It's a curious thing, that energy cannot be drawn from gravity; it feels instinctively wrong. Yes, I know, gravity is not an energy source but intuitively it seems plausible. Sir Isaac Newton's view of gravity provided the same basic model that we accept today; that gravity is a force
which tries to pull two objects toward each other. Anything which has
mass also has a gravitational pull. The more massive an object is, the
stronger its gravitational pull is. Earth's gravity is what keeps you on
the ground and what causes objects to fall.
A force can push or a pull, and is capable of moving objects of mass, but does that mean it's consuming energy? Sometimes, provided there is potential energy to consume. For instance, holding a rope taut is using force. Pulling something towards you with a rope is
using energy. If you're standing on the surface of the Earth, energy is not being spent to keep you from falling
to the ground, even though a force is pressing upon you. It's only when the
force moves an object of mass that energy is consumed. So force is
independent of work because it's possible to have forces that do no
work.
Note - when I say that energy is consumed I do not, of course suggest that it has gone, but merely changed to another form of energy, as we all know, energy cannot be created nor destroyed.
Note - when I say that energy is consumed I do not, of course suggest that it has gone, but merely changed to another form of energy, as we all know, energy cannot be created nor destroyed.
So force does consume energy when it makes something move. But that energy has to be there first before the force can use it. There is a law of conservation of energy but there is no law of conservation of force. The force is always with you - on earth anyway! In gravity's case without any potential energy there can be no energy expenditure, so how do we get potential energy? We do some work against gravity, and that energy is stored as potential energy. Lift a weight and you have the potential energy to drop it.
But...in the case of Bessler's wheel, in order to continually
rotate, it would require a continual supply of energy from falling weights.
Conventional thinking dictates that a gravity wheel will never have a
continual supply of energy
because any energy gained by the falling weight on the one side of the
wheel is cancelled out by returning the weight to its original height on
the other side of the wheel.
That is more or less where we have
been for the last three hundred years - how to get the weights back up
again without extra energy being required? Despite their assurances
that we are all ignorant of the basic laws of physics or crazy
lunatics - we
continue to believe in Bessler. For me, it's a gut feeling, an instinct coupled with strong circumstantial; I know
Bessler's wheel is possible. But 'knowing' is not enough, it must be proved and the only way is with a physical proof of principle wheel.
There is a source of continuous power - and on earth that source is gravity. Now I know it isn't the actual energy source but it is so close to being just that that I'm going to say it is. And I'll tell you why? It is really a matter of semantics.
Semantics - the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. It includes interpretation and common usage and accepted norms. So... the application of gravity to the weights drives the rotation of the wheel.
To put it another way, without the force of gravity the weights would just float where ever you placed them. You need the driving force of gravity to move the weights, without which you've got nothing! In my opinion therefore gravity ultimately provides the energy, even though there is no apparent depletion of energy levels. I say 'apparent', because gravity obtains its force from the universe and all the objects of mass within it, interacting with each other. We have no precise information about gravity so we must simply accept that for us it is a permanent feature of our world.
We know that gravity attracts mass. We also know that the mass has to be free to move in the direction of the force of gravity rather than against it and is not fixed in position. In other words it can fall. If it can fall it has potential energy which is changed into kinetic energy.
We know that gravity attracts mass. We also know that the mass has to be free to move in the direction of the force of gravity rather than against it and is not fixed in position. In other words it can fall. If it can fall it has potential energy which is changed into kinetic energy.
1) We know that Bessler's wheel used weights;
2) We know that the wheel required the repeated 'loading' of potential energy by repeated lifting and returning of the weights to their pre-fall position;
3) We know that gravity used that potential energy to make the weights fall
4) We know that Bessler's wheel worked
4) We know that Bessler's wheel worked
5) Thus the wheel was driven by gravity.
Consider this. Bessler's first two wheels began to turn spontaneously as soon as the brake was released. This suggests that the weight which was about to fall, was ready to do so, or indeed had already fallen. This would lead to the immediate commencement of rotation. The next weight would then begin its own action, falling and continuing the motion of the turning wheel. According to conventional thinking at this point or near it, any energy gained by the falling weight on the one side of the wheel is cancelled out by returning the weight to its original height on the other side of the wheel. But this only applies if you cannot engineer a reduced effect on the ascending side - something everyone of us knows and believes Bessler achieved.
Since it is so obvious to all of us that reducing the effect of the weights on the ascending side of the wheel will lead to continuing rotation, why do the experts continue to deny its possibility? We know Bessler did it, ergo it is possible, and all those teachers who believed what they were taught..... are wrong.
Consider this. Bessler's first two wheels began to turn spontaneously as soon as the brake was released. This suggests that the weight which was about to fall, was ready to do so, or indeed had already fallen. This would lead to the immediate commencement of rotation. The next weight would then begin its own action, falling and continuing the motion of the turning wheel. According to conventional thinking at this point or near it, any energy gained by the falling weight on the one side of the wheel is cancelled out by returning the weight to its original height on the other side of the wheel. But this only applies if you cannot engineer a reduced effect on the ascending side - something everyone of us knows and believes Bessler achieved.
Since it is so obvious to all of us that reducing the effect of the weights on the ascending side of the wheel will lead to continuing rotation, why do the experts continue to deny its possibility? We know Bessler did it, ergo it is possible, and all those teachers who believed what they were taught..... are wrong.
Now all we have to do is discover how Bessler was able to lift the weights back to their former position without requiring extra energy from outside the wheel. Simple.
JC
John,
ReplyDeleteStill here! Listening to your words "a reduced effort" I can't help but picture paired weights on the perimeter of the wheel with gravity acting to cause some of the weights on the ascending side to "juggle" and cause a temporary imbalance .
Here's a thought experiment to consider which should clarify matters.
ReplyDeleteImagine one has a ball of solid lead sitting on the ground. He then picks the ball up and places it on top of a nearby table. In order to do that he had to expend a certain amount of energy from the stored chemical potential energy of his muscles to produce a lifting force that exceeded the weight of the ball due to gravity. The ball on the table now has extra energy, but the ball is stationary so it's not kinetic energy and its temperature is the same so it's not thermal energy. So where is that extra energy the ball has? The answer to this riddle did not become apparent to physicists until after Einstein came along and published some very interesting conclusions he reached back in 1905. Basically, the extra energy the lead ball has is represented by a very, very slight increase in its mass. How slight? Probably only a fraction of a picogram of extra mass. Note that there are no extra subatomic particles or atoms in the ball. It's just that all of the subatomic particles present in its lead atoms each have a tiny amount of extra mass in them. If the ball should then roll off of the table and begin to fall toward the ground, it's velocity during the drop will increase as it loses gravitational potential energy and gains kinetic energy. As this happens the ball's mass remains constant because no energy is leaving the ball. When the ball finally hits the ground, it will stop and it's kinetic energy will be transferred to the atoms of the various mineral crystals in the soil. These atoms will begin vibrating a bit faster and that will cause their temperature to rise. Thus, the ball's kinetic energy and the mass associated with are transferred to the atoms of the soil. Those soil atoms then will experience an increase in their thermal energy and the mass associated with that energy. As a result, that initial mass one's muscular effort put into the lead ball to raise it to the table finally winds up being transferred to the subatomic particles that make up the soil atoms of the spot that the lead ball fell onto.
The most important sentence in your blog, imo, is:
"Conventional thinking dictates that a gravity wheel will never have a continual supply of energy because any energy gained by the falling weight on the one side of the wheel is cancelled out by returning the weight to its original height on the other side of the wheel."
"Conventional thinking" is wrong, imo. The energy and mass regained by the weights on the ascending side of a wheel only equals that lost by the weights on the descending side if the center of mass of the weights is located at the wheel's axle or on a vertical line passing through it. However, in an imbalanced wheel, the center of mass of the weights is located on the wheel's descending side. That drastically changes the situation. In such a case, the ascending side weights rise at a slower rate than the descending side weights sink. This causes the descending side weights to lose more gravitational potential energy and the mass associated with it per second than is regained by the ascending side weights. With each rotation the weights continue to lose a bit of gravitational energy and mass and, over time, the weights will weigh less. Where does that lost energy and mass go? If the wheel is allowed to accelerate freely, they are equally distributed among all of the wheel's rotating parts. If the wheel's axle runs outside machinery, they are transferred to the parts of that machinery.
Not this again Ken... please? The form of GPE is simply GMH - any mass increase would represent additional energy over and above GPE/GMH.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to believe that potential energy has mass, fine, but then why would it only manifest selectively in one of two interacting masses - ie. if two identical masses are separated against their mutual gravitation, your theory predicts that both increase in mass equally.
So to keep the mass increase constrained to one or other, you'd have to suppose that the mass increase was size-dependent or something. Take that rationale to its conclusions and we get infinities, preferential reference frames, not to mention free energy..
Here's a riddle for ya - a balance beam, with an identical pair of metal masses on each end. We remove a load of free electrons from one mass only - it now has positive charge relative to its twin, and given a path, a current would run between them. So one end of the balance beam has seen a rise in PE - yet via a reduction in mass (removal of electrons).. Which way will the beam tip?
@John - there's an interesting twist on the force/energy relationship, which is that in EM, displacement within a force field presents a load upon the field's energy source - so while in principle it costs nothing to merely render a static force field, any mechanical work subsequently performed by it would increase the power drawn in direct proprtion to the work done.
This relationship is enforced by Lenz's law, which is effectively Newton's 3rd law for EM systems. However if Lenz's law is circumvented (contentious, but possible), then the workload is not transmitted to the power source and any such displacement is thus thermodynamically free.
One could only guess what energy source might underwrite the gravity field, but the thought occurs that if you're applying some kind of exploit around Newton's 3rd law to re-lift the weights, then the energy source would not be gravity, but whatever was responsible for inertia - the form of the output energy would be GPE alright, but that of the input energy would be something else..
Mr. Vibe, thanks for the reminder of Lenz's law, I'd almost forgotten it and had to do a quick reminder via Google. I'm not sure it applies in my configuration, even as an analogy, although I must do a runthrough of the mechanics of it, just to be sure, and I'm grateful for all suggestions.
DeleteJC
@ Mr. Vibe, you wrote:
Delete"If you want to believe that potential energy has mass, fine, but then why would it only manifest selectively in one of two interacting masses - ie. if two identical masses are separated against their mutual gravitation, your theory predicts that both increase in mass equally."
Not only do I believe it, but so do all of the world's physicists and they have done so for about a century now. And, yes, if one parts two masses that are gravitationally attracted to each other, then the masses of both of them will increase and the distribution of that increase will depend upon the percentage of the total mass of the two objects that each has.
The answer to your "riddle" is simple. Removing the electrons from one of the metal balls gives it a positive charge relative to the other ball (you don't specify where you put those removed electrons, so I'll assume they were placed on the other ball) which then has a negative charge. This increases the electrical potential energy of the system and all of the subatomic particles in the system will experience a slight increase in mass that is proportional to each one's percentage of the starting total mass of all of the subatomic particles in the two balls before the electron transfer occurred. Since one of the balls, the negatively charged one, has slightly greater mass than the other, in theory, that ball should cause the beam to tip to its side. I say theoretically since the difference in mass and weight between the two ends of the beam would probably not be sufficient to overcome even the slightest friction in any sort of physical fulcrum.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that anybody that tells us that an imbalanced pm wheel can not work based on arguments involving the changes of gravitational potential energy that take place on its ascending and descending sides does not understand the simple dynamics of such a wheel. In such a wheel, at any instant, the descending side weights which are farther from the axle are always dropping faster and therefore losing more gravitational potential energy and mass than are being gained back by the slower rising ascending side weights which are closer to the axle. If one considers a single weight as it leaves the 12 o'clock position and completes a single orbit about the wheel's axle, it will arrive back at the 12 o'clock position with a tiny bit less energy and its associated mass than when it started that orbit. That lost energy per weight is, if the wheel is allowed to run freely without a load attached to its axle, then redistributed to all moving parts of the wheel to increase their kinetic energies and the masses associated with those. It is, literally, as though the mass of the weights was flowing out of them and then flowing into the other parts of the wheel and even a bit of that flows back into the weights themselves as their kinetic energy of motion around the axle increases. When the wheel's axle is connected to outside machinery, the energy and mass of the wheel's weights begins flowing out into the parts of those machines and their energies and the masses associated with them increase.
How a imbalanced pm wheel works seems mysterious until one understands what's actually going on in them. Bessler did not have this explanation I am providing, all he could do was just say in AP (on pg. 362):
"It must, simply put, just revolve, without being wound-up, through the principle of 'excess weight'"
To him it was all explainable by the observation that having the center of mass of the weights on a wheel's descending side put a little bit more mass on that side than on the ascending side and, as long as that condition was maintained, the wheel would continue to run.
@John - it wasn't so much a design consideration as food for thought regarding an ultimate energy source; I've long concluded that classical asymmetries are possible, and that this implies that the fundamental forces are active, not passive fields.
DeleteWhatever the field in question - gravity, EM or any other - when something falls into it, work has been done, and energy has been supplied. Since force is not energy, this deficit must've been underwritten by a fundamental energy source responsible for manifesting the field and its activity in the first place.
Normally, when this displacement is reversed, and work is done against the field, that loan is repaid. That's just your common garden symmetrical interaction, but my point is that it shows there is, by definition, a universal and near-infinite energy reservoir ready to fund all the work that will ever be done by any and all forces. It must have unfathomably deep pockets, with no credit limit... provided it's eventually repaid. Classical conservation of energy laws enforce that symmetry.
But an asymmetric interaction is not different in kind; only in its ratios of give and take. It's quantitatively, not qualitatively, different. We're not opening an account at a new bank, or changing our core business... we're just cheating the repayments. The actual form of the gained energy, in its units and dimensions, is simply the same energy we're using all the time everywhere anyway.
This energy field is the vacuum. The gauge bosons whose activity constitutes the substance of the force fields are vacuum fluctuations. When we drop a mass or magnet, the vacuum sponsors this provision of output energy. When we re-lift it, we're performing work directly against the vacuum's activity. This constant background buzz of energy exchanges is both holding us down to the ground, while also preventing us from falling through it.
Forces, and classical interactions, are kind of layers of abstraction above what is, at its most fundamental level, the toing and froing of energy exchanges between the thermodynamic realm of baryonic-EM interactions, and the broiling zero point upon which it crests.
Force fields are composed of energy interactions, but they're just localised polarisations of a background din of such activity, a constant throng of energy exchanges ultimately liable for all work done, whether repaid or not.
So i guess my point is simply that an asymmetric interaction is going to be a load on that system. The form of the energy is not, itself, novel... just the repayment options.
Of course, i also cannot believe this can be sustainable indefinitely without consequences, but that's for other discussions..
@Ken
DeleteThe point of the conundrum was to remove a mass of electrons from one end of the beam, lowering its weight, so they're no longer part of the system.
So that end of the beam has increased electrical PE, but decreased weight.
So to decide which way a perfect beam would tip, you'd have to consider your mass/energy equivalency assumptions.
Obviously, weight is a function of mass and gravity, but charge is a function of EM force. And electrons are fundamental so cannot decompose, however if they could then the energy equivalent to their mass is orders of magnitude greater than their electrical PE.
If your theory were correct then the beam would remain balanced, but in reality it will tip towards the heavier, uncharged side.
However in your reply above you're reiterating that merely cycling a weight in a gravity field reduces its mass - that upon arriving back at the 12 o'clock position it has converted some of its mass into energy. By this rationale, any vertical wheel or piston etc. is suffering the same consequence; clearly an absurd and unnecessary conclusion that runs contrary to all available evidence.
The presumption that GR implies PE gravitates is widespread but you're really picking up the ball and running with it.. and perfectly illustrating its limitations. Fair play for following it through to its conclusions, but you only need glance around to see that where you've arrived at bears little resemblance to where you've embarked from..
Mass/energy equivalency itself isn't the wrong turn - it's absolutely fundamental here, but you're mis-applying it. Square peg, round hole. The real mass deficit is not local, but global.
The substance of any force is quantum exchanges of elementary ambient momentum, traded in signed units of h-bar. It is the mass equivalency of this background radiation pressure - the vacuum potential - that is depleted when we drop a weight, and reinvigorated when we relift it. Asymmetric interactions source and sink thermodynamic energy from and to this zero point, depending on the direction of the asymmetry. All fundamental particles are localised vacuum fluctuations of this higher-dimensional ambient momentum - delineated by the Pauli exclusion principle; fermions comprising baryonic matter are half-spin particles and cannot exist in superposition, while bosons including the force mediators, having integer spin, can share wavefunctions. Hence in an asymmetric interaction, by definition we have an excess of output work by spin 1 particles and so an associated deficit of ambient global momentum; we've taken an endowmnet of momentum of one sign, without reciprocating an equal transfer of the opposite sign. Whether or not the balance has actually shifted in our favour is a matter of the longer term ecology, but suffice to say if it was all so simple as a nice, neat, local mass deficit, i'd be the first to subscribe...
@Vibrator. You wrote:
Delete"The point of the conundrum was to remove a mass of electrons from one end of the beam, lowering its weight, so they're no longer part of the system.
So that end of the beam has increased electrical PE, but decreased weight."
Thanks for finally clarifying your "conundrum". Yes, removing the electrons from one of the balls will reduce the mass of that ball and that, by itself, would cause the beam to tip toward the other ball. However, as you mentioned, removing the electrons will, as it raises the potential electrostatic energy of those electrons and the ball they were removed from, also result in an increase in all of the masses of their subatomic particles. The question then becomes will that increase in mass compensate for the loss of mass of the ball due to the loss of its electrons. That depends upon how many electrons are removed and how far from the ball then are moved. In most cases it will not and the now positively charged ball will still way less than its uncharged twin and the beam will tilt toward that twin.
You also wrote: "However in your reply above you're reiterating that merely cycling a weight in a gravity field reduces its mass - that upon arriving back at the 12 o'clock position it has converted some of its mass into energy. By this rationale, any vertical wheel or piston etc. is suffering the same consequence; clearly an absurd and unnecessary conclusion that runs contrary to all available evidence."
Not true. I said that the constant reduction in mass only happens when the center of rotation of the weights is constantly kept offset from the center of rotation of an imbalanced pm wheel that carries the weights. It will not happen if the center of rotation of the weights is located at any point on a vertical line passing through the center of rotation of a wheel carrying the weights. The constant reduction in mass of the weights I was referring to is due to the fact that, in an imbalanced pm wheel, the weights on the descending side are always falling, being farther from the wheel's center of rotation or axle, at a faster rate than the weights on the ascending side are rising because they are closer to the wheel's center of rotation or axle. It is this maintained asymmetry in the rates of loss and restoration of gravitational potential energy and mass of its weights that is the secret of how an imbalanced pm wheel can continuously output energy in order to accelerate itself or to run attached machinery in its environment.
Everyone I've ever heard declaring an imbalanced pm wheel is impossible, never seems to be aware of this effect. All they do is just focus on the fact that the weights in such a wheel always complete closed paths and fall through and then rise through the same vertical distances. That is true, but they don't seem to realize that the instantaneous rates at which the falling and rising occur is critical to determining how much energy a weight will have each time it reaches the zenith of its travel after it completing a single trip. They spout their declaration of impossibility and then this misinformation is absorbed by others who do not think about it and gets repeated over and over again. Well, thank God Bessler did not believe it and neither do I.
Thanks for the follow up response Mr. Vibe. Your final sentences summed up the situation nicely:-
Delete"So i guess my point is simply that an asymmetric interaction is going to be a load on that system. The form of the energy is not, itself, novel... just the repayment options.
Of course, i also cannot believe this can be sustainable indefinitely without consequences, but that's for other discussions."
I read that one theory concerning the source of gravity was that it was an effect connected with all the spinning planets throughout the universe and that the movements and alterations in those movements affected each and every other one. In another view everything is based on the movement of atoms, as above , so below.
In a sentence, Richard Feynman wrote, 'all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.'
So all the energy consumed on earth over a million years would be less that that used to move a grain of sand one inch, when compared to the size of the universe, so although there may be consequences ultimately I don't think they need concern us :-)
JC
JC
strongly agree with you, Mr. Vibe.
Deleteat a first glance it seems that Besslers wheel runs on gravity. Imho the real
source of energy is what makes the weights lift - and not
what makes the weights fall (=gravity).
At this point I want to you to take a closer look on a water mill.
The weight of the water makes the mill turning. -> At first it seems
the mill runs on gravity. And it runs for free.
But one drew the system borders too close! If you look at the bigger picture
one will see the whole thermodynamik environment of planet earth, wich makes
the water go up the hill again!
So (maybe again too close) the sun is the real source of energy which turns
our watermill.
To get back to Bessler's wheel: On one side the mass is static. Makes gravity
to push down. On the other side the mass is dynamic - and here the influx of
energy provided by the environment takes place. The asymmetry in Besslers
wheel is made from the exchange between static and dynamic forces, between
inertia and gravity.
Sincerely
5park
Wondering about the possibility of building an imbalanced pm wheel? Let "Physics Girl" explain it all to you. Note, however, that she never mentions Bessler's wheels in her historical review. Yes, she is right about one thing. When someone tells you they have a working pm device, ask yourself where the hidden power supply is. I did just that with Bessler's wheels and concluded and still maintain that it was the lead weights themselves!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b8ZsFszE8I