Are there illegitimate energy sources? An illegitimate child is still a child. An illegitimate energy source would still be an energy source. What determines legitimacy?
It is well known that kinetic energy varies by the square of the speed of an object. When an object doubles in speed its kinetic energy quadruples. If this increase of kinetic energy could be tapped to do work without depleting the original momentum then would this be a legitimate energy source or an illegitimate energy source?
If the energy source breaks the Second Law of Thermodynamic then does it become an illegal or illegitimate energy source?
The second law of thermodynamics is a statement of repeated observation (or perhaps better yet, a statement of some things that have never been observed).
Here are two things that have never been observed:
1. Heat has never been observed to move spontaneously from a cold body to a hot body.
2. Heat has never been observed to be converted entirely into work with no other result.
So the second law, in other words, is just the statement that these two things are impossible. That is:
1. It is impossible for heat to move spontaneously from a cold body to a hot body with no other result.
2. It is impossible to convert heat quantitatively into work with no other result.
The latter statement is sometimes phrased: "It is impossible to make a perpetual motion machine of the second kind."
Ah, but this assumes that the perpetual motion machine uses heat to produce work. Heat is kinetic energy. Motion is also kinetic energy. A perpetual motion machine would use kinetic energy in the form of motion rather than kinetic energy in the form of heat. Thus the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not apply. Kinetic energy CAN and DOES move from slower objects to faster objects under certain circumstances involving centrifugal force. Thus the Second Law of Thermodynamic only covers heat engines. Even James Clerk Maxwell recognized the fact that the Second Law of Thermodynamic might not be valid in certain cases. That was the basis of Maxwell's Demon.
A device that converts (or sorts) motion into faster moving weights and slower moving weights is much like Maxwell's Demon. Both Maxwell's Demon and such a device break the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Maxwell's Demon sorts molecules one by one into faster and slower vessels, which is an almost but not impossible task. A motion engine would sort the motion of weights into faster and slower moving weights. This requires no energy other that the initial rotation of a wheel. Thus kinetic energy transfers from slower moving weights to faster moving weights, which would break the Second Law of Thermodynamics if the kinetic energy was in the form of heat. But the kinetic energy is not in the form of heat, it is in the form of motion.
Does this make the energy gain illegitimate?
