In yesterday's post I was trying to say that the traditional explanations of why gravity cannot be used to drive a wheel continuously, must be wrong because the evidence that Bessler's wheel was genuine is so compelling. I wanted to get away from the oft-parroted words we learn from text books, wikipedia etc., and think for ourselves.
I have tried the well-tested route of analogies, one of Eric Laithwaite's favourite ways of explaining things, but people still get side-tracked into irrelevant details. They simply don't get the allusion to gravity being analogous to the wind. The origin of the wind is always introduced no matter how many times I say 'you have to look at this as a local effect'.
Instead of trotting out the same old stuff, why don't we think about the problem and use our commons sense?
Gravity is continuous, we know that because when we drop something it falls to the floor - it happens every time!
I can pick up a book off the floor and replace it on a shelf and restore the potential energy lost in sending the book to the floor.
Let's say I fire a rifle horizontally, the bullet hits the ground 500 yards away at a point level with the ground I'm standing on. At the same time I drop another bullet from my hand level with the rifle and both bullets hit the ground at the same time. Gravity was only responsible for making the bullet drop to the ground.
Those are the features which define a conservative force. It is a continuous force; energy lost by it is capable of being restored by reversing what happened; and it is not necessary to take into account the path of a fallen object when calculating the work done by gravity.
Now it is always said that for those reasons gravity cannot be used as we wish to use it. But each of those definitions can apply to wind and water currents, so why separate them from gravity?
Yesterday the sun was introduced again. My fault, I mentioned it. The thing is that the features of a conservative force mentioned above must be applied locally. We don't know where gravity originates so we just need to look at how it manifests itself here on earth. I tried to accommodate those who wish to include the sun in their argument by fixing on the fact that air is affected by gravity just as everything else is. We know that the air is more dense closer to the earth's surface because of gravity. It is analogous to the oceans of the planet. If you dived to the bottom of the deepest ocean you would be crushed by the sheer weight of water above you, and a small bubble of air would escape from your flattened lungs and shoot towards the surface of the water.
As it rose the bubble would get larger and larger. Air at the surface of the eath is like that and as it rises each molecule gets larger and less dense.
Yes the sun affects the air currents but gravity holds it down and would do so without the sun. Solar energy may be responsible for the winds that blow, but gravity enables them to rise and fall, and create varying pressures. Gravity acts on molecules of whatever is with its field whether it's air, water or lumps of lead. The conservative force of gravity lies at the heart of all movement on the planet.
I wish everyone would accept Bessler's statement that the weights are themselves the PM device, the ‘essential constituent parts’". Then we could go about trying to explain why that can be so. I have tried and will continue to try to find the solution but sometimes I feel as if I'm banging my head against a wall of taught science. No-one thinks for themselves any more but takes everything they are told for granted - parrot fashion. I'm not saying that people don't understand what they have learned but sometimes it is easier to assume that that is all there is to the facts; there are no other factors to be considered, when perhaps a little lateral thinking might help us to understand how to solve the problem.
JC
