Lutec's perpetual motion calculations a "basic mistake"
Yesterday, we saw a "zero point energy" machine from Australia. The creator, Lutec, says it's a "highly efficient means of generating electricity," but to many it'll look like just another rotary magnet-style perpetual motion machine. From their videos, it doesn't even seem a particularly elegant one:
From Lutec's website, it appears to be an investment scheme, with many appeals to buy shares. The most interesting claim in pursuit of that goal is that no physicist or engineer has ever looked at their figures and said it doesn't work. Enter BBG commenter Mac, who claims he's an engineer who has looked at Lutec's numbers and says it doesn't work.
I am a professional engineer in Australia. In September 2006 I was supplied with a summary of calculations by a potential investor to Lutec Australia, John Christie's company.The summary had diagrams and calculations showing how this worked.
The calculations were, to put it politely, fundamentally miscalculations. For example, they calculated the energy taken out of the battery as 'Ampere Hour Rating' of the battery multiplied by the battery voltage drop over the time of the test.
Another basic mistake was that they did all kind of 'chopping' of a sine wave, then used formulas to convert 'Ipeak' to 'Irms' on the assumption that it was a non-chopped sine wave.
They are just two of the many, many mistakes in the calculations.
I know that my comments to the investor were passed back to them, as I was emailed John Christie's response.
I have no objection to them believing that they have invented something new. However, the claim that no engineer has looked at their figures and said it doesn't work is incorrect.
Mac makes clear that this is his professional opinion and not that of his employers.
Here is something made of Lego that works in similar fashion to Lutec's machine. Amazing free energy!
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So, I understand that this doesn't work, but can someone explain the exact fallacy?
Why couldn't a generator be hooked up to the lego toy?
Where is the error in the calculations shown in the first video?
Here's my guess: to make powerful magnets, you need a powerful source of energy. The total energy produced by the machine (i.e., above that that is drawn from the AC) is never going to be more than the energy put into creating the magnets.
Is that correct?
The exact fallacy is Conservation of Energy. For any of these so called machines to work they would have to fundamentally disprove our understanding of physics as well as mathmatics. The equation by definition would be unballenced. I have no problem with busting laws of physics, it happens quite regularly. But mathmatics is absolute. No matter what happens in the outside world a proof is a proof.
WORMBABY-
If our physics is off enough, anything is possible. Regardless of what math we've used to describe the physics. For example, parity is pretty well respected in most observations of the physical world, including electromagnetic interactions. And we can use math to describe it and the math is, as you say, "absolute". However, a violation of parity has been observed.
We use math to describe physics. And it's a great tool. But physics doesn't then inherit the perfection of the math.
Man this post is a little confusing since perpetual motion cannot need external energy sources to start or work, their engine might have a long MTBF, but it´s not even close to perpetual motion concepts.
Power factor is something that trips up a lot of these inventors. For AC, volts * amps doesn't necessarily give you the real power of the system.
If you want to demonstrate over-unity power production, either power the device itself on its produced power (something they never seem to do) or at least use a calorimetric measurement - heat up a known quantity of water and measure the temperature rise. It's a whole lot harder to fake (or misinterpret) that sort of measurement.
jfranchino
Exactly my point physics does not inherit the perfection of math. The discovery of the violation of parity actually solves a problem with meson theory and our understanding of strangeness in particle physics.
But there is a reason PM machines havn't been accepted for review at the Paris Academy of Sciences since the 1700s. Because it requires us to suspend what we know of math which we cannot.
If you've just solved the greatest impossible problem in physics you might want to blow a couple hundred bucks and get some real power meters and a tripod for your camera before you blather on about it.
I agree with MADSCI, all you have to do to prove this is connect output to input. No excuses there! They even make AC power at the output!
I'm amazed this gets this amount of press.
Perpetual motion (or other "free" energy generation) is like psi powers or cold fusion, in that any real implementation would be easy to demonstrate in a way that was credible and undeniable. Shaky, out-of-focus pictures of Bigfoot are excusable, given the circumstances, but a motor isn't running away from you in a dark forest. You can easily shoot high-quality footage, not to mention taking it out to demonstrate to skeptics.
Wormbaby
Maths is a logic system, created by humans. We do not know for sure whether or not the universe runs on logic, therefore we do no know for sure whether maths applies at all (indeed, when was the last time maths /exactly/ modelled anything?)
Course, it's very likely that we can model things to a high degree of accuracy using maths, but to say that something is impossible simply because of a basic logical fallacy is wrong, in my opinion.
The reason that violations of conservation of energy would disrupt our understanding of mathematics is because it is possible to prove that conservation must hold assuming only that the laws of physics don't change over time. The proof does not care what the rules are, just that they are invariant with time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem
I think it's very telling that people still think they can break the laws of thermodynamics by the creative arrangements of magnets.
What some of you are confusing are LAWS of physics (Gravity, Thermodynamics, Motion) versus THEORYS of physics (relativity, etc).
The first thing I noticed about the experiment is where the "input" power gauges are DOWNSTREAM of the transformer. If he was going to be accurate, then the gauges should be upstream of the transformer.
Secondly, anyone who has worked on highly efficient motors/engines know the more efficient the device, the quieter it runs, with or without any kind of silencer.
Of course, MADSCI makes it even simpler, plug the device into itself...
Lisa! Get in here.
[Lisa walks in, chuckling nervously]
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
you should hold a contest, best idea for a thermodynamic mascot wins perpetual accolades from their peers.
noethers theorem is a mathematical certainty, saying that symmetry map to conservation laws. but theres no guarantee that our universe obeys those symmetries, thus giving rise to doubt the applicability of those mathematical certainties on our physical world. for our universe to break those symmetries would be contrary to our experience, though...
Zarniwoop, jfranchino
ok ok free energy 4 everybody. So u guys investing or what? I see he still has opportunities to "to get in early on this ground breaking technology"
I like how he is vying for "SOPHISTICATED" INVESTORS ONLY. I get the impression he would feel guilty about scamming a little guy, but someone who can afford the 100000 AU$ is someone he doesn't mind depleting of a few resources.
Actually, I've invented a similar machine. It's called a Perpetual Entropy Machine. You simply throw the switch, and entropy takes over from there. I'm looking for SOPHISTICATED investors only.
Like, totally!
But on a more serious note, the reason why things like this get so much publicity is that we have to judge 'free energy' contraptions on their own merits, not the merits of all the contraptions that've come before them. I doubt there's a single physicist alive who doesn't wish beyond wishing that one of these things really did work, either.
(Nearly) everyone forgets that magnets ARE a power source. I mean, seriously, do these dimwits ever consider how much energy goes into producing one?
Why do these things get any press? I realize that sometimes they are amusing enough...
In summary, is the fundamental reason why the Lego contraption in the video clip is not a perpetual motion machine that the magnets will demagnetize over time and the power output isn't enough to create another set of magnets of the same strength? (that is, assuming the mechanical components are of adequate strength and will not break down before the magnets do)?
Wikipedia has this interesting snippet in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet#Magnetization_and_demagnetization :
"""Contact through stroking one magnet with another in random fashion will demagnetize the magnet being stroked, in some cases; some materials have a very high coercive field and cannot be demagnetized with other permanent magnets."""
Does this apply?
(I accept the "you can't get something from nothing" aspect of the impossibility of true perpetuum machines, I'm just interested in the principles behind this particular scheme).
I am an investor, and I would like to know how to contact the designer of the second machine, as it looks more credible than the first.