Inegnuity v's Entropy 2 - Observations & Questions

[Grimer]

...
When one is working up a swing is one changing frames of reference ?

http://physicsinsights.org/up_in_a_swing.html

Good question. Thanks for the link.

I notice the link author writes:

I have actually seen a rod-supported "swing device" at an amusement park driven a full 360 degrees by determined occupants! (They didn't turn inside out.)

I'm surprised he didn't refer to KiiKing. Maybe knowledge of it wasn't so widespread in 2005.

[Fletcher]

Ok .. I place a lot of importance in Bessler's MT. It was unpublished in his time.

He was going to use it as a text in his planned school. Therefore IMO it was likely to be more truthful (because it was kept private) than documents in the public arena by him. MT was leading to a reveal somewhere in the document (which we know was removed) and the Toy Page seemed to be added as a substitute.

Nevertheless, all through the first 55 drawings or so Bessler seems to give clear steers or messages. Especially about storksbills (pantographs, scissors, jacks). This seems to be validated by the 8 segmented tapering storksbill in the Toy Page illustration.

I, like everyone else, have looked into jack mechanisms many times. They appeared a special type of lever, like an ordinary lever and fulcrum, or ordinary geared pulley arrangements that multiply forces. But they were different in a specific way. The geometry of the articulated segments meant that the accelerations and forces were variable which could be tweaked further with tapering the segments.

The difference in my approach this time to storksbills was that I didn't want to 'fight' gravity but use it in a Prime Mover.

The concept is to use the tapered segment storksbill to cause variable acceleration in lateral (horizontal) moving masses, activated by a driver mass falling vertically. The intent to cause all (as much as practical) of the vertical momentum of the drive mass to be transferred into horizontal momentum of two lateral load masses. N.B. at this stage I am contemplating the static mechanism only. The device is symmetrical about the vertical axis.

In ordinary geared pulley arrangements the accelerations are invariable. The drive mass falls under constant acceleration and gathers velocity, momentum and KE. The lateral masses gather these things too. However, in an ordinary pulley arrangement the drive mass gets faster and faster until it is stopped. That means the drivers mv and KE is of no use to us. It can not do work for us and has to be recovered somehow as lost GPE/KE. This is its limitation.

However if the geometry of a storksbill could slow down and perhaps stop the drive mass in its fall until it has near zero velocity ( near or nil mv and KE ) then the lateral load masses would have all the drivers momentum equivalence that it would have had in free-fall for the same height loss.

And as we have seen if that could happen then the lateral masses would have the same mv total (horizontal) as the driver equivalence mv (vertical) but because they are comparatively smaller they would have much greater KE than the KE equivalence of the driver for the same height loss. This is an effect of gearing.

This lateral KE then could be used to do 'Work' in lifting or repositioning other objects inside an OOB wheel.

I include a simple pulley pic of a symmetrical device meant to illustrate the shortcoming of pulleys. A tapered segmented storksbill or similar ilk would the advantage of also operating in two ways.

1. the driver hangs below the fulcrum and pulls the arms in.

2. the driver sits above the fulcrum and extends the arms out.

[Fletcher]

In a sense I'm trying to devise a linear equivalent to pequaide's hypothetical rotary momentum transducing device, to increase system KE by losing known GPE, by the application of shape changing geometry of variable length segments.

[Fletcher]

I started with these arrangements.

Not tapered as yet.

The scissors were made of almost massless nodes connected by massless rods.

I was watching the velocities and accelerations as the segment geometry changed shape.

[MrVibrating]

AFAICS the only effect of tapering storks bills is to increase their operating mass, inertia and friction for a given excursion length.

Explanation: Assuming all the pivots have good bearings (with no off-axis play) then all scissor sections have an identical angular velocity - that is, the terminal scissor pair open and close at the same rate as the handles at the other end, regardless of any tapering.

Further assuming that the struts of an idealised scissorjack rotate a full 90° (or 45° for each strut of a pair), then the linear velocity of the terminal end is the rolling sum of 0.25 * Pi * strut diameter * angular velocity of all scissor pairs in the chain - in other words tapering the scissor pairs has precisely the same effect as using fewer equal-sized pairs. For a given angular velocity, linear acceleration is highest when launching from full retraction, reducing to a minimum towards full extension, since a given angular increment has a greater horizontal component below 45° and a greater vertical one above (for horizontally oriented jacks), so this could give us some variation, but as a function of angle rather than tapering of the scissor sections.

However more fundamentally i still cannot see that "momentum transfer" is a real thing - it's a handy metaphor, but not a physical reality. Colliding masses do not exchange momentum - it's not transcendant beyond MV, so not "transferrable". Rather, collisions transfer energy, which then generates the manifestation of momentum, individually and uniquely to the respective inertias and energies. The notion of "momentum transfer" seems to imply that it might change form in the same way as energy - literally, converting to velocity to compensate a difference in mass and inertia. But momentum is specific and subjective - it can only have dimensions of M & V, and is only conserved along with those values... if one changes, the other remains the same. They're not conjugate in that if one decreases the other must rise. A diminshing mass in flight doesn't accelerate in violation of N1.

I really want to buy into this "momentum equivalence" principle but the only definition i can conceive of is KE - which is all any collision can transfer, by any mechanical means. "Momentum" only has meaning in the context of moving mass. It cannot have a conduit, be conducted or abstracted or converted to another form, it does not propogate through a medium and its dimensions aren't covariant (so as to preserve net P for a given change in M or V). It's not a second, parallel energy currency that we can trade between, but merely the goods that the currency buys, calculated on an individual per-transaction basis..

TBH i was SO looking forward to a means to transfer momentum... or any hitherto-neglected properties of storksbills. Am i just not seeing it? I'll sleep on it and maybe come back to this over the weekend..


It's all excellent work of course, thorough and well-presented. I just can't get me jaw round the gobstopper.. :/

[Fletcher]

Thanks Mr V .. I'll read your reply thoroughly tomorrow.

As you point out there are certain sections of the action geometry that at least hold some promise of better things.

Just what was so 'special' about them in terms of what Bessler meant I'm yet to nail down myself.

But then .. that is why I invited everybody to stretch their legs and think about them again.

Perhaps with a different mindset than the usual.

JB would have only thought in terms of momentum, movement and force. So he was unlikely to know the currency is KE.

[Fletcher]

ETA: just as a matter of housekeeping. Possibly of some interest.

In the earlier examples of two masses colliding with a spring intervention we lost 1/2 the momentum, though KE was conserved. This is what the sim showed.

Interestingly, in the Output boxes of the last pics of the scissors at times the sum of momentums (absolute values) was greater than the MV equivalence lost by the driver.

Obviously the left and right momentums cancel in the real world but the point is the sim showed a gain in system momentum absolutes rather than a loss.

And as I said earlier, if there were a way to slow down the fall rate of the driver whilst increasing the velocity of the laterals as the trade-off we would see an increase in KE of the laterals. The hope being in excess of the KE equivalence of the driver.

[Trevor Lyn Whatford]

Hi Fletcher,

I had given up on stork bills, but then I think I found a way to get a velocity shunt from both opening and closing them, this will be the last build I will be using them on.

I have tried drop weight velocity shunts before but as the weights are dropping on the descending side of the wheel, the ascending side becomes heavier so the shunt is lost to a negative out of balance, this does not happen with my stork bills design, because the weights are sliding not falling and I can get two positive shunts per each set of jacks in every 360 full rotation, the drop weight drivers also keep there weight on there pivots, so I thought it would be worth a build.

Looking at my stork bills weight shift video I built some time ago, I concluded that rolling weights shifts would be more effective than the scissor jacks.

I will post the results when I have finished this velocity shunt build and its tinkering thereafter.

PS, I know it is still early days yet with this thread, but I would like to see a weights shifts moving outward on one side and inward on the other side playing the OoB gravity game, and a comparison between the two experiments. I am not a fan of the weight shift used above for no other reason than the effect seems to me, too weak to do a lot of good.

I most say that I do like your threads, they always keep the mind active and the imagination set free.

[daxwc]

But what Fletcher; what is the game plan of using the increase in KE of the laterals? Either using the KE or the multiplied leveraged force of the storkbills causes losses, counter-torque or mass that needs to be picked up. I have prior suggested using it to make the perimeter of the wheel smaller and pulling all the weights in therefore pumping it but CF is squaring.

Or can the increase in KE be made to move the fulcrum (pivot point, dual axle) over lateral and make up for the mass drop?

[daanopperman]

Hi Fletcher ,

In the drawing is a pulley drive that will slow down or speed up , I do not give any discription as it is self explan. It was implimented in early whatches , connected to a spring it would rotate the taper as the temp. increased in the day , and cooled in the night to keep the time of the watch accurate . It is called a FUSEE regulator .
If your driver was on one end of the taper and the driven on the other , you would have a variable speed pulley drive .

MrVbrating ,

If the jack segments decrease in lenght , the leverage also have to change , so a tapered jack with smaller arms would not be the same as a straight jack . It would be a variable velocity and force jack would it not ?

[MrVibrating]

@Daxwc - How the KE gain was used in a working device would be academic, but a device to pop champange corks would seem apposite.

@Daan - Yes, the scissorjack itself can be entirely 'black boxed' - disregarded in favour of focusing only on the relative input vs output displacements, as therein lies the leverage ratio. Hence tapering the jack has exactly the same effect as using fewer equal-sized segments. At least, that's my thinking... will gladly revise it if contrary evidence is presented.

@Fletcher - i spent a few hours this afternoon mulling over conservation of momentum in terms of Noether's theorem. Still thinking it over but all indications are that a collision between unequal masses represents a discontinuous translation (because of the change in mass) hence momentum is not a conserved quantity in the exchange.

But as to how to interpret that, well on the one hand it doesn't seem consistent with a concept of "full momentum transfer" between unequal masses, but then on the other, no more precludes momentum from rising, as falling.. but as for the real meat of facillitating a KE gain, i'm still looking for it.

Something i've understood from the outset here is that an asymmetric interaction MUST, by definition, trade between two forms of energy - one characterised by time symmetry and the other by spatial symmetry. But that's so general as to be almost useless in finding a practical implementation. If we ever DO find OU here we'll see that it plays off an energy quantity where force is a function of time, against another where it is a function of space. The latter obviously has to be a vector, the former could be scalar or vector, CoE applying perfectly to each in their own respect but not to the results of their interplay.

But if that was any kind of roadmap to success we'd be there already.. i mention it only as we may be skirting around these issues here.

Finally, as to your hypothesis re. slowing the fall rate of the driver while maximising the velocity of the linear mass, the ideal implement for this is simply a jack with many segments.

Consider that a massless, frictionless jack with infinitely many segments and a 1 picogram lateral mass, operated by a megaton drop weight, would not 'operate' at all - it'd be locked solid by the superluminal acceleration being applied to the lateral mass.

No matter how infinitesimally small the lateral mass, nor how astronomically large the driving mass, or even how strong the gravity field, the input PE would be finite and thus insufficient.

Taking a step back into more realistic scales, a jack with sufficiently many sections will accelerate a tiny mass to ludicrous velocity while a massive driver weight drops veeery slooowly indeed.. :)

[Grimer]

Something i've understood from the outset here is that an asymmetric interaction MUST, by definition, trade between two forms of energy - one characterised by time symmetry and the other by spatial symmetry. But that's so general as to be almost useless in finding a practical implementation. If we ever DO find OU here we'll see that it plays off an energy quantity where force is a function of time, against another where it is a function of space. The latter obviously has to be a vector, the former could be scalar or vector, CoE applying perfectly to each in their own respect but not to the results of their interplay.

Mmm...

I like it. That's given me something to think about. :-)

[daxwc]

MrVibrating:

@Daxwc - How the KE gain was used in a working device would be academic, but a device to pop champange corks would seem apposite.

I disagree, it has been brought up before about trying to use the fast movement of the storkbills although no math was shown on momentum. The real battle is trying to use it and without evoking a squared relation on reset if real transfer could be achieved. People didn’t just sit around and wait for the math. So far in the last few years the academics are down to just scratching their lazyboy’s arm rests on this concept and sipping cheap wine :)

[daxwc]

I am very sorry Fletcher. I am always trying to push the agenda along and you are always trying to look under every rock and make sure all I’s are crossed. I am very intrigued where you might be taking this please continue and ignore my comment.

[Fletcher]

No worries dax, and everyone else. I am just looking under a rock again and its taking some time. It's my nature to pause and investigate when I think of something. I try not to pass by without checking for myself even if they are usually dead ends.

As you once said. If you can break Mechanical Advantage rules then the worlds your oyster (to go with the champagne).

And to Mr V, of course force x time is momentum and force x displacement is energy.