~Free Energy~, page 1

Originally posted by electric

A windmill is a free energy device, a solar cell is a free energy device, a fusion reactor is a free energy device, a hydroelectric is a free energy device. Even a non-rechargable battery is a free energy device.

It's free because the input energy is less than the amount of energy than you get out of it.

You are utterly and shamefully wrong. First you misunderstand the definition of free energy. The devices you have named require an input greater than the output.
The potential energy of the chemicals in a battery is greater than what we get out of them. If this was not the case, a battery could be used to power its own battery charger and never go dead
A windmill can not power the fan that drives it without a net loss of energy.
Hydroelectric plants can't water pumps large enough to sustain them.

Wind, water, and solar power all share a common source: the heat of the sun is what keeps these going. Without heat from the sun, the air temperature and atmospheric pressure would stabilize and the wind would stop. The water would stop evaporating and being carried to higher elevations to flow back down. The light to power solar cells would stop.
And the sun isn't free energy either. It burns fuel the way your car's engine does, except it's a nuclear reaction, not combustion. One day our sun will die because it is not free energy.

The idea of free energy is not getting something for nothing, it's harnessing energy that's already there. The main ideas at the moment focus on Quantum vacuum fluctuation energy (Zero-Point energy), which has to be there for Planck's equations to work, the Casimer effect, energy that is stored in magnets, solar and cosmic ray energy (or possibly electron neutrinos), cold fusion, fuel reprocessing, electrostatics and ions, chemical reactions.

I'm not going to delve into theoretical physics and say what is and is not possible in perpetuity throughout the universe, however I will say that you have apparently based part of your arguement on the fact that Planck's equations can't possibly be wrong, and therefore there couldn't possibly fail to be energy inherent even in a vacuum (which to my non-physicist mind would definately be something from nothing, and a violation of thermodynamics).
You also mention "energy stored in magnets". There is no more energy stored in a magnet than in any other matter, it is simply arranged in a certain way, giving the magnet negative and positive poles, which still cancel eachother as in all matter. Again i'm no physicist, but am i correct?

Your point on harnessing energy which is already there is somewhat valid. Solar energy, although it is not free, can in fact be a solution. The problem we have is simply that it is not viable at the moment. Fuel of some type will always be necessary, even if it's in the form of exposure to light or to some as yet known form of energy. Where I differ with you is the idea that we can practically use an antena and coil to gather enough stored energy from our environment to do a useful amount of work. Running a device on static electricity and a coil is like running a car on a windmill attached to a flywheel and a clutch. You MIGHT be able to keep it in continuous motion if you geared it right, but you wouldn't get enough power to be practical.

Mechanical, thermodynamic, and electrodynamic principles attempt to model nature. Nature doesn't model itself from our Science and Mathematics.

It is true that nature doesn't follow science, but science reflects nature, and therefore that which contradicts the laws of thermodynamics is most likely not to be possible. Your arguement here is essentially that because humans do not dictate what nature does, their observations of what nature does are useless. It is strange that you even bother to mention this though, since you maintain that the laws of thermodynamics are not violated by what you mistakenly call "free energy". (Ironically you are correct that they do not violate the laws of thermodynamics because you are incorrect about these things being sources of free energy.)

If you go ahead and describe the process by which your body obtains energy you may find something that doesn't exist in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium.

Many people still think plants live off water.

Clarify the first sentence.
As for the second sentence: Only you think that. Everyone else here knows that plants use solar energy to stimulate chemical reactions. Like all living things, plants run on fuel, and use water to facilitate the use of their fuel.

Tesla showed, with a simple thought experiment, that it's possible to engineer around the laws of thermodynamics. He said, if you could build a pole large enough to reach from the ground to Earth's outer atmosphere, the heat exchange between the two ends would be enough to power a motor. He was describing the principles of his Cosmic ray receiver in thermodynamic terms.

We all know that creating a path between unequal stores of energy will create flow and that flow can be harnessed to do work. A giant pole from earth to space would certainly create a conduit for flow between unequal stores of energy, however it is not the most efficient way. I can only assume Tesla was illustrating a point, not calling for the construction of a pole to outer space. We are still talking about a glorified sail: it only gathers the energy which strikes it, transmits that energy inefficiently, and is limited in capacity by the structural integrity concerns of a miles-tall pole which has to handle large amounts of energy flowing through it. As for cosmic rays: where did you get that? Just pull it out of the sky (no pun intended)? Tesla said heat exchange, not the flow of cosmic rays. You could cover the whole planet with these poles if you want, but they won't be practical. Passively gathering energy, while efficient, is necessarily less productive than releasing stored energy in controlled conditions (such as in a combustion engine or nuclear reactor). Imagine the sun as a big engine that runs on fusion, and a nuclear plant as a smaller, weaker version. You'd rather set a sterling motor next to the big engine and run off that engine's wasted heat rather than building your own engine?

There is not enogh charge in the atmosphere to run a motor. Try it yourself if you don't believe me. Whe we do have is radiated EM waves from manmade and natural causes that can be picked up by an antenna. You can barely pick it up with a crystal rectafier and an earphone.

This is absolutely right. Anybody who was ever REALLY interested in how their radio works has probably wondered why it needs batteries, since all the radio is doing is taking electrical pulses out of the air and channeling them to a magnet in the speaker. The answer is that even the energy which humans have generated and broadcast into the air is still far too weak to power the speaker. Like I keep saying- there may be a whole lot of stuff in the air, but you can only use what contacts your antenna, so dispersed energy is not a viable sollution.

I'm not talking about radiated RF energy, I'm talking about high-voltage electrostatic, created as charge particles from the Sun make their way to the surface of the Earth. The Testatika machine is a famous electrostatic motor. There is also plans on the web to build a self powered electrostatic motor. The power output is very low, but it is still self powering. I will post a link to the plans if anyone is interested.

I've never heard of a testatika machine however I am imagining something akin to a vandegraf generator. If they are similar, then they are not any more self powering than your car. If the flow of fuel stops, so does the generator. This limits the ability of even a very large on to the amount of air circulation it gets and makes it perhaps even less efficient than a windmill, correct?

"In March 1971, Dr. Oleg Jefimenko proved that a wire held aloft by a ballon at 1200 feet altitude would provide 70 watts of high-voltage power to an electrostatic motor (an improved version of the Franklin motor) for as long as the ballon stayed at that altitude. The wire was a high impedance conductor; and the motor ran at 12,000 rpm or about 200 pulses per second. The motor was a small capacitance device; and had it been run at the impossible rate of 20,000 pulses per second (120,000 rpm) it might have drawn down some 7000 watts of free power !!" ( from the "Vindicator Scrolls" volume one by Stan Deyo, publishers: West Australian Texas Trading)

Holy-Mutha-Freakin-Something. You can mirror this experiment simply by passing a magnet over a wire back and forth. The magnet will cause electrons to move along the wire. This is exactly the same as Tesla's hypothetical tower, and is useful but inefficient for the same reasons.
The wire gathered 70 watts of energy, sufficient to turn an electric motor 12,000 RPM (obviously if a load were attatched to the motor there would be some waste and you would get just under 70 watts of output). If the motor had turned 10 times faster, yes you would have gotten 10 times more energy (i'm assuming you meant that, and that 7000 was a typo). However you are forgetting that in order for that to have happened, the wire would need to have gathered 10 times more energy- the wire isn't spontaneously creating electrons- they must come from somewhere. This means that exposure to air (the surface area of the wire and the availability of charged air) will limit the ability of this method to generate power. Start multiplying the size of the motor and wire in your head now, keeping in mind that 70 watts is almost nothing. You end up with a huge pole and motor of colossal size to generate a relatively small amount of power.

[edit on 2-10-2004 by The Vagabond]