Tarsier79 wrote:Gravity is a harsh mistress. She has specific rules we have been unable to break. Nearly everyone here started their journey trying to move weights horizontally on a wheel, like the Baskara wheel.
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The theoretical way to overcome the confinements of gravity on a "wheel" is to either lift a weight lightly, or drop a weight heavily...
I think it is encouraging that more and more of us are looking beyond the "pure" gravity OOB wheel. We might look backwards now and again but in our hearts we know it is not the full story and we must turn again and face forward .. aka there is more to it to find. Defining what is missing is the hard bit.
I also think the first step in that process is what you describe Tarsier .. it seems logical - lift a weight lightly (or with less effort/cost) or drop a weight heavily (or with more force and velocity i.e. speed and KE). Assuming there is no external energy input that needs replenishment, or a harnessed environmental force (a nod to ECC1), we are left with scant "internal and in-situ' candidates to finally generate a surplus of wheel momentum (the gain). Interestingly Wolff was of a similar persuasion to your suggestion, which I in part quote below ..
Letter from Christian Wolff to Johann Daniel Schumacher, 3rd July, 1722
... But the force which drives the weights, does not come from the machine itself, rather it comes from some fluid, invisible matter by which the movement of the falling weights becomes faster and faster. Orffyreus' whole invention consists of an artful arrangement of weights, in such a way that they are
lifted when at rest and acquire force during their fall, and in my opinion it is this that he keeps secret. This is also consistent with what Orffyreus says, that anyone could easily understand his invention, as soon as he is allowed to look into the wheel.
3. It is possible therefore, that when the internal structure of the wheel has been revealed, some mathematicians may decide that it is not a perpetual motion machine
as there is an additional force involved,
namely the unknown substance which applies continuous pressure to heavy bodies when they fall, and which adds to the force of their impact...'
I bring you to what B. actually said about his wheels in one of his most famous and well-known quotes ..
John Collins DT pg 190 hardcopy :
Johann E. E. Bessler, 1717 - "Unlike all other automata, such as clocks or springs, or other hanging weights which require winding up, or whose duration depends on the chain which attaches them, these weights, on the contrary, are the essential parts, and constitute the perpetual motion itself; since from them is received the universal movement which they must exercise so long as they remain out of the centre of gravity; and when they come to be placed together, and so arranged one against another that they can never obtain equilibrium, or the punctum quietus which they unceasingly seek in their wonderfully speedy flight, one or other of them must apply its weight at right angles to the axis, which in its turn must also move."
Imo the key difference to 'light up - heavy down' philosophy is imo .. 1. that B. is saying that equilibrium (of forces) can NEVER be achieved (he never says directly the how), generated from the weights movement (undefined) .. 2. He seems to be saying that the weight-force (of a weight - and invariable) is applied on the down-going side of the wheel causing the axle rotation as a result. We tend to associate these two things together. 2. is self explanatory, 1. is far from it, and the crux of the matter imo.
Of course his words are difficult to fathom, they were intended that way. Some may interpret them as (as did Wolff) that the weights fall on the down-going side with greater speed and energy, transforming into a gain in wheel momentum. Wolff attributes this to an unknown internal pervading force adding to impact force. Smart guy Wolff, as just about no-one else offered any coherent theory but him.
I tend to dial it back a notch with a more cautious hypothesis. That reading B's. quote above in the clear light of day that his mechanical arrangement of weights etc 'in motion' were the cause of wheel momentum gain. And that the weights and wheel was continuously out of CoG (i.e. OOB). Meaning that the weights in motion could not achieve an equilibrium of forces (torques) which kept them swinging on by bdc and replenishing their GPE, imo !
Doesn't seem too different from 'light up - heavy down', both requiring a 'mysterious' force. And which Wolff arrived at.
I suggest that that excess force was an asymmetric torque (no surprise there) that was generated on the down-going side of the wheel. But importantly it was not a 'normal' torque from periodic weight displacements usually associated with a 'pure' gravity wheel where these torques balance out i.e. are symmetrical in nature. I would could call it more akin to the idea of in-situ 'force double-dipping' rather than Wolff's strict addition of a mysterious force, imo. Food for thought !
