Gravity - Ultimate Source of Energy for a GravityWheel.

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.

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.

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

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.

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