>> ^jqpublick:

I think it's more likely that this system extends the drive time of whatever battery cells he has installed in the thing. It's not that he's getting free energy, it's just that at 40 the system is going fast enough that even though there's a net loss, the additional energy stored in the batteries gives a longer running time. I think that's just about all that there is here.
>> ^rkone:
>> ^Drachen_Jager:
That is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

Agreed. I'd downvote the video if I could. People, if you're in doubt, think of it this way - if the fan could generate more power than the loss of pushing it, then you could just keep adding more fans until it becomes a perpetual motion machine..



Problem, nothing happens at 40 miles an hour in physics for a decrease wind resistance and drag. If anything, the faster you go, the more of a problem wind becomes. There is no possible way that this is extending his drive time. This is exactly equal to holding your hand out the window. If you could turn that blockage into electricity, it will always be less energy than the amount of momentum it sapped via drag. Or else ALL CARS WOULD ALREADY DO THIS! The reason you don't is because it doesn't work.

A simple instance where something like this IS used is the emergency ram air turbine for jumbo jets. When there is a complete loss of power, a ram air turbine drops down to generate emergency power for the hydraulic systems. This increases drag, but it is so small that it isn't a problem. But it is also why air planes don't have windmills on them, anything you use to block the wind is slowing you down more than any recoverable amount of energy via electric conservation of kinetic energy. This is physics 101, entropy, it's a bitch!

Now, if he compressed the incoming air, added a combustion chamber with kerosene or gasoline, then he would have himself a turbine engine for his car, but now, he just has a lesson in why physics is hard.

Like a lot of these types of videos, I want them to be true.
However, my brain immediately starts screaming the there is something wrong here. And yes, the first thought I had was how precise those pieces of cardboard needed to be, mainly because of weight. also how hitting the center for the axle had to be absolutely precise to guarantee balance. (Precision I don't think you can get from cardboard.)

As far as the wight of lifting each of those flaps back up, I wouldn't think that the swinging flap would have enough energy to keep it going. Visually I see it happening in the video but I immediately question it. Again I want it to be true - think of the possibilities - but the skeptic in me tells me something else is at play here, even if I can't see it.

In reply to this comment by dannym3141:
Hi, don't know if you're satisfied about this video yet but;

If you accept purely gravitational motion, then the kinetic energy gained from lowering any individual card segment must be paid back in full when you raise it back up on the other side. Now factor in resistances (the pen cartridge axle, air resistance, and it's making noise which is a form of energy) and you quickly realise that for the whole thing to spin there must be an external application of energy.

Even consider how accurately he would have had to cut all those cardboard pieces to make them the exact same weight so that heavier ones didn't cause the contraption to slow. I can attest that i've made these types of things as a kid, as soon as you start building one you start to feel why it can't work; you can kinda feel the principle of conservation of energy yourself.

I have references if you need :
In reply to this comment by Sagemind:
Comments on YouTube claim that this is somehow fake - that there is a fan somehow blowing on it.

I see no fan in the one direction they show and his body blocks it from any wind on the other side while he is filming so..

Any takers...?

Like a lot of these types of videos, I want them to be true.
However, my brain immediately starts screaming the there is something wrong here. And yes, the first thought I had was how precise those pieces of cardboard needed to be, mainly because of weight. also how hitting the center for the axle had to be absolutely precise to guarantee balance. (Precision I don't think you can get from cardboard.)

As far as the wight of lifting each of those flaps back up, I wouldn't think that the swinging flap would have enough energy to keep it going. Visually I see it happening in the video but I immediately question it. Again I want it to be true - think of the possibilities - but the skeptic in me tells me something else is at play here, even if I can't see it.

In reply to this comment by dannym3141:
Hi, don't know if you're satisfied about this video yet but;

If you accept purely gravitational motion, then the kinetic energy gained from lowering any individual card segment must be paid back in full when you raise it back up on the other side. Now factor in resistances (the pen cartridge axle, air resistance, and it's making noise which is a form of energy) and you quickly realise that for the whole thing to spin there must be an external application of energy.

Even consider how accurately he would have had to cut all those cardboard pieces to make them the exact same weight so that heavier ones didn't cause the contraption to slow. I can attest that i've made these types of things as a kid, as soon as you start building one you start to feel why it can't work; you can kinda feel the principle of conservation of energy yourself.

I have references if you need :
In reply to this comment by Sagemind:
Comments on YouTube claim that this is somehow fake - that there is a fan somehow blowing on it.

I see no fan in the one direction they show and his body blocks it from any wind on the other side while he is filming so..

Any takers...?

Hi, don't know if you're satisfied about this video yet but;

If you accept purely gravitational motion, then the kinetic energy gained from lowering any individual card segment must be paid back in full when you raise it back up on the other side. Now factor in resistances (the pen cartridge axle, air resistance, and it's making noise which is a form of energy) and you quickly realise that for the whole thing to spin there must be an external application of energy.

Even consider how accurately he would have had to cut all those cardboard pieces to make them the exact same weight so that heavier ones didn't cause the contraption to slow. I can attest that i've made these types of things as a kid, as soon as you start building one you start to feel why it can't work; you can kinda feel the principle of conservation of energy yourself.

I have references if you need
In reply to this comment by Sagemind:
Comments on YouTube claim that this is somehow fake - that there is a fan somehow blowing on it.

I see no fan in the one direction they show and his body blocks it from any wind on the other side while he is filming so..

Any takers...?

>> ^Kalle:

One serious question that bothers me is.. why isnt it possible to use gravity as an energy source?
Would such a machine be a perpetual motion machine?

There is a bottom to a gravity well (apart from Black Holes? I don't know ). Say you drop an object and harvest some of its kinetic energy as it falls...what do you do once it reaches the bottom of the well? You must exert energy to pull it back out of the well, and that energy is greater than what you gained from dropping it. In a sense a pendulum makes this transaction with every swing. It does it very efficiently, only losing a fraction of its energy with each exchange but none the less it does lose energy. In a sense we never truly generate energy, we simply move it around. We break chemical bonds and withdraw a portion of the energy that was needed to make those bonds. Whenever we put an object with any mass on a high shelf we use some our energy and give it potential energy. Should it fall from the shelf this potential is converted to kinetic. The most plentiful supply of locked away energy? Probably mass. The speed of light squared is a big number, as GeesussFreek says, the future is probably fusion. If we can convert just a tiny fraction of this planets mass to energy cheaply and safely then our energy problems are more or less solved.

Anyway, I hope that somewhat answered your question. Its one of those questions that on the face of it seems simply to answer but once I tried I realised it wasn't so easy

To me this object looks like an extremely efficient pendulum. I actually love its design. The fact the ball "orbits" is actually very apt. I don't think its perpetual motion, but if it really had been going at near constant speed for that long then it is still a very impressive piece of engineering. He should patent and start making more. I'd bet people would pay a pretty sum for a scaled down version sitting on their desk. I would. Even better, put a lightbulb in the centre, surround it with 8 concentric rings for each planet and tweak the weights/magnets so the balls orbit at approximately the right speed...that would be fucking sweet.

If I were facing an approaching wall of deadly kinetic energy I would like Black Sabbath's Into the Void playing. And I would like to spend that time with Bill Murray.

I think ideally, as momentum must be conserved, that the ball would come in, the other ball would be ejected, and decelerated until it escaped the magnetic pull going the same speed as the incoming ball was before it started accelerating.

On a real physical track like this with friction and sound energy loss, I think the ball would be ejected, not overcome the pull of the magnet, and get sucked back pretty quick. It may strike hard enough to send the other ball out a bit, but after very few iterations, they would be all stuck together.

I haven't thought yet about the effect of the magnet moving towards the first ball as it approaches. Maybe this has no net effect at all.>> ^oritteropo:

Well it's only a guess, since I'm too lazy to do the calculations , but I don't think the kinetic energy from the impact would be sufficient to overcome the very large magnetic force, so click and no ball ejected.
>> ^messenger:
[...] Now I want to know what would happen if there was only one ball after the magnet. What do you think?

Well it's only a guess, since I'm too lazy to do the calculations , but I don't think the kinetic energy from the impact would be sufficient to overcome the very large magnetic force, so click and no ball ejected.
>> ^messenger:
[...] Now I want to know what would happen if there was only one ball after the magnet. What do you think?

kinetic energy is a bitch, yo!

>> ^Pring4:

According to the logo, this project has aspirations of sending these rails from the arctic circle to anywhere in the world. I support this.


Hate to burst your bubble, but at earth's surface escape velocity the kinetic energy of a projectile is only 32 times its weight in TNT. With suborbital flights and resistance on reentry the effect would be considerably less than that. Wind during the ascent would throw it off farther than the destruction radius unless the slug was really huge (multiple tons) or they put in some internal guidance system that can survive the biggest EMP ever.

>> ^TheGenk:

>> ^therealblankman:
Until the moment the universe stops expanding, or until the moment when monkeys fly out of my butt (whichever comes first of course) this will remain a pack of lies.

I'd say "lies" does not apply here since all the so-called PMMs in here, like the description more or less states are using an external source of energy: earths gravity.
So technically, they are not PMMs.
edit: Wait... I just destroyed my own argument... "lies" applies since they are not PMMs.

Hmmm... you might want to re-think the whole "Gravity being used as an external source of energy" thing. That's not what's happening here as gravity can not be used in such a sense. You can certainly use gravity as a way of converting potential energy into kinetic energy, but such energy is always quickly dissipated as heat. The classic example of this is having a mass at the top of a ramp and releasing that stored energy by allowing the mass to roll down that ramp. Once that mass reaches the bottom of the ramp, with perhaps a few oscillations until the energy is completely expended, then that's it- the "machine" comes to a complete halt and all the energy is spent. These machines in the video seek to return the mass to the top of the ramp over and over again without using outside energy to do so, and without losing any energy within the system itself, which is impossible.

>> ^harlequinn:

Does the water jets it is using make any difference to the wake?

Yes it does, but as it's the only economical (by defense standards anyway) way to get that hulk up to those speeds, the foam of the wake really doesn't factor in. The impressive part is the bow waves though, or lack thereof. The pontoons (I don't believe they have engines, otherwise they'd be nacelles) seem to catch the bow waves, possibly re-using the force to retrieve some lost kinetic energy. That last part might be coming out of my ass though.

Swinging Physics: Potential And Kinetic Energy Working Together

Potential Into Kinetic
Swings work by converting potential energy into kinetic energy, then kinetic energy back into potential energy, over and over again.

The kinetic energy is the fast part of swinging; it’s the speed you have as you rush back and forth.

Potential energy is the high part of swinging.
The higher you go on the swing, the more potential energy you have.
- http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/swinging-physics/

Also see: Amusement Park Physics
http://www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/pendulum.html

kinetic energy is a bitch.

>> ^deathcow:

Real geniuses! Looks like a trash can lid would be ample defense.


Frozen water falling from more than 20 feet has enough kinetic energy to rip asunder a plastic lid