Gravity/buoyancy motor combo?

[Mangyhyena]

All right, gravity brings weight down, buoyancy lifts weight up. How can these two be brought together in one machine?

If we surround a 10 pound weight with enough styrofoam, it will float in water and will still fall down without water. Can you all think of any way to take advantage of that? I mean, we're trying to figure out a way to raise a weight that requires less energy than we'll get out when it falls, right?

Isn't there any way to use buoyancy to raise the weight, then let gravity bring it back down, some way that requires less energy put into it than will come out?

Is it possible to insert an object into the bottom of a water tank without letting all the water out through whatever hole the object enters through?

I'm sure this isn't a new thought, but neither are gravity motors and so many here are driving themselves crazy trying to figure out a way to make one work, me included. Why not throw one more level of insanity on the fire?

It wouldn't be difficult to make a piston that is both gravity and buoyancy powered, but water would have to be pumped into and/or out of the piston. If energy could be produced when the weight floats to the top, then again when it falls to the bottom, could that possibly require less energy for the pump than could be produced from the rise and fall of the piston? (surround the weight with enough styrofoam to make it float in water and stick it in a cylinder. Fill cylinder with water, then pump water out. Weight or weights would rise in water, then fall when water is pumped out, turning a generator)

If someone put a gun to your head and demanded you figure a way to get more energy out than you put in using a combination of gravity and buoyancy, would you live or die?

Give this your best shot and lets see what happens.

[jim_mich]

Been there.
Done that.
Many have tried.
All have failed.
Simple laws of physics.
It can never work.

Search for "David Diamond" patent.

[Jim Williams]

David Diamond patent

http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicat ... cale=en_EP

[Mangyhyena]

Been there.
Done that.
Many have tried.
All have failed.
Simple laws of physics.
It can never work.

Search for "David Diamond" patent.

Ah, that pesky voice of reason. You're probably right. Still, the challenge of looping static forces is just too darned fun to ignore.

Actually, what I had in mind was a half and half motor. One half gravity (falling weights) and the other half buoyancy motor. (weights float up). Am I asking too much? Wait, don't answer that one.

For instance, if you had, say, a structure in the middle of a pond. The structure is anchored to the bottom of the pond and is water tight. The top of the structure is above the waterline and has no roof, so you can stand on the bottom of the pond and look up at the sky, nice and dry. The pond water is all around this water-tight structure that in your madness, you built.

Inside the structure near the bottom, you put in an airlock. On the outside wall of the structure you install a simple buoyancy motor. On the inside you install a simple gravity motor. Both motors run from the bottom of the structure to the top. Drop a weight from the top of the room on the gravity motor and energy is generated from the fall of the weight.

At the bottom, I remove the weight from the gravity motor. It is a ten pound weight that is buoyant, if put in water. Say it's a hollow sphere with styrofoam to help it float, when it's in water.

I stick that weight in the airlock, after which is it magically/mechanically loaded onto the buoyancy motor on the outside of the structure, where the water is. It floats to the top, or it should, generating energy as it rises. At the top, it is reloaded on the gravity motor. And the process repeats.

A mechanical means of loading and unloading these buoyant weights would have to be set up, but that doesn't sound impossible.

That was my idea, in principal, of a half and half motor. Half gravity motor, half buoyancy motor. Buoyancy to carry the weight up on the outside in the water, gravity to make it fall down the I side, where there is no water.

All right, does this sound like a different approach than David Diamond's? I haven't seen it before, but that doesn't mean someone hasn't already failed with something similar.

What say you all to this crackpot idea?

[Tarsier79]

I agree with Jims statement.

M, first you have to understand what in fact buoyancy is: Buoyancy is the displacement of water, driven by gravity to make average total mass in the system fall. (Falling weight is not what we want to help us in any cyclic gravity-medium mechanism.)

Secondly, try to calculate how much water you will have to move out of the way/lift to insert your foam covered weight at the bottom. If you do it right, it will be the weight & volume of water displaced x height of the water. Due to hydrostatic pressure, the deeper you insert the "float", the harder it will be to do so.

You will find this a 0 sum game. Best to confirm for yourself though.




[/i]

[Mangyhyena]

I'll warn you right now, if I don't hear a reason this dual operation motor breaks the laws of physics, I'm going to give this simple machine its own topic. (you all trembling at this threat yet?)

Honestly, though, what is wrong with this concept? The whole thing relies on the airlock as a means to transfer the buoyant weights from the inside of the room to the water outside. (from the gravity motor inside the structure to the buoyancy motor outside the structure.

If you're having any trouble picturing this structure, think of gluing a drinking glass to the bottom of a bowl. Fill the bowl with water. The drinking glass would have no water in it, but be surrounded on all sides by the water in the bowl. If an airlock or another mechanical means to allow you to eject an object from inside the glass to the water in the bowl, without allowing water into the glass as the object is ejected, then that would illustrate what I'm talking about.

Maybe there is an energy requirement to run the "ejector" due to water pressure. That energy requirement would have to be greater than the energy generated during the buoyant rise through water and the fall back into the bottom of the structure on the gravity motor.

So, does anyone know of a way to get those buoyant weights from the inside of the structure to the outside without allowing water inside and that doesn't require a lot of energy to operate?

[Mangyhyena]

I agree with Jims statement.

M, first you have to understand what in fact buoyancy is: Buoyancy is the displacement of water, driven by gravity to make average total mass in the system fall. (Falling weight is not what we want to help us in any cyclic gravity-medium mechanism.)

Secondly, try to calculate how much water you will have to move out of the way/lift to insert your foam covered weight at the bottom. If you do it right, it will be the weight & volume of water displaced x height of the water. Due to hydrostatic pressure, the deeper you insert the "float", the harder it will be to do so.

You will find this a 0 sum game. Best to confirm for yourself though.




[/i]

All right, you're saying that the energy required to eject the buoyant weight would exceed the energy generated from both the rise to the surface of the water and the fall back to the bottom?

If that's the case, this is another dead end. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

[Trev]

The Spiteri Gravity/buoyancy wheel has been disused here before: http://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/viewt ... ht=spiteri

[Mangyhyena]

Thanks for the links. I'm always interested in attempts at free energy.

If you can humor me a little more regarding the gravity/buoyancy setup, I'd appreciate it. I'm not looking to break the laws of physics, just to identify any loopholes that can be exploited to advantage, as we all should be doing.

So, if I understood the problem with the setup I've proposed, the water pressure on the other side of the wall will prevent me from ejecting a buoyant weight from the dry side into the water without adding an external source of energy to match or exceed the water pressure on the other side of the wall. If we add, say, a compressor to build enough pressure behind the weight to keep the water from shooting into the dry room, then the energy required to run the compressor will be greater than the energy released when the buoyant weight floats to the surface (driving the buoyancy motor) and the energy released when that same weight is moved laterally to the top of the gravity motor so it can fall back down on the dry side. (gravity motor) Do I have that correct?

If that's correct, then the only hurtle to overcome is the energy requirement to eject the buoyant weight into the water. Correct? If we could get that weight from the dry side of the wall to the wet side without using so much energy, would we have a dual motor setup that makes energy as the buoyant weight floats to the surface and when it falls back down to the bottom of the dry room again? Would we be talking about a real possibility of a self runner?

I did a little research into submarines last night, instead of sleeping like I should, and I may have found a way to get that buoyant weight from the dry side to the wet side at depth without having to manually match the water pressure. Maybe/hopefully.

So, we need a way to put the buoyant weight on the wet side of the wall after it has fallen down the dry side on a gravity motor. And, we can't expend more energy than the combination of the buoyancy motor and gravity motor generate.

What if we had 2 identical airlocks into which the buoyant weights could be loaded after they had fallen down the dry side of the wall on the gravity motor? One airlock is full of water, the other is full of air. There is a pump between them. Each airlock has two water-tight doors, one on the dry side of the wall, the other on the wet side. Keeping the door on the wet side closed, the door to the dry side of the airlock is opened on the airlock with only air in it and the buoyant weight is removed from the bottom of the gravity motor and loaded into the airlock, closing the inside door afterwards. The water from the second airlock is pumped into the first, the air in the first going into the second airlock as water takes up all the excess space around the buoyant weight. The outer door/wet side door is opened on the first airlock. The buoyant weight floats out and onto the buoyancy motor, generating power as it rises.

The next weight reaches the bottom of the gravity motor. This buoyant weight is loaded in the second airlock, which is now dry, or full of air. Dry-side door is closed. Water from the first airlock is pumped into the second airlock, then the second airlock's outer door opens and that weight floats up onto the buoyancy motor as well. (first airlock is now full of air and ready to reload)

When the buoyant weight reaches the surface, it is laterally loaded onto the top of the gravity motor so it can fall to the dry side again. The process repeats.

Now, the energy expenditures are the pumping of water from one lock to the other and the lateral loading onto the top of the gravity motor. If I understand correctly what I looked up about airlocks, the water pressure will equalize the water-filled lock naturally, without extra input, when the outer door (wet side) is opened. Once that happens, the buoyant weight should be free to float up onto the buoyancy motor and run it to the surface.

What I don't understand is what happens to the pressure in the lock after the outer door closes. Wouldn't there be a difference in pressure between the two locks? Can that pressure difference be used to assist the pump? Or, is there no additional pressure from the depth once that door closes, cutting off all the weight from the water outside the airlock.

Would there be any way to use the water pressure on the wet side of the wall to run the pump? Seems like there should be a way to do that, since the dry side is open at the top, not sealed like a submarine. There would be a difference in pressure between the dry side of the wall and wet side. Usually, when there is a difference in two things that are close together, there is an opportunity for power generation. (thermoelectric generators come to mind). Perhaps there is also a way to use the pressure difference to run the pump. Perhaps not.

At this point, I'm in way over my head. Punn intended. However, this isn't over the heads of you all. So, chime in any time. Politely inform me I'm all wet with this or point out another problem I'm not seeing. I realize this fictional machine is far from practical to build on a large scale, but if it proved out on paper, couldn't a small model be made from a 50 gallon drum to demonstrate free energy, even if the amount of energy out was not enough for practical use? This is assuming you all see some way to make it work on paper in the first place. I'm especially interested to see if any of you can find a way to exploit the pressure difference between the dry side and the wet side at depth. Maybe the gravity/buoyancy motors wouldn't be necessary, if you can exploit that difference without it costing more in energy to exploit than what you can get out. (it's going to take someone way smarter than me to dream that one up)

If I'm all wet and someone explains where I went wrong, I'll at least learn something new and avoid the same mistake in the future. If anything in this post gets anyone thinking along a new line, then it was worth reading, I guess.

[Tarsier79]

Have you drawn yourself this setup in 2d? Draw it on graph paper, and make your weight 1 square, but weighing 1/2 mass of the equivalent area water. Draw one with the weight in the lock, and one with the weight removed from the top of the water.

Then you should be able to see the problem with your design. The process of working through your designs should not end with someone telling you it won't work, nor should it end in your imagination, with a description on paper. In order to learn what doesn't work, you need to learn why each design doesn't work.

Good luck.

[eccentrically1]

The main thing you should know is that buoyancy is a conservative force, like gravity. So two conservative forces, even working together, won't produce energy. Conservative in this context means, in one cycle, A to B back to A, everything "equalizes", or nets out to zero.
So any power generated by an object rising and falling through any medium goes to a negative value because of inefficiency.

[scott]

I posted a sketch about this almost 10 years ago.
http://www.besslerwheel.com/wwwboard/messages/231.html

Wow. I'm getting old.