noise and connect this resistor to an ideal Diode ( a Diode with a on-voltage of +0V or some uV above this). The uni-directional current through the diode can charge a capacitor. That capacitor charge could be used to do work outside the system of resistor, diode and capacitor. At this time, a suitable Diode is not available, therefore it is impossible to demonstrate such a device. However, in superconductors a similar effect can be found. A persistent current that can be interpreted as rectified Nyquist’s noise. http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0310073

175.180.185.43 (talk) 08:37, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Johnson-Nyquist noise is a thermal spectrum. The diode would preferentially select the more energetic electrons thereby cooling the resistor. The physics involved is essentially the same as a thermocouple.Prebys (talk) 13:19, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I've closed this edit request because, regardless of this thought experiment's veracity, it can't be included in the article without a reliable source. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 14:57, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't single energetic electrons lack a definable Kelvin temperature? Also, in what sense would it heat up something cool if it is converted into electricity? Only the resistive component of the electricity would generate heat. The heat transfer would be only a fraction of the total energy transfer.siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 15:02, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec) No! This is just a simple variation on Maxwell's demon...and it fails for precisely the same reason. The demon with the shutter that it can open to let energetic particles through is just the diode in your example. The demon creates more entropy than it can eliminate - and so will your diode. You can't use the "thought experiment" label to arbitarily claim the existence of a perfect diode if that perfection is not possible...that's how Szilard (and later, Bennett) shot down Maxewell's demon and restored the primacy of the second law. They realized that you can't just claim a "perfect" demon - even in a thought experiment...and for the same reason, you can't claim to be using a "perfect diode" if the laws of physics don't permit such things.SteveBaker (talk) 15:13, 4 March 2011 (UTC) <-Consider this: The Maxwell's demon is always only a thought experiment. The concept of the Diode is real. Different kinds of diodes have different on-voltages. What is needed here is not the ideal Diode with an on-voltage of +0V, but an on-voltage that is below the noise voltage of the resistor. The Diode shows a way to realize something that comes close to the Maxwell's demon. In the article about the Maxwell's demon you will read that the Maxwell's demon actually does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. Thus this perpetual motion machine of the second kind is possible, and now the realisation only depends on finding a Diode with an on-voltage that is below the noise voltage of the resistor. The available energy will not be enough to cook an egg, only enough to prove the point.175.180.185.43 (talk) 16:17, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Bottom line is that what you have here can no more violate the second law of thermodynamics than my refrigerator can! SteveBaker (talk) 15:13, 4 March 2011 (UTC) <-violating the the second law of thermodynamics is not the point, the point is to show that perpetual motion machine of the second kind is possible.175.180.185.43 (talk) 16:17, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

This is why Wikipedia disallows "original research" (See: WP:NOR) - we couldn't write about this idea of yours even if it worked. It's not the business of editors here to figure out why every crazy perpetual motion idea doesn't work and thereby prevent the nut jobs from putting junk into the article. (Not that I'd label you as a "nut job" - this is a thoughtful and well-reasoned concept.) If you are convinced that your idea is true - then this is the wrong place to promote it. Instead, you should write it up as a proper scientific paper, get it peer-reviewed and published - and claim your Nobel prize (finding a loophole in the second law of thermodynamics would make you a shoe-in!)...and then we'll write about it in this article using your paper as a "reliable source"...unless of course it gets shot down at the first hurdle (which I'm 100% certain that it will!).

Good luck anyway! SteveBaker (talk) 15:13, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I think I'm not the IP?siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 15:45, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

The bottom line is that you have to always include all the physics in the problem. You can't take a physical process like Johnson-Nyquist noise and combine it with an unphysical thing like a "perfect diode". Another good example is the Brownian ratchet. It appears to work if you combine the physical process of Brownian motion with an unphysical ideal ratchet. Feynman showed that a ratchet sensitive enough to Brownian motion would undergo Brownian motion itself, rendering the device useless.Prebys (talk) 15:42, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

This is correct. Heat due to friction will occur in any real diode. However, the diode itself is a passive device. It makes no attempt to do any work, and thus, the diode in cannot itself be responsible for entropy increase. If you think about it really, if heat were to be converted into electricity in a diode, that would itself constitute cooling, and thus the temperature drop, assuming it is definable here, certainly must occur, causing entropy to increase. Also interesting is that the reverse process, though not an exact time-reversed process, creating heat by using electricity to pass current through a circuit element of non-zero resistance, also increases entropy.siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 15:58, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

In any case, an imaginary Maxwell "Demon" is not necessary to allow the diode to ratchet energy in one direction. All you need first is simply an energy source, such as heat. This otherwise useless energy becomes the basis for the work necessary to convert it into electricity. In practice, less than 100% will be converted into usable electricity. The COP of converting this heat into energy also gives us the energy cost in conversion. Basically you take the amount of heat converted into work and divide that by the amount of heat not converted into work. So if 20% was not converted into work, while the remaining 80% was, then the COP would be 4. Instead of a Maxwell "Demon" powered by nothing, what really happens in this system is 20% of the heat was missed rather than converted into work. No new entropy is really created if the collecting device consists of 100% passive components, except for any active systems required to assemble and deploy the passive components in the first place. As long as this COP is less than infinite, we will have not violated the second law of thermodynamics.

You could somehow try to recover the remaining (missed) heat, and reflect it back to the system again, but you will still not convert 100% of it. The system which dissipates the waste heat can be any sort of machine, whether it is a motor or not. A fraction the same energy could be passed through one motor after another, and one car to another, and one house to another, etc. but you will always lose some energy each time, so practically, this back-and-forth exchange cannot continue on forever. The amount of positive work that can be done with a unit of energy is that energy times 1/(1-x), where x stands for the percent of waste heat recovered in each cycle. This assumes that all the negative work is done by the dissipation of heat. The net work done on the whole environment (i.e. motors, cars, houses, etc.) will always be less than that initial energy.

The way we use energy in today's economy (which is characterized by the amount energy stored in moving parts in the economy at any given time) is just like how energy is wasted in an overdamped oscillator. The vast majority of energy that is removed from storage does not return, and more than half of the energy used up is not even stored in useful devices in the first place. More than half of our energy is dissipated as heat before we even get to use it to do useful work! Our economy behaves as though it were an overdamped oscillator because right now we cannot recover even 15.9 percent of the waste heat. A future economy based on collecting waste heat from devices could change that, despite having the inevitable consequence of having an efficiency less than 100%. However, in such a future economy, energy available would not be an unapproachable limit to the positive work which could be done, but rather, it would be an unapproachable limit to the amount of energy that could be stored in the economy's moving parts at any moment in time (i.e. it would be a limit only to net work). So for example, even if just 50% of waste heat could be recovered, the usefulness of our energy reserves would double. If 80% of the waste heat could be recovered, then this would quintuple the usefulness of our energy reserves.

In this light, the only totally renewable energies are based on atmospheric and hydrospheric energy independent of contributions of sunlight, tidal forces, tectonic, geothermal, chemical, nuclear, and other, yet exotic, mass-energy conversion processes. While renewable sources could be sufficient to power our artificial devices, our state of existence is also contributed by the other forces. However, for a finite time as long as the other conditions remain stable, a small amount of input energy would be all we need to keep our machinery going as long as we retain an atmosphere which would harbor much more than the waste heat the we have put out. We would just have to recollect that energy through the use of infrared photovoltaics, wind turbines, and/or mechanical dampeners such as buoys.siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 16:31, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

You need to understand something about "waste heat." Heat engines can only work by moving energy from the "hot side" to the "cold side", with an efficiency of each step in the cycle absolutely limited by 1-(Tc/Th). (Tc and Th are temperature of cold and hot side resp., and must be in an absolute zero-based scale like Kelvin or Rankine.) The heat must be continuously removed from the cold side to keep it cold, to keep the efficiency from falling. For example, it is easy to say "look at all the waste heat coming off of a car engine, we should be able to use that somehow." But most attempts to use it will reduce the efficiency of the engine's heat sink (the radiator, exhaust pipe, and the engine block itself), thus raising the temperature of the "cold side", thus hurting the efficiency of the engine's primary cycle. Sometimes "co-generation" tricks work. A common example is the car's heater, which is just another radiator in a convenient place. Another example is "smart buildings" that use the heat from a server room to heat other rooms. But practical applications that don't hurt the "main cycle" more than the recovered energy is worth are pretty rare. Jeh (talk) 20:02, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

The truth is that less than 100% of the waste heat can be transduced to a different temperature by removing it from a larger number of degrees of freedom and dumping it onto smaller number of degrees of freedom. Such transduction is not done with thermodynamic "engines" which involve PV work. Conduction and convention cannot do this simply due to the simple fact of geometry that the volume increases with the distance traveled, and so heat typically spreads to a larger number of degrees of freedom (i.e. temperature decline). In contrast, radiative transfer, might do this so as long as the medium which carries the heat has enough transparency to this radiation which would allow this heat to be transduced through concentration via mirrors and/or lenses. Failing that impractical method, converting heat directly into voltage and current, which actually constitutes a temperature drop, can allow this energy to bypass the gradient between hot and cold, and then such energy can be transduced back into heat (temperature increase) using a resistive heating element. It is also the case that some of this waste heat comes out still having a significant temperature difference with respect to the ambient temperature, which may generate enough pressure differentials, which as potential energy would convert into kinetic energy in the atmosphere, which can then be captured by a wind turbine, which can account for some (albeit small) fraction of the energy used in generating the hot reservoir from which the waste heat came. Regardless of all this potential to recycle waste heat repeated times, it still does not violate the second law of thermodynamics to do so because "the truth is that ONLY less than 100% of the waste heat" can be converted, COP is never infinite, and the system will stop oscillating.siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 20:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

This thread is getting really long and no longer has any relationship to the article. It should probably be moved to a USENET group.Prebys (talk) 20:36, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

There is no mechanism to satisfy your proposal that is consistent with any standard use of the wiki interface.siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 20:46, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I was politely trying to say that this thread - although interesting - has nothing to do with improving the article anymore. It should be terminated here and (if it continues at all) be taken to a more appropriate venue.Prebys (talk) 22:14, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Hopefully the argument has finally ended with my large post above.siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 22:28, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

This is actually a useful line of discussion. The laws of physics as we currently understand them obey the laws of thermodynamics, so any argument based on those laws that appears to generate perpetual motion simply must be wrong - although the flaw is sometimes quite subtle. I think it's worth adding a "Gedanken experiment" category to the "Apparent Perpetual Motion" section, which I'll do when I get some time. It will include at least the Brownian Ratchet and Maxwell's Demon. Anything else?Prebys (talk) 16:04, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Thought experiments

Based on the discussion above, I've added a gedanken experiment subsection to "apparent perpetual motion". It currently includes Maxwell's Demon and the Brownian Ratchet. Any other suggestions. In particular, does anyone know if there's a WP:RS for the Nyquist idea above? I googled a bit, but all I could find was one kook paper.Prebys (talk) 16:38, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Could this be the WP:RS for the Nyquist idea above?: http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0310073 It does not exactly mention a "Diode", but rectified Nyquist’s noise.

arxiv.org is self-publishing service, so it doesn't qualify as a WP:RS for WP:FRINGE topics.Prebys (talk) 18:29, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

There is another thing: All the discussions above go around creating a temperature difference with a Maxwell Demon or similar that should eventually drive a Heat Engine to obtain work. But in the Nyquist idea above the potential for work is obtained by creating a voltage potential through rectification of an electric current. The point of this exercise should be to establish that although it seems really impossible to build a perpetual motion machine of the second kind with a heat machine, we should still acknowledge there might be other ways to do that. 175.180.185.43 (talk) 13:01, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

No, we shouldn't. WP does not print editors' speculation (that's called original research). Not unless you can find a reliable source that's in agreement. And in fact, since this is WP:FRINGE territory, WP would prefer to see several RSs in agreement, since RSs have to be interpreted by WP editors (or else we'd be infringing copyright), and our interpretations might be wrong; the chances of this diminish when we have several RSs. More generally, we don't put "this could turn out to be wrong, or to have some exceptions" on all statements of scientific knowledge, and there's no reason to make an exception here. Jeh (talk) 16:55, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree 100%. As I said above - it's (mildly) interesting to hear about proposed perpetual motion machines and figure out why they are broken (the fact that they are broken is really not under any kind of rational dispute)...kinda like solving a crossword puzzle. However none of that discussion - fascinating or otherwise - belongs in our article. We are absolutely forbidden (for reasons that should be obvious from the kookie posts above) from engaging in original research or synthesis of 'truth' from multiple sources.

Bottom line: We absolutely cannot under any circumstances put any of this into the article. That's because you don't have a reliable source. Specifically: An article in a reputable, peer-reviewed science journal or book that says "If you connect a resistor to an ideal diode, you get a machine that breaks the second law of thermodynamics"...or whatever it is. Until you have such a source, this completely (and obviously) wrong idea doesn't get within a million miles of being in our article. That's not my call - not your call - it's written large in the fundamental guiding principles of this encyclopedia. SteveBaker (talk) 17:38, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

As I have stated in my above (non-kookie) posts, multiple times in fact, the proposed device will not violate the second law of thermodynamics. At best, it could recover some otherwise wasted heat and recycle a fraction of this a finite number of times, but it never may use all of it. It is not a perpetual motion machine of the second kind.siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 02:58, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

But as SteveBaker said (multiple times), it can't go in unless you can find a reliable source for it.Prebys (talk) 14:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Not really a "but". I knew all along that this doesn't go into the article. I'm not defending this proposal or saying that it should be in the article.siNkarma86—Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia
^{86 = 19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk} 01:49, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Perpetual Motion is not impossible!

What about a machine powered by the cosmic microwave background? It's a tiny amount of energy, but it is guaranteed to exist basically forever, and so could continue powering a machine forever! 174.118.22.93 (talk) 22:43, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

This would be a perpetual motion machine of the second kind: The energy of the cosmic background radiation is essentially the heat of a photon gas at the very low temperature of 2.725 Kelvin. According to the second law you need a thermal reservoir with an even lower temperature in order to extract useful energy from it. Even if you have such a reservoir (you will need energy for creating it), it will only work until the temperatures of the background radiation and the one of the reservoir are the same. Gk63 (talk) 13:30, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

For some reason, I read "cosmic rays", not CMBR. I retract my statements below.Prebys (talk) 15:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there's a minor loophole here. There's a significant dipole anisotropy in the CMBR, resulting from the velocity of our solar system relative to the "fixed" CMBR frame (this anisotropy is always subtracted off in the standard CMBRA plots or you wouldn't see anything else). This means there's a slight blue shift (hot reservoir) in one direction and slight red shift (cold reservoir) in the opposite direction. Calculating the (fantastically small!) power one could extract from this and explaining how energy is conserved strikes me as a pretty good exam question.Prebys (talk) 16:44, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you could have a device powered by any number of environmental sources, and it would run "forever" (or until something wore out), but this article is about hypothetical devices that run without any external sources of energy. There's really no difference between something powered by cosmic rays and something using solar power or wind, except that both of those provide much more power (the energy in cosmic rays is minuscule). By consensus, that sort of "perpetual motion" is not considered in this article.Prebys (talk) 14:58, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Not an actual loophole. Is you operated such a device long enough it would eventually slow down the solar system relative to the CMBR frame and the device would stop. True, the device would rust away long before that happened, but the same is true of a solar powered device. Guy Macon (talk) 17:25, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mean it was a loophole in conservation of energy. I meant it was a loophole in the statement that you had to provide a separate cold reservoir relative to the CMBR. It doesn't violate any laws of physics, but it also doesn't provide any useful levels power - by many orders of magnitude!! Calculating explicitly how it would slow down the solar system to conserve energy is a little subtle. As I said, a good exam question.Prebys (talk) 17:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a place to discuss our own ideas. If there were a notable published proposal for such a device it would have a place here but otherwise not. Joja lozzo 15:58, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

IF this had been an acceptable topic, then the OP would have been directed to supply a WP:RS. Since it is not, the discussion can end here. In any event, editing or deleting others' comments on the talk page is strongly discouraged by the Wikipedia talk page guidelines (see WP:TPO), except in certain specific circumstances. One person's opinion about what is or isn't on topic is not one of them.Prebys (talk) 16:47, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree about keeping hands off others' posts on talk pages as a general rule,. However in the case of violations of WP:FORUM it is permitted. See last line of policy: "Material unsuitable for talk pages may be subject to removal per the talk page guidelines." Joja lozzo 19:00, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Considering the purely speculative nature of the original post, removing it was pretty reasonable. Guyonthesubway (talk) 20:12, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I admit to being sensitive to WP:Forum after the previous long exchanges above, one helping someone with a project and one discussing thought experiments without referencing the article (though the latter appeared to result in article content in a tangential manner). In the future I will suggest these discussions be moved to the initiator's talk page and I hope I will have others' support in taking them off this page. Joja lozzo 23:47, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm as guilty as anyone. Nuke me in the future. Guyonthesubway (talk) 00:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Superconductivity/Superfluidity

Could low temperature superconductivity and/or superfluidity be considered as real example(s) of the 3rd type (ie low/no friction) of perpetual motion? At the moment it is listed under 'Apparent' perpetual motion machines. FrankSier (talk) 09:58, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

perpetual motion, Impossible?

The law of conservation of energy states that energy can never be created or destroyed as we all know. This very law is the defintion of perpetual motion. Elements ,as we all know, is a substance that can never be broken down into smaller components and can never be destroyed. Elements themselves are perpetual motion machines. If the universe is infinite, then it is perpetual because that means it is continuosly growing. As of today, we do not have the technology or information to build a perpetual motion machine but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If all matter within the universe is moving then it is perpetual because matter is unaffected by Newton's first law of motion. -M.H.Win. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.214.148.12 (talk) 03:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Energy is indeed conserved - but the law of conservation of energy is only the first of three laws of thermodynamics - and you can't ignore the other two! The second law says that entropy never decreases - and that it can only remain constant at the absolute zero of temperature. The third law says that you can't reach absolute zero. As a practical matter, entropy always increases - which guarantees that energy will be dispersed to the point that we can't retrieve it and make it do work. When you take all three laws into account - there cannot be true perpetual motion. Eventually, the universe winds down to to a state with no free energy and we have a uniform sea of uniformity. The principle of relativity says that it is meaningless to talk about the motion of a system without some outside observer - and when the entire universe is in that state, there is no outside observer. Hence no more motion at the end of the universe - hence no perpetual motion.

Furthermore, all atoms have a finite half-life - although in some cases it is very long. It is even suspected that Protons themselves decay with a half-life somewhere around 10³⁰ years. One of the things that the LHC will show if it every detects the Higgs Boson would relate to proton decay. Neutrons - once freed from the nucleus by the decay of a proton will decay about 15 minutes later. Eventually, everything - including atoms - decays away to useless low grade heat.

These annoying practical matters are really a fundamental feature of our universe.

SteveBaker (talk) 04:43, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

SteveBaker has nailed it. Jeh (talk) 04:57, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Pawl failure

I revised the text in the Brownian ratchet section because it read as if the pawl could fail in only one manner. If it could fail in only one manner (failure to disallow motion), then we'd still see net rotation in one direction. However, there are two types of failure, and both should be mentioned. 1) failure to allow, 2) failure to disallow. With both types of failure allowed, we'd see no net rotation in either direction as described. In short, my edits are intended to make it more clear to the reader why a Brownian ratchet fails. Rklawton (talk) 13:08, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed that the main article uses wording similar to this. Rklawton (talk) 13:08, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Merge History_of_perpetual_motion_machines?

History_of_perpetual_motion_machines has been reduced down in size from what is was previously (I removed the rubbish). Perhaps since it's length is not overly long it could be merged back into the main article? IRWolfie- (talk) 22:13, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose: WP:SIZERULE states:
- > 100 KB Almost certainly should be divided
- > 60 KB Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading time)
- > 40 KB May need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size)
- < 40 KB Length alone does not justify division
- < 1 KB If an article or list has remained this size for over a couple of months, consider combining it with a related page. Alternatively, why not fix it by adding more info? See Wikipedia:Stub.

Since this article has reached 36KB and the history article 16KB (and that's after you've boiled down the latter to an appropriate size) - we would expect the combined article would be over the 40KB threshold and pushing the 60KB threshold. That means that the moment the article were combined, we'd be saying "May need to be divided"...and close to "Probably should be divided". Since the best division would be into a history article and the main text, we'd be right back where we are now. The history isn't some tiny stub.

SteveBaker (talk) 01:02, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Weak Oppose: I don't really have a strong opinions one way or the other, but if we keep two articles, I think we need to move the bulk of the "history" section of this article into the other.Prebys (talk) 08:05, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I'd agree with that. Get this article further below the 40kb 'split' threshold, push the history article up so that IRWolfie would perhaps be happier to keep it. A nice compromise - and a more rational way to organize things. SteveBaker (talk) 16:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Strong Oppose. There is a _lot_ of historical information concerning this. The history article has been hacked up and is in terrible shape currently. A {{Expand further}} tag is needed, not a merge. J. D. Redding 00:36, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Since there is clearly no consensus to merge - I'll remove the tags. SteveBaker (talk) 12:25, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Lukeme99, 17 September 2011

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

There is evidence of a working perpetual energy machine that seems to work, and i feel I should add it into the wiki page, it will only be a short explanation, and will inform people in the world that there is a possibility of perpetual energy working in practice. (link) http://www.gadgetreview.com/2009/03/perpetual-energy-machine-made-from-household-products-video.html

Lukeme99 (talk) 13:12, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

It's an excellent example of a crock of shit. If we're going to post links to such things, then it needs to be to a reliable source that shows the gadget from both perspectives - the bunk and the debunked. Rklawton (talk) 15:15, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

We have to be agressively skeptical about such things as this video. There are any number of ways it could be faked - and since almost all of these so-called "science videos" on popular video-upload web sites are outrageous fakes, that must be our base assumption. I mean to say: Which is the most likely prospect:

All of science as we know it is wrong (although it seems to work in every other case).
The video is faked (eg by installing some small button cell batteries inside the motor or by having two thin wires run down the motor support and through a hole drilled in the table to some external power source).

Honestly, which of those things seems more likely? Bottom line is it's absolutely certain that this is a fake.

Well, you're probably going to argue about that - but in truth, it doesn't matter. Wikipedia has rules about such things - and in order to present this as a working perpetual motion machine, we'd most certainly need some reliable sources saying that it's true...an article about the technique in Nature magazine, for example. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That science could have missed such a simple and effective free energy source is almost inconceivable, that the "inventor" wouldn't be making a billion dollars a year selling these things (or selling a license for someone else to make them) is also almost inconceivable - so this is a monumentally large claim - and the evidence would have to be similarly monumental for us to be able to write about it.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Thought Experiments

There are two very similar sub-sections of the same name that both describe the same two thought experiments. The first is under "Basic Principles" and the second under "Apparent perpetual motion machines". Perhaps one should be removed? Jfmantis (talk) 00:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Good catch! I've removed the first of the two sub-sections. Thanks! SteveBaker (talk) 13:20, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

why is 'free energy device' being redirected here ?

does it not refer to free or very cheap energy? it is not the same as perpetual motion, and i don't understand why it is being equated... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.148.34.157 (talk) 08:30, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

You are obviously correct that "free energy" (such as solar or wind power) is not the same as perpetual motion. However many people do equate the two, so the article tries to clarify the difference. Wdford (talk) 11:26, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with User:24.148.34.157 that the term "free energy" encompasses some non-perpetual sources such as wind, waves and solar. Our page entitled "free energy" is a disambiguation page that covers a number of uses of the term. I would argue that it should have an entry pointing to this page - and another to someplace like Renewable energy that discusses things like wind, waves and solar. But "free energy device" is not a term that I've heard used to describe a solar panel, a windmill or a wave-energy extraction device - it seems that the vagaries of our language are such that when people talk about "free energy devices", they are talking about the junk science things like casimir effect devices or whatever...perpetual motion machines. So I'd defend linking free energy device to this page - but I'd also recommend expanding the list of links from free energy to cover the dual nature of the use of the term as meaning either "renewable energy source" or "thermodynamically impossible energy source". SteveBaker (talk) 13:35, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Free energy has nothing to do with motion. Motion is motion. Detractors of perpetual motions like to add unsubstantiated objectives of perpetual motion experimenters such as the creation of free energy. All references to "free energy" from perpetual motion should be de emphasized. I do not like to delete people's comments but they should not overide the logic and truth about the whole matter of "perpetual motion". Just because someone think that perpetual motion is impossible, does not give them the right to tell lies and deceptions. Othmanskn (talk) 00:15, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Er...then you don't agree. I'm not saying that "free energy" and "perpetual motion" are different things - I'm saying that the term "free energy" covers two very different fields: That of extracting energy from renewable sources (wind, waves, solar, etc) and that of performing some thermodynamically impossible thing like extracting 'vacuum energy' with a Casimir-effect device or doing some hokey thing with magnets and ramps. The former meaning is indeed totally unconnected to perpetual motion. But the latter meaning of the term "free energy" (that where the conservation of energy laws seem not to apply) is indeed the exact same thing as "perpetual motion" as the term is currently and widely used. We're not only talking about perpetual mechanical motion - we're talking about any source of non-conserved energy - which could trivially be connected to a motor to create perpetual mechanical motion. So, no - we most certainly do not agree! SteveBaker (talk) 14:06, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Newton's Laws and perpetual motion

I have added comments on Newton's laws about perpetual motion. There is too much misunderstanding of Newton's laws although it is so basic for any scholar who wants to know about science. I felt guilty myself for being so ignorant about its possibilities. Everyone should revise their Newtonian physics and remove any prejudice. I believe Newton's laws are so fundamental that it exists in all Physics textbooks so there should be no dispute about its laws. I don't bother to quote them because it felt so childish. I had written an article on this and make it available at arxiv, a pre-publication archive. As for putting citations and additional explanations in this topic, I may consider them later on, if this entry survives long enough. Othmanskn (talk) 00:23, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I support the reversion of your comments in the article. They are incorrect and misleading. Before you consider adding more along these lines, please ensure that you have reliable sources (per WP:RS and WP:FRINGE) to back up what you're saying. Note that your "pre-publication" material does not come close to being a "reliable source" in terms that Wikipedia requires. SteveBaker (talk) 14:09, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Perpetuum mobile

Latin synonym. "Perpetuum mobile" jmak (talk) 08:01, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Over Unity

The term "over unity" is frequently used in the fantasy machine world to sound less technically impossible to unsuspecting and less technically adept readers. This term should be mentioned somwhere in the article as a clue to readers and researchers for their general awareness. 99.251.114.120 (talk) 02:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I found this article by searching for the term "over unity" but found no mention of the term in the article. 99.251.114.120 (talk) 02:53, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Search for the terms "overunity" and "over-unity". IRWolfie- (talk) 18:25, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Bedini Magnet Motor?

I'm pretty sure this demonstration is not a hoax.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttY7yLXZSpo

72.224.189.211 (talk) 02:40, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Due to the abundance of scam videos uploaded to YouTube, YouTube is not considered a reliable source. Rklawton (talk) 03:02, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

It always puzzles me when people say "I'm pretty sure this is not a hoax". How exactly are you sure? What is the evidence that convinces you? This video would be quite trivial to fake. The wires that go to the "motor" are tangled all over the bench - it would be easy to connect them to a power source. Even if not, we never see under the white board that it's mounted on - it could easily have a hole drilled through it with wires coming from beneath carrying power. The centers of those coils are big enough to hide a couple of D-sized batteries. We can't see what's behind the panel with the circuitry on it - there could easily be batteries hidden there. Even easier - the spindle on which the spinning part rests could be motorized from beneath to make it spin. There are any number of ways in which the video could easily be faked. But for it to be genuine, the whole of science as we know it would be proven false - because without the laws of thermodynamics, we have no way to prove anything. The sad fact is that at least three quarters of "science demonstration" videos on YouTube are clear fakes - most of them inept, but many of them very clever. The mere fact that this is a YouTube video means that it's far more likely to be faked than not. Even if Bendini motors actually worked (which they don't) - I'd suspect that this video was faked.

I am usually fairly skeptical of youtube claims, but from what I can see, this guy Jeff Williams is well respected mechanic and for real. To your other point, if history shows us anything, it's that popular scientific beliefs can be in error. Of course a video is not absolute proof, but it's interesting that you think it must be fake because it goes against what others have taught you. 72.224.189.211 (talk) 13:58, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Conservation of energy is not a "popular scientific belief"; it's been the cornerstone of physics since the 18th century. Even a good mechanic would have no particular reason to learn about E&M, so he wouldn't be prepared to address the issues which were raised in one of the other responses (even assuming he's sincere). People aren't skeptical about this because of "what others have taught them". They're skeptical because over-unit claims have been around for hundreds of years, and they've been coming in pretty steadily since the 19th century. This is also not the only claim that probably used non-sinusoidal wave-forms to spoof power readings (Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell being another famous example). But of course the real problem is that the Bedini motor has been around for 6 years now (and this video is over two years old). If it worked, they'd be all over the place by now.Prebys (talk) 14:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

If history has shown us anything, it's that every single claim for perpetual motion type devices is either wrong of fraudulent. Every single one. All the time. No exceptions. Ever. Now that's pretty convincing even for those who don't understand physics or math. And the proof is simple enough. It's not like plate tectonics where scientists revise their theories as they obtain more data. Leave one of these devices running long enough, and it always, every time, no exceptions, runs down. The only thing that doesn't run out is excuses for why the experiment failed. Rklawton (talk) 14:09, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

At any rate, as Rklawton says, YouTube videos are definitely not admissible as references to Wikipedia articles - so true or false, this video doesn't provide anything we can write about in this (or any other) article. SteveBaker (talk) 03:53, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Even if the device shown is performing exactly as portrayed, there is no evidence of overunity there. All he has there is an overcomplicated motor-generator set (which could be replaced by a buck-boost converter with no moving parts). Yeah, the voltage out is greater than the voltage in. So what? That doesn't mean the energy out is greater than the energy in. Even the videos that purport to measure a power increase (in watts) are invariably using simple DMMs, one for voltage and one for current. The first problem with that is that even "true RMS reading" DMMs are not true RMS reading if the waveform has too high a crest factor, which these invariably will (the transistor there is a switching transistor, after all). So you have inaccurate voltage and current readings to start with. The second problem is that they then simply multiply those together to get power—not even measuring, let alone bothering to consider, the phase angle. Jeh (talk) 11:36, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I won't pretend to be an expert on this subject. I would have added this to 'Magnet Motor' talk article but that redirected here. Would like to see more input from others knowledgeable on the issue. 72.224.189.211 (talk) 13:58, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I believe you just did.Prebys (talk) 14:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes. As Jeh pointed out, even someone who is 100% genuine may mistakenly believe that they are seeing over-unity because they are not measuring things correctly. Having followed Joseph Newman's "Energy Machine" for a while, it seems likely that he is actually a genuine person - not a deliberate fraud. Newman has invented another motor/generator gizmo that (because of the bizarre way it's constructed) generates really nasty spikey/noisy outputs that are exceedingly hard to measure properly. Unfortunately, Newman's total lack of scientific education (which he, and others like him, typically regard as an advantage) is crippling his ability to understand that he's horribly mistaken. It would not be hard to believe that this car mechanic would also fail to understand the issues of "energy" transfer when a complex waveform is present. So I suppose it's possible for this guy (and the video he made) to be simultaneously genuine and honest - but yet also horribly, horribly wrong.

However, even a simple, honest car mechanic should know that you can buy 12 volt DC to 120 volt AC converters (for use in cars) in the auto aisle in WalMart. These machines produce ten times as much voltage as they consume! But they are most certainly not perpetual motion machines or a source of free energy. So he must be aware that simply measuring voltage doesn't prove a thing...which makes me suspect a hoax rather than an honest error...but who knows?

The problem here is that it can often take an immense amount of effort to prove that there is a problem by measuring the inputs and outputs of a supposed energy-generating machine. The group who proved that Newman's machine doesn't work (and thereby overturned his patent application) had to go to quite a bit of trouble because of the unusual waveforms it generates. Fortunately, there are a couple of acid tests that one can perform. One is to run the machine in a "closed loop" manner - where the output drives the input. If the machine is genuinely over-unity (or indeed, exactly unity) in defiance of the laws of thermodynamics - then this should be abundantly obvious. However, Newman always claimed that the nature of the electricity that his machine produces was somehow not compatible with the input - so closed loop operation would be impossible despite his over-unity claim.

In the end, we don't have to look into the details here. It suffices to say that the laws of thermodynamics say it's impossible - and nobody has ever found a way to break or bypass those laws. We don't need to waste our time explaining every crazy gizmo that's out there. The burden of proof lies with the inventors. Show us one of these machines running closed-loop for a month, then let us pull it apart and examine it in detail...if it's genuine, you'll be a hero. SteveBaker (talk) 21:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

All that said, the Bedini Motor does get quite a bit of press. Perhaps it deserves a mention in the "examples" section?Prebys (talk) 21:43, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

We'd need a reliable source that specifically says it's a notable example of a perpetual motion machine. The machine itself doesn't have an article, and the "inventor's" page is up for deletion because it has only one reliable source and that source is ten years old and only indicates local notability. Rklawton (talk) 21:53, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Mythbusters covered it, fwiw. Also, there are Google hit counts. Jeh (talk) 22:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

To 72.224.189.211 (talk · contribs): Regarding "popular scientific beliefs can be in error": Scientific theory that is based on, and consistent with, literally uncountable observations over a period of centuries rarely turns out to be out-and-out wrong. Make it "rarely squared" for theory that correctly predicts the outcome of previously untried experiments (in other words, it just plain works). Rather, such theories are refined over the years to increase accuracy or to account for different conditions. For example, neither relativity nor quantum mechanics invalidate Newtonian mechanics. Newtonian mechanics turns out to be a special case; it's just that the special case is what we experience in everyday life. See the essay The Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov. Jeh (talk) 22:39, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Hojo Motor

There seems to be a new player on the block (at least new to me). I saw an advertisement on FaceBook for the "Hojo Motor". It's nothing we haven't seen a hundred times before, but they seem to have a particularly aggressive ad campaign going, including a whole bunch of "independent reviews" (with suspiciously similar wording). They even appear to be actively sock-puppeting the few skeptical discussions. I think it may have risen to the level of "recent examples" (it's always a gray area what constitutes a WP:RS for a crazy claim; that is, are we establishing the claim itself, or something intelligent said about the claim?). Thoughts? In any event, given the level of activity, I expect someone will attempt to create a WP page pretty soon, so heads up!Prebys (talk) 16:42, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, far from new. Claimed a working device in 1979. It just looks like someone has dusted off some old patents (2 out of 3 of which are expired), and decided to go heavy with it. Given that, I withdraw my suggestion.Prebys (talk) 17:00, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Impossibility and the Laws of Physics

Readers may be curious about why educated and otherwise-intelligent people continue to pursue perpetual motion ideas, when they are clearly “impossible” in terms of the “laws of physics”? The answer is that the current laws of physics are seriously incomplete (dark matter and dark energy apparently make up 96% of the universe, which leaves a lot of energy outside the laws of physics.) There are thus loopholes in the "laws", which can be exploited if one can find the correct method. Gravity and vacuum energy are popular avenues for "crack-pot" research, because the laws of physics are known to be incomplete in these areas. Permanent magnets are similarly attractive options. The fact that nobody has got it right so far does not mean it’s “impossible”, merely that the method is currently unknown. Nobody knew how to build a heavier-than-air flying machine, until some "crack-pots" figured it out – and until then, it was considered to be “impossible” to defeat the law of gravity. I don’t think that a few lines in a large article clarifying this enigma is excessive? Wdford (talk) 09:58, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

(That's something people say a lot: Precisely when was it thought to be impossible to "defeat the laws of gravity"? People could clearly see heavier-than-air birds, bats and insects doing precisely that? I submit that nobody with the intelligence to do physics would ever have made that claim.) SteveBaker (talk) 15:18, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

The statement "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." is universally attributed to Lord Kelvin in 1895, but I haven't been able to find a proper citation. I suspect it is either a misquote or taken out of context. In any event, if he did say this, he was definitely in the minority, as gliders were common by then and lots of people were working toward powered flight. As you say, it's kind of a stupid thing to have said in any era by anyone who had ever seen a bird. I also wish people would stop characterizing the Wright brothers as "crackpots". They were very methodical and basically invented aeronautical engineering. They were always confident that they could fly, but they worked very hard to insure they would survive the experience.Prebys (talk) 19:26, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I haven't been able to find the specific citation for that quote by Kelvin, but there are lots of other quotes indicating he thought heavier than air flying would not ever be *practical* (still wrong, but not quite the same as saying it's impossible). This interview is kind of interesting because it took place just a year before the Wright Brothers first flight, and by then there was plenty of evidence that it was only a matter of time before someone would get it right. We should remember he was getting pretty old by this time. One the other hand, no one seems to be able to produce a credible source for his other supposed quote "There is nothing new to discover in physics now...", and I suspect it may have been entirely apocryphal. Prebys (talk) 19:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

SteveBaker: I actually can't imagine anyone with an understanding of physics claiming that heavier-than-air birds, etc., "defeat the laws of gravity." Overcome the force of gravity with opposing forces, sure. But the force of gravity is still acting on them. Jeh (talk) 18:44, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that the gaps in our understanding of physics do not lie in the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Those two, specific bits of physics are the most solid things humans know about the universe. In fact, Noether's theorem is a mathematical proof that these laws are valid. Roughly, it states: "If a system has a continuous symmetry property, then there are corresponding quantities whose values are conserved in time." - well, we know with high confidence that the system does indeed have that continuous symmetry property - and therefore the laws of thermodynamics are a mathematical inevitability. Just because mathematicians can't prove the Riemann hypothesis doesn't mean that one day we'll wake up and find that 2+2 no longer equals 4 and similarly, our lack of understanding of dark matter doesn't mean that you can make over-unity energy devices.

So the realms of doubt that you are concerned over do not allow for the possibility of perpetual motion. You are correct in saying that there are parts of physics that we don't understand - but we do know for 100% sure that whatever those things are, they'll have to obey the laws of thermodynamics.

The trouble is that your "educated and otherwise-intelligent people" are either not sufficiently educated or they are not sufficiently intelligent to interpret whatever they have been educated in. Their efforts to produce perpetual motion using things that are supremely well understood (like ramps and magnets in Simple Magnetic Overunity Toys) attests to the fact that they are not in fact delving into the subtleties of uncertain areas of physics - but are instead deeply stupid people who don't care to read about field theory and potential energy. What they hope is that by fiddling around with balls, magnets and ramps, that they'll somehow come up with a machine that'll work - and that the explanation for that will just turn out to be "dark energy" or some such term that they've seen bandied about as "uncertain science". I might have some respect for them if they were actively using what little is known of dark energy/matter to construct some devious machine to utilize those concepts - but they aren't. They're messing around with magnets, ramps, coils, ball bearings and other extremely mundane, well-understood objects.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:13, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps I should have used the example “Nobody believed it would be possible to ever walk on the moon”? There are always those people (like the Wright Brothers or Tesla) who believe that it can be done, and then there are the others (who can’t do physics) who firmly believe it can’t be done, and who use words like “crack-pot”.

I have no problem with the current laws of thermodynamics. I have low regard for those who fiddle around with balls and magnets etc. However, every so often their comes along an Orville or a Tesla, who can and does find new ways of doing things that advance our knowledge along directions that were previously “impossible”. Certainly if we use gravity or vacuum energy to power an over-unity device it will not strictly speaking be a perpetual motion machine, because it will be an open system. However the gravity and vacuum energy loopholes may well provide the next big breakthrough, and there are thus those “crack-pots” who are striving to be the next Tesla. They should not be lumped with people who think they can make water flow uphill. Surely we can include a few sentences to clarify this?

If for some reason we can't, then perhaps we need to create a new sub-section on "why do people persist with this research even though its seemingly contrary to the laws of physics?" Wdford (talk) 11:26, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

The article already includes plenty of acknowlegement that "alternative energy" sources are not strictly speaking perpetual motion and are not prohibited by the laws of thermodynamics. BTW, both gravity and "vacuum energy" (the Casimir effect) are based on conservative fields and so cannot serve as sources of energy any more than magnets can. This was what SteveBaker was saying; a person who wants to make contributions in this field needs to learn the science. As for your last question, "why do people persist" in promoting pseudoscience, I'm sorry but you yourself have given the answer to that question. There's an endless supply of gullible and/or bored people out there to give them attention. --Chetvorno^TALK 14:08, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. The Casimir effect ("vacuum energy") is no different (in principle) to using magnets and gravity. The utter failure of people like User:Wdford to understand the issue here is that they universally confuse the idea of "force" with "energy". They assume that because gravity or magnets exert a "force" that they must be capable of releasing "energy" - and that's simply not so. When you place a book onto a table, gravity holds it there by exerting a force on it - and will continue to hold it there until hell freezes over because exerting that force neither produces nor consumes energy. It's the same with a fridge magnet - it'll stay stuck to your fridge until hell freezes over because it's only exerting a force. Now - if you hold a magnet a half inch away from the fridge door (or hold the book an inch above the table) and then release it - then energy is indeed released. But that's not free energy - in order to make it happen again, you have to pull the magnet back off of the fridge or lift the book up again and that takes energy. The energy you put into the system when you do that is what you get back (minus some losses) when you release it again. No free energy came from the magnet or the gravity. Ditto for the casimir effect. Hold two plates close together and vacuum energy will exert a force to push them together...yes...a "force". Release the plates and they'll smack together just like dropping a book onto a table. But to pull the plates apart again requires energy just like lifting the book or pulling off the fridge magnet...same exact deal.

That fundamental failure to understand the distinction between "force" and "energy" is at the heart of 99% of the failure of "crackpots" to see that what they are doing is utterly worthless. That's why they LOVE to talk about magnets, gravity and the casimir effect. All of those things are examples of where a "mysterious" (to the untrained) force is being created "for free" with no input or consumption of energy. Which (if you don't understand the distinction) suggests to them that they simply must be a way to extract free energy from these mysterious forces. The sad, sad thing is that this distinction is one of the most trivial parts of physics - and the fact that these folks evidently slept through their high school physics class on the day that this was explained to them has caused them to get all excited over nothing! SteveBaker (talk) 15:21, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

A few other corrections. First, people have dreamed of going to the moon probably since the time of the Greeks, so that's another bad example. Second, as I said before, the Wright brothers were not "crackpots" by any means. They spent years doing methodical research, and were among many working toward the goal of powered flight. Third, contrary to popular belief, Tesla never did anything that challenged the laws of physics at the time (even a little bit). Everything he ever did was well understood within the context of Maxwell's Equations. Like his arch-nemesis Edison, Tesla was an extremely clever inventor, but really made no fundamental contributions to the underlying science.Prebys (talk) 14:50, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. The Wright brothers weren't really doing anything that other people hadn't tried - they were just much MUCH more methodical about it. They tweaked their motor to get more horsepower out of it - they lightened things here and there - they streamlined things in a home-made wind-tunnel - they altered the shape of the airfoil to get more lift - they measured and weighed and iterated over the design repeatedly. There was not one single breakthrough that they came up with that someone else hadn't tried - just care and attention to detail. Tesla...hmmm...he was basically a showman - and in later life, a fraud and a crackpot. He didn't invent any new science. SteveBaker (talk) 15:21, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

That's of course in the real world. In the twilight world where a lot of these sort of folks live, Tesla invented a plenty of other stuff, like death rays and free energy devices which were all confiscated when he died. They're now hidden at Area 51 on the shelf below the 100 mpg carburetors, in the room next to where the extraterrestrial bodies from the Roswell crash are stored.Prebys (talk) 17:49, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

On a more serious note, as romantic as the notion of the "mad scientist" or "crackpot" is, almost no significant scientific breakthroughs have been made by people who fit that description - certainly not in the last century, and very few before that. Sure, there are some big egos and extreme personalities, but in then end progress is made by dedicated people working diligently and methodically within "the system".Prebys (talk) 17:49, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes - although with a lot of those early researchers, their crackpot-ism was due to the nature of society at the time. When so little was known - every new idea, no matter how crazy, had to be examined.

I've been reading "The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World" by Edward Dolnick - and it describes in some detail how, on the day that Isaac Newton's seminal paper on the nature of light was presented, the next item on the agenda was the examination of a purported unicorn horn and a test of the hypothesis that a spider can't escape from a circle of powdered unicorn horn. It turns out that either the hypothesis is false or the horn in their possession was not in fact from a unicorn because the spider had no difficulty in escaping. But you have to wonder when you hear that Robert Boyle - the guy who discovered the mathematical laws concerning the interrelationship between the temperature, pressure and volume of gasses - was also a vocal proponent of blowing dried, powdered human feces into the eyes in order to cure cataracts. The juxtaposition of bullshit and gold star quality science in those guys was a wonder to behold!

My point is that they had a right to be looking at all of those weird ideas because at the time they didn't have the science to dismiss them as readily as we can now. The idea that a perpetual motion machine might be invented wasn't at all a crazy idea until the laws of thermodynamics were discovered and subsequently proven in the mid-1800's.

We don't live in that age anymore - the era when a "gentleman scientist" with no formal training could invent something earth-shattering is long gone. Amateur inventors have a hard time coming up with anything profound anymore because the low-hanging intellectual fruit has already been plucked and the quantity of training you need to become expert in a wide range of fields is more than can be fit into a single human lifespan.

SteveBaker (talk) 19:22, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Gee, Steve, before I read that I actually LIKED science. Guess I'll go be an English major now :) --Chetvorno^TALK 20:29, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Science is still a lot more fun than waiting tables, which is what you'll probably do with that English degree. It's just that, as Steve said, the low hanging fruit has been picked. These days, you're halfway through grad school before you know enough to even understand the questions, let alone start working on the answers. The idea that someone with no education or training is going to discover something profound playing with magnets and coils in their garage is a little like saying someone is going to find a goldmine sitting in the middle of a shopping mall's food court that somehow no one noticed before.Prebys (talk) 23:37, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

It's not that a career in science is worthless - or that you can't make breakthroughs - but we are past the time when someone could sit at their kitchen table and invent the first microscope - or figure out an important equation that fellow scientists will use every day of their lives - and certainly not tinker in your garage with mundane objects like magnets and ballbearings and come up with a machine that violates all known laws of science. These days there are teams of scientists who use fancy equipment to push the boundaries in directions that are largely obscure to outsiders. The breakthroughs are still there - but they aren't obvious things that are going to make you a household name - and it's not going to be an unfunded, self-trained enthusiastic amateur that gets there. Even 100 years ago, people like Einstein could only just make an impact with a magnificient solo effort - but then, only in areas like relativity or offering a deeper understanding of the photoelectric effect. Even back then, the layman couldn't possibly understand. In 1912, you could get a Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of automatic valves for use in lighthouses and buoys - but in the last few years, it's becoming difficult for the layman to understand even the titles of some of the Nobel awards! These days, the quest for perpetual motion is a joke - and those who pursue it are on a par with the flat-earthers. SteveBaker (talk) 17:49, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

(outdent) I'm not sure I fully agree that a home tinkerer can't come up with something profound and novel and important (and that stands up to scientific scrutiny and others' tests!). There are certainly some "everyday" things that weren't well studied and that in semi-secent times become associated with non-advanced scientists (like the Mpemba effect). And there may well be useful niches that could be explored perhaps without advanced equipment, but we just don't know what they are (and how "tinker-level" they could be examined because we haven't even found the niche yet (but this is usually more the realm of inventors and products in the engineering and applications realm not new basic science). But perpetual motion inventors aren't about going off in new directions to discover new things that haven't been studied, but instead are going off in well-trodden directions and/or that contradict known things that have been well studied. DMacks (talk) 18:24, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

The Mpemba effect isn't really a "discovery" though. Firstly, (as our article notes) several people had previously noted the effect. Secondly, Mpemba didn't discover anything - or produce any new understanding. He found a seemingly simple (but actually, complex) counter-intuitive phenomenon. What he found doesn't violate or overturn any known laws - except at first sight. SteveBaker (talk) 03:55, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

All very enlightening, in a rather patronising way. I’m sure that “technically” it’s all perfectly correct, but in the real world (where most of us live) gravity certainly IS a source of energy. Ask any child who has zoomed down a hill on a skateboard, or any astrophysicist who has sling-shotted a deep-space probe around a planet. Gravity has been used for millennia to drive water wheels, and today provides the "force" which enables the extraction of energy in hydro-dams. Professor Pedantic would rightly protest that hydro-dams are actually powered by the solar energy which drives the precipitation cycle, and that the skateboard is actually powered by the solar energy which nurtured the food the child ate before climbing the hill, but by that same token fossil-fuel is not an energy source either – it’s just a long-duration storage mechanism for the solar energy that nourished the Jurassic jungles which gave rise to those coal-beds and oil-fields.

The average crack-pot is not trying to discover a shiny new law of physics or to prove Einstein wrong, they are merely trying to find better ways to do things. (There are also “non-average crack-pots” too, but they are a different matter entirely.) The average “over-unity inventor” is just like the Wright Brothers – pottering methodically in their garage, looking for the combination that will change the world – a combination that “serious scientists” can’t be bothered to look for, on the assumption that “it can’t be done”. The average “over-unity inventor” is also usually highly skilled in their field – not Nobel-level scientists, but practical engineers who have seen phenomena in their careers which have given them ideas.

Secondly, the article heading Free energy device redirects here, on the basis that the two subjects overlap substantially. We do therefore need to give a bit more space to open systems, and not just limit the article to dissing closed-system designs. “Free energy” and “renewable energy” overlap but are not the same thing – wind and solar are indeed free, but biodiesel is quite expensive.

Third, there seems to be a lot of emphasis from some editors on covering up the fact that the laws of physics as we know them address such a small percentage of the energy and mass in the universe, and that glaring loopholes still exist in areas as fundamental as gravitation. Is this coyness really appropriate in an encyclopaedia?

Finally, it’s a bit harsh to describe Tesla as a “showman” or a “fraud”. Wikipedia says of Nikola Tesla: “He was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America. He pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of ground-breaking importance.” Tesla may not have invented “new science” but he found many ways to redeploy “theoretical science” to dramatically improve our lives, which nobody else had yet thought of. In this way he added value which nobody else had added - Maxwell may have formulated the equations, but equations don’t power cities.

Wdford (talk) 14:38, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Your comments on gravity precisely demonstrate my point - that most people (yourself included, evidently) do not understand the difference between a "force" and "energy". SteveBaker (talk) 19:31, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I would add that the "average “over-unity inventor”" seems to be completely unaware of the differences, not just between force and energy, but also the differences between energy, power, EMF, electrical charge, torque, rotor speed, etc. Hence the preceding discussion of a YT video in which we see two DMMs being used to measure voltage and claims that their readings show more power out than in (without even an attempt to measure current!). The mechanic who created that video is apparently known as a car engine expert but in terms of electrical energy - which he was trying to produce - he doesn't know what I'd expect of a "C" student in EE102 (AC circuits). Jeh (talk) 20:31, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Regarding Tesla, Adam Savage remarked in one of his public talks that there are two Teslas: There's the intuitive genius who came up with the AC induction motor, polyphase motors and generators, and transformers; he basically invented the fundamental pieces of today's electrical generation and distribution grid and those principles are still at work. And there's the tragic figure who spent much of the rest of his life trying to create a comparable success, following one blind alley after another while making such fundamental errors as confusing stored energy in a resonant system with new net energy. (His claims of "earth resonance energy" as a net energy source? Nonsense.) I would add that there's a third: The Tesla some people now believe existed, who demonstrated practical wireless power transmission (meaning something that doesn't waste almost all of the power input) and really did make a tiny box that could shake down buildings (apparently no one has heard of complex vibrational nodes, or of damping). Jeh (talk) 20:31, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

The original comment sounds like it wants to add a section based on original research. The rest of the comments, while interesting, are not directly related to article content. I suggest closing the thread per WP:NOTFORUM. If there are no complaints I will do so. IRWolfie- (talk) 14:44, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I complain. The article should have at least two more sentences clarifying open-system free energy, and at least two more sentences expanding (in plain English) on the scientific fact that the known laws of physics do not cover most of the energy in the universe. There are a thousand lines devoted to explaining how closed-system perpetual motion is cosmicly unlikely, so the article can afford four more sentences in the interests of clarity and balance. Wdford (talk) 17:42, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Firstly: The second paragraph of the lede already explains that we're not talking about open systems. I don't think additional clarification of that point is required in an article that is only discussing closed systems.

Secondly: You fail to understand my earlier point that the laws of conservation of energy (as embodied in the first and second laws of thermodynamics) apply to all sources and 'kinds' of energy - even those that might be completely unknown to science. This is why Noether's theorem is so important. Many new sources of energy have been found since the laws of thermodynamics were discovered around 1850 - and not one single one of those sources ever violated thermodynamics. Far from inducing doubt in our readers, we should be emphasising the solidity of the math and science that demonstrates why perpetual motion isn't possible - and that free energy cannot ever exist in a closed system.

Thirdly: "Balance" in Wikipedia articles means balance between opposing viewpoints in reliable sources. In the case of science (and especially fringe science), we are required to use points of view from very specific kinds of sources. (Essentially: modern, peer-reviewed science in reputable journals). Since not a single such reliable source says anything other than that the laws of thermodynamics rule - what we're doing here is entirely balanced. When seen from the perspective of Wikipedias' guidelines, even one sentence that so much as hints that thermodynamics might be incorrect would be undue weight.

This idea that somehow there is a chink in the armor of the first and second laws of thermodynamics shows a profound lack of understanding. To quote from our energy article:

"Since 1918 it has been known that the law of conservation of energy is the direct mathematical consequence of the translational symmetry of the quantity conjugate to energy, namely time. That is, energy is conserved because the laws of physics do not distinguish between different instants of time (see Noether's theorem)."

This statement - which is backed by solid mathematics, not hypothetical statements or possibly flawed experimental evidence - applies identically to all energy, whether the source is known and well understood, or as yet mysterious or undiscovered. It's a mathematical property of time itself. To state that energy sources unknown to science might one day allow perpetual motion would be to put an outright untruth into the encyclopedia - and that ain't gonna happen (at least not without some gold-plated super-reliable sources that say exactly that)! SteveBaker (talk) 19:31, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

You have failed to show any reliable sources and you appear to have a desire to add this based on your own original research. This has no place on wikipedia. If you can't show any reliable sources (as SteveBaker mentioned) that make this link to the topic I suggest you stop pushing for this as it will never be mentioned in the article. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:00, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

^ Encarta dictionary definition of perpetual motion

[1] Encarta dictionary definition of perpetual motion

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