I tried, in my previous post, to define the subtle difference between the force of gravity and something that Bessler understood as the heaviness of an object. This may seem like splitting hairs and that there are no differences, but bear with me.
What is the difference between gravity and energy. We are told that the reason why the force of gravity cannot be the source of energy is because energy
is a property of objects, such as balls and weights etc. In contrast, the word force describes the interaction between objects.
Forces are the way that energy is transferred from one object to
another when they interact, but forces are not the energy itself.
Gravity is a force and it provides one way for objects to exchange
and transform energy to different states.
People speak of energy as if it is a thing, and of course we all know that energy can be stored, bought and sold, and transported. The reason that energy has all these aspects is that, unlike many conditions that objects may be subject to, energy is conserved; the condition of having energy is always passed from one object to another, never created anew or destroyed.
Remember Bessler's words from his Apologia Poetica? "The rain drips down. Snow falls. The shotgun shoots. The bow twangs", he is refering to motion not the cause of the motion. I used to think he meant gravity, but because he included two motions not applicable to gravity, I think he was simply pointing to motion and emphasizing the fact by including the bow and the shot gun. I'm certain that he was describing in particular the motion of falling - the reaction to gravity, to the action of things that are imbued with heaviness when they were allowed to fall.
So if I stand by a wall and try as hard as I can to push it over, as far as the wall is concerned I haven't spent an ounce of energy, because it hasn't moved. Forget the fact that I'm panting, sweating and very hot. But what if the the wall suddenly gives way and falls over? A snapshot of one second during my ten minutes of pushing is the moment when my energy output which was a force, changed the potential energy I was providing into kinetic energy as the wall fell. So the only energy I gave the wall that made it fall was that expended during that single second.
Imagine I'm standing on a trap-door. For me it's the same as standing on solid ground, until someone pulls a lever and I fall through the hole. As long as I'm standing on the trap door I'm like the force I was exerting against the wall. Nothing changes until the lever releases me then the potential energy that was my weight is released and it changes into kinetic energy.
Now picture Bessler's wheel. It has the weights suspended from some part of the wheel. The force of gravity is a force imbuing the weights with heaviness, but nothing happens because no weight falls. But we know that Bessler's wheel began to rotate spontaneously, which can only have happened if one weight or more was in a position which overbalanced the wheel. Overbalancing motion occurs when there is more kinetic energy on one side of the centre of rotation than the other. If it was potential energy on each side and there was more potential energy on one side of the CoR than the other, the weight would fall, but only when the brake was released, the wall gave way, or the lever was pulled which released the trap door, that is why, as soon as the wheel was released it began to turn.
The force of gravity had unlocked the potential energy and converted it into kinetic energy, but only during the period of its fall. It had to wait for the wheel to be released before it could change the potential energy locked up in the weights; the trap-door had to be released before I fell; and the wall had to give way before my potential energy was converted to kinetic energy.
Jean Bernouille said perpetual motion seekers should seek a movement in Nature to adapt to a perpetual motion machine; the falling of any object of mass, is that natural motion in Nature. What we are doing or trying to do is make use of something which is already happening, that is, a weight is falling. Gravity has already changed the weight's potential energy into kinetic energy. The energy was already there it just needed releasing by allowing it to fall and produce usable enregy in the form of kinetic energy.
When the wall fell over, and the kinetic energy was released in that single second, it wasn't new energy; the potential energy had been there ever since someone built the wall. The trap door fell because someone locked it upwards into position and it was that energy that was released when it fell, and the same applies to the weights in Bessler's wheel. Their potential energy had been there since he built the wheel ...But, how did it repeatedly acquire new potential energy for its next fall? Before I respond consider the following.
I've said before that those who suggest that Bessler's wheel were stopped in a certain point during rotation are wrong. If you have a wheel which appears to spin continuously it must always be out of balance. Why? Because if there were points during rotation where it wasn't out of balance it would stop if a sufficient load were placed upon it. With no load, rotation might well be carried past the dead zones purely by impetus, but as soon as a heavy enough load were placed on it, you would notice a variation in speed during a single rotation and the heavier the load the more likely the wheel would come to a stop. But one of the most impressive things about Bessler's wheel was its very steady rotation. This supports the idea that the wheels were always out of balance, anything else would show up. But anyway logic demands that a continuously turning wheel must be continuously out of balance.
The oldest argument against these weight-driven wheels is that a weight falling in a circle cannot have enough energy generated by its fall to enable it to return to its starting point. Do people think we are so dim that we have not discovered that fact for ourselves long ago, as if we didn't already know it? Why on earth do those same people stick with the old, old formula of one single weight to demonstrate their flawed argument? Do they really think that there is no way to get a weight back to its starting point with the assistance of other weights operating in different ways - a special configuration of a number of weights?
In my opinion Bessler's wheel did not try to tap gravity for its energy source, mainly because he did not know of this exterior force of nature, all he knew about was that his weights were heavy and did not prodice energy unless they were falling. He worked out that the inherent heaviness in each weight provided the fall and his most difficult achievement was to find a way to configur his weights so that there was spare action available to return each fallen weight back to ts starting point
JC
