"Cebu" (menostwelve)
08/10/2014 at 14:41 • Filed to: FLYING PIGS, perpetual motion, zero-point energy, Cebu generator, money for nothing, generator
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"Cebu" (menostwelve)
08/10/2014 at 14:41 • Filed to: FLYING PIGS, perpetual motion, zero-point energy, Cebu generator, money for nothing, generator | 1
| 8 |
A bit of background first:
The Moon's orbit around the Earth gravitationally attracts the ocean just a teeny bit, causing tides to rise and fall in Earth's oceans, as we learned in science class.
This rising and falling can be harvested by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! or other, more effecient ways to harvest the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! created by the Moon's orbit.
Since the Moon and the Earth don't "run out" of gravity, and we -hopefully, anyways- won't run out of water, this is already, theoretically, a zero-point energy source feeding off of the (in human terms, anyways) perpetual motion of the moon's orbit around the Earth.
Problems arise, however, when you're nowhere near an ocean- say, in space, because space is cool.
This is what I propose to take advantage of tidal forces. However, since the human race hasn't cracked gravitics yet, we'll have to make do using magnets.
If you've ever tried to get a magnet to levitate on another magnet, you'll know that it's fantastically hard- the magnet keeps flipping 'round and sticking to the magnet you're trying to levitate it on.
One way around this is mechanical constraint- just fix the magnet on a pole so it is physically impossible for it to flip around.
A (presumably) very bored man named Roy Harrigan discovered another way around this - simply !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Gyroscopic forces overcome the magnet's attraction to the opposite poles, leading to a perfectly stable spin that can go on for hours- at least until air friction acts enough on the magnet to slow it down and it all goes haywire. Remove the air, and you remove the friction. In a vacuum, the spin will go on forever. However, since there is no way to harvest rotational energy without incurring at least some friction, all you've got is an interesting office toy.
Well, there was no way to harvest rotational energy without friction. Turns out that we were all thinking about it from the wrong angle...
What if, instead of mechanically levitating just a magnet, you decided to put a payload on it? A payload consisting of very light !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and tide mills. (And yes, at this point, we're talking the mother of all Levitrons. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.) This would be our "earth" to paralell the earlier discussion of tides.
And, in lieu of a moon, a spinning magnet, set in orbit around the first. The magnetic forces from the second spinning, orbiting magnet would act upon the ferrofluid, dragging it back and forth like an ocean. This motion would be harvested by the aforementioned tide mills, and the mechanical energy from that translated to electrical energy via a garden-variety dyno. The electrical energy would be transmitted via the mechanical levitation no-flip pole(s) (one for + one for GND, naturally) and, eureka, easy electricity for eternity.
Building the "Money for Nothing" generator, as I've decided to call it, is another level entirely- one that I have nae the finances nor the time to commit to. Perhaps some brave DIY'er will decide to take it on.
That, and I'm not 100% sure this would work... it does violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, after all.
For Sweden
> Cebu
08/10/2014 at 14:44 |
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The moon is ever-so-slowly moving away from the Earth; it's motion is not perpetual.
RoadHead -- Armand
> Cebu
08/10/2014 at 14:45 |
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Whoa.
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Cebu
> For Sweden
08/10/2014 at 14:55 |
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True. But as far as humanity's life-span upon this rock in the middle of freakin' nowhere, it's perpetual...
Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire
> Cebu
08/10/2014 at 14:57 |
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Nope. In order to generate a tide, you need to have a single mass on one side that also rotates around. So, that needs to be accounted for. Then you also will need such a colossal mass to gain any useable energy from the system that you will need an even larger amount of energy to get the whole system going.
PS9
> Cebu
08/10/2014 at 14:59 |
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Not even in that context is it perpetual. Because it is moving away, it's gravitational effect on the earth lessens with every passing moment. Even given the relatively short life-span of a single human, the long-term consequences for an orbital gravity harvester will be non-trivial.
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Cebu
> Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire
08/10/2014 at 15:05 |
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Magnets taking the place of gravity, dude. And, yeah, it'd take five times forever to build.
roflcopter
> Cebu
08/10/2014 at 22:56 |
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The funny thing about magnets is that they don't just keep being magnets forever... for that to happen you must use an electromagnet and then you're using energy to create the magnetic field. So much like the fact that tides are actually taking energy out of the Earth-Moon system, the magnets would fall out of orbit due to the energy loss. Have you looked into magnetic induction? It basically shows that no matter how hard you try, the second law of thermodynamics will always find a way to be true.
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Cebu
> roflcopter
08/11/2014 at 14:00 |
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True.