Perpetual Motion
Dean
One of my favorite subjects in science has long been perpetual motion machines. There's something seductive about their illusion, because they trap so many people into spending so much time trying to find ways to try to make them work. They never do work of course, but some of the attempts show amazing cleverness. They serve as a testament to why what seems like a good idea is often wrong.
Also, puzzling out the exact reasons why one of them doesn't work is often a great lesson in logical thinking and in understanding physics. All of this is why I thoroughly enjoyed this site when I stumbled upon it: The Museum of Unworkable Devices.
Of course there's always the possibility that one of these days someone will make a perpetual motion machine that works. In which case they'll have a device that creates energy out of nothing. Let's hope it doesn't get out of control and create enough energy to destroy the Earth, or worse, get stuck in reverse and start sucking all the energy out of the universe...
(If I have to explain to you that I'm joking in that last paragraph, I'll have to slap you.)
It's no long standard practice to require a working model for most inventions, but for those applications that's all that the examiner has to do to reject it. Demand a working model and when none shows up just give it a "won't work" rejection using no prior art.
In Germany, from what I've been told, they just allow all of them instead of messing with lunatics. That must make for some absolutely hysterical patent infringement cases where neither one can make the device that one is suing the other for making.
Here's a link describing it.
Hey, some people go in for that kind of thing. :-)
BK
I filled the tubes half full of water with hopes that rising near the top left the water would move to the inner glass tube, and on the lower right downside move to the outer part.
Of course it didn't work, but it was fun to make and play with.
Al Gore can pretty much suck the energy out of anything.
Sandi: You'll be amused to note that a device like that was first put together in 1100, it's called the Bhaskahra Wheel and is illustrated here. :-)
Phelps: Overcoming friction isn't the only problem.
Take two small flat magnet like the ones that hold your cupboard doors shut (large magnets don't seem to work). Lay them down flat and end to end with like poles facing. Lift the facing end of one slightly higher but very close to over the other. Carefully release it.
If you release it just right it will hover over the other magnet and oscilate up/down. It will eventually stop oscilating and come to rest. It was years ago and I don't recall how long it took (seems it was around an hour or so), but it was a very long time.
Apparently inertia is at work caused in turn by repulsion then gravity. I think larger magnets don't work because of too much disparity between gravity (weight) and the density of flux in the magnets as they get heavier.
The inventor of the tunnel diode actually had a hard time getting a patent, because the patent office thought the component was doing something (negative impedance) that violated the same physical law that prohibits perpetual motion. It really doesn't, but they do sort of take this kind of thing seriously.
Anyone else here a fan of both ZZ Top and near-space colonization?
Now go to your room young man.
(To repeat: If I have to explain to you that I'm joking in that last paragraph, I'll have to slap you...)
If, if, if. I didn't say it's so, I just note that at the end of the article it says there's some reason to believe DNA makes use of brownian motion. If that were true, that might be the explanation.