Kingbob said:

Well i watched the video, didnt see anything particularly mindblowing.
The thing i find interesting is their choice of torroidal electromagnets, and a high amount of plastics in the design of the ‘motor’ to minimize magnetic shielding. I have an electronic engineering background before switching to IT, but I still use brushed and brushless motors a lot. What they’ve made is basically a 4 pole brushless motor.

I think the same. What I see here is a fairly straightforward electric motor. It has a few slightly unusual aspects to it, like the fact that they use toroidal magnets, which is not an especially good choice for a motor, but otherwise it’s a permanent magnet DC motor.

I’m not impressed by what they are showing on the scope, especially because they don’t really give a good explanation of how everything is wired and such. It looks like it’s just a simple issue of not getting the same induction back when they have the polarity reversed and I agree it’s just the magnets are not inducing counter-current because now the current is flowing the other way.

They seem to missunderstand the whole issue of energy and work in a motor. The fact that a motor needs energy has nothing to do with the internals of it or the magnetic fields. If a motor is under load, like spinning a fan or lifting a weight or whatever, it is going to need energy to do that because the load is going to work to slow the motor and to keep it going, you need to put more energy in. Of course, a motor can keep spinning for a long time without power input if you don’t have a load and it has a low friction bearing. That’s a simple flywheel.

Thus a motor will spin without power input if there is no friction and no load on it. We can’t create frictionless flywheels, but we can come pretty damn close. Of course, if you watch it long enough there will be perceptible slowing of it.

If this is indeed more than 100% effecient, then it should need no input power at all. Simply connect the output shaft to a generator and it will power itself, right? That’s the thing. As long as there is power input nothing is proven.

An important thing to remember: There have been claims to having produced a more than 100% effecient motor before and in some cases the inventors actually believed it because they had done some simple calculation mistakes. For example, they confused things like the usable power with the reactive power or they calculated the shaft output power then compared it to the input power but they were not using a true-RMS measurement of the input current or something.

While i’m not convinced there is any gain in energy at all, *IF* there is, i think i can see where its coming from. The magnets on the rotor are likely to be neodymium rare earth magnets, which are uber-strong and have a serious magnetic field. Usually you cant pull 2 directly apart, you have to slide them. What I think is happening, is that basically during rotation, the magnets are inducing a small current in the torroidal coil. Physics 101: every school kid knows a magnetic field moving through a coil will induce a current. Any of the “additional” energy they think is coming out of this system is likely to be as a result of this small induced current. Thats also why its made of plastic, to ensure as little interference as possible to the magnetic field.

Catch is, as soon as you remove the power to the electromagnets, rotation will slow and the induced current will drop. There certainly wouldnt be enough power to maintain its own motion. Nor would it be “perpetual” as the magnets themselves would lose their strength over time. Essentially what they’re trying to to is power a motor, from it’s own rotation, its not possible. Even with an external power source the gain just isnt sufficient to be self sustaining.

At least thats what i got from watching it.

As for ‘reversing the current’, lol, classic. He does infact reverse the polarity!
Which given that its 4 electromagnets in series, should make bugger all difference anyway. Probably why theres 2 magnets next to each other on the rotor, they’ll be mounted with opposite polarities facing out so the rotor will still turn in the same direction regardless of the polarity of the magnetic field from the electromagnets.

        SKDBMember said:

If you consider discussion of this topic intrinsically insulting to your intelligence I shall **** off and leave to enjoy the fruits of being right on your ownsome. Enjoy, and try not to drag your knuckles too much.

Don’t flatter yourself – we were never having a discussion.

One-to-one, every time.

        Crastney said:

there are, surpisingly, things about the universe that we do not yet know.

If I wasn’t already aware of this, I wouldn’t be doing research in theoretical & applied mechanics. I guess that makes me biased in a way; I wouldn’t want to be forced to throw out everything I knew about physics overnight. You assume that the skeptics don’t care about discovery or furthering knowledge. Often, the opposite is true. There is a correlation between the “if you disagree with me, then you are closed-minded” argument and a weak scientific position. I would be less skeptical of the demonstration if it had been preceded by a published paper or at least been described in detail.

        SKDBMember said:

Apologize? For having a different viewpoint to you? Extracting apologies is not the purpose of debate. Victory alone should be enough for anyone.

Apologize for insulting our intelligence, our education, and our knowledge. This is not a matter of viewpoint, or opinion, overunity is physically impossible, it is that simple.