After a liftetime's experience in Besslerland, one thing I have learned is this; there are hard and fast rules in physics and they cannot be bent or deformed to accomodate personal convictions about how Bessler's wheel worked and even though you may come up with numerous ingenious designs for gravity-eneabled wheels, they all have to be compatible with the laws of physics. That is why I do, from time to time, suggest such things as the parametric oscillation (PO) as holding the key to the solution.
The reason why I do this is because I want to get people thinking about how it might be achieved without going the 'over-balancing route'. This particular blog is not so much about parametric oscillation (PO) but more about the need to find a way to use gravity to drive round a wheel, that is compatible with the laws of physics, but, most importantly, leaves behing for the lessons of history, the simple over-balancing wheel.
PO is simply, swinging on a swing and maintaining the motion by altering the position of the body relative to the fulcrum or crossbar on which the swing hangs. Oscillation by itself will simply slow down until it comes to a stop, so you need a way to generate energy to maintain the swinging. Traditionally people have sought to overbalance the wheel by moving weights inwards and outwards from the centre of rotation, but it must surely be obvious by now that, as the scientists confirm, such a method will not work. After hundreds of years without a single runner, except for Bessler's, no show means no go, pardon the aphorism.
Did Bessler use PO? In my opinion,yes. He said that simply overbalancing a wheel was a waste of time and piling more weights on simply confirmed that it would not work. But PO doesn't simply mean overbalancing although it does form a part of the action. First you have to generate the initial energy which is induced by allowing a weight to fall, and it isn't necessary to have it fall into a position which would overbalnce the wheel. It's job is to move another weight of identical mass and size, into a position which will then lead to a small angle of rotation in the wheel.
Compare this action to that of the person on a swing. To initiate movement the swinger leans backwards to start a small angle of rotation, and then forwards to repeat the action in the opposite direction. With the right timing, he or she, can add the force generated in the first action to the second one, thus increasing the distance rotated back and forth. The rider's action produces rotation just as the first weight does when it falls and moves the second weight.
The rider flexes his arms or pulls on them to move his body into an overbalancing position and that starts rotation so the movement of the arms is similar to the fall of the first weight. Separate from the arms is the body which is equivalent to the second weight. In the case of the sitting swinger, when he leans back, his weight is moved behind the fulcrum, thus moving the swing seat forward; and then he leans forward to bring his body weight in front of the fulcrum thus pushing it rearwards again.
A more efficient method for our purposes is for the swinger to stand on the seat. In this case he moves his body weight closer to the fulcrum and further from it dependant on whether he is swinging forwards or backwards. Of course he still needs to start the movement by altering his body position to the front or rear of the fulcrum, then he can adopt the rise and fall method This is more efficient use of the rider's energy. In Estonia, as I have mentioned several times over the years, they have a national sport called in Estonian 'Kiiking'. In this case the swing has rigid ropes made of steel and the rider is fixed by his feet to the swing seat and this permits him to swing back and forth with increasing momentum until he completes a full turn and several afterwards. In competitions the Estonians lengthen the steel ropes which makes it much more difficult to generate a full turn.
It is this technique that I am sure we can turn to our advantage and I believe is what Bessler incorporated within his wheels.
However if you do ot subscribe to this theory then you must find an alternative that does not depend entirley on simple overbalancing and as far as I know the only other potential techniques currently being studied either avail themselves of the centrifugal/centripetal force generated in turning the wheel, or David Cowlishall's Gyroscopic Inertial Thrust (GIT!).
JC
