Michael wrote (with reference to the very tiny mass losses occurring within a running overbalanced wheel):
Okay well lets look at that then. Tiny but large enough that Bessler's wheel ran on it?
Exactly. As my solution to the hypothetical problem of my last post showed, Bessler's wheels were only losing mass in the picogram range per wheel rotation. That's one trillionth of a gram of mass! But, as we learn from Einstein's Mass-Energy Equivalence equation, that tiny amount of mass can, indeed, provide enough energy to power a gravity wheel.
Now Ken this is your quote.
Quote:
as energy is supplied to the object to accelerate it, more and more of that energy will go into increasing the mass of the object as its velocity increases toward that of light.
Think about that when you say an object accelerating by gravity is losing mass.
At first glance this seems paradoxical. If an object drops in a gravity field and loses mass that is converted into the kinetic energy that the object displays and an increase in the kinetic energy of an object also increases its mass, then shouldn't the mass of the object remain the same?
The answer that resolves this apparent paradox is that are low velocities compared to that of light such as arise when objects fall through the Earth's atmosphere, practically all of the kinetic energy that derives from their loss of mass goes into increasing their velocity rather than their mass again. As the velocity of the object approaches that of light, this situation changes drastically so that almost all of the kinetic energy supplied in an effort to accelerate the object will go into increasing its mass.
For the purposes of performing calculations with a chronically overbalanced gravity wheel, we can safely assume that all of the kinetic energy derived from the loss of the rest masses of its weights goes into increasing its velocity and none of this energy goes back into increasing the masses of its weights again. It must also be remembered that, once the gravity wheel reaches its terminal rotation rate and has its maximum amount of kinetic energy, any additional energy derived from the mass of its weights will not be transfered to the wheel as a whole, but, rather, to the surrounding atmosphere to overcome air resistance. Must energy will also be lost by infrared energy emission from the wheel's various bearings as they heat up from friction.
One final thing Ken. Einstein's equivalence principle states that it is impossible to distinguish between a uniform acceleration and a uniform gravitational field. Since your using Einstein you have to validate this, but using this and your point of view, any object experiencing acceleration on a horizontal plane that is the same rate as gravity will also lose mass. Contradicts the fact that any object being made to accelerate has an increase in mass doesn't it.
Einstein's Equivalence Principle also assures us that there is no difference between gravitational and inertial
mass. When I made reference to this famous principle, I was trying to say that if we could reduce the mass of a weight by using it inside of a working overbalanced gravity wheel, then we would notice that it lost its weight (due to gravitational mass) as
well as its inertial properties (which are due to inertial mass).
When an object accelerates horizontal to the direction of action of a gravity field it will
not lose any rest mass. Such an acceleration can not be provided by the gravity field, but would have to be produced by an outside energy source. That
outside source of thrust (perhaps a rocket engine) would be what was losing mass...not the object accelerated (unless, of course, the velocity of that object and an attached source of thrust began to approach that of light).
Well, in my last post here I presented a problem concerning Bessler's giant 12 foot diameter Kassel wheel and wanted to show how Bessler's 4th Law of Motion and some expressions derived from it could be used to solve that problem. Basically, I gave some hypothetical parameters for the wheel which seemed "reasonable" to me and then proceeded to calculate the amount of rest mass lost by the great wheel's weights per wheel rotation, the number of rotations needed to
completely extract all of the mass energy from the weights in one of the two component one-directional wheels that may have made up the larger composite two-directional Kassel wheel, and the amount of time, in years, for this process to be completed.
The results of the calculations were rather surprising because they showed that the weights driving the great wheel only lost about 2 picograms per wheel rotation or about 2 trillionths of a gram of mass per rotation. Then, in order to completely extract the energy associated with the mass of one of the great wheel's two component one-directional wheels, one would have to allow it to run at 26 rpm for over 2 billion years! This would not be possible unless, as Einstein's famous equation indicates, mass was not a form of very highly condensed energy.
However, in reviewing the calculations I performed in the last post, I noticed that I had neglected to do any calculations of the constant power output that the Kassel wheel would have had according to Bessler's 4th Law of Motion based on the hypotheical parameters I attributed to it. So, for the remainder of this, hopefully, shorter post, I will address this problem and give a calculation of the power output of the Kassel wheel.
The constant power output, P, of an overbalanced wheel whose CG is directly horizontally to the left or right of its axle is given by:
P = - 2πMgdω
where M is the total mass of the weights driving the wheel, d is the horizontal distance of the CG of the weights from a vertical line passing through the wheel's axle, and ω is the rotational rate of the wheel in rotations per unit of time.
When the CG of the weights is below the axle of the wheel and forms a "dip" angle of φ with a horizontal line passing through the axle, the power output equation above is modified to:
P = - 2πMgdωcosφ
Since, from the previous problem's given parameter's, we know that, although below the wheel's axle, the CG of the 128 lbs of weight within
one of the two composite one-directional wheels that drove the great wheel was only displaced horizontally 1 inch or 2.54 cm from a vertical line passing through the axle, we can use the first equation for constant power output and write:
P = -2(3.1415927)(58 059.823 gm)(980.655 cm-sec¯²)(2.54 cm)(0.433333 sec¯¹)
or, since the units of erg are gm-cm²-sec¯², we can solve the above and give the power in units of erg-sec¯¹:
P = -3.93756 x 10^8 erg-sec¯¹
Knowing that there are 10,000,000 or 10^7 ergs per joule lets us rewrite this as:
P = -39.3756 joule-sec¯¹
And, since a watt equals one joule per second, this becomes:
P = - 39.3756 watts
Also, since one horsepower is equal to 746 watts, we can also express the Kassel's constant power output while rotating at its
maximum terminal rotation rate of 26 rpm as:
P = - 0.0527823 horsepower
There have been several other power estimations of the Kassel wheel which have been approximately in the range of tens of watts (I think I once calculated 25 watts by using a different mathematical approach than that used here). It should be remembered that in the previous problem I presented, I only
guessed at what "reasonable" values to assign to the great wheel's internal parameters.
The P output I calculated above would be the
minimum power level of Bessler's largest wheel. As a load was applied to the wheel, it would immediately slow down from the maximum rotation rate of 26 rpm and this would then reduce the CF that was disabling its weight shifting mechanisms. As a result of the then improved performance of the weight shifting mechanisms, the CG of the driving weights would slowly rotate up to a higher location relative to the axle (put not above or even level with the axle) and that would cause the horizontal displacement distance, d, of the CG to increase.
If d was doubled or tripled by the great wheel slowing down and reducing the CF acting on its weight shifting mechanisms, then the constant power output expression derived from Bessler's 4th Law of Motion indicates that the power output of the wheel would consequently
increase by a factor of two or three times. Thus, the actual
maximum power output that the Kassel wheel could deliver to perform external work might have been anywhere from 80 to 120 watts.
Although this is only enough power to light a single light bulb, it is amazing to think that the great wheel could have provided it for over two
billion years for
each direction that the wheel was run in!
ken
On 7/6/06, I found, in any overbalanced gravity wheel with rotation rate, ω, axle to CG distance d, and CG dip angle φ, the average vertical velocity of its drive weights is downward and given by:
Vaver = -2(√2)πdωcosφ