Topic: Perpetual motion device - Free Energy - Do you believe in it? - page 8. (Read 14005 times)

Yes and no.
A perfect store of energy IS a perpetual motion machine.
All mechanism that store energy are motion machines.
Wether they are to be considered 'perpetual' is a relative case.
The practical definition of a perpetual motion machine is a machine that doesn't need an external power source to operate for an indefinite ammount of time.

Would it be fair to say that orbiting planets and electrons are just stores of energy (kinetic, atomic, etc), like a battery or a spinning gyro, and not perpetual motion machines?

Thank you. That is what I was trying to say. Now we can stop calling it perpetual motion.

Telling stories is just making up hypotheses. Anyone can make tons of those, and they are entirely useless. Just stories. It only becomes science when you actually start to test them.

EDIT: And yes, you can test the theories behind physical cosmology, which makes them not stories.
We also have "microscopes" that can see individual atoms, so those aren't just guesswork, either.

No. Saying that is the easiest and dumbest way to bring down a curious mind. Is physical cosmology not science? With all the problematic theories about the early universe.. a bunch of irrelevant unscientific stories?

This is a common, but incorrect, description of science. Whether your stories are about atoms or are about leprechauns, telling stories isn't science.

Presenting repeatable process for logically deriving conclusions from empirical measurements is science.

The problem is that there are no macroscopic things that can behave in this way.
So there are no stories to be told from our prespective that can prepare you for the mind bendings that go on on the quantum level.

Propably you havent stomached the realities at the quantum level yet.
In the quantum world observation equals interaction.
An electron doesn't actually orbit, it spreads over a cloud of propability.
Furthermore, because we are on the quantum level, the atom will only absorb or expel certain quantities of energy. It cannot lose energy in a constant way like a planet in orbit can. That is why it is so special.
A planet in orbit IS in a way a perpetual motion machine.
It is just not perfect as it will radiate away its own energy.
And an atom system is much more perfect in this way as the quantization of the fabric of the universe throws up energy thresholds that give a system local stability.

Here's my lame quote of a reply:
I'm not in disagreement with any observervations. Experimets are the best part of science. My only intention with storymaking is to understand the observed results.

For example. Everybody knows wave-particle duality, that particles have both wave and particle properties, but nobody knows why? Making up a story based on the observed results to explain the behavior is Science.

Ahh, the beauty of the English language. Either that, or you're up to your old tricks again...

Switching from talking about measurement to "Quantum mechanical observation" is slippery at best, and intentional trickery at worst. As previously stated, an electron in it's orbit is in a balance of forces, and calling it perpetual motion would be like calling a planetary orbit perpetual.

You can bombard atoms with masses and the electrons will absorb part of the momentum of the masses and jump up, then drop down and release the energy as a photon. So electrons interact with momentum not just with photons. Photons are maybe an easier way of interacting but they are not the only way of interacting.


Iceland is a nice example as lava gives a big temperature difference. But it is technology that can only easily be exploited in certain parts of the world. It is by no means a universally available source of energy.
Btw, arent they totally into steam in Iceland? I heared they pump water into these hot places and leverage the phase transition of the water.

Anyway, what was proposed was a stirling engine that is practical and uses only the temperature difference between a lake and air. I say the surface you need to pump through enough usable energy would render it unusable for most applications.
Furthermore this would work mostly on the energy stored in the outmost layer of the earth. It's nothing compared to the volume of energy sitting inside our earth.
So my guess is if we used this surface potential that pretty soon the sun will not keep up with warming the surface enough to make a difference.

That is in fact exactly what it means.
Quantum mechanical observation is nothing more than interaction.
But an atom has multiple energy loops/resonances and you can observe one while using another to get a grip on the atom.
Whether something is an observer depends on whether it has interacted with part of the system.
So random photons falling on it makes that system observed by the photons and they now carry information about the system.
But as i said you can isolate a system from that.

interesting thread here but lots of misconceptions

magnets work because unmatched electron spins within the material are all lined up in the same direction. this can be stable if unperturbed, but any attempt to extract "work" or "useful energy" out of them results in those spins becoming less aligned, and the magnet eventually wearing out. in a sense, this is like the magnet acting as a battery.

similarly, with atoms and electrons. electrons orbit their nuclei, and do have momentum, but that momentum is inherent to the specific type of atom, and the current state of the electron. quantum mechanics says that electrons can only occupy certain quantized momentum "states", meaning the momentum can only have discrete values in the atom. by interacting with individual photons, electrons can interact with their environment. for example, an electron in a high-energy state can fall to a lower state, and release energy, but would have had to be excited in the first place (which required energy). if an electron is not excited, it can't release any more energy, even though it does have (angular) momentum. also, to release energy, an unoccupied, lower-energy state must be available for the electron to "fall" into. for this reason, electrons in the lowest, or "ground" state can't release any energy!

stirling engines work by exploiting a temperature difference between two thermally insulated reservoirs. a great example of this is geothermal energy (see Iceland). the hot reservoir is the hot magma, which functions as a source of energy, since the heat tends to flow towards a cold reservoir. in theory this is a great energy source, but the act of extracting it eventually will cool down the core of the planet (but this would take millennia to even be measurable.)

so yes, large temperature differences are a great source of energy, but it is still much easier to create a temperature difference by burning things or fissioning nuclei than by drilling gigantic 10-mile deep holes into the ground.

It's also important to understand that it's constantly being interacted with. Just because it's not being observed does not mean that photons (or other particles) aren't hitting it.

I dunno actually.,
But due to uncertainty principal you propably would have to attack it from multiple angles.

The important thing to understand, tho, is that a stable atom will not change it's energy level unless it is interacted with.
This despite being a dynamic entity.

How do you measure the momentum? With what instrument?

You measure its momentum so the energy was in movement.

Learn what epistemology is so that you can understand the difference between science and just making up a story.

[Alt-science warning]
Nobody can know what exactly atoms are. We only have theories and a bunch of statistics. I do not think the electrons are spinning around nucleus like pictured in countless text books. I think the entire atom is rolling around it's axis, or better, is itself just a whirl, with it's center rolling fast and the outer parts moving slower (just like our solar system). The speed of the whirl depends on temperature, at absolute zero all motion ceases and and matter decays back to background of space. Opinions welcome

Think about how you determine where an electron is (or rather, was), and you might understand where energy is coming from in that system.