I wrote this poem out of frustration that such an idiotic argument could
ever have been taken seriously Hermann von Helmholtz (August 31, 1821 –
September 8, 1894) was a brilliant German physician and physicist but
as so often happens, he was credited with discoveries outside of his
area of expertise, hence the acceptance of a conjecture so easily
disposed of, that the mere fact that it is relied upon to dismiss such
theories as I have researched over many years, defies logic.
With acknowledgement and grateful thanks to Scott Ellis of Besslerwheel forum:-
"In 1847, a 26-year-old German medical doctor, Hermann Helmholtz, gave a presentation to the Physical Society of Berlin that would change the course of history. He presented the original formulation of what is now known as the First Law of Thermodynamics, beginning with the axiomatic statement that a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible.
Axiom - A statement or proposition that is accepted as true without proof.
No one had ever succeeded, he wrote, in building a Perpetual Motion Machine that worked. Therefore, such machines must be impossible. If they are impossible it must be because of some natural law preventing their construction. This law, he said, could only be the Conservation of Energy.
But a profound reversal of reasoning has occurred in the last century. Helmholtz originally said "Because a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible, therefore the First Law of Thermodynamics;" while in any physics text book today one will find the statement that "Because of the First Law of Thermodynamics, a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible."
With acknowledgement and grateful thanks to Scott Ellis of Besslerwheel forum:-
"In 1847, a 26-year-old German medical doctor, Hermann Helmholtz, gave a presentation to the Physical Society of Berlin that would change the course of history. He presented the original formulation of what is now known as the First Law of Thermodynamics, beginning with the axiomatic statement that a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible.
Axiom - A statement or proposition that is accepted as true without proof.
No one had ever succeeded, he wrote, in building a Perpetual Motion Machine that worked. Therefore, such machines must be impossible. If they are impossible it must be because of some natural law preventing their construction. This law, he said, could only be the Conservation of Energy.
But a profound reversal of reasoning has occurred in the last century. Helmholtz originally said "Because a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible, therefore the First Law of Thermodynamics;" while in any physics text book today one will find the statement that "Because of the First Law of Thermodynamics, a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible."
Skeptics are quick to cite the Laws of Thermodynamics to disprove Bessler's claims. In fact, the argument is circular.
The Laws of Thermodynamics do not prove that Bessler's machine is impossible. On the contrary, they are deduced from the "leap of faith" of first presuming it is impossible."
It is often found that people who are recognised for their expertise in one field often comment on areas outside their experience and because of their celebrity their ideas are accepted.
Of course in this case the expert was a 26 year old medical student. Others such as Lord Kelvin in 1895 stated that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible” .
Lord Kelvin could not know , what would happen in the future, and apparently, Hermann von Helmholtz didn’t even know what had happened in the past.
I was callow and thin of skin, when first I found Orffyreus' spin;
the poisonous barbs of jeers and sneers aimed at me by my erstwhile peers
did not a jot of difference make, to my intention to forsake
those oft repeated laws of old that we were vehemently sold -
immutable and set in stone. I, ignorant, set out alone
to prove that falsehoods once proposed, accepted almost unopposed,
weaved in argument assumptive, circular and quite presumptive,
conclusions made were not conclusive and some agreed were too inclusive.
For 40 years I've sought success, wanting more than just a guess.
Helmholtz said non-stop rotation, driven just by weights in motion,
had never ever been achieved, and not by Bessler, who deceived.
The works of many witnesses dismissed as so much witlessness,
by Helmholtz, who said that he had proved no weight-driven wheel had ever moved
without the aid of trickery, chicanery and quackery.
Addressing such a case as this a court of law might well dismiss
on grounds of lack of evidence when set against such testaments,
the leap of faith required to prove, that gravity wheels could never move.
I must apologise for inflicting my poetry on you from time to time, but I enjoy writing it and so I publish it sometimes. I have many more but I am content to leave it as it is.
JC
10a2c5d26e15f6g7h10ik12l3m6n14o14r5s17tu6v5w4y4-3,’.
Actually, I think von Helmholtz was right! Perpetual motion that is supposed to be obtained by creating energy out of nothing is impossible. You can't get something from nothing. However, I don't for a second believe that Bessler's wheels were doing that. They did have a power source, but it would not be recognized until early in the 20th century. That power source was the energy represented by the mass of their moving parts; that is, by the masses of their weights and levers. Bessler's imbalanced wheel, like any wheel that manages to keep its center of mass on its descending side during rotation, managed to tap into that, which was to him and his contemporaries, unsuspected source of energy and then pass it on to machinery outside of the wheel. So, in reality von Helmholtz proposed a physical conservation law that was only correct as far as it went. But, we now know that his law was incomplete. If he had had the equation E = mc^2 that Einstein popularized, then von Helmholtz would have presented the full Conservation of Energy - Mass Law and, I believe, as a result the general consensus that Bessler was a hoaxer would have almost immediately dissipated and he would have gotten the credit he deserved. Let's hope we can soon make that happen!
ReplyDeleteAn asymmetric force interaction by definition sources energy from the disproportionate input / output FxD integrals, transferring it between the classical and quantum realms. The direct implication is that the field in question is active, not passive (this would be the real paradigm shift). If we extrapolate that the field is interchangable for any other, then we must assume that all such fields (ie. all fundamental forces) are active vacuum phenomenon.
DeleteIt's not nuclear energy (how would that work anyway - what are you proposing, fusion or fission?)...
Certainly mass equivalency remains an outstanding issue, but without a working mechanism we might as well be arguing about angels on pinheads. Again though, the direct implication is that the vacuum is losing relativistic mass in proportion to the energy drawn from it.
Yes Helmholtz was right, and not through any a priori assumptions as JC alludes. But his work is only tangential to the issues here...
Ken,
ReplyDeleteGive us an update on your progress.
I was only able to run a partial test of the two main interconnected groups of levers and weights last night and had to stop after about 20 degrees of wheel rotation. The simulations tend to run very slow at first due to the large number of parts in motion at the same time. So far everything seems to be working smoothly, though, but I need to have a full 45 degrees of rotation with all of the levers assuming the same orientations at the end that they had at the beginning of the segment of rotation. Hopefully, I'll have the testing completely today and be able to report success tomorrow. However, even if the "resetting" of the levers is perfect, there is still one final critical test. That involves turning on the wm2d feature that lets me track the location of the center of mass of the weights and levers. That location must remain on the descending side of the wheel throughout the 45 degree segment of wheel rotation or the design must be considered yet another failure.
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DeleteGood news to report! I tried running the sim for my latest and best (I hope!) design and, initially, the levers failed to reset after 45 degrees of wheel rotation although they came close to doing so. Then I noticed the problem. The last rope I added to complete the "connectedness" of the moving levers had somehow managed to relocate its attachment point to its lever. This is, unfortunately, a known bug in the wm2d software. One must always recheck things after adding something to a design to make sure that the parameters for other parts did not reset themselves to their default values. Been working with the program for about eight years now and still haven't figured out how to prevent this from happening (if anybody had solved this problem, then please let me know). Anyway, when the rope was then reattached to the correct spot on its lever and the sim run, the shifting levers (those seven levers whose pivots travel between 6:00 and 4:30 o'clock) worked smoothly and all levers assumed their original orientations by the completion of the 45 degree segment of wheel rotation. One final "acid test" to go. I'll switch on the feature that allows tracking of the center of mass of the weights and levers and if that center stays on the wheel's descending side, then this is it! I think, however, I'll leave that final test until next week so that I can bask in the glow of thinking I've finally solved this cursed mystery over the weekend. Happy Halloween everyone!
DeleteJohn,
ReplyDeletea while back you said to think out of the box, and study movements in nature etc.
Well, I've been thinking about Saturn's moon, Hyperion, because of it's odd shape, and the interaction of the other moons, it has an irregular, impossible to predict rotation.
Bessler would not of been aware of Hyperion, but what if he had managed to duplicate a similar action that caused the wheel to overbalance ?
I did explain previously how a random input could produce a regular output.
Also the unpredictable nature of the rotation is something physicists could never explain.
Although Hyperion has a chaotic rotation, it's still turning ! :-)
I agree with Ken that the answer must be found in an increase (sic) in the mass of the moving parts.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, Newtonian and Ersatz gravity are the most fundamental fields we experience so it wouldn't be surprising if gravitational and inertial mass were involved.
One thing's for sure. If RAR does work and change in mass is the answer, modern physics will be totally unable to explain it. :-)
I'm always pleased when people agree with me, Frank, but Bessler's wheels did not increase the mass of their perpetual motion structures as they operated and outputted mechanical energy to their environments and any connected and running machinery in them. Rather, the weights and levers in his wheels actually lost small amounts of mass with every drum rotation. Since energy and mass are actually the same thing, it turns out that whenever a system loses energy it must also lose mass. Conversely, whenever a system gains energy, it must also gain some mass. The loss in mass of the weights and levers inside of Bessler's wheels with each drum rotation was very tiny (only a fraction of a picogram) and was insignificant as far as creating the imbalance that drove a wheel. However, the energy lost from the weights and levers was significant and was temporarily stored in stretched springs before being released so that it could literally pull all of the weights and levers past the 9:00 o'clock position a little closer to their stops on the rim as drum continued to rotate in a clockwise direction (final stop contact took place somewhere around the 4:30 o'clock position of the drum). As one of his wheels rotated, it would always lose energy and a tiny amount of mass while any device connected to and driven by the axle was gaining energy and a tiny amount of mass. Without bringing the energy contained in the weights and levers of Bessler's wheels into a discussion of how his wheels operated, one can only conclude that his wheels were creating energy out of thin air. This type of illogical conclusion will never convince anyone in the possibility of imbalanced pm wheels or Bessler's wheels in particular.
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