Posted by D. (199.60.107.1) on May 29, 2003 at 11:15:56:
Hi Joel.
Hold a ten pound weight in your hand. Now tie said ten pound weight to a rope, it's not going to change in weight, of course. Same as putting it on a lever, or a pulley, which is the same thing. The only way you would get some motion is if the "scale" was miles high-and the higher weight was near orbit. Still unusable. What you are looking at is NOT natures way of saying here's something mysterious, though I will agree it can be thought of as magical in the regards that it shows 1. The strength of gravity due to the size of our planet and 2. that ALL of nature is built upon symmetry. If it wasn't we would have a chaotic and unstable universe. Force competing against force. Free energy at one moment, and it erradicated the next. Entropy is the product of symmetry. We are lucky it is this way, or we would not exist. I say "lucky" but in reality it can be no other way. Darren actually has the right approach, using momentuum. Imagine a wheel with a single weight "a" at the top. Let it go, it will rotate to approx. the 10, 1/2 position (the best I could find using a very good bearing-years ago). Now do the same thing again, but when it reaches the 3 oclock position drop another weight "b" at the top, You will have greatly increased the wheels potential, and both weight will easily continue past the starting point, but, in order to make it perpetual you will have to have an infinite number of weights taking up zero space on the wheel. An impossibility. If...you could find a way to take each weight off at a certain point, and replace it at another point, without losing said weights momentum, you would have it made. But this is the trick. You could try and cut a ramp across the axel, but there's still the issue of energy loss. Time will tell if Darren got "IT"!
Darren; as per my previous post I was only having a little fun with mystery. When I called you an illum. I was calling you illuminated. Not such a bad thing eh?
d.