Toad Elevating Moment

[smith66]

Hiawatha hurbles...

Score, gents. The laws of physics are my bitch!

Schnellwagen at the ready:

A force which varies for free is a free energy gradient.

A weight placed upon a vertically-spinning wheel is subject to both centrifugal force and gravity. However their net sum undulates - it's sinusoidal because gravity adds to CF through the lower 180° arc, but subtracts from it through the upper, overhead portion of the cycle - ie. from the weight's perspective, the radial and gravitational vectors align additively and destructively each in turn, once per cycle.


This is a free energy gradient.


We can 'drop' a weight when it's heavier, and 'lift' it when it's lighter.


Additionally, conservation of angular momentum governs angular speed as a function of radius (the 'ice-skater effect'), so 'dropping' the weight out towards the rim should decelerate it. However it can alternatively cause an acceleration, by converting CF to torque (by whatever preferred transmission mechanism). Hence dropping it when it's heavier (CF and G aligned) can add more rotational kinetic energy (RKE) to the system than needs to be subtracted from it to retract the weight back towards the axle in the upper half of the cycle (when CF and G vectors are opposing each other); the outbound excursion causes acceleration, and so does the retraction (again, due to conservation of AM)!

Both extension and retraction are gravity-assisted, and both cause acceleration. Angular acceleration causes CF, CF is converted to torque, which is converted into CF, which is converted into torque.

For any given config, peak efficiency arises when CF = 1G; hence, the output force is 2G, and the input force is zero.

Ergo Bessler's mechanism used this free variation in net force as an energy source, and a positive-feedback loop to rinse it proper, like. The per-cycle gain is equal to the mass times excursion distance of the radially-displaced weight, times the integral of the equalised CF and G forces.

There's little else worth saying for now, save that gravity is for cissies; real men play with magnets. Stonking great N42 NdFeB's. Kilowatt solenoids. That's some proper force right there. The optimum config is a large radius for high radial force and excursion distance at minimum speed, and EM for the linear vector (it's x10^39 > G after all).

Force is force. If Orffyreus could've used decent magnets, he would've.

One, final note on the transmission: it's direct-drive, or OB; each has their own pros and cons. In the former case though, the requirement that "everything must go around together" is a particular limiting factor - however it's do-able (such as via a slightly-modified scissorjack mechanism). OB seems equally viable.. it's swings and roundabouts, i think..

I've only sussed all this in the last 24hrs so i'll update as i make any progress... need a wm2d sesh..

Skoodles skiboobles,


V

Mr Vibrating,
A link to my thread and in it, I even agree with Jim_Mich but got no green dot.
Go figure.

http://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/viewt ... be51438643

p.s., still, other ways it might work in an oob wheel but I would advise against discussing math in such a fashion.
Starting my build this weekend. :-)

[MrVibrating]

Spent another hour this eve and the gain went away again.

Obllox.

It's such an effing biatch, this thing.. assuming CF = G and 1kg weights moving across a 1m radius, we gain 1J from extending in the lower half of the wheel, and another 1J from retracting in the upper half.

2J up. Sweet eh?

But the counterbalancing i thought would be a cinch turns out to be impossible, i think. Hence it'd need to rotate 180° with an unbalanced weight from 6 to 12 o'clock, ie. a lift distance equal to 2r at 1kg and 1g, AKA 2J.

It's SO unfair. All i wanna do is break symmetry and bloody Nature won't let me. I mean the delusions are great, don't get me wrong, the buzz of mistakenly thinking you're onto something is totally addictive. If i ultimately can't crack this though i'm gonna end up doing a load of 'shrooms and staring at the toys page until i get a permanent psychosis... Probably gonna be the closest i'll get to a 'win' here...

[MrVibrating]

Speaking of which; this is what's preoccupied me for the last week:

There's clearly strong correlations between MT41 and 138-141.

The two snap-toys on the toys page, C and D, can be shifted leftwards onto the scissorjack - the vertical struts of the snap-toys align pretty much to the angles of the neighboring scissorjack struts, and so do their pivot points.

Rotate the whole image 90° CW (because the horizontal application is always better). Plus, now we have gravity and CF acting on the system.

This resulting mechanism is a bit of a dog's breakfast (i built one in WM2D), but its chief behaviour is to lift the outer two snap-toy struts up, away from the axle, when the jack is extended.

Of course only the upper snap-toy C has weights attached - D appears to be under sprung tension only. D is also larger than C - their sizes correlate to the tapering profile of the scissorjack.

Note also that the jack shown in MT41 "isn't exactly the correct artistic application" because it doesn't taper.

Putting these two together, there's an interesting consistency in that extending the jack lifts the weights up from the axle, and retracting it drops them back down.

This alone however seems somewhat trivial - it's a simple translation of forces and work.

The significant aspect, then, must pertain to the the tapering geometry of the jack and two toys, and the spring elements.

One single action of the jacks causes a small displacement of the weights at C, and a larger displacement of the springs at D.

This asymmetric displacement effect is another feature of the 1-down, n-up type of scissorjack config used in MT40 - at say 1-down 3-up, we get a 3:1 conversion of force/distance work.

So how might what looks like a simple power conversion lead on to an energy gain?

The total work input via the jack must be equal to the weight lifted and the sprung tension applied. Neither workload seems to attenuate the other.

Also, both the snap-toys can be removed entirely, and their weights and springs applied directly to the scissorjack. What you end up with is functionally identical to the apparently needlessly over-complicated original, in all but one respect: the snap-toys reach down to, and seem to commute with, the axle. Moreover, they seem to interact with alternate and opposite sides of the axle. But perhaps this is also superfluous - perhaps chords attached between the weighted and spring-loaded scissorjack and axle would obviate the snap-toys completely.

The chain/belt thingy, item A, then, must be some kind of means of turning these weighted, sprung scissorjack actions into torque on the axle.

I'm stumped, for now. I'd thought D might load the springs with CF work, hence the larger displacement, but replacing the snap-toys with the scissorjack as described above would seem to require the jack to be mounted vertically rather than horizontally, such that the lighter, tapering end was subject to greater CF due to ts greater radial excursion. Yet both the Toys Page and MT41 re-iterate the necessity for a horizontal jack.

I think D is a CF workload, and that C is a GMH workload, and that D is maybe > C. Beyond that, it gets more uncertain..

Is there a way here of tackling the unbalanced re-lift i mentioned earlier, hence getting a gain from the combination of CF and alternating G vectors..?

[Fletcher]

Yep .. it's a mind bender alright - the trick is not to throw the toys page out of the cot in a fit of pique.

ETA: IMO, the toys page is a lot of symbolism of motions & movement rather than mechanical detail ['for he who knows how to apply them differently'].

[MrVibrating]

This may be of interest to you & perhaps be a method you could use or modify for your needs.

It is a sim I once built whilst doing my own Cf studies.

The dual masses change radius in & out simultaneously as the pendulum shaft swings & the translation energy [Cf's ?] of the sliding masses is channeled via the geared "Pull Mech" into Rotational System Energy at the axle.

In short, it was a way to transform linear/radial motion into rotational acceleration at the axle.

Pull the sim apart to see how everything works - I have stripped it to bare essentials so it shouldn't be to hard to follow.

Cheers, great mechanism and added to my small but growing collection... Earlier this evening however i gained a little more clarity on the issue by reducing it to its Newtonian terms and realised that the CF work available is equal to the centrifugal force integral times the radius, period. It doesn't matter how much mass the flywheel has - it's just a power conversion issue, i think.

Still want to try and double check this in a sim though. Roundabout plus big flywheel vs one with a smaller mass flywheel, each flinging the same radial mass the same distance. Maybe trying different spool diameters too, just to be thorough... I expect unity - a bigger mass flywheel will reach a lower speed but equal energy as a lighter, faster one. Still, be interesting to see if it's possible to leave the wheel with more energy after the weight's detached.

For what precious little it's worth by way of reciprocation, here's this evening's doodle based on my Toys page meanderings above. It doesn't DO anything, of course (no point running it), just a schematic of the confused mental picture i'm currently wrestling with - the snap-toys dangling off the scissorjack.. why? I don't know. They just seem to fit, dammit.

http://www29.zippyshare.com/v/50138791/file.html

[MrVibrating]

@smith66 - cheers for the link, cool thread :)

[MrVibrating]

also, @Fletch, i agree that 138-141 are hieroglyphs. But the actual message seems to chime with that of MT41 - obviously also hieroglyphic.

The key details they describe are either instructions, or descriptions of aspects of his working mechanism; specifically that the weights are close to the axle when the jacks are retracted, and conversely, close to the rim when the jacks are extended.

This would be perfectly consistent with the jacks acting in vertical strokes, except we're pretty explicitly told, both verbally and graphically, that they're horizontally operated.

They can still perform lifts, albeit smaller ones (limited by the strut lengths of the jack), however on that particular point, there's a good argument to be had that smaller displacements are better anyway... So it's not an out-and-out discrepancy; if perhaps slightly incongruous.

I guess what i'm saying is that there's fair reason to suppose the jacks refer to.. jacks. Or simplified levers accomplishing the same action of interest.

I've also considered them as metaphors for various elements - CF, power conversion, force translation etc. etc. But on the toys page, the upturned whistling top seems to represent CF or CPF (or perhaps their N3 counterparts), and its proximity to the lower snap toy seems pertinent to its purpose.

One thing i'd considered was that the scissorjack in 138-141 does indeed refer to power conversion per se, and the instruction is thus to convert CF to lower-power torque, perhaps (or perhaps vice versa?)...

However in that case why the emphasis on H vs V orientation, or the snap-toy alignments? Hence the metaphor must be something more specific. Perhaps its not so much a metaphor as an actual key mechanic!?

The jacks do have at least one interesting property - which may of course be entirely incidental to their employ here -however it concerns their acceleration, which is unusual in that because all struts rotate in unison, while their rotational speed is equal throughout, their linear acceleration is cumulative; each successive linkage inherits the linear acceleration of all its predecessors. Hence if energy and construction practicalities were no object, the tip of a sufficiently large scissorjack could reach relativistic speeds almost instantaneously...

Granted this probably isn't what Bessler found 'special' about the jack (though who knows, it's certainly its most impressive property upon actually playing with one), but whatever's special about it, i think there's good reason to suppose it's mechanical. After all we're ultimately looking for a mechanical exploit...

[MrVibrating]

PS, another thing i'm toying with is connecting CF to the 'wrong' side of the wheel. As i've laboured elsewhere, if we could do this with gravitational weights, they'd happily lift themselves; place one at 3 o'clock, but its weight is felt at 9 o'clock, hence it 'falls' upwards. It occurred to me that schnelwagen might be adapted for such a task, though i couldn't figure it out. Another one for the backburner, for sure..


However the other day it occurred to me that CF work might be subverted in a similar manner. If a weight pulling high CF at 9 o'clock is actually connected at 3 o'clock, then it has extra PE available by 'unwinding' this kink in its transmission, type stuff. Dunno. Half baked for now...

[Fletcher]

The jacks do have at least one interesting property - which may of course be entirely incidental to their employ here -however it concerns their acceleration, which is unusual in that because all struts rotate in unison, while their rotational speed is equal throughout, their linear acceleration is cumulative; each successive linkage inherits the linear acceleration of all its predecessors.

Hence if energy and construction practicalities were no object, the tip of a sufficiently large scissorjack could reach relativistic speeds almost instantaneously...

Granted this probably isn't what Bessler found 'special' about the jack (though who knows, it's certainly its most impressive property upon actually playing with one), but whatever's special about it, i think there's good reason to suppose it's mechanical. After all we're ultimately looking for a mechanical exploit...

I wonder if this would be true ? - the thought experiment by way of comparison is if I stood on the surface of the earth with a very long wooden pole that terminated 10 cm from the surface of the moon [assuming I could do this] then if I were to poke the moon the force I'd give the pole would be transmitted instantaneously - of course this can't happen, the force I give the pole is transmitted from atom to atom & a wave results which takes time to transmit.

However in that case why the emphasis on H vs V orientation, or the snap-toy alignments? Hence the metaphor must be something more specific. Perhaps its not so much a metaphor as an actual key mechanic!?

I will play the devil's advocate & suggest the horizontal application of the storksbill is more symbolic, or a metaphor if you prefer, rather than a bona fide mechanical application as you are imagining it to be - we all have a tendency to over complicate things or make things more complex than they need be, when we have insufficient information - here we could invoke 'Ockham's Razor' - this could be a case of a very simple mechanical symbolism - not a run-o-the-mill storksbill able to expand or retract as we normally assume its application to be, but in a horizontal application a representation of a special type of box or truss section - except this truss has pivot points so when laid out horizontally it would sag at the end furtherest from where it is pinned like a bent index finger.

This would be similar to a lever that has one rotationally spring hinged pivot, or multiples forming a horizontal flexbeam;

"Applied in a different way".

[MrVibrating]

Hi all, been playing more this w/e with some of the ideas mentioned above, and have an intriguing result to share.

It concerns using a scissorjack as a direct drive mechanism. As noted earlier, when we open or close a scissorjack, the struts from which it's constructed all undergo a maximum rotation of just under 90° before bumping into eachother and jamming further movement.

Because we need 4 x 90° to supply a full 360° of torque, a minimum of 5 jacks would be necessary to create continuous torque throughout a full rotation.

So yesterday i set about simulating such a contraption. As you can imagine this is a complex design (i mean, it's 'simple' insofar as it's just 5 scissorjacks, but the jacks themselves are complicated to simulate), which slows everything down R&D-wise.

However this evening while working on this i hit upon something that appears quite astonishing... i'd previously wondered if a weight might 'fall without falling' (zen eh) - perhaps even rising (as pondered previously) - or maybe causing something else to fall away instead, while the weight itself remains temporarily suspended. Somewhat reminiscent of the 'slinky drop' delay effect, if slightly different..

So anyways, the answer, according to WM2D, is a resounding YES!

Let that sink in for a moment.

We can convert GPE into torque, without the driving weight descending.

This is possible because using the storksbills as a direct drive transmission like this, we always get, say 72° of torque (for a 5-mechanism config), regardless of the radial excursion length. Our jacks might drop 1kg 1 meter, or 10 meters, but we always only get 72° of angular displacement on the shaft. Thus we have an effective gearing system, converting the "drop power" for a given weight's mass and fall height into precisely 72° of rotary power, á la torque.

For any arbitrary weight or height.

Observe the following demo:

http://www9.zippyshare.com/v/50631276/file.html

The jack has a heavy weight at the thick end, and a lighter one at the thin end. The lighter weight lifts the heavier one, levering it up and simultaneously causing the wheel to rotate. However the wheel's speed momentarily equals the jack's, hence the jack is only changing radial position - its change in angular position is effectively cancelled, and the weights' angular speed is zero, even though they're accelerating the wheel they're attached to.

Thus, all we have to do is tweak the system until the angular and radial displacements precisely coincide, and voilá - from a horizontal start, the wheel lifts the weight at exactly the same incidental speed that the jack contracts or expands, and thus the wheel rotates without the weights changing height - they stay horizontal and level, even while performing work!

Watch closely - this is one neat trick (even if i say so myself):

http://www49.zippyshare.com/v/54976268/file.html

Is that sick or what? The wheel itself is a homogenous mass. For simplicity, i've replaced the prominent weights on the jack by raising the masses of the terminal struts at each end (so each 'V' at either end has a different mass, carefully tuned). Hence, there is no change in height of any mass until the jack retraction completes.

Nothing 'falls' anywhere, there's no vertical change in mass position! The weights only draw closer together.

Conventional logic then would dictate that the GPE of this system is zero. No mass gets any lower. Yet clearly, gravity has performed work on the system, rotating the wheel...

Obviously, the system is preloaded with energy - there is PE there, and it's gravitational in kind - so there's no suggestion of free energy or a symmetry break, yet.

And yet from a standing start, it lifts a weight at the same rate it falls, while simultaneously 'dunking' one at the same rate it rises - with the net result that nothing goes up nor down, and all the equivalent work is performed upon rotating the wheel instead.


Weird, huh?


I doubt this is particularly useful for now, but it's another one to chalk up as "special" properties of scissorjacks, that's for sure..

[MrVibrating]

I wonder if this would be true ? - the thought experiment by way of comparison is if I stood on the surface of the earth with a very long wooden pole that terminated 10 cm from the surface of the moon [assuming I could do this] then if I were to poke the moon the force I'd give the pole would be transmitted instantaneously - of course this can't happen, the force I give the pole is transmitted from atom to atom & a wave results which takes time to transmit.

True, though i'm not sure this alone could scupper the notion entirely - our pole might be balsa wood, or a steel-tensioned diamond crystal. Within such constraints though, if we could construct a jack from the hardest materials then its acceleration performance is simply a function of strut length and number of links. Of course we'd come up against inertia too in real life, still, the accelerations possible with practical jacks are impressive, and might yet prove useful..

I will play the devil's advocate & suggest the horizontal application of the storksbill is more symbolic, or a metaphor if you prefer, rather than a bona fide mechanical application as you are imagining it to be - we all have a tendency to over complicate things or make things more complex than they need be, when we have insufficient information - here we could invoke 'Ockham's Razor' - this could be a case of a very simple mechanical symbolism - not a run-o-the-mill storksbill able to expand or retract as we normally assume its application to be, but in a horizontal application a representation of a special type of box or truss section - except this truss has pivot points so when laid out horizontally it would sag at the end furtherest from where it is pinned like a bent index finger.

This would be similar to a lever that has one rotationally spring hinged pivot, or multiples forming a horizontal flexbeam;

"Applied in a different way".

Quite possibly, yes. I've a nagging suspicion they're just a symbol for power conversion, and no more special than a pair of gear wheels. However i've a stronger intuition that they encompass a key principle mechanic, a specific power conversion mechanism that accomplishes a symmetry break. Perhaps somehow rectifying increased force from one half of a power conversion with increased displacement from the other. Or something. The Toys Page seems to be making a specific point about the relationships between CF and G masses and displacements, and also the function of the springs, amongst other things. So i'm just trying to eliminate the most obvious literal interpretations...

My hunch is that 138-141 has four permutations; one's a gain, another may be a loss, and the other two are unity.

[MrVibrating]

Latest thoughts on the above findings:

- this effect ticks lot of boxes; jacks operate horizontally, weights 'gravitate' towards the center (albeit sideways), weights can be made to provide an "upwards impetus" while another, at the same time, provides a downwards one, torque is proportional to radius... these are the consistencies that immediately spring to mind, perhaps there's more though..

ETA: another one; the Apologia wheel could depict 3 jacks meeting at the axle..!?

- this looks like a partial solution for the Toys page (the left side anyway); a small horizontal displacement to GPE causes a larger angular displacement (although here the actual vertical displacement is nil)... this would presume that the lower snap-toy represents torque, rather than CF, say. And of course it uses a horizontal jack. And it goes without saying that the art of "falling without falling" is fairly 'extraordinary' (Bruce Lee would be proud).

- Is the jack also the proverbial 'flail'? A distinctive feature of both is exponential acceleration of the leading edge due to power conversion (the whiplash effect, trading ever-shortening wavelength for increasing amplitude)

- Could this effect be further tweaked to make the weights actually lift themselves? Although this sounds like utter hatstand, perhaps it's fundamentally akin to 'sailing upwind faster than the wind' - troublingly counter-intuitive, but perfectly viable nonetheless? I mean, if it's just a matter of force translation, as appears to be the case, then perhaps all CoE requires is that there is a concomitant displacement of mass for a given GPE, regardless of its direction; up, down or round'n'round...

- if we can get 72° of additional torque for every lift - effectively letting the weights 'fall' sideways horizontally, before being allowed to fall in the more traditional 'downwards' direction, then isn't this something of a bonus? I mean provided the actual lift and fall mechanism (in the proper, Y, plane) is fairly efficient (ie. not too lossy), perhaps this horizontal fall is thermodynamically free?

This last question seems the most pressing, for now. This evening i'll try to find a more complete cycle for this effect, see what comes up...

FWIW, this effect would be inertial vs gravitational, i think. Since CF / CpF are inertial forces anyway this doesn't alter the fundamental classification of the exploit (if that's what it is), but it's a surprising shift of focus, for me anyway..

[Fletcher]

Vibrator .. I had a play with your sims - I centered them on the page & turned up the accuracy & turned on View > 'System Center of Mass', & zoomed in close.

Take a look - you'll see that there is a drop in CoM i.e. loss of PE & this leads to the torque IMO.

The question is has there been an increase in system KE greater than PE gravity lost ? - What do you think ?

[rlortie]

I am not a WM2D user, but for the sake of helping others I do have the capabilities and knowledge to download and run a simulation.

The first above, I was told has inconsistent restraints and was asked if I wish to continue.

As for the second, it is with my hands on experience that tells me you cannot gain anything from scissors if allowed to open to the acute angle shown. It will require more force/mass to open and close than will ever be gained.

Ralph

[Fletcher]

Inconsistent Constraints isn't a show stopper Ralph.