I have been asked to clarify what I mean by the phrase, 'a packet of energy' used on my website at http://www.besslerswheel.com/html/conservative_force.html
If I drop a book on the floor I say that its fall has consumed one packet of gravitational energy. If I drop two books on the floor at the same time there will still be only one packet of energy used, but if the two books drop one after the other then two packets of energy have been used. If a very heavy dictionary and small pocket diary fall at the same time only one packet of energy has been used. So the number of packets of energy used depends purely on whether they happened to fall together or separately.
If I drop a bag of billiard balls on the floor, I can calculate how much energy was used by weighing the bag of balls and measuring how far they fell - weight times vertical fall gives us a figure indicating the work done by gravity. I could also weigh the bag and each ball separately and work out how much work was done for each item. If I then added those figures together the resulting total would be the same as for the bag of balls. So it doesn’t matter how far they fell or how heavy they were - all we are interested in knowing is whether they fell together or separately and that is why I call the amount of work done by gravity, a packet of energy consumed.
The reason I use this phrase is to try to explain how one half of a pair of weights can move the other half without coming into conflict with the conservative nature of gravity. Their falls do not happen at the same time and therefore their new positions can be used advantageously to rotate the wheel.!
I realize of course that this phrase is normally used in connection with photons or gravitons but in this instance there is no direct connection with that concept.
JC
John,..Sorry to raise this question again,but I really believe that Bessler's reference to a humble tool was not referring to himself,but he was alluding to a device.
ReplyDeleteThis device was known to,'famous men of the day',though not in the form they were used to seeing it.Perhaps he modified it to serve a purpose in the wheel.
Several things spring to mind; a club,stork bill,a modified lever or a beam balance,even a pair of bellows.Some tool that was used by famous men of the day.
I don't think he was referring to himself,otherwise he would not have said it had to be modified into a different form.
Perhaps someone else has a suggestion as to what the humble tool could be.
ReplyDelete"If I drop two books on the floor at the same time there will still be only one packet of energy used, but if the two books drop one after the other then two packets of energy have been used."
ReplyDeleteThat's totally wrong. Energy is linearly proportional to the mass. It doesn't matter if you drop both books together or one after another. You use the same amount of energy.
You still don't get it, yellowson. My point is that if two different weights drop at two different times then two different packets of gravity do the work. Whether Energy is linearly proportional to the mass is not relevant to the point.
DeleteJC
OK, sorry I get it now; this is your own theory then. You have to prove it with your working wheel, because your theory sounds wrong.
DeleteTrevor ,
ReplyDeleteGood luck weighing the evidence of what the humble tool might be that Bessler spoke of ."On one side it is heavy and full; on the other empty
and light, just as it should be."
Spinning tops were well-known and popular toys in those and later days. A spinning top works best (the gyroscopic effect works best) when most of the mass is distributed as Bessler said - one side full and heavy (top) and one side empty and light (bottom). One can even think of a Levitron... but I doubt that very much. But perhaps Bessler saw the potential (or discovered precession) of the gyroscopic effects of the humble toy and used it? Shades of Laithwaite...
DeleteWhere is this humble tool comment from? From the Apologia?
Delete@Andre, I doubt that Bessler actually used gyroscopes, but we seem to agree on their weight-reducing possibilities. What annoys me is that nowadays the Mechanical Engineering department of any decent university could easily repeat Laithwaite's experiments with a heavy gyro, using motion capture technology on the person raising it, then program an industrial robot fitted with appropriate force and torque sensors to duplicate exactly the motion of the person. If done properly, that would settle the question of weight reduction.
DeleteBut of course no university will do this; they all "know" the answer already.
@yellowson, The reference is in Das Triumphirende PM Orffyreanum, page 46. As translated on p203 of John's publication of this, talking about the Principle of Perpetual Motion, Bessler says "...the cause of it all being a humble tool which the famous scholars of the day have as yet seen in but an incomplete form."
Gyroscopes don't "lose" weight. That's why no one duplicates Laithwaite's experiments.
DeleteIf they lost weight, can you tell us where it went?
Currently I cannot be sure of explaining where the weight "goes" any more than I can explain the equally difficult question of how Laithwaite lifted the gyro so easily. Maybe forced precession explains it all; maybe not. I readily concede my inadequate knowledge in this respect, but at the same time I don't like to gloss over anomalies. Traditionally, the way to gain knowledge is to do experiments, which is all I'm suggesting here. (In vain, as I know!)
DeleteAs I've said before, Laithwaite seems to be forcing the gyro's precession somewhat, in which case an added torque through angle could compensate (completely — or not?) for a lesser force through vertical distance. A properly designed experiment would sort all this out.
I suggested a few blog entries back to try it yourself. Hold a spinning gyro while standing on a set of scales and compare it to the weight of the gyro while it is not spinning.
DeleteTo make a well-balanced gyro of 40 pounds weight or more is not a trivial task. But you have a point: if I want it done right, I'll have to do it myself, because no-one else will. But as said, the experiment would have to be properly designed and instrumented, meaning I would want to know how much energy was being supplied from both lifting force, and torque, at small time intervals throughout the whole process. Ordinary scales would not be good enough for that.
DeleteThanks Arktos. I've read Das Tri. and by that comment, Bessler was talking about himself obviously. You can search humble in the pdf and you will see that when he says humble he always refers to himself.
DeleteI'll keep trying to get it across:
ReplyDeleteThe work done on the book or books or billiard balls to lift them to the position they are dropped from can't be ignored; it's the other half of the physics involved.
If, then, a pair of weights is in a position so one weight lifts the other with a packet of gravitational energy, we MUST include in our analysis the energy it took to position the weights. Otherwise, we get incorrect data.
That's why gravity is called conservative, we have to do work against it to take advantage of it. I can't put it more simply.
The statement that each weight is using different packets of gravity is misleading. Gravitational force is determined between centers of mass. If two books or a bag of billiard balls falls, the center of mass of both books or the bag becomes the system under analysis, rather than two separate books with two separate centers of mass becoming TWO SYSTEMS under analysis.
If we analyze one weight lifting another weight with a lever, we do the same. We isolate each weight to determine the forces on their centers of mass, and the equation for levers to show power in = power out.
John said
"If I drop a bag of billiard balls on the floor, I can calculate how much energy was used by weighing the bag of balls and measuring how far they fell - weight times vertical fall gives us a figure indicating the work done by gravity."
Right, W = F x D.
Let's not forget it took the same Work to lift the bag of balls.
"So it doesn’t matter how far they fell or how heavy they were - all we are interested in knowing is whether they fell together or separately and that is why I call the amount of work done by gravity, a packet of energy consumed."
And again, let's not forget the packet of energy consumed to lift the bag.
"The reason I use this phrase is to try to explain how one half of a pair of weights can move the other half without coming into conflict with the conservative nature of gravity. Their falls do not happen at the same time and therefore their new positions can be used advantageously to rotate the wheel.!"
Using the "packet of gravity" phrase doesn't circumvent its conservative nature.
Eventually the weight that was originally lifted will be required to lift the other weight. Its new position was gained from a sacrifice of distance (same weight lifting same weight on unequal lever arms), or mass (larger weight lifting smaller weight on equal lever arms). Either way, the sacrifice means the weight that was lifted can't lift the other weight from its new position because it doesn't have the same mechanical advantage.
And not to get too picky, but "energy consumed" implies the energy is gone. Energy converted is the preferred terminology.
See my response to yellowson, Doug. I take your point about energy 'converted' being preferable to energy 'consumed'. Thanks
ReplyDeleteJC
Your response to yellowson doesn't respond to my comment.
ReplyDeleteMy comment didn't refer to energy being linearly proportional to mass.
My comment refers to the work done against gravity, and sacrifices made with mechanical advantage. But if your response is the same, that these are irrelevant, I'd have to ask you to elaborate what makes them irrelevant.
If you don't get the correct answer with the physics involved ; involve more/less physics until you do .
ReplyDeleteThere is no correct answer . we're all just socializing .
DeleteMy personal belief is that the tool is a a pantograph, though modified.
ReplyDeleteP.47
Trevor asks:
ReplyDelete"Perhaps someone else has a suggestion as to what the humble tool could be."
Considering that each one of Bessler's two-directional wheels contained a total of 16 LEVERS, I think it's quite safe to assume that the "humble tool" he was referring to was...the LEVER! LOL!
JC wrote:
"The reason I use this phrase is to try to explain how one half of a pair of weights can move the other half without coming into conflict with the conservative nature of gravity. Their falls do not happen at the same time and therefore their new positions can be used advantageously to rotate the wheel.!"
I can appreciate your effort to explain how a Bessler wheel's descending side weights would be able to lift an EQUAL number of ascending side weights, but you do not need to "desynchronize" the interaction between the weights on both sides in order to accomplish the lift. In Bessler's wheels the ascending side weights were, ON AVERAGE, always a bit closer to the axle than were the descending side weights, ON AVERAGE. This condition persisted despite the rotation of the wheel (that is, up to a certain higher maximum rotation rate at which point CF ruined the imbalance). This displacement and maintenance of the CoM of the weights on a wheel's descending side was due to the unique scheme of interconnecting cords between the weighted levers and the careful use of spring tension on the moving levers.
Again, you keep using phrases like "work done by gravity". Gravity does NO work on weights! Only a weight can "do work" on another weight although gravity can facilitate the process. The donor weight does this by transferring some of its own energy / mass content to the recipient weight. In Bessler's wheels the descending side weights, being a bit farther from the axle than the ascending side weights, could actually do enough work to not only lift the same number of ascending side weights AT THE SAME TIME, but also overcome the various counter torques acting on the wheel from air and bearing drag and any "outside" machinery attached to its axle. This process does NOT violate "the Law of Conservation of Energy / Mass".
"gravity does NO work on weights!"
ReplyDeleteActually it does. But I know you want to rewrite the laws of physics, so we'll humour you too.
@ Doug
ReplyDeleteOh, all of a sudden you now proclaim that gravity DOES do work on weights? I think it is YOU who are trying to "rewrite the laws of physics"! LOL!
It is true that the energy / mass content of an object will increase as it is risen in a gravity field. BUT, that added energy / mass does NOT come from the gravity field, but, rather, from some other OBJECT that is losing some of its own energy / mass content. IF the other object is a falling weight, then gravity certainly enables the transfer of energy / mass between the two objects to take place, nothing more!
Trying to get energy / mass out of a gravity field is almost like trying to squeeze orange juice out of a vacuum!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(physics)
ReplyDeleteOn second thought, that might be too much to read. Never mind.
ReplyDeleteW=fd
Work = force times distance
work = gravitational force on a weight through a distance (height), or position relative to a reference point.
Doug, of course you are right that the gyroscopic weight does not loose weight,but the weight through gyroscopic action is transferred to the support which when it's at the apex of the wheel,puts the load on the main axle where it has no affect on the wheels torque.
ReplyDeleteThis way you have basically raised the weight in a spiral to a greater diameter in the wheel where it can have more leverage.
You have to be sure that the gyro starts and ends up in the same plane as the revolution of the wheel to avoid a gyroscopic action that would slow the wheel down.
Doug writes:
ReplyDelete"work = gravitational force on a weight through a distance (height), or position relative to a reference point"
Yes, it requires work be done (or energy / mass expended) in order to lift a weight against the pull of gravity. But, my point is that that work is NOT done by gravity, but by some OBJECT which loses the required amount of energy / mass from itself. When the other object is a weight, then gravity helps make the transfer possible as when a lever or pulleys or buoyancy are involved.
However, that other object need not be a weight. For example, a cannon ball can be fired straight up into the air and will experience a sudden increase in its energy / mass content as it is accelerated up the cannon's barrel to a high velocity by the expanding exhaust products of the explosion. That energy / mass will be rapidly supplied as the chemical reactants of the explosive charge in the cannon are converted into gaseous products which, in the process, lose some of their original energy / mass. Yes, the reactants formed will actually weigh picograms LESS than the original charge reactants did!
As the cannon ball rises, its energy / mass content remains unchanged except for the small losses that take place as it pushes aside the intervening atmosphere. It merely continuously trades in the energy / mass associated with its dwindling kinetic energy for the energy / mass of its increasing gravitational potential energy. At some height, the cannon ball will run out of the energy / mass supplied by its kinetic energy and will not be able to add further to the supply of energy / mass associated with its gravitational potential energy.
At that point, the cannon ball will come to a stop. Then, without support, the process will reverse itself. The ball will drop and convert all of the energy / mass associated with its gravitational potential energy back into that associated with its kinetic energy. It will finally arrive back at the cannon with almost all of the added energy / mass it acquired from the exploding chemical reaction that launched it (minus that small amount transferred to the air molecules to push them out of the way during its ascent and descent) and will be traveling at close to its original muzzle velocity. Needless to say, whoever fired the cannon better not be hanging around waiting for it arrival! LOL!
@ Trevor
Gyroscopes are truly amazing and puzzling things to play around with and Bessler appears to have been fascinated with the properties of spinning objects because he includes a spinning top on his "toys page" in MT. But, gyroscopic action is NOT used in Bessler's wheels.
Tg, you missed the boat on that post.
DeleteGravity does work. It's a force. It moves things through distances.
Forget the objects losing energy, energy can't be lost (or found).
The cannonball got its PE from the cannon. The PE was then converted from PE to KE by the force of gravity.
Energy is just a concept that helps us understand how things interact. All types of energy fall under the two main types, potential and kinetic.
The mass of the cannonball, (or any mass) and the mass of the earth interact through the force of gravity.
When I was reading Das Tri I noticed something interesting. On page 238; Johann Andreas Weise's testimony
ReplyDelete" The most noteworthy detail regarding this particular experiment was that the wheel, while under this considerable load, continued to rotate at exactly
the same rate as when it was running “empty”."
That's really extraordinary that the wheel had the same speed whether it was empty or loaded! Bessler was talking about regulation with an external pendulum; but, if the above testimony is true, then the wheel had an internal regulator, because empty wheel must rotate faster. There is of course another simple explanation the wheel somewhat could understand it was empty or not!!!!
Bye the way,..The one important humble tool I left out is the flail.
ReplyDeleteIt has amazing properties.
As you swing the long shaft around in a large orbit,as it comes to a stop,the large orbit velocity give place to a small orbit of the short rod on the chain.
This imparts tremendous centrifugal force at the end which can easily be used to cause a weight to fly up.
I think the flail is mentioned in the Apologia poem.
Yep. I too think the flail is important. It involves two different order circular motions. In particular in manifests transfer of energy from a large orbit to a small orbit, the feedback part of the cycle.
ReplyDeleteWow... some valid observance . Who'da thunk it .
ReplyDeleteyellowson wrote:
ReplyDelete"That's really extraordinary that the wheel had the same speed whether it was empty or loaded!"
When an unloaded wheel had a load suddenly attached to it, the wheel would EVENTUALLY slow down until its torque equalled the counter torque produced by the load. However, one must also remember that the 16 weights inside the Merseburg and Weissenstein wheels were near the rim of those wheels and gave their drums a high moment of inertia so that they would behave, for awhile, like flywheels. If a load was only connected to the wheel for a BRIEF time, then, indeed, the wheel would be able to move it DURING THAT TIME without a noticeable drop in rotation rate.
This effect was observed when the rope of a weight hung from a pulley outside of a nearby window was suddenly attached to an axle peg and began "rapidly" lifting the weight. The weight would rise at about the rate of 10 inches per second and would take about 36 seconds to climb 30 feet during which time there would only be an imperceptible decrease in the rotation rate of the wheel. If, however, one could arrange for a rope to lift the weight HUNDREDS of feet, then after a few minutes one would notice that the wheel had lost much of its initial maximum terminal rotation rate and, eventually, the weight would stop rising and then begin sinking and making the wheel turn in the opposite direction. (Interestingly, if this was done, the eventual "overspeed" of the drum that the weight caused in that reversed direction would make the drum produce a braking effect that would actually cause the weight to descend at about the same rate that it rose of only 10 inches per second! This odd effect is the result of excessive CF produced causing the CoM of the overdriven sub wheel's weights to rotate CW and way over onto the ascending side and close to the 9:00 position of the drum. Fortunately, this "mode" of operaton did not damage the wheel's mechanisms.)
Treveor wrote:
"...The one important humble tool I left out is the flail.
It has amazing properties."
I think of the flail like any other tool: a device for amplifying force at the expense of distance. One moves the lighter wooden handle through a certain distance and then stops. The increased energy / mass of the handle is then immediately added to that of the movable end piece (usually a metal rod) which then travels a shorter distance to strike something with much greater force. This comes in handy when its time to apply a high force to, say, remove the wheat grains from their fibrous, but somewhat brittle outer hulls (called chaff, IIRC).
I guess that one could "poetically" describe the motion of the levers inside of Bessler's wheels as they moved from the 6:00 to 3:00 positions of a CW rotating drum as looking somewhat like the motion of a flail. But, that would be about the only similarity.
TG, one of us obviously doesn't know the physics. Let me give you a clue about who he is, he lives in a dreamworld...
DeleteI think I should give this topic a little rest. It has started to take up so much time and it feels like it is about to become an obsession. Good luck to everyone. I honestly hope one of you or all of you will make it. See you later :)
The bi-directional wheels , how do they work ?
ReplyDelete- Ealadha
The bi-directional wheels worked in a similar fashion to besslers windmill.
DeleteIt's symmetrical and does not use 2 systems to run both directions.
P.47
What is your opinion about how they worked?
ReplyDeleteI am posing the question of how the bi directional wheels worked because there is someone posting on this blog whom think they know the principle of the Merseberg and Weissenstein wheels .
Delete- Ealadha
PART I:
ReplyDelete@ yellowson
The only "dreamworld" that I am living it is the one in which "self motive" machinery is a reality. For the first time in decades I think that world is finally at hand.
I have found, however, that most newbie "wrong track" Bessler mobilists ARE truly in a dreamworld of UNrealistic expectations. Many actually think they will do a quick review of the Bessler literature, scribble a few sketches, and, VOILA, their "unique" and so "obvious" design will immediately solve the 300 year old Bessler wheel mystery! IF it was really THAT simple, it would have been done CENTURIES ago by any one of the TENS OF THOUSANDS of HIGHLY skilled craftsmen and inventors who have wrestled with this problem!
The 1 out of 100 of these newbies that actually builds something quickly discovers that there is a BIG difference between what they THOUGHT would happen when they unleashed their wheel and what actually happens. Most will, after a few months to years of chasing "wrong track" designs, drop out and just declare the whole quest futile as they resign themselves to being "no trackers" for the rest of their lives. I was close to this point myself several times and in the past have even tried taking "vacations" from the subject. Sooner or later, my mind would tell me that it was time to return and take a fresh look at the whole subject. I'm SO glad I did because only a few years ago I finally stumbled onto the "right track" approach and, so far, it is the ONLY one I've ever tried that is showing REAL promise. No, I don't have a fully operational one-directional wheel YET, but I'm more hopeful than ever that will come in the next year...possibly sooner.
PART II:
ReplyDeleteDoug asks:
"What is your opinion about how they [the two-directional wheels] worked?
I'm not sure who you are addressing this question to, Doug, but my opinion about the two-directional wheels has been posted many times in prior blog entries.
Basically, a two-directional Bessler wheel is just two ONE-directional wheels mounted side by side on the axle inside of a drum with an enlarged width. However, the two one-directional wheels, which I refer to as "sub wheels", are arranged so that their "preferred" directions of rotation are OPPOSED to each other.
When the two-directional wheel is stationary, the two CoM's of its two sub wheels (each containing 8 weights) are on opposite sides of the axle and their locations are horizontally symmetrical to each other. This places the composite CoM of ALL of the 16 weights of the two sub wheels directly under the axle. At that location, known as the "punctum quietus", the composite CoM can produce no driving torque and the wheel will remain stationary.
When one of Bessler's two-directional wheels was given a gentle push in EITHER direction, something really amazing happened. WHICHEVER sub wheel was forced to rotate COUNTER to its preferred direction would, after a complete rotation, have all of its 8 weights "locked up" against their rim stops. This caused the CoM of those 8 weights to "retreat" to the center of the drum's axle. That sub wheel then became "neutralized" and could no longer contribute to the driving torque that would act on the drum. The remaining sub wheel, which WAS turning in its preferred direction, would continue to do so until the rotational kinetic energy / mass accumulated in ALL of the structures of the wheel was dissipated. I think I remember Wagner mentioning that Bessler had an assistant who would grasp and then apply his body weight (100 pounds!) to the axle of the Merseburg wheel in order to slow it to a stop. This was a somewhat risky maneuver and I assume the assistant wore a heavy leather apron to protect himself whenever he served as such a "human brake"!
Once a two-directional wheel was stopped, a gentle nudge in the opposite direction through a complete rotation would then completely unlock the FORMERLY retrograde turning subwheel's 8 weights while locking up the 8 weights of the sub wheel which had PREVIOUSLY driven the drum. This sequence of unlocking and locking up half of the two-directional wheel's 16 weights would have to be repeated EACH time that the drum was stopped and then restarted in the OPPOSITE direction. If the drum was stopped and then restarted in the SAME direction it formerly turned in, then the previously locked up weights would simply remain locked up against their rim stops. Unless ALL of a two-directional wheel's 16 weights were unlocked from their rim stops, a two directional wheel would behave exactly like a one-directional wheel and have to be tethered to the floor to prevent it from spontaneously accelerating to is maximum terminal rotation rate.
Actually, understanding the general operation of Bessler's two-directional wheels is fairly easy. The HARD part is finding THE design for the 8 weighted lever sub wheels that Bessler used in those giant "ganged" wheels. Sooner or later we WILL have that design!
There you go ealadha.
ReplyDelete