Note to Missouri Politicans: Perpetual Motion = Bad Investment!
March 8th, 2010
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One would generally think that a buisiness model that involves violating the laws of physics is probably not going to result in a very sound enterprise. However, it appears that some in Missouri feel differently about that.
Odessa, Mo., cheers news of manufacturing plant
A Utah company announced Thursday that it planned to build a manufacturing and research complex in Odessa, Mo., that could eventually employ more than 3,000 people.
The company, Manna of Utah, said it would build facilities to make home generators that use magnets to make electricity, produce food products from soybeans and rice, and manufacture portable medical emergency rooms that could be sent quickly anywhere in the world.
There also would also be a research and testing center, which would have 1,200 employees and a day care center.
The announcement was made to more than 300 people gathered in Odessa, including several state legislators and U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton.
“This is a magic moment for Odessa, a magic moment for Lafayette County and a magic moment for the Missouri,” said Skelton, a Democrat.
But the announcement also raised questions, including whether Manna of Utah, which has an office in Provo, can bring it off. The company started just last year and has 23 employees.
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The Missouri Department of Economic Development said discussions have just begun about state incentives. But at this point, an official said, no request for state incentives or other help has been received.“Our project managers have had very preliminary discussions with representatives of the business to determine what information they would need to provide if they were to apply for any state incentive program,” said John Fougere, a department spokesman.
Officials in Odessa were clearly happy in the hours leading up to the announcement. Rep. Mike McGhee said that Odessa would be producing technology that would be “world-changing” and that the announcement would shake the earth and the product would be the equivalent of the light bulb.
The Odessa Republican was referring to a home generator developed by Maglev Energy in Largo, Fla. The home generator, which Manna of Utah is licensing, uses magnets.
Maglev said that it filed for a patent on the generator in 2005 and that it has a prototype. However, the generator isn’t commercially available.
It should be noted that producing food products from soybeans and rice does not violate any laws of physics nor does producing portable emergency rooms. However, a company that only started last year and appears to be 23 people doing this in their off time (as it was noted that their chief operations officer only works part time for them and has a real job during the day) is something that really anyone should be skeptical about when it starts making such grand claims of a manufacturing plant.
Yet what really shows this to be a complete nutbag proposal is that the supposed company is licensing what, by app appearances, is a perpetual motion machine. The generators are supposed to be the “centerpiece” of the manufacturing operation.
And yes, they are already looking for government incentives and investment of taxpayer dollars. As stated in this article:
Odessa’s Board of Aldermen will have a meeting this evening on the proposal, but it is closed to the public because it deals with development matters. The mayor said Odessa had offered the developer, Manna of Utah, a site and agreed to provide $90 million in revenue bonds for the project.
As for the details of the generators that this company has licensed, some information can be found on the website of “Maglev Energy” of Florida. The images to the right come directly from their website. They are supposed to show the “base frame for the concept” and “concept mockup.” However, it looks suspiciously like a 5000 watt portable generator, from which the gasoline engine has been removed and replaced with a “mockup” made of masking tape, styrofoam and cardboard. Hell, it even says it’s a 5000 watt portable generator on the side.
Well, I hope they at least kept the motor and didn’t damage it while pulling it out, because a generator like this usually costs a good few hundred dollars. The “magnetic” motor which apparently would drive it, however, is not going to be worth any more than the cost of the magnets put into it and likely less, considering that trying to get the motor to run at all is likely to damage or destroy the magnets.
On the face of it, this appears to be one of the classic misconceptions about magnetism that is constantly being rehashed as a perpetual motion machine. Like fields of magnets repel, so it seems that if you arranged magnets in a ring, with their poles angled inward, a rotor with like fielded magnets arranged to point outward would result in the opposing fields pushing the rotor in a perpetual spinning motion.
Unfortunately, this simply will not work. The idea is based on an oversimplisitc and flawed understanding of magnetic fields. These fields do not simply push in one direction, they create a field of magnetic influence which surrounds the magnet. This field will repel magnets entering the field regardless of what direction they come from, so the repulsive force is not going to push the rotor around. The net forces in both directions are equal and the rotor may spin when pushed, but only until it runs out of momentum and settles to a stop.
All attempts at a permanent magnet motor run into this problem and that usually leads the would-be inventor to the next step – trying to figure out a way to make the magnets move due to opposition without coming to a stop by repeatedly reversing, adjusting or otherwise altering the positions of the magnets or their fields. In theory, this can be done. As with a lifting magnet, a simple permanent magnet can be made to impart motion and do work. There is, however, a very big catch to this – it extracts very little energy and ruins the magnets.
Doing work requires energy and that energy comes from the magnetic potential stored within the magnet. When a magnet does work, the field is degraded. If the system is in equilibrium, such as if the an item is attracted to a magnet and then pulled off of it with equal or greater force, the magnetic field is not degraded.
However, if a magnet is made to act on an item and impart a net energy, then the field is degraded each time it does so. This change in force represents energy, energy which comes from the magnet itself. It takes energy to set up a magnetic field. When a magnet is manufactured, it is placed in a powerful solenoid coil and a field is imparted to it. This energy is what is lost when the magnet is degaussed. Furthermore, it’s not even all that much energy. Even the most powerful magnets only have a total field potential of a few joules per cubic centimeter. Furthermore, since very high power coils and special manufacturing techniques are needed to produce the magnetic field, once a rare earth magnet is depolarized, there’s no way you can re-polarize it on your own to the levels it came out of the factory with. It’s basically ruined.
Tony Bamvakais, Odessa’s mayor, also went on the trip to Florida. Told of the experts’ opinions on Tuesday, he said the generator was not a perpetual energy machine. But it was so efficient that it kept on producing power when it was unhooked from an outside power source, he said.
It needs “just enough to get the generator running,” he said.
Well, I’m sorry have to say this, but that is a perpetual motion machine (or at least would be if it worked). Even if it needed a little energy to get started, any device that can produce more energy than it consumes is producing energy and therefore could run itself on its own output and still have energy to spare. You can not run an electric generator off of an electric motor and walk away with a net gain in energy. Anything which can be “unhooked from the power source” and then continue to produce power falls into one of two categories: either it has an internal reserve of energy, such as a battery or fuel tank (which will eventually run out), or it’s a complete work of fiction and does not exist.
But The Kansas City Star asked experts, including electrical engineers and a physicist, to review information about the generator, including its patent. They weren’t impressed and said Odessa needed to be skeptical.
“I would drop it like a hot potato,” said Ted Higman, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Minnesota. “I would not go one more step down this road if I were Odessa.”
And Bob Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland known for debunking perpetual-motion machines, said the enhanced efficiency claimed for the generator sounded like a direct violation of the second law of thermodynamics. That law holds that there is some cost when energy is moved, which would reduce the efficiency of such a generator.
But that’s not how some state and local officials view it, including a handful who went to Florida to see the machine. Missouri state Rep. Mike McGhee, an Odessa Republican, said last month when the project was announced that Odessa would be producing technology that would be “world-changing,” the equivalent of the light bulb.
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The Utah company is licensing the generator technology from Maglev, which has had it for at least five years and got its patent in 2008. The company has yet to make the technology commercially available.Park, the Maryland professor, said the generator’s patent at one point described generating electricity and energy from permanent magnets, but he said those contained only a small amount of energy. Overall, the patent is obtuse and poorly written, perhaps on purpose, he said.
“It is my personal opinion, based on years of experience in debunking perpetual-motion machines, that the language in this patent is deliberately obfuscating,” he said.
To Bob Park: Thanks for taking the time to refute this ridiculous claim, you’re obviously right on.
To Rep. Mike McGhee: You, sir, are an idiot. I hope voters remember this when they go to the polls.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Just LAME, Misc, Not Even Wrong, Obfuscation, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 8th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
You would think that the masses would get tired of perpetual motion nonsense and reject it outright any time a claim is made, since over a period of literally hundreds of years, not one of these devices have ever been shown to work. Yet year after year we read that yet another deluded crank, or another scheming mountebank, has made another machine, and has gathered a group of breathless followers, many of whom should know better.
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March 8th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
With the sorry state of Science “Education” in our schools, it’s no wonder people fall for scams like this!
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March 8th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Hey, weren’t you guys listening – this is a “world changing” breakthrough! You don’t know everything!! They laughed at Fulton too, you know !!!
We are doomed…
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March 8th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
DV82XL said:
Perhaps that’s why they say it’s not perpetual motion?
“he said the generator was not a perpetual energy machine. But it was so efficient that it kept on producing power when it was unhooked from an outside power source, he said.
It needs “just enough to get the generator running,” he said.”
Yeah, they use the buzz word “effecient” too. Actually, what they really mean is “more than 100% effecient” which of course, means that it is indeed a perpetual motion machine if you use it to power itself, which it could do (if it were real, which it isn’t)
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March 8th, 2010 at 10:59 pm
I know a couple of these local politicians, and I guarantee you this whole deal is to get Tony “Bam Bam” Bamvakais re-elected. There is an election on April 6th, and everyone pretty much knows what a jackass the Mayor has been over the last couple years over many other issues. So my guess is that he cooked up this entire scam to look good for bringing all these “jobs” to town. He could care less if this company is legit or not, which, obviously, it is not.
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March 9th, 2010 at 2:47 am
Ashamed ex-Odessan said:
Well then, do you think there’s any chance that the whole thing could be used against him by using it as an example of a bad policy and scam he is promoting?
It’s not unusual for this crap to get a free ride in the media, but I see a silver lining here, because the newspaper did publish an article that is extremely critical of it and makes good arguments from experts to avoid it. Perhaps it’s possible to get people to realize this?
On the other hand, I have to admit that it’s always disheartening to see this kind of ridiculousness go anywhere. Sure not everyone can be a scientist, but perpetual motion for god’s sake? Isn’t it clear that is what this is? Doesn’t it seem a little suspect by now to anyone who has seen it before, including the high profile crap with Orbo and that magnificent failure? Come on people!
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March 9th, 2010 at 4:21 am
Sadly magnawork floods youtube and other places with their bogus ads trying to rope suckers in to BUY
their plans. Everyday on youtube searches, its the same thing, pinheads working for webtraffic for magnawork,
litterally 50 or more repeated video uploads.
These pinheads should be arrested just for trying to interefere with others interested in magnet energy related media. Magnawork should be boiled in oil! Greedy greedy..
Lock em up and ship them to a deserted island with a bunch of magnets and tell them if they want to rejoin society, than they better actually build working examples from their own plans.
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March 9th, 2010 at 8:43 am
Gordon said:
Yes, I think this thing is falling apart around the Mayor and state house Rep. McGhee, and I know a couple of guys on the board of aldermen who are basically putting the brakes on the issuance of those industrial revenue bonds. Also, I know the editor of the local paper, who is doing a pretty good job at investigating “Manna of Utah” and “Maglev energy” and uncovering all kinds of info that screams “con”. Like the “portable ER” business was supposed to be headed by a physician from Augusta, GA, and he was introduced as an independent authority who had been sought out by the company at this big embarrassing announcement ceremony…well it turns out he is the brother-in-law of the spokesman for Manna. That wasn’t mentioned before. Also, the woman they are supposedly licensing “recipes” from who was also introduced as an outside entity…she is the spokesman’s MOTHER! That also wasn’t mentioned.
Hopefully they are charged with contempt and jailed. They are deliberately misleading public officials with the intent to commit fraud. The people of Odessa know what’s going on, and they will not forgive this kind of idiocy.
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March 9th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
All attempts at a peppermint magnet motor …
Well, I realise that’s probably a typo mis-corrected by spellcheck, but… damn, who wouldn’t want magnetized peppermint?
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March 9th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Sigivald said:
Yeah, that was the autocorrect trying to correct a typeo with the wrong word.
The one thing I can think of is after you’ve ruined a bunch of magnets trying to build an overunity device, if they we peppermint magnets, then at least they would not be totally useless. You could use them to freshen your breath.
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March 10th, 2010 at 5:21 am
Actually, it’s possible to make a motor with a permanent magnet, and no fluctuating magnetic field from a coil. Homopolar motors do it.
A very simple, and well working homopolar motor you can make at home:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/HomopolarMotor
They still require power input, of course. There are no free lunches.
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March 10th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
I think you are missing the key point here:
But that’s not how some state and local officials view it, including a handful who went to Florida to see the machine.
The company, Manna of Utah, is in, well, Utah. This was a free trip to Florida for some state and local officials. All they had to do was be ‘interested’ for a couple days and lend the company some credibility for a while. In exchange, a free trip.
Good work if you can get it.
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March 10th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Chuckie said:
Yeah. If it had been a “free” trip to Florida to look at some time-shares that they decided not to buy, then nobody would have thought twice about it.
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March 13th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
If certain officials would have checked Missouri’s Court / Case.net in reference to some individuals and downloaded the current Corporations papers in Utah of Manna.
Then simply spent a few dollars for a backround check on the trustees of this non-profit corp.
And simply googled the primary trustees name.
And looke at the entire spiderweb of the corporation that Mag-Lev is part of.
Which is all public information
Odessa would not be in this position.
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March 17th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
If you watch the YouTube video of the “generator”, you can see that there are several large batteries in the bottom of the frame. I’m sure the people who visited Florida saw the thing continue to “run” even after it was disconnected from the external power source.
Duh.
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March 23rd, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Many thanks for the Great content with regards to this subject.
I personally own a few generators simply because you never know when you will be needing them
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April 17th, 2010 at 9:07 am
The below material was taken from another forum in which themadscientist as he likes to call himself makes scientfic claims to the Magnetic Technology, that he nor anyone else has done the proper testing and research to support such claims
Dear Mr. Mad Scientist:
You’ve written standard internet polemics, but have not written a scientific paper. Manna of Utah will succeed and hire people here, or it won’t. The outcome will matter, but the pre-outcome debate won’t. I’m not offended that you have an opinion, and have no reason to think you’re wrong or right, but I do wish you wouldn’t make science look bad by claiming more than you’re doing.
A scientific writing has three parts. Part one is to write a testable hypothesis. You’ve done the hypothesis part for Manna’s generators, but it could be tough to do a real test without having either a working generator or some help from Manna.
Part two of a scientific paper is to describe the hypothesis test methods and results. I think you’ve given us three bits of evidence, none of them scientifically valid. One of the evidences in your links is that many people agree with your hypothesis, but that’s not really evidence; many people also once agreed that night air caused malaria.
Your other tests allege violations of the accepted thermodynamic principle that it isn’t possible to create energy. One of the ways you come at that is to say Manna people claim the generator isn’t a perpetual motion machine, so therefore it must be. That notion requires an assumption you didn’t prove. You also say that because you can’t think of any way the machine could work without creating energy, it can’t work. But pure ignorance isn’t a test. I don’t understand how computers work either, but we know they do.
After writing a hypothesis and describing test results, a scientific paper will discuss possible conclusions that can be based on the results. Since you have neither real tests nor real results, you’re left with an unproven hypothesis, or an opinion.
Finally, it’s fine for you to have an opinion and to express it. It isn’t fine to confuse opinion with science.
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April 17th, 2010 at 10:56 am
JB said:
You haven’t linked to the post in question, or explained themadscientist’s position in enough detail for anyone to really get what your talking about here.
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April 17th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Hopefully this link can clarify some of my earlier comments,
http://www.trailswestgrapevine.com/forums/display_topic/id_635/page_1/
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April 17th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
This link will also provide more clarification as to my post regarding the so called madscientist.
http://skepticblog.org/2010/03/08/another-energy-scam/
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April 17th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
OK. It seems that MadScientist and themadscientist are different people, or so themadscientist claims. I can’t see any real reason to doubt the claim, because I can’t see what anyone would have to gain by pretending they were two different people with very similar nicks in the first place.
It is fairly clear that the conversation you’ve quoted from was a bit of chitchat between Odessa locals, not a scholarly disputation between academics, so I’m not sure why anyone expected themadscientist to come up with a peer-reviewed scientific paper on it. By the way, for what it’s worth, themadscientist is spot on. Manna is a scam.
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April 18th, 2010 at 11:48 am
I am not claiming whether they are or are not, everyone has a right to their opinion as it should be noted that it is an opinion and only an opinion. I yet to read anyones opinion that has support to back their opinioniated claims, as yours Finrod fall with in the same catagories. I would love to debate subjects of the matter, but would need to find someone knowledgeable enough to debate other then express alleged claims. Have a wonderful weekend
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April 18th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
JB said:
Whatever, man. It’s your town. You have a good weekend too.
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June 6th, 2010 at 8:48 am
If spammers are going to post comments like this, the least they could do is use coherent english.
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