Free Energy?

[mfyahya]

Re: Free Energy?

+e

+π

[mfyahya]

Re: Free Energy?

"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy0UBpagsu8

[mfyahya]

Re: Free Energy?

Reminds me of the book "Physics can be fun" by Yakov Perlman. I got it as a gift when I was a kid and it had fascinating accounts of attempts at perpetual motion by various cranks throughout history.

There was a chapter on scientific errors in popular science fiction novels, such as how H.G. Well's Invisible Man must necessarily be blind, because light would just pass through his eye's lens and retina.

[bpwoods]

Re: Free Energy?

It goes something like: delta S > q/K

S is entropy (the measure of disorder). q (proxy for GDP). K temp in Kelvin

So, how do you replace the > with an =? Hmmmmmm

Zap goes you 'free lunch'!

Brian

[leegs]

Re: Free Energy?

What with all the quoting of the laws of Thermodynamics (hereafter referred to as LOT) in this thread, I think its worth highlighting the comments by Photon, nicely summarized *T*, namely

' . . . However, there can be a lunch that someone else pays for. . .'

The LOT specifically refer to behavior in a CLOSED system. The LOT do not in any way invalidate the possibility of some device or process that harvests energy from an as-yet-unknown energy source, while ALSO causing an increase in entropy in the larger closed system.

Having said that, I am every bit as skeptical, even disdainful, of the claims in the original post as anyone here. I'm convinced that our energy-intensive way of life is doomed, over what time horizon I can't say, but doomed nonetheless. But I think it is not accurate to apply the LOT in a superficial manner to out-of-hand reject any and every magic-seeming energy-producing/harvesting mechanism.

[photon555]

Re: Free Energy?

Perhaps we will have free energy when Peak Euler is reached and the value of e begins to decrease.

[bpwoods]

Re: Free Energy?

Energy is a tricky concept, so it is operationalized as heat (measured in degrees Kelvin). So the temp and mass of an object are measurable. heat (aka: energy) will flow from area of warm temp, to area of cool temp. If you do this in a controlled way, you get work (power). But try re-warming the original warm area of the now cooled down total area - assume the temp is uniform throughout. Good luck with that lunch.

These 'cold fusion' scams, are just that. Scams.

Brian.

[ASH]

Re: Free Energy?

Energy is a tricky concept, so it is operationalized as heat (measured in degrees Kelvin).

Minor nitpick: Kelvin is a measure of temperature, rather than a measure of heat. Heat is measured in units of energy, such as Joules.

Heat, like mechanical work or the flow of matter, is a method of energy transfer. Temperature, like pressure or the electrochemical potential, is defined as a partial derivative of the energy of a system (for temperature the partial derivative is with respect to entropy; for pressure it's with respect to volume and for the electrochemical potential it is with respect to particle count). The change in a system's temperature as the result of a transfer of heat can be found using its heat capacity (which, in turn, depends upon how energy is distributed amongst the system's internal microstates -- something treated by statistical mechanics via the system's partition function).^* So in a round-about way, you can use a measure of the change of a system's temperature to deduce the amount of energy transferred into or out of it by the flow of heat, if you know its heat capacity. However, without the heat capacity to scale your measurement, you can't measure a change in energy (quantify a heat flow) based solely upon a change in temperature.

^* Clarification: Reading back over this, I realize that my original wording implies the inverse of the technical definition of heat capacity. Technically, heat capacity is the partial derivative of the system's energy with respect to temperature, so you might say it tells you how much heat flows (how much the system's energy changes) for a given change in temperature. I phrased it the other way because of my bias about cause and effect. The way I see it, temperature tells you something about the disorder of the system and how its energy is distributed amongst its microstates, and changing the system's energy causes a change in its temperature, rather than vice-versa.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Free Energy?

I'm a bit reluctant to make any comment at all for fear of being accused of being just another "Mad Inventor" and find most of the original posting to be so paranoid as to make one blanch.

Let us take this out of frame and think about the future we have in front of us today. It is surely reasonable to say that we all expect that we are past peak cheap oil and as such, we can all expect that energy supply, or better described as uncertain energy supply; changing every perception of the potential for a new way of getting at energy, will come to the fore.

Again, I am increasingly convinced that a sudden rise in sea levels will bring the present overall economy as we have known it all of our lives; to a sudden stop. So all the paranoia about other forces will become irrelevant. After a brief period of devastating turmoil, we will fall back into small, local, very high technology groups with every reason to look at all the off the wall ideas for one very simple reason, pure survival.

My personal interest is the same as all true inventors; we are always much more interested in finding answers and so this is a continuation of my own interest in a debate. That debate centres upon the concept that a permanent magnet is simply a group of atoms forming a particular relationship with each other; such that they continuously generate an electromagnetic force field. As such, all atoms are constructed from exactly the same materials, protons, and in which case there is nothing "magical" about a permanent magnet; it is simply the result of the configuration of the protons and their interconnection between each group of them.

Yes, like many others I have ideas that "Might" work; but do not have the finances to allow me to set about finding answers. In my case the patent has reached publication but I am still in debate with the examiner about the claims. So you can go look it all up. Application Number: GB 0717385.9 Published Specification GB 2447526 A8 Date of publication 17.09.2008 go find it:

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/patent/p...ublication.htm

So not all of us original thinkers are paranoid.

In my case, I have every intention of creating an independent energy and gravity research institute; preferably here in the UK. My view is that we need to bring a wide ranging group of people from many different disciplines together under the same roof and set about looking in detail at all of these off the wall ideas. But well funded and with a fine workshop as well as research facilities. Bring together a wealth of open thinkers with a suitable overlay of conventional scientists to act as a control against stupidity and over enthusiasm.

Over the past year I have set into motion the possible sale of my telecom IP with a view to using some of the income to set into motion my ideas for The capital Spillway Trust www.chriscoles.com/page4.html and thus to set into motion a new way of creating new jobs. With the balance of the income to be injected into the new research institute. But so far, the agents do not seem to be having any success getting at any value for the IP.

I believe that permanent magnets are groups of atoms where the movement of the individual atoms within the mass of the magnet creates a constant flow of internally induced electromagnetic flux; and in which case there must be a potential for getting at that energy. It is not perpetual; as all magnets slowly lose their potential. My own thinking raises the idea that as all existing electric motors utilise magnetism in sheer; that there must also be the potential for using magnetism as though a conventional turbine.

My record as a debater of a very wide range of subjects here on iTulip speaks for itself.

Not all original thinkers are fools; even if it satisfies many to believe so.

[ASH]

Re: Free Energy?

As such, all atoms are constructed from exactly the same materials, protons, and in which case there is nothing "magical" about a permanent magnet; it is simply the result of the configuration of the protons and their interconnection between each group of them.

...

I believe that permanent magnets are groups of atoms where the movement of the individual atoms within the mass of the magnet creates a constant flow of internally induced electromagnetic flux; and in which case there must be a potential for getting at that energy. It is not perpetual; as all magnets slowly lose their potential. My own thinking raises the idea that as all existing electric motors utilise magnetism in sheer; that there must also be the potential for using magnetism as though a conventional turbine.

If you'll forgive me playing my standard role as "Mr. Conventional", I thought I might pipe up to mention that the conventional understanding of permanent magnets relates to the spin angular momenta of the electrons in the magnet, and the role of those electrons in chemical bonding, rather than to properties of the protons or the motion of the atoms, per se. The type of magnetism displayed by common permanent magnets is "ferromagnetism" (as opposed to "paramagnetism" or "diamagnetism"). In a ferromagnetic material, the energy associated with the chemical bonds that hold the material together is minimized when the electrons occupy molecular orbitals with aligned spins. Why this is so has to do with the fact that electrons are indistinguishable particles with half-integer spin (classified as "fermions"), and quantum mechanical states for multiple electrons have to be antisymmetric with respect to the exchange operation. The issue is that we can't actually tell one electron from another, unless they are doing different things, so when you write a mathematical expression for a multi-electron state that lists what all the electrons are doing -- i.e. labeling them electron #1, electron #2, etc. -- whatever you come up with has to "mean the same thing" if you rewrite the expression with all the labels swapped around (or "exchanged")... to within a factor of -1 for fermions, or +1 for bosons (integer spin particles). Anyway, this requirement places restrictions on what kind of multi-electron states you can have in materials, and in ferromagnetic materials, the valid multi-electron states describing chemical bonds where the spins don't all point in the same direction have much higher energy than the valid multi-electron bonding states in which the spins are all aligned. The reason the energy of the different valid multi-electron states varies is that they imply varying spatial distribution of the electrons, and therefore varying overlap of electrons with each other (like charges repel, increasing the energy of the multi-electron state) and with the atomic nuclei (unlike charges attract, lowering the energy of the multi-electron state). Consequently, inside contiguous domains within a ferromagnetic material, it is energetically favorable for all the spins to spontaneously align, and to hold that alignment as a "permanent" magnet, because doing so allows the electrons to distribute themselves in space in a way that minimizes electrostatic repulsion and maximizes electrostatic attraction. On the other hand, if you heat up the material so that the thermal energy available to re-orient electron spins is larger than the bond energy penalty of doing so (above the "Curie temperature"), you can demagnetize a permanent magnet. Also, you can pole a permanent magnet by applying an external magnetic field that makes all the magnetic domains want to line up with the external field; they will hold that orientation after the external field is shut off, because of the whole bond energy thing. Anyway, when all the neighboring spins point in the same direction at a microscopic scale, the magnetic dipole moments of the electron spins basically add up, and produce a net magnetic dipole field for the macroscopic hunk of material.

As far as energy production goes, you can store energy in a magnetic field and harvest it later, but you can't withdraw more energy than was originally stored. As a more general statement, although the ground state of many quantum systems does involve "perpetual" motion -- for instance the zero-point oscillations of a diatomic molecule or virtual particles created in the vacuum -- the reason this motion is perpetual is that the system is in its ground state, which means a state of lower energy does not exist. If the energy of the system cannot be lowered, the energy it does have in its ground state cannot be extracted to do work. That's a point that can lead folks astray: the surprising fact that energy is present does not imply that it is possible to extract.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Free Energy?

+π

+4.6692...

[jiimbergin]

Re: Free Energy?

If you'll forgive me playing my standard role as "Mr. Conventional", I thought I might pipe up to mention that the conventional understanding of permanent magnets relates to the spin angular momenta of the electrons in the magnet, and the role of those electrons in chemical bonding, rather than to properties of the protons or the motion of the atoms, per se. The type of magnetism displayed by common permanent magnets is "ferromagnetism" (as opposed to "paramagnetism" or "diamagnetism"). In a ferromagnetic material, the energy associated with the chemical bonds that hold the material together is minimized when the electrons occupy molecular orbitals with aligned spins. Why this is so has to do with the fact that electrons are indistinguishable particles with half-integer spin (classified as "fermions"), and quantum mechanical states for multiple electrons have to be antisymmetric with respect to the exchange operation. The issue is that we can't actually tell one electron from another, unless they are doing different things, so when you write a mathematical expression for a multi-electron state that lists what all the electrons are doing -- i.e. labeling them electron #1, electron #2, etc. -- whatever you come up with has to "mean the same thing" if you rewrite the expression with all the labels swapped around (or "exchanged")... to within a factor of -1 for fermions, or +1 for bosons (integer spin particles). Anyway, this requirement places restrictions on what kind of multi-electron states you can have in materials, and in ferromagnetic materials, the valid multi-electron states describing chemical bonds where the spins don't all point in the same direction have much higher energy than the valid multi-electron bonding states in which the spins are all aligned. The reason the energy of the different valid multi-electron states varies is that they imply varying spatial distribution of the electrons, and therefore varying overlap of electrons with each other (like charges repel, increasing the energy of the multi-electron state) and with the atomic nuclei (unlike charges attract, lowering the energy of the multi-electron state). Consequently, inside contiguous domains within a ferromagnetic material, it is energetically favorable for all the spins to spontaneously align, and to hold that alignment as a "permanent" magnet. On the other hand, if you heat up the material so that the thermal energy available to re-orient electron spins is larger than the bond energy penalty of doing so (above the "Curie temperature"), you can demagnetize a permanent magnet. Also, you can pole a permanent magnet by applying an external magnetic field that makes all the magnetic domains want to line up with the external field; they will hold that orientation after the external field is shut off, because of the whole bond energy thing. Anyway, when all the neighboring spins point in the same direction, the magnetic dipole moments of the electron spins basically add up, and produce a net magnetic dipole field for the macroscopic hunk of material.

As far as energy production goes, you can store energy in a magnetic field and harvest it later, but you can't withdraw more energy than was originally stored. As a more general statement, although the ground state of many quantum systems does involve "perpetual" motion -- for instance the zero-point oscillations of a diatomic molecule or virtual particles created in the vacuum -- the reason this motion is perpetual is that the system is in its ground state, which means a state of lower energy does not exist. If the energy of the system cannot be lowered, the energy it does have in its ground state cannot be extracted to do work. That's a point that can lead folks astray: the surprising fact that energy is present does not imply that it is possible to extract.

-e^(pi i)

[ASH]

Re: Free Energy?

+4.6692...

Just for the record, that one flew over my head... I had to Google it.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Free Energy?

If you'll forgive me playing my standard role as "Mr. Conventional", I thought I might pipe up to mention that the conventional understanding of permanent magnets relates to the spin angular momenta of the electrons in the magnet, and the role of those electrons in chemical bonding, rather than to properties of the protons or the motion of the atoms, per se. The type of magnetism displayed by common permanent magnets is "ferromagnetism" (as opposed to "paramagnetism" or "diamagnetism"). In a ferromagnetic material, the energy associated with the chemical bonds that hold the material together is minimized when the electrons occupy molecular orbitals with aligned spins. Why this is so has to do with the fact that electrons are indistinguishable particles with half-integer spin (classified as "fermions"), and quantum mechanical states for multiple electrons have to be antisymmetric with respect to the exchange operation. The issue is that we can't actually tell one electron from another, unless they are doing different things, so when you write a mathematical expression for a multi-electron state that lists what all the electrons are doing -- i.e. labeling them electron #1, electron #2, etc. -- whatever you come up with has to "mean the same thing" if you rewrite the expression with all the labels swapped around (or "exchanged")... to within a factor of -1 for fermions, or +1 for bosons (integer spin particles). Anyway, this requirement places restrictions on what kind of multi-electron states you can have in materials, and in ferromagnetic materials, the valid multi-electron states describing chemical bonds where the spins don't all point in the same direction have much higher energy than the valid multi-electron bonding states in which the spins are all aligned. The reason the energy of the different valid multi-electron states varies is that they imply varying spatial distribution of the electrons, and therefore varying overlap of electrons with each other (like charges repel, increasing the energy of the multi-electron state) and with the atomic nuclei (unlike charges attract, lowering the energy of the multi-electron state). Consequently, inside contiguous domains within a ferromagnetic material, it is energetically favorable for all the spins to spontaneously align, and to hold that alignment as a "permanent" magnet, because doing so allows the electrons to distribute themselves in space in a way that minimizes electrostatic repulsion and maximizes electrostatic attraction. On the other hand, if you heat up the material so that the thermal energy available to re-orient electron spins is larger than the bond energy penalty of doing so (above the "Curie temperature"), you can demagnetize a permanent magnet. Also, you can pole a permanent magnet by applying an external magnetic field that makes all the magnetic domains want to line up with the external field; they will hold that orientation after the external field is shut off, because of the whole bond energy thing. Anyway, when all the neighboring spins point in the same direction, the magnetic dipole moments of the electron spins basically add up, and produce a net magnetic dipole field for the macroscopic hunk of material.

As far as energy production goes, you can store energy in a magnetic field and harvest it later, but you can't withdraw more energy than was originally stored. As a more general statement, although the ground state of many quantum systems does involve "perpetual" motion -- for instance the zero-point oscillations of a diatomic molecule or virtual particles created in the vacuum -- the reason this motion is perpetual is that the system is in its ground state, which means a state of lower energy does not exist. If the energy of the system cannot be lowered, the energy it does have in its ground state cannot be extracted to do work. That's a point that can lead folks astray: the surprising fact that energy is present does not imply that it is possible to extract.

Thank you Ash for the conventional viewpoint.

In essense, on your side there is the belief that the electrons are stationary; whereas, on mine; I believe they are always in constant motion as they form a part of the structure of the proton itself.

Here in the UK I am right now working on the construction of what may prove to be a part of the eventual proof of which of us is correct; I will keep you posted.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Free Energy?

Just for the record, that one flew over my head... I had to Google it.

me too!