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Hello, Recently I was also shown the classic free
energy example of a steel ball rolling up a ramp
with a magnet on top, only for the steel ball to
fall back to its original place... with the
process restarting. Of course, this could never
work, but I was wondering, what if one was to put
a thick copper tube along the ramp, and replace
the steel ball with a magnetic ball. By doing
this, the eddy currents produced by the steel
ball in the copper tube as it is attracted to the
top will slow it down. If one makes a hole in the
ramp, the slow speed of the magnetic ball should
allow it to easily fall through, to its original
place. Would the addition of the copper tube
(with some tinkering) allow such a device to
work? Thank you for your help!! Best,
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Question Date: 2011-05-20 | | Answer 1:
By adding the conductive tube eddy currents
will indeed be induced by the moving magnet which
will slow it down. We know that the first system
cannot be a free energy machine, and the machine
you are proposing will be continuously extracting
energy from the system and turning it into heat in
the copper tube (the same mechanism that heats an
electric toaster,current in a conductor), so it
should produce even less energy. There isa
certain potential energy associated with the
separation of two magnets and with their positions
in a gravity field, and that is the most energy
you can ever extract from the system if you let it
run by itself without interference. It is
simple to simply claim conservation of energy to
show why this machine won't work (and it's
correct) but it's also interesting to look at it
kinematically. A field from a magnet typically
decays versus distance(d) with a 1/d3
rate while the force of gravity is basically
constant(near the surface of earth). To lift a
steel ball or magnet up the ramp the force from
this field at a distance must be greater than the
mass of the ball times the acceleration of gravity
times the sine of the angle of the ramp with
respect to horizontal (i.e. Fmagnetic >
m*g*sin(theta)). With a long ramp of
high slope (theta) the magnetic field will be so
strong at the top of the ramp that the ball/magnet
will stick to the magnet rather than falling
through the hole because the magnetic force
increases as it goes up the ramp. If the ramp was
sufficiently short and of shallow enough slope
then the ball/magnet could fall through the
hole(because the force of gravity does not have
the sin(theta) term for a vertical descent through
the hole), but the magnet would slow it's descent
down the hole, so it would not gain enough kinetic
energy from the fall to be able to roll up the
ramp back to it's initial starting point, and so
it could not run perpetually. | | Answer 2:
I'm not sure about the setup (I'm having a hard
time picturing it), but keep in mind that you're
also going to be losing energy due to friction.
Also, remember that an object responding to
magnetic force exerts a counteractive
electromotive force on the electrical current that
is generating the magnetic field in the first
place. If you use your static magnetic ball to do
work using its magnetic field, then you will
eventually de-magnetize the ball. Click Here to return to the search form.
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