Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ut-ngp.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!graner
From: graner@ut-ngp.UUCP (Nicolas Graner)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: KS Perpetual Motion Machine
Message-ID: <1510@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Mar-85 17:23:40 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.1510
Posted: Thu Mar 28 17:23:40 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 31-Mar-85 03:14:28 EST
Organization: U.Texas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 94


 In <1264@decwrl.UUCP>, merrill@raja.DEC writes :

>	 The Kappa Sigma Perpetual Motion Machine
> 
> Description
> 
> 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.
> Theory
> 
> Gravity works for us in two directions.  First by creating a pressure gradient
> in the atmosphere that gives hydrogen and oxygen negative potential energy and
> secondly by giving water positive potential energy.  
[...] 
> Rebuttal
> 
> For every energy loss, for any inefficiency, for each diminished return
> there is but one response:
> .
> 
>					 BUILD THE TOWER HIGHER !

Not quite true, unfortunately !

First, consider a simplification : since your water falls down in a
vacuum tube, there is no point in using water, a hydrogen balloon will
fall quite as fast, and give you as much energy (except for the weight
of the oxygen. By the way, oxygen is *heavier* than air, so anyway your
oxygen balloon won't rise. But this is another point)

Therefore I suggest the (much simpler) following system, based on the
same principle and presumably more efficient (no loss of energy in
electrolysis and so on) :

There is a huge vertical vacuum tube, and you have a single hydrogen
balloon. You drop the balloon at the top of the the tube, and it falls
like a stone. At the bottom is a colleague who takes the balloon
outside and lets it go : the balloon gently rises in the atmosphere
until you can catch it and start the cycle again. Of course, there is a
turbine inside the tube and another one outside, so you can produce a
lot of energy out of gravity.


Now, what's wrong with that ?

Your poor colleague, at the bottom, has to pull a balloon from a vacuum
(low pressure) tube into the (high pressure) atmosphere.  Whatever
trick he uses to do that (sophisticated airlock or ...) he will have to
provide energy to "compress" the atmosphere.
.
You could object that you, at the top, can gain energy by letting the
atmosphere push the balloon into the tube through a turbine, but since
atmospheric pressure is lower, you won't get everything back.

What happened to the difference ? Well, it is exactly the (potential)
energy that good ol' Archimedes gave your balloon, thanks to the same
pressure difference, and that you will retrieve with your turbine in
the tube !

Conclusion : as any "perpetual motion" machine, this one will at most
give you back the energy you gave it (in fact much less because of
friction and all that).

This also applies to your original design : to get the gasses in the
balloons, you will have at some point to give them the energy you
expected them to give you. No free lunch !

I leave it to the physicists to put some numbers and formulas here, but
they will find the same result.

Now for a more general statement : the laws of physics, as we
understand them now, don't allow perpetual motion (not even using a
constant gravity or magnetic field, as some people suggested). It is
possible that those laws are wrong and someone will come up with a new
theory that will allow it (though I personally doubt it).  But if you
claim you have designed a PMM and you can explain how it works in terms
of classical physics (Archimedes' principle, gravity field, permanent
magnets and the like),

	       YOU  ARE  WRONG  !!

and your place is not is not among the serious people on net.physics
:-)

*** REPLACE THIS PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE WITH YOUR CAR ENGINE ***
Nic.                      {ihnp4,seismo,...}!ut-ngp!graner

*If Murphy's law can go wrong, it won't*