Impact is the Key

[Grimer]

The facts governing impact are known to every competent engineer. They don't need to be demonstrated. All I have done is to point out the logical consequences of those facts.

Do you deny the facts?

Do you deny the logic?

If you don't then the conclusion must follow. That's what Q.E.D. means.

You don't demonstrate a geometrical proof with experiments. No amount of experimentation can ever prove absolutely that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. No amount of experimentation can ever prove that the number of primes is infinite. Logic is more powerful than experimentation.

If I'm wrong then either something is wrong with the calculus, the rules governing impact or the logic connecting them.

Are you stating that Impacts can provide more energy output than the energy input?

No.

There are two energies to be considered. The input energy used in raising the weight on the left of the Paternoster Tower. The energy gained by the weight as it accelerates under the action of gravity on the right hand side of the tower.

I am saying that the energy gained under gravitational acceleration from the top of the tower to the base of the tower is twice the energy needed to lift the weight from the base of the tower to the top of the tower.

[bluesgtr44]

Don't be shy Bill. Tell me I'm wrong.

...
Your theory is not demonstration.
...

With respect, Bill, I disagree. A demonstration is precisely what it is. I demonstrated the logical connection between accepted facts.

Euclid's Proof of the Infinitude of Primes is not a theory. It's a demonstration. Surely you are not trying to suggest that experiments could disprove his demonstration are you?

There is a point where this has to become a reality. I think what some are looking for here is the applied physics of what you are presenting. There is another thread here by ANT, and he has presented information much as you have. He is, however building the linkages to try and apply his theory in a physical form.......that's what I think should be the next step in your impact approach. Just an opinion......and yeah, we both have one those too.


Steve

[Grimer]

Frankly, I'm a bit appalled that no one can grasp what I can clearly see and am quite certain about. I suppose professional engineers don't go in much for building PMMs.

I've always had staff to build experimental apparatus but with a decent development kit it couldn't take too long to demonstrate the principle in a Bessler type wheel. It would be simpler for people to understand with a Paternoster tower but that would be more difficult to implement.

[daxwc]

Grimer quote:

Frankly, I'm a bit appalled that no one can grasp what I can clearly see and am quite certain about.

Hmm... ever consider the apathy is due to your wrong?

When you raise a weight up against the force of gravity under constant velocity you only need half the energy that you gain when the weight drops under constant gravitational acceleration.

The maths shows it rather nicely

Constant velocity = dx/dt

Constant acceleration = d²x/dt² = dx/dt x dx/dt
We have two dollops of Kinetic Energy given to us by a weight falling under the acceleration of gravity. We have 1/2.mv^2 + 1/2.mv^2. We have mv^2. Impact give twice the deflection, ergo, twice the energy.

Well, it would have to work in reverse. So if a weight raised up against the force of gravity under constant velocity you only need half the energy, would mean if we raised the weight under constant acceleration that the weight would now have a greater potential energy.

[Grimer]

Good try daxwc. Unfortunately the way the two forces are applied is totally different so the situations are not symmetrical.

For instance the raising up you cite would have gravity acting constantly against the accelerating force you would be applying from below. You can't switch off gravity. But in falling the upward ground force is completely switched off. Gravity has the weight all to itself.

However, that is just the kind of question one needs to ask.

I fear the real problem is that I am a poor teacher. I have never had to teach students in my research career and I tend to make too many assumptions about what people know. From some of the remarks made about impact it's clear that people have a far broader view than the narrowly defined scientific view.

[daxwc]

Actually, the energy would be absorbed by whatever slows the momentum of the mass so there would be no increase in potential. Not enough coffee, I didn't think it through so early in the morning.

[Grimer]

Don't be so hard on yourself. It was a good question and it made me think.

I can see that if you have two accelerations opposing each other the difference must be a velocity. I know that sounds weird but if you turn is into angular momentums it becomes clearer. I'll be back later with some diagrams.

[daxwc]

How do you have two accelerations opposing each other in a vertical mass acceleration? Don't you have one potential and one acceleration, unless you have a spring involved, as gravity is not moving the mass down.

[Grimer]

How do you have two accelerations opposing each other in a vertical mass acceleration? Don't you have one potential and one acceleration, unless you have a spring involved, as gravity is not moving the mass down.

Another very good question.

When you stand on the ground two equal and opposite accelerations are acting on you. The acceleration upwards you receive from the ground and the acceleration downwards you receive from gravity. Because these forces act on very different sized structures within the material this results in a state of internal balancing tensile and compressive strain as the smaller structures are displaced towards the larger structures. In this case we can take the gravity acting mainly on the nuclei and these are strained relative to the electron cloud.

The earth pushes on the electron cloud. Gravity pushes on the nuclei.

The accelerations are equal and opposite so you don't move.

If you now increase the ground acceleration, the ground force, so that it is slightly greater than the gravity force you will move up at a constant velocity. The gravity will act as a drag, a friction and, I think you expressed it as, absorbing the energy input - a good way to put it.

The trouble is we are badly served by Newton's First Law which is a boundary case and doesn't apply in general.

In general a force is needed for a constant velocity cos in general there is a drag of some kind.

Another way of looking at things is to reverse your suggestion. Suppose we have an opposing force a drag force for the weight (a man say) dropping down. We put a parachute on him and he soon reaches a constant velocity. With a big enough parachute we approach the boundary condition and he gently steps upon the ground. Negligible impact energy.

Next we throw him out of the plane without a parachute. He accelerates all the way down to the ground. Instant strawberry jam. Now we want to prevent the energy going into jam making and use it to raise the weights on the other side.

I can see the problem people are having now. I instinctively picked the right combination of weight stiffness and "ground" stiffness to do this. Other people haven't and have in their minds all kinds of impacts where it would be very difficult to recover the impact energy. Difficult to recover it from strawberry jam for example, eh!

I shall prepare a detailed explanation on what you need to do to recover the impact energy and why you need to do it. The more perceptive members will have worked this out already.

[daxwc]

Grimer quote:

When you stand on the ground two equal and opposite accelerations are acting on you. The acceleration upwards you receive from the ground and the acceleration downwards you receive from gravity.

I know this is what they teach, but I have a hard time believing it. If the mass of the earth is accelerating up why does it quit accelerating when it hits me? So the earth is aways expanding? The earth is so massive that I doubt I have accelerated it at all. Why is it not as easy as my mass is attracting earth and earth is attracting me, the loser is the one that gets accelerated, after that it is like trying to suck a beach ball through your vacuum cleaner hose, it just gets stuck there. Reminds me of dark matter, something somebody made up, because they could not get the math to add up. Now if you had told me its as easy as any gain in momentum on a wheel gets accelerated on the downside I might agree.

[Grimer]

Think of the earth as a big bag full of very high pressure gas. When you stand on it a contact area develops over which you feel the pressure of the gas, the gas "wind" analogous to the gravitational wind except that the gas wind blows on you outside surface over the area of contact whereas the gravity wind presses on the inside surfaces of the nuclei, say.

The contact area increases in size until the stress times area matches the gravitational stress times area.

[AB Hammer]

Impact is the Key

This is us pounding our brains trying to figure it out. So in this case I am sure we all can agree that impact is the key. LOL

[Grimer]

That's the problem. Unless you wear a crash helmet to absorb the strain you will pound your brains out. If your head and brain were infinitely stiff then you could pound away all you want and you would not feel a thing. To be affected by any of the pounding your brain has to undergo strain at the appropriate scale.

No strain - No pain

So if you go round nutting people make sure your brain is stiffer than theirs or you'll come off worst. Come to think of it that must be why people nut others on the nose. The skull is much stiffer than the nose so the nose absorbs all the strain and all the pain. The nutter's brain might be damaged but the brain can't feel pain which is why surgeons can operate on people's brains while they are awake and sometimes do.

[Grimer]

Well, it would have to work in reverse. So if a weight raised up against the force of gravity under constant velocity you only need half the energy, would mean if we raised the weight under constant acceleration that the weight would now have a greater potential energy.

Let's go back to your original question. Not only was it a good question. It was better than you can imagine.

As I said, the two situations are not the same. But let's make them the same and see what happens. Let's make the situation where the man is lifted up the same as the situation as where the man is dropped out of the plane and free falls to the ground to finish as strawberry jam.

Can we do this? Can we simulate going up what happens going down. Can we fall upwards at an acceleration of 32ft per second?

Let's carry out the experiment in the biggest hanger we can find so that we have a floor and a ceiling so that we can fall down from the ceiling to the floor and fall up from the floor to the ceiling.

How do we get a man to fall up?

We get ourselves what my friend Wing Commander "Flash" O'Neill sat on for 34 years, a "bang seat" with the official name of ejector seat. We have one made which will give us an acceleration of 64 ft/sec. Sixty four feet per second minus 32 feet per second gives us an acceleration of 32 feet per second up towards the ceiling. We have Rockavity antigrav - and the final result of falling upwards towards the ceiling is the same as the result of falling downward towards the floor except that this time the strawberry jam is spread all over the ceiling instead of all over the floor.

So if we didn't have the rocket would we have used less energy in raising him to the ceiling at a constant velocity on a pensioners stair chair, say?

You tell me.

And Bessler didn't use rockets to raise his weights or people would have seen the smoke filtering out of the cracks in the planking.

So there was an asymmetry of function between weights being raised and weights dropping down. Bessler found out how to use this asymmetry to power his wheel.

[greendoor]

Can we do this? Can we simulate going up what happens going down. Can we fall upwards at an acceleration of 32ft per second?

Is a pendulum not an example of a mass ascending with (very nearly) the same aquired energy - a deceleration that (very nearly) exactly matches the acceleration of free fall ... ?

No rockets required. No evidence of over unity.