Newton's Third Law broken?

[MrVibrating]

Dwayne, yes I have not seen the video with astronauts yet. What they do is much less efficient than what I have described.

I didn't know reaction-less drives can cause rotation but not a linear motion.
Any easy explanation why is that ?

Anyway, I am surprised that NASA or Wikipedia do not consider liner reaction-less drive possible. I would consider it proven possible after the Thornson's drive demonstrations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... 1hfr9c#t=8

Cheers all

@honza - an articulated system of masses can make a small local change of position, but without changing the system's net momentum or KE - in other words it can cycle back and forth between those two positions, but can't accumulate momentum in any plane.

ETA: I did an analysis of the Coulombe drive years ago, which, like Thornson's drive, seems to work no matter how it's suspended - float tests, hanging platforms, rails.. the vids are here (there's more, YT deleted half of 'em):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HeSnPXXJ6k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjZjG1ari_I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcPMvYGYLVc

It looks like an asymmetric exchange of momentum (both carts have equal mass), yeilding a remaining momentum that could accumulate, or else a progressive net change of position, depending on how the system is configured...

..unfortunately i found that the system depended on these connections to Earth, despite their apparent flexibility.

So to suss the Thornson principle you'll have to do a careful analysis, double-checking for all counter forces, throughout an interaction. It's almost certainly going to be a variation on a stiction differential, no matter how elaborate.. But good and worthwhile exercise nonetheless IMO.

[Trevor Lyn Whatford]

Hi,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg2qGcY1M_c

We use these a lot on production lines, the main reason is to evenly spread the product, they are far from a free lunch, and take more power per ton shifted than a belt conveyors.

They are normally 2 motors rotating a out of balance weights each, you can increase the vibration by moving the weight over to one side.

[AB Hammer]

Trevor L

shaker trays is what we called them when I was in my first non family job at a lumber yard/sawmill. It fed the sawdust to the boiler that ran the main parts of the sawmill. I spent many of hours underneath keeping them from jamming up and keep the dust flowing, with a shovel. LOL not a good smell

[Phaedrus]

I don't see "reactionless"-stuff happening.

Please explain (Marchello, or any other skeptic), how this video does not represent reactionless driven motion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVHg4BVGUhM

Please skeptanalyze this video and explain how the "stiction' between the device and the air molecules underneath are causing it to move to the right. Or maybe you want to claim that it is being 'blown' to the right? Or maybe you want to claim the whole demonstration is underwater, and it is swimming to the right, and the 2 men are standing there, holding their breath.

[Furcurequs]

Phaedrus,

If the weight of these oscillating/vibrating devices is somehow supported during their tests, there are certainly going to be some very real issues with the test results - whether they dangle the things from strings, float them on water, use an air track, use an oil slick or whatever.

If you are going to use such crude tests, you would also need to try to measure the actual forces in the horizontal - which would probably be quite difficult to do.

Again, probably the easiest way to know we aren't wasting our time would be to simply do a drop test. During a fall we can basically have zero-g (if we can neglect the air resistance for part of the fall or let the fall be in a vacuum chamber), and so if we could see horizontal acceleration while the device is in free fall, we might just have something.

We would, of course, then have to rule out or account for any sort of aerodynamic tendency to "glide" (if not done in a vacuum chamber, of course). These devices don't look like they would make for very good gliders, however, so any horizontal acceleration we saw as they fell for a few feet might be significant.

If the people with these devices are not bright enough to even do a proper test, should we really believe they are going to overthrow the laws of physics as we know them? I don't think so.

I found this blog post from last week by Marc Millis who is the former head of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project and who was also in the Horizon documentary I gave the link to previously:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=35243

From his responses to questions, he spoke of having included information about some of these mechanical devices in the book he helped compile about some of the propulsion ideas they investigated. He also seems to have complained that many independent researchers showed a lack of impartiality and rigor in their investigations.

Also, here is a paper that was put out by NASA to try to encourage those submitting ideas to them to do more rigorous tests before basically wasting their time:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20070004897

Based on the experiences of the NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, suggestions are offered for constructively responding to proposals that purport breakthrough propulsion using mechanical devices. Because of the relatively large number of unsolicited submissions received (about 1 per workday) and because many of these involve similar concepts, this report is offered to help the would-be submitters make genuine progress as well as to help reviewers respond to such submissions. Devices that use oscillating masses or gyroscope falsely appear to create net thrust through differential friction or by misinterpreting torques as linear forces. To cover both the possibility of an errant claim and a genuine discovery, reviews should require that submitters meet minimal thresholds of proof before engaging in further correspondence; such as achieving sustained deflection of a level-platform pendulum in the case of mechanical thrusters.

You might want to read that. It even explains the problem with using an air track.

From what the paper says, it sounds like about a third of their submissions came from people that they said showed signs of paranoia or delusions of grandeur. Many of the others were from amateurs who were apparently just too ignorant to do valid tests.

[ME]

I don't see "reactionless"-stuff happening.

Please explain (Marchello, or any other skeptic), how this video does not represent reactionless driven motion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVHg4BVGUhM

[/quote]
I would appreciate not to be generalized as "skeptic".

The following WM2D animation shows an (almost) weightless disk having two weights swinging around in circles. The two weights are vertically aligned so the resulting motion is only horizontal. There's a small ball at the top - just sitting there- acting like some center of gravity-pointer.

As you can see the center of mass doesn't move. With a slightly heavier yellow disk it wouldn't swing that much and the weight would track an oval shape.

This is what would happen in space. You could give it an initial push, but the mechanism wouldn't change anything about that given path.

As can be seen in the video (besides the track-effect); when the mechanism reaches the end-stop it has a better way to push against, and so it does.

[ME]

The following animation shows what happens when such weight accelerates.
As it only has a single 4-bar-linkage with a single weight, this weight remains where it is, and just drags the (almost) weightless construction with it.

When I would have used two mechanism, it would only wobble horizontally.
On the left one can see what happens when such linkage is attached to the background.
(by the way: there are no collisions, just bad placement and thus slightly overlapping)

The mechanism accelerates more to the right ( a[right] ) then to the left ( a[left] ).
As static friction (Fs) is an equal and opposite force up to a certain point (Fs[max] ), this thing would actually move when the back-force would be (m*a[Left] < Fs[max] ) and (m*a[right] > Fs[max] )
And that's what's happening in those videos's.

Marchello E.

[Sam Peppiatt]

Phaedrus, I would want to see how level the track is. If it is down hill a slight amount it will move in that direction, also friction is an issue no matter how slight. It's almost working but not quite. The problem as I mentioned before, is it stops each time which is a killer.

The key to it is to provide a resistance of some kind to "push off" from to prevent any backward motion. The idea is NOT to break the 3rd law but to find some way to circumvent it. Like Besslers Wheel, isn't it much more likely that we don't know how to do it, at least I don't.

But just imagine how fantastic it would be , if a way could be found. Sam Peppiatt

Live Your Days Inspired Anew, LYDIA

[John doe]

I was thinking that this might be relevant to the discussion. If not it's an interesting video regardless.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=53iWX0Xouv4
You will notice the nuts start at the bottom and vibrate uphill.

[Fletcher]

ME .. if you want to show what happens to the System CoM then you can make the yellow disk transparent Window>Appearance>Pattern>No

Then you can activate View>System Center of Mass.

Zoom in if you need to.

[ME]

Fletcher, thanks - yes you're right, I changed colors that way. For some reason I did it this way...

[John doe]

Any opinions or comments on the video I posted ?
Is it relevant at all?

[rlortie]

You wish for an opinion!

Vibrating shakers with an incline is nothing new! Gold miners dry mined placer gold with such inventions when water was not available. The correct term for such a device is called "gravity classifier".

Learned from Native Americans using buffalo hides and wind called; "winnowing" before white men moved west.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnowing

I built such a machine out of rectangular air venting material and a five horse Briggs and Stratton engine. Even found a little gold with it!

Ralph

[John doe]

The age of the technology is not in question.
Your previous occupation as a gold miner is irrelevant.
The name winnowing or classification as gravity classifier is also irrelevant.
My only concern was to the relevance or irrelevance as pertaining to this discussion or PMM in general.
Thanks in advance.

[ME]

My 2ct:

The age of technology is for sure in question when trying to reconstruct what Bessler did.
Perhaps gold-mining is not relevant persé, but simple pre-industrial mechanical machinery (of any kind) sure is.
The relevance being: what kind of mechanical construction gave Bessler his "aha-erlebnis" - and are we able to get a similar experience.
Our current "problem" obstructing a lot of attempts in reconstruction his prime-mover-mechanism, or even his thought-pattern, is an overflow in technology and knowledge.

For your video: perhaps it's relevant, perhaps not - I guess such thing needs an enormous amount of energy input compared to simple-lifting.
As MrV said:

@honza - an articulated system of masses can make a small local change of position

Apparently even upwards.

We could find out more about mineral-separation in general and at least view the images on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_processing

Marchello E.