Gravity as a conservative force

[John Collins]

I rushed this a bit but I hope my meaning is clear.

Gravity as a conservative force.

Take a weight on a wheel as starting from the point of highest gravitational potential and allow it to fall, spinning the wheel in the process, and it returns to its starting point of highest gravitational potential. We are taught that this cannot happen under any circumstances. Why not? Gravity is a conservative force. What does that mean?

I’ve given years of research delving into this aspect of gravity and the truth is that I cannot find a satisfactory answer. I think that the term ‘conservative force’ is misleading as it implies an association with the ‘laws of conservation of energy’, which is not necessarily true, at least not in the use of the actual word ‘conservative’.

Various definitions of conservative forces tell you that they can be recognised because the amount of work they do can be measured by the in-line distance they move an object and that any variation in the path can be ignored. This implies that conservative forces only move in straight lines, but it doesn't convey the fact that this force can be infinitely wide - and that objects can be embedded within it. This definition is used against perpetual-motionists who wish to use gravity as the energy source, because the path the falling weight takes is not relevant to the work gravity was calculated to have done.

We know that varying the distance from the axle of a rising weight and a falling weight can create torque, which will make the wheel turn. Can the weights be arranged to produce continuous torque as the wheel turns? Yes. To reproduce this effect using only gravity means that we must also use gravity to arrange for the weights to move in a way that fulfils the torque requirement. Can this be done? Yes.

Continuous torque leads to a continuous out-of-balance wheel.

To return to our ‘conservative force’ and what it means. There are two kinds of force in this world; continuous driving forces such as a rivers or the wind or even a slow-moving glacier. By continuous I mean the opposite of the other kind of force, which is the explosive, instant, non-continuous force. By this, I mean the force which a baseball receives when it is hit; or a football when it is kicked; or a billiard ball when the cue hits it. So is gravity a one off, instant, explosive force? Or is a continuous never-ending driving force applying its action without ceasing? Well if it was the former we would keep falling off the planet.

So when we say that gravity is a conservative force, we mean that it does not expend itself in a once and for all hit, but it conserves its momentum, drive, force forever. This has absolutely nothing to do with the laws of conservation of energy, at least as far as gravity wheels are concerned.

So when we say that a weight starts from the position of highest gravitational potential, and returns to its starting point, enabled to do so by a careful arrangement of moving weights, it is not the same instant of gravity that first moved it, but rather a continuous stream of force, pressure, action upon the weights which can continuously move it.

It was suggested that my analogies of wind and water were not accurate but I maintain that in fact the reasons why we can use gravity as the sole energy source to move the gravity wheels is exactly the same reasons as we can use wind for windmills and water for water wheels or hydroelectric turbines; a continuous force exerting its influence upon a moveable object.

All comments, criticisms and helpful advice welcome.

John Collins

[1712]

Yes gravity is a continuous, but not increasing force. In a gravity wheel, you would have to borrow some of that force from somewhere to add to a single weight, for example.

Can't be done.

[PIMAN]

With all due respect 1712, I can only guess that your pointless retort spawns from a lack of knowledge on this topic. I'm afraid it will take a bit more than a one liner and declaration of futility to debunk Mr. Collins on his careful logic and conclusions. Perhaps it's true that silence becomes the pessimist when victory is at hand.


(insert sound of pin dropping here)


PIMAN

[jim_mich]

People like to use a single word to convey a thought. Problems arise when and if the person using a word and the person hearing that word have differing understanding of its meaning. In this case the word is conservative used to describe the force of gravity. So I decided to look up the meaning of conservative. HyperDictionary does not show a WordNet mechanical definition but it does show a WebsterÂ’s 1913 definition...

Conservative system} (Mech.), a material system of such a nature that after the system has undergone any series of changes, and been brought back in any manner to its original state, the whole work done by external agents on the system is equal to the whole work done by the system overcoming external forces.
--Clerk Maxwell.

So I then looked up the base word "conserve" and found its meaning to be "keep safe, protect and preserve". My best concept of "conserve" would be, "You conserve your money when you don't spend it or use it up." I also looked up the word "preserve". It can mean "to keep or save from injury or destruction".

Looking at Maxwell's "Conservative System" we see a material system with unique properties. First after it has undergone some series of changes it then returns to its original state. This would be internal conservation of energy. Secondly the work input equals work output. So we have a system with no net external gain or loss and no net internal gain or loss. A conservative system is a system the does a "net nothing".

A weight rotating on a wheel is a conservative system. My question is when a weight rises against gravity does it put back energy into gravity? If you had a magical box around the rising weight which could measure how much gravity energy is enclosed within the box then would you see a gain of gravity energy as the weight rises and a loss of gravity energy as the weight falls?

If a weight is allowed to free fall then it will have inertial momentum energy and increased speed when it reaches bottom. If energy is used up or consumed as it falls (say to do work) then it will have no inertial energy or speed when it reaches bottom. The act of moving is what transfers energy from the gravity force source to the momentum force of the moving object. If the momentum energy is converted to heat energy on impact or used to do work then it doesn't return to the gravity force source. Therefore the gravity system is not balanced and is not conserved until the heat or work energy is used to move the weight back to its start position and then all is conserved.

So in this respect gravity is a conservative force. Forcing a weight upward coupled with letting it fall is conservative. It does a net nothing.

Unfortunately this does not answer the question of whether gravity is a continuous force like wind and water and as such can it be harnessed to do continuous work? To answer these questions requires a better understanding as to what makes gravity do what it does. If it's some mysterious pulling force between mass objects and acts like a spring then it would be like pushing a beach ball downward into water or pressurizing an air tank. Energy input equals energy output and you have a "net nothing". If this be true then no amount of searching will ever produce a working perpetual motion gravity powered wheel. On the other hand if gravity is an effect caused by blocking some ever present all directional movement of some ghost like aether then it might be possible to harness this flowing pressure in some manner just as we harness the flowing pressure of wind and rivers.

To me it makes more sense that gravity is an unequal pressure caused by the earth blocking some ever flowing, ever moving aether. This ever flowing, ever moving, super complex ghost-like energy force I call "Ether Energy" to distinguish it from the old concept of a static non-moving aether. If Ether Energy exists then it would be the source of power for a working PM wheel. Ether Energy (EE) would also be what causes inertia as a sudden movement of an object pushes against the EE until some of the EE in front of the object begins to move along with the object. The whole EE concept gets very complex just as our own universe is complex. EE is the building block material or force from which our universe is built.

A possible working wheel cannot function using only gravity since its conservative in nature. So it must also use some other affects such as inertial momentum, centrifugal force or temporary energy storage such as springs (or equivalent) all in combination with gravity force to capture and harness the unequal flow of EE that we call gravity. If there is no Ether Energy then I might as well quit searching like main stream science has done. Gravity can only be harnessed if there is a continious flow of energy to be tapped. If gravity and inertia are like a springs that stretch then spring back I might as well quit trying. If on the other hand gravity is like a flowing river or a blowing wind then there may be hope of a way to capture this unequal pressure on a continuing basis. This is my quest.

[Clarkie]

Jim,
IMO the answer to this is to lift a 4lb weight 1' by dropping a 1lb weight 4'.

They cancel out so no extra work done and no over unity but it is possible to extract power from the action itself.

I am building a model to test the theory, not a wheel but just the mechanics to prove or disprove the physics.

If I'm right we will all cry due to the simplicity of the action and that the relative laws of physics have been around for 300 years.

Bessler went on for 10 years, ticking off what didn't work until he found what did, we have all assumed that you need to move the weights in and out of the circle but he found another way.

Pete.

[ken_behrendt]

Is gravity a "conservative" force?

The short answer is "yes" because, if a weight drops, say, one meter and then rises one meter, the net change in gravitational potential energy (and in the rest mass) of the weight will be zero. Thus, this dropping and rising weight can release no energy to perform external work.

If one mounts two weights diametrically opposite each other on a wheel's outer rim and gives the wheel a spin, then one weight will drop through a vertical distance equal to the wheel's diameter while the other weight rises through the same distance. The energy released by the decrease in gravitational potential energy (and rest mass) of the descending weight will exactly equal the energy absorbed by the rising weight to increase its gravitational potential energy (and rest mass) and there will be zero net change in gravitational potential energy for the two weights and, once again, no energy can be outputted by this arrangement of weights.

Now, we come to the matter of a chronically overbalanced one-directional wheel such as Bessler constructed. In these wheels, the weights both fall and rise through the same distance. BUT, now the system does, indeed, output kinetic energy which can accelerate the wheel and perform work external to it! How could this be possible if gravitational force is supposed to be "conservative"?

From studying this matter, it occurred to me that there is actually simple answer to this dilemma.

Unlike a wheel in which the CG of the weights is located at the axle, in a chronically imbalanced gravity wheel, the CG of the weights is always maintained on the wheel's descending side. Because of the geometry of this situation, one finds that the vertical descent velocity of the weights on the wheel's descending side is always greater than the vertical ascent velocity of the weights on the wheel's ascending side.

Apparently, gravity interacts with these weights as though they all had an average or net vertical velocity that was a descent! Thus, in effect, the weights within an running overbalanced gravity wheel are, as far as their interaction with a planet's gravity field is concerned, all actually continuously dropping. This bizarre effect is even more remarkable when we consider that this effective state of continous dropping occurs even though the CG of the rotating array of weights remains, for any particular rate of wheel rotation, fixed at a certain location in space within the wheel's rotating drum!

Since the weights are effectively always dropping at a constant velocity in such a wheel, they will continuously lose gravitational potential energy (and the rest mass of the weights responsible for it) with each wheel rotation and this energy will show up as an increase in the kinetic energy of all of the rotating parts of the wheel. This kinetic energy can then be channeled away from the wheel to perform external work and the wheel will continue to rotate just so long as the rate at which energy is extracted, at a particular wheel rotation speed, from it to perform external work does not exceed the rate at which its weights are losing gravitational potential energy (or rest mass) at that wheel rotation rate.


So, what about something like a water wheel?

Such a wheel is, indeed, overbalanced and that is why it rotates. But, it is not overbalanced due to the its own automatic shifting of water between its ascending side and its descending side. It simply captures some of the kinetic energy released from the falling water as that water loses gravitational potential energy (and rest mass). Unseen to viewers of the water wheel will be the processes which initially added gravitational potential energy (and rest mass) to the water molecules filling the buckets of the rotating water wheel's descending side. The gravitational potential energy added to the water molecules as they evaporated from the surfaces of ponds, lakes, streams, rivers, seas, and oceans was, initially, provided by nuclear fusion reactions taking place inside of our Sun some time earlier. And, that energy was gotten as the rest masses of the nuclear fusion reactants involved were lost and converted into powerful gamma and x-ray radiations within the Sun's core.


What about a "heat engine" type overbalanced wheel in which a chronic state of imbalance of its weights is maintained by, say, expanding gases within some sort of arrangement of cylinders that shift the weights about?

Well, if we could some how make all of the gas cylinders and pistons involved invisible and just looked at the weights, then we would see that this arrangement is outputting kinetic energy but we would also not that its weights were not be losing gravitational potential energy (and rest mass) during each wheel rotation! We would also note that this strange situation was only possible so long as the expanding and contracting gas powered pistons were shifting the weights about during wheel rotation.

Eventually, we realize that all of the energy this wheel outputs, ultimately, does not come from a net loss of either the gravitational potential energy (and rest mass) of its weights, but, rather, solely from the thermal energy source that heats the gas within the cylinders. It will actually be the loss of the rest masses of the particles in the thermal energy source that will be showing up as the kinetic energy outputted by this type of wheel and there will be no net loss of rest mass by the wheel's weights themselves.


ken

[Michael]

Unfortunately this does not answer the question of whether gravity is a continuous force like wind and water and as such can it be harnessed to do continuous work?

The best answer to Jim's posted retorical query might be, what is the sound of one hand clapping?
In otherwords there is no actual continuous force of gravity. In physics, a classical force is a name given to a net influence that causes a free body with mass to accelerate. (from wikipedia). If there is no body to be pulled to the earth, there is no measurable force of gravitation.

If this is true;

On the other hand if gravity is an effect caused by blocking some ever present all directional movement of some ghost like aether then it might be possible to harness this flowing pressure in some manner just as we harness the flowing pressure of wind and rivers.

then the only way to make use of a tecnique to make a wheel turn perpetually would be to turn the ether flow on and off. Something, no doubt, Tesla must have given thought to, as evidenced by some of his papers.

John I understand what you are trying to say;

To return to our ‘conservative force’ and what it means. There are two kinds of force in this world; continuous driving forces such as a rivers or the wind or even a slow-moving glacier. By continuous I mean the opposite of the other kind of force, which is the explosive, instant, non-continuous force. By this, I mean the force which a baseball receives when it is hit; or a football when it is kicked; or a billiard ball when the cue hits it.

but there aren't really two kinds of force. Force is force. Even your percieved continuous forces have a beginning and an end, and they only have an end because they lack power to continue motion ( entropy ) and they only have a beginning because something has changed, which brings us exactly to the quote by Maxwell Jim supplied;

Conservative system} (Mech.), a material system of such a nature that after the system has undergone any series of changes, and been brought back in any manner to its original state, the whole work done by external agents on the system is equal to the whole work done by the system overcoming external forces.
--Clerk Maxwell.

which means, something greater has caused a change in a system, and were that system be caused to be brought back to it's original state, all energies are accounted for; the energy that caused the change, the energy of the system, and the energy that went into bringing the system back up to par.

[John Collins]

All of you; I understand all your points, but I still maintain that even though we can't say that gravity is a perpetual force as in unending, for our purposes it is. I know that it may ultimately have an end and a beginning but respectfully, you are playing semantics with what I said. Also, you may say that it isn't a force Michael, unless there is a mass available to be pulled to earth, I say there are masses - the weights. But yes, we don't need to measure gravity if there is no mass to measure gravity's action on.

Again I know force is force, I was differentiating between two kinds of force, for our purposes again. Sudden short-lived force and alternatively, continuous force. OK, I am saying that gravity has a continuous effect upon masses upon which it can apply its force - and - like the effect of wind, applies continuous pressure to objects within its sphere of influence.

The short-lived sudden forces of brief duration are defined as non-conservative forces. Gravity is conservative and continuous.


I think of gravity as a field of energy which has an effect on everything within its sphere of influence. I don't consider whether it is pushing or pulling down, nor do I worry about how it can push down or pull down on all parts of the earth simultaneously. All that matters is how it effects things at a particular place and time. I know that it applies pressure downwards ( or pulls downwards) and that because it is continuous, it is like the wind. It continues to apply pressure. Savonius windmills turn within a continuous current of wind, and at the time the wind is a conservative force, because you can calculate the work it does by measuring the distance it moves an object, regardless of its path. This is just the same as you can do with gravity.

If the wind can operate locally as a conservative force and at the same time turn a windmill, then so can gravity turn a weighted wheel.

Sorry for those who have all read this before in my book, but I am mystified at what seems so obvious to me is completely alien to many people.

Briefly if you accept that Bessler's machine worked, and you accept that he told the truth about what drove his machine, gravity, then you have to admit that gravity, as a conservative force, must operate as the wind does under certain circumstances. Those circumstances are - the need for a continuous flow of air to drive the sails around and back, against the wind.

[Michael]

The short-lived sudden forces of brief duration are defined as non-conservative forces. Gravity is conservative and continuous.

They are? I don't think so. All forces are considered conservative, meaning; all actions and sources for all actions are accountable. Respectfully, can you show me a source with accurate definitions that says some forces aren't like this?

I don't think anyone disputes that gravity causes bodies to move. I also don't think sailing sort of into the wind can be done with nearly as much energy as sailing with the wind.

John, since we are using like references, would you agree that if one were to create a perpetual motion machine that ran on gravity, said gravity could be replaced with a spring system?

[John Collins]

Nonconservative Force - Any force which does not conserve mechanical energy, as opposed to a conservative

John Collins

[John Collins]

I don't think anyone disputes that gravity causes bodies to move. I also don't think sailing sort of into the wind can be done with nearly as much energy as sailing with the wind.

I think you misunderstood me Michael. I was referring to the fact that Savonius windmills turn both with the wind and against at certain parts of each revolution just as required in a gravity wheel (against gravity).

John, since we are using like references, would you agree that if one were to create a perpetual motion machine that ran on gravity, said gravity could be replaced with a spring system?

No, springs are not the same thing.

John Collims

[Michael]

Alright I agree that there is a challengeable area here. I looked up non conservative forces and it lists magnetism as well as friction, but there are rules to these definitions and the proper terms must be understood. Generally friction can be stated as non conservative, but when you get down to atomic physics the energy lost to friction is still accountable so therefore it is still conservative. Although magnetism can be stated as non conservative it still acts conservative and still falls within parameters, which is the framework of conservative.

[Michael]

No, springs are not the same thing.

John Collims

Then you'll have to define why springs would be different than gravity in that case. Of course if you are right, not by intuition but by knowing how it would be different, then you would be able to generate the blueprints for a gravity machine by being able to state workable and non workable differences.

[ken_behrendt]

Very interesting discussion here.

I perceive gravity as a field of conservative force which is continuously present...but only so long as the mass which creates it is present. Apparently, one can not have gravity without some mass as its source (but, then again, maybe with some future advanced physics even this would be possible).

What I think everybody from Newton on past Einstein to the prsent wants to know is exactly how "action at a distance" or gravitational attraction takes place between two separated masses which slowly causes them to pull together.

The answer to that little riddle will, I suspect, still take more time to fully resolve. I, personally, am not comfortable with Einstein's concept of this attractive force arising from the distortion in the 4 dimensional space time continuum created by the presence of mass. It is a mathematical solution that is nearly impossible for the average person to visualize.

I suspect that Newton's original suspicions will, eventually, be shown to have some validity. What happens between two masses as they "gravitate" toward each other will be due to an interaction taking place between invisible, subatomic particles that each continuously emits. Ultimately, it would be the interactions between these particles (the elusive gravitons) which would account for the observed actions of gravity and even the inertial properties of objects.

After all is said and done, as mobilists, I think we must concentrate our efforts on finding a simple, self-adjusting mechanism that will maintain the CG of a rotating wheel's weights forever on the descending side of a wheel. To do that we need not speculate on the ultimate nature of gravity, but can leave the matter to future gravity physicists to satisfactorily resolve.


ken

[John Collins]

Then you'll have to define why springs would be different than gravity in that case

Why do you link my comments with that question Michael? I regard springs as a means of temporary storage of energy, available for release subsequent to the storage moment. The difference between gravity and springs is that energy has to be expended to compress the spring and the same energy (minus small amounts due to friction etc) is produced upon extension. Gravity is constant; there is no need to create the pull (or push) of gravity by storing it's energy, it is there all the time.

It isn't a new bit of energy when gravity repeatedly makes a weight fall in a gravity-wheel, and it isn't the same bit of energy from the previous fall, although obviously some of it is generated by it having been raised again, increasing the potential energy, it is a piece of energy from further down the stream of the same energy.

I think of gravity as stream of nonstop energy, like a river, into which we can place objects. I can place a toy boat in the stream and watch it float down the river. And I can hold the boat in the stream and watch the water flowing past, then it only has the potential to flow with the stream as long as I hold it. This is just the same as allowing an object to fall in the 'stream' of gravity, or holding the object in my hand, when it has potential energy to fall.

If a stream of water can generate energy, so can the stream of gravity through which we move all our lives.

John Collins