Has there been any device that can actually fit the criteria of perpetual motion invented yet? And if so, can it produce power? Of course when I was in school this was an impossibility, but at that time molecular transfer by teleportation was too and I have read an article recently which described that scientists actually believe they have teleported mass from one location to another location thirty feet away.

Not yet. There's that old 2nd law of thermodynamics that gets in the way.
There are some things that come close.. Items that spin in vacuum. Even the earth is measurably slowing down.

My favorite machine is the one with 6's arround the perimeter of a wheel. That runs of gravity.
When the six gets to othe side it becomes a nine
since nines are bigger they fall with greater force. To increase power you and do 66's or 6666 etc.

most demonstration devices have cleverly hidden electromagnets.
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12-05-03, 09:47 PM
K.K.
I bet that 6/9 machine is also dogspit's favorite one! (at least on one side Wink )

12-05-03, 09:50 PM
Tree
LOLOL!!!

12-06-03, 10:53 AM
methos
Perpetual motion is possible in one sense, but in the real world there will always be some energy lost in one form or another (usually heat dues to friction). Even if some what were could be found to eliminate energy losses (which I don't see happening) such a machine could not be used as a power source. In order to get power from it, it would have to lose power, and in doing so it would cease to be a perpetual motion machine.

12-06-04, 08:25 AM
Kainchild
What about electricity flow? Does electricity get lost when powering up things?

12-06-04, 09:00 AM
methos
Yes. The energy goes to whatever it is powering and is no longer available to power something else.

Not all of the energy even makes it to doing the job the machine is intended to do, a portion is also lost as heat.

12-06-04, 07:55 PM
Kainchild
The reason why I asked this is because I thought I remember reading somewhere that the electricity flows into something, powering it, through the wire and then flows back into the wire and back to the generator it came from, where as energy from the electric flow is not loss.

12-06-04, 10:17 PM
methos
No, the energy is lost.

12-07-04, 04:24 AM
tsaeb
Hugh: You used to be my idea of a perpetual motion machine, but I think that you have more helpers with this website these days.

01-20-05, 11:07 PM
Kainchild
I just find it hard to believe that energy cant be looped. I think its possible to create an infinite energy loop. The only problem is over coming the divide into infinity problem :-).

01-22-05, 02:04 PM
methos
Part of it is a practical problem of containign the energy. The rest is that, in order for energy to be useful, you have to do something with it. Once you've done something with it, it is rarely in a useful form anymore.

01-23-05, 04:07 AM
Kainchild
Well look at basic eletric generator. Something like managing to power massive cities. You would think having to power something that large would have the same size in drag effect, but it doesnt due to the nature atomical energy. I think the same will apply when someone ends up stumbling across it on an atomical level. Einstein proved that massive energy does ceom from such small particles. Why cant some create an infinite loop from an atom and be able to tap keep tapping such energy?

01-23-05, 11:13 AM
methos
Atomic energy comes from small particles by destroying them. Just like burning oil, to get the energy out, you have to destroy the source. You can't create an infinite loop tapping the energy because, once you've destroyed it to get the energy, there's no atom there to tap.

01-24-05, 05:04 PM
Kainchild
Who said anything about destroying it..... ;-)

01-24-05, 06:52 PM
methos
You did.

"Einstein proved that massive energy does ceom from such small particles."

The energy doesn't just "come from" small particles. You get energy by converting the particles into energy, that is, destroying them.

01-25-05, 11:55 AM
Kendor
I'm confident that one day someone will harness the force of gravity, (or same force on quantum level), containing it into such a loop that will produce useful energy.

01-25-05, 09:18 PM
Professor
Whoa -- all this talk about energy "loops" (which is not in the vocabulary of physics) sounds an awful lot like violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (see Peteeo's and methos's posts above), which 300 years of empirical evidence suggests is impossible. That hasn't changed since Hugh was in school Smile (see his post at the top of this thread).

Kendor: The force of gravity has been harnessed to produce useful energy for centuries, in the form of mill wheels, hydroelectric generators, etc. Of course the power of running water ultimately derives from solar energy impinging on the earth's surface, and isn't really "free."

The most plausible candidate for a major world-changing breakthrough in energy production -- ending our dependency on fossil fuels -- is nuclear fusion. But nobody's yet figured out how to sustain the high temperatures & pressures required to make it work. It still boils down to E=mc2. In theory, however, there's enough deuterium in just a few bucketfuls of seawater to power every major city for years.

That's speculative but at least plausible and consistent with scientific principles. Serious research by educated physicists is being conducted to that end.

"Perpetual motion," by contrast, fails all tests of scientific validity and is a fool's errand.

I guess I'll take the role of designated grouch for this thread. Since this is a science forum, I suggest we keep it real.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,

I believe the universe is in perpetual motion, presently expanding at an accelerating rate. Even if it were to slow, it would either decelerate but continue to expand until an infinite amount of time has passed, or collapse back on itself and ultimately be born again. You can't rule out perpetual motion at this macroscopic level, and my sense is that it can't be ruled out at the quantum level, either(the infinite and the infinitesimal have a lot in common). Thanks, Kainchild, for thinking 'out of the box'.