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From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: KS Perpetual Motion Machine
Message-ID: <555@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 30-Mar-85 20:02:58 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.555
Posted: Sat Mar 30 20:02:58 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Mar-85 21:18:46 EST
References: <1264@decwrl.UUCP>
Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 41
Summary: Just uses atmosphere as a spring; and btw, O2 is heavier than air

merrill@raja.DEC (Rick) describes a scheme for a perpetual motion machine.
(Quote at end.)  Of course, it won't work.

The catch is, the operation of electrolyzing (NOT hydrolyzing, that means
something else) the water absorbs not only enough energy for the chemical
reaction but also enough to force away the surrounding atmosphere.  After
all, this amounts to lifting the atmosphere against gravity (or compressing
it, if you're operating in a sealed space).  When you reverse the reaction,
this is precisely the energy you get back.  You used the atmosphere as
a spring, pushing it up and letting it fall back.  No gain.  Simple, no?

In the machine as described, there is also a severe loss of energy since
the heat from burning the hydrogen back into water is not used.

And to top that, there is a major technical defect.  A balloon of
oxygen will NOT rise in the air, because oxygen is NOT lighter than air.
Remember that the density of a gas is proportional to the weight of the
molecules making it up (ideally, anyway, and close enough for this).
Dry air is 78.08% N2 (mol. wt. 28.01), 20.95% O2 (32.00), 1.26% Ar (39.95),
0.05% CO2 (44.01); other components total less than 0.01%.  This gives a
weighted average of 29.10, or about 10% lighter than pure O2.  If the air
is not dry, it is even lighter since H2O has a molecular weight of 18.02.

However, for purposes of the machine, air doesn't have to be used to float
the balloons; that's just a convenience.  We could seal the tower and
substitute a heavier gas such as Ar or CO2 or even Xe (wt. 131.30 -- is this
the densest non-radioactive gas?), or we could even fill it with oil.

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Mark Brader		    and			   uw-beaver!utcsri!lsuc!msb
> 
> Consider an unfinished tower at the edge of a river.  Hydrolysis is performed
> continuously on some water from the river and the subsequent oxygen and 
> hydrogen gasses are stored in balloons, which being lighter than air rise
> to the top of the tower where the balloons are burst and a spark ignites the
> gasses which combine into water.  The water is permitted to fall through
> a vacuum tube into a turbine which generates twenty percent more electricity
> than is needed to operate the aforementioned operations.

The vacuum tube is, of course, an efficiency frill.