To be more precise I need a physicist, or maybe an engineer. Perhaps its fitting that I've come up with what might be an incredible idea, after all I lived opposite form the creator of Worms (who invented the game doodling in class in the same school I once went to). So maybe it is the destiny of people from Bournemouth to invent things when they should be paying attention in class!
I don't want to be too detailed in my "invention" as it is just an idea and I really need to spend some time looking up and calculating the formulas needed, the basic premise could result in a way of generating power that requires no energy input bar gravity (not an unheard of idea, see hydroelectric dams). However if the mechanism is efficient enough for it to even support its own running is questionable, let alone to provide power for external devices, especially in the quantity needed for, say, a reactor.
I'm not saying I've come up with something that will stop the worlds dependence on fossil fuels or anything, especially as this is a very very preliminary idea, but if this works then it could be amazing!
Of course I'm 90% sure it doesn't work, its so simple that it must have been tried before, its not like cold fusion or anything, this is such a simple mechanism that a studying biochemist thought of it while daydreaming instead of listening about how to purify protein samples, something that could actually be useful in her career...
Thursday, 26 November 2009
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2 comments:
While I cna lay claim to being a former Astronomy Physics major, I swapped over to CompSci my 4th year for more gainful employment opportunities.
Still, I am suspicious of all perpetual motion machines. :)
All gravity-based things lose energy once friction is intriduced (and is nigh impossible to avoid in some form on earth here) but can still be pretty darn efficient.
Clocks used gravity for years before the quartz battery came about.
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/01/how_to_make_a_gravity_clo.html
I would recommend that you revisit very carefully your "requires no energy input bar gravity".
The energy derived from gravity comes from moving something from a high place to a low place and thereby converting potential to kinetic energy. This means that energy must have once been expended to create that potential energy.
In the case of hydroelectric dams, the real and very direct source is solar energy. The sun heats the oceans, turning the liquid water into vapor that then rises through being heated. Ultimately it condenses and rains in various places including higher altitude places where some of the energy injected by the sun gets stored by virtue of that water existing a higher altitude, waiting to expend it through running down hill.
So, look at your idea again, and ask yourself how the thing that is falling (for something must fall to capture energy from gravity) got to the high place and that is the true source of your energy.
Maebius identified a clock as something that worked off of gravity. In that case, the proximate source of energy was human power, lifting the weights into position every few days or so.
Give us some more information and I'm sure we'll be happy to help you out.
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