KAL 9000 Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 I have to admit, I designed like 100 perpetual motion machines that would solve the world energy crisis... Before I learned about thermodynamics. Thermodynamics, you dream crusher! I think my favorite idea that I had was a zombie with human flesh tied to a post held in front of it. The zombie would run towards it, but the zombie is on a treadmill. The turning gears in the treadmill would drive a generator. What were your guys' crazy ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sereneti Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 (edited) maybe not about a perpetuum mobile, moar question like "geothermal energy... why dont we use the Yellowstone for our energy-problems..?" ore "why do they use the massive energy consuming supra-conduits, and dont use neodym-magnets for the fusion-generators"? Edited May 12, 2016 by Sereneti Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainDreamer Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camacha Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 1 hour ago, Sereneti said: maybe not about a perpetuum mobile, moar question like "geothermal energy... why dont we use the Yellowstone for our energy-problems..?" I never really got why geothermal energy is supposed to be endless. It seems we just get outselves into another thing that turns out destroying our planet in the long run. The last thing we want is cooling our planet. We thought the oceans were endless. They turn out not to be. The thought the air was boundless. It appears it is not. Why would geothermal energy be different. Solar, sure. But not geothermal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shpaget Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 (edited) A capillary action driven hydroelectric power plant. I was sure it would work. Edited May 12, 2016 by Shpaget Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PB666 Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, Camacha said: I never really got why geothermal energy is supposed to be endless. It seems we just get outselves into another thing that turns out destroying our planet in the long run. The last thing we want is cooling our planet. We thought the oceans were endless. They turn out not to be. The thought the air was boundless. It appears it is not. Why would geothermal energy be different. Solar, sure. But not geothermal. Seriously, the energy goes intonspace anyway, converting earth in china to solar panels also reales earths energy. The reason we don't convert yellowstone into electric power plant is because its a national park. The majority of energy is released under Lake Yellowstone, it keeps the lake warm in the winter, if we were to capture that energy we would substantially change the ecology of the lake. Edited May 12, 2016 by PB666 De-IPADize the response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaarst Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 51 minutes ago, Camacha said: I never really got why geothermal energy is supposed to be endless. It seems we just get outselves into another thing that turns out destroying our planet in the long run. The last thing we want is cooling our planet. We thought the oceans were endless. They turn out not to be. The thought the air was boundless. It appears it is not. Why would geothermal energy be different. Solar, sure. But not geothermal. The Earth is big, like really big. The world energy consumption is about 100 TWh per year. The total internal energy in the Earth is about 1015 TWh. You shouldn't worry about geothermal energy cooling the Earth. It's not endless, but mankind is a lot less endless than that (whatever this means). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camacha Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 (edited) 21 minutes ago, PB666 said: Seriously, the energy goes intonspace anyway That does not chance the fact that we forcefully cool the Earth's core, however slight we might think it is. It is not a renewable resource. 11 minutes ago, Gaarst said: The Earth is big, like really big. Ah, like Big Sky, or green house gasses, or any of those other supposed really big resources? Are we really that stupid, to make the exact same mistake yet again? Edited May 12, 2016 by Camacha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sereneti Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 21 minutes ago, PB666 said: Seriously, the energy goes intonspace anyway, converting earth in china to solar panels also reales earths energy. The reason we don't convert yellowstone into electric power plant is because its a national park. The majority of energy is released under yellowstone, it keeps the lack warm in the winter, if we were to capture that energy we would substantially change the ecology of the lake. i know... now... and its a big , big sleeping vulcan... Do you realy want to "touch" it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superfluous J Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 27 minutes ago, Camacha said: Are we really that stupid, to make the exact same mistake yet again? Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do learn history are doomed to watch OTHERS repeat it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PB666 Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 40 minutes ago, Camacha said: That does not chance the fact that we forcefully cool the Earth's core, however slight we might think it is. It is not a renewable resource. Think about all the warming global warming causes. Seriously. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insert_name Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 back on topic, I thought of a device that would turn a wheel on a car, and then as the car sped up it used its back wheels as generators, needless to say it coulcnt work Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GluttonyReaper Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 One that I thought of when I was very young was, uh, jugglers. The idea was simple and effective - rather than wasting space and energy carrying lots of equipment, you would just hire jugglers to carry all your stuff via juggling, obviously. Apparently 7 year old me didn't understand that juggling actually gets harder the more you're juggling, and that, y'know, jugglers are people too and need to eat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YNM Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 (edited) I always have conceived things that relies on the conservation of energy, before realizing harnessing the energy out would stop the thing. Like, bouncing a ball between two walls could be an elevator. Safe to say I never really thought about one. On the point of geothermals : why, the Earth already losing heat anyway (I mean, volcanoes ? hot springs ? Iceland ?)... we're just putting some work on it. Much like an RTG is hot no matter whether the thermocouples are on or off, the Earth loses heat no matter whether we have geothermals or not. Edited May 12, 2016 by YNM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, Camacha said: That does not chance the fact that we forcefully cool the Earth's core, however slight we might think it is. It is not a renewable resource. Like Big Sky, or green house gasses, or any of those other supposed really big resources? Are we really that stupid, to make the exact same mistake yet again? "...however slight we might think it is..." Not really an issue of "think". We know how much geothermal energy exists, and its rate of escape into the atmosphere. We can calculate exactly the impact of temporarily diverting a fraction of that energy to power our civilization. It is stupidly below negligible. Avoiding geothermal energy out of fear that we will deplete the Earth's internal heat is orders of magnitude sillier than thinking you can save gas mileage by clipping your fingernails shorter. To the OP: I was full of perpetual motion machines, and their analogues. Magnets held tremendous promise. One was a "magnetic blocker" that blocked magnetic fields to let a ball roll down a slope, generating energy, then slid back out of place to let the magnet pull the ball back up the hill. When I learned that would definitely not work, I decided that I could simply put an electrical motor on one end to push the ball out of range of the magnet...not realizing that force x distance = work. Then there was the simple "generator powering a motor turning a generator" idea. A slightly more refined one, when I was around 13 years old, was an electromagnetic Brownian ratchet to extract energy directly from heat. Violated the second law of thermodynamics but not the first (so I thought). Quite a nice setup, if I do say so myself. When I was 16 I designed a battery-powered jet turbine engine for a motor vehicle that was supposed to run on water via electrolysis. Not a perpetual motion machine in any sense, of course, but still not viable. Edited May 12, 2016 by sevenperforce Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainDreamer Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 Ok, so another idea back when I was young, not really perpetual motion, but crazy power generation idea: A giant solar/thermal power tower. Just a giant tower, with giant disc, coated with solar panel, curved enough to concentrate sunlight toward an superconductor orb in the middle leading straight to steam turbine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darnok Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 3 hours ago, Gaarst said: The Earth is big, like really big. The world energy consumption is about 100 TWh per year. The total internal energy in the Earth is about 1015 TWh. You shouldn't worry about geothermal energy cooling the Earth. It's not endless, but mankind is a lot less endless than that (whatever this means). Ohh realy so small... like 0.39% of CO2... wait that is not even amount we create. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superfluous J Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 I never thought of them myself, but I used to enjoy making them using the rules in fictional universes. Like Nightcrawler in Marvel. He could just BAMF something heavy to the top of a tower where it is slowly lowered down some mechanism designed to turn the potential energy into useful electricity. Then he could just BAMF back down, grab something else, and repeat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SinBad Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 I thought up a reactionless drive. Basically a big reciprocating weight that moved forward quickly, transfered its momentum to the space craft, then drifted back ready to be driven forward again. Oh well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cantab Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 Back when Portal was the Big Thing, I conceived of putting a portal on the floor, one on the ceiling, a waterwheel between, and then dumping a load of water in so it perpetually fell between the portals and turned the wheel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 40 minutes ago, SinBad said: I thought up a reactionless drive. Basically a big reciprocating weight that moved forward quickly, transfered its momentum to the space craft, then drifted back ready to be driven forward again. Oh well. Oh, that reminds me: I had a perpetual motion machine driven by buoyancy. Hydrogen or helium balloon that rises into the air, then uses a spring to compress a portion of the lifting gas, causing it to drop. Once on the ground, the compressed gas would be released, storing its energy in the spring, and lifting the balloon back up. I knew that the energy exchange between the spring and the gas could not be 100% efficient, but I figured I could make up the loss by taking energy from the upward and downward motion. Took me forever to figure out that the gas would lose energy pushing against the higher atmospheric pressure at the surface...and that this pressure gradient was the only reason that the balloon moved at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0111narwhalz Posted May 12, 2016 Share Posted May 12, 2016 I think I had the classic waterwheel one. Water flows down a canal, over a wheel, and into a reservoir. The wheel drives a screw that pulls water from the reservoir up to the canal again. Then I thought up another one using flywheels and weights. Not quite an overbalanced wheel, but in the same vein. While the flywheel turns slowly, a set of weights sticks around the hub by a combination of magnets and springs. As it spins faster, the magnet eventually loses hold of the weight and allows it to slide towards the rim. This was supposed to increase the moment of angular inertia of the wheel without changing the speed. The magnet/spring combination was essential to the speed conservation because it would allow a sudden change between high speed and low speed. Needless to say, I forgot about the conservation of angular momentum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelLestat Posted May 13, 2016 Share Posted May 13, 2016 1 hour ago, sevenperforce said: Oh, that reminds me: I had a perpetual motion machine driven by buoyancy. Hydrogen or helium balloon that rises into the air, then uses a spring to compress a portion of the lifting gas, causing it to drop. Once on the ground, the compressed gas would be released, storing its energy in the spring, and lifting the balloon back up. I knew that the energy exchange between the spring and the gas could not be 100% efficient, but I figured I could make up the loss by taking energy from the upward and downward motion. Took me forever to figure out that the gas would lose energy pushing against the higher atmospheric pressure at the surface...and that this pressure gradient was the only reason that the balloon moved at all. I guess your idea was something similar to exploit the change of buoyancy you get when you compress the lifting gas, but that energy of course is the same you get from the potential energy gain. But is not about the atmosphere pressure gradient.. is about density (they are related, but buoyancy is all about density) http://www.hp-gramatke.net/pmm_physics/english/page0550.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sereneti Posted May 13, 2016 Share Posted May 13, 2016 9 hours ago, PB666 said: Think about all the warming global warming causes. Seriously. before i think about the long-therm-problems, there are enough short-therm problems to avoid that... there is one city that have huge problems after geothermie...https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebungsrisse_in_Staufen_im_Breisgau the problem is not the "not renewable", the problem is, that the mankind use a recource without thinking. if geothermie is "cheap energy" they are (ab)use it, without thinking of the problems. Fosil-fuel is a good recource. But its used without thinking. Nuklear-fuel is a good recource. But its used without thinking. and so on... if there is a "perpetum mobile", mankind will (ab)use it, too.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted May 13, 2016 Share Posted May 13, 2016 22 minutes ago, Sereneti said: Nuklear-fuel is a good recource. But its used without thinking. Just take some uranium stones and make a pile... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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