magnets

[fraserjim]

If one uses energy trying to push two permanent magnets together why cant we harness it and get something for nothing or perpetual motion

[Mortartube]

You use more energy when you push the magnets together than you receive as a product of them actually being pushed together. You can't get something for nothing. The best we can do is pass a spinning coil of wire between two permanent magnets to generate electricity. But this needs power in itself (hydroelectric etc). I believe that some magnets can be made much more efficent by supercooling them when it comes to electrical generation but you need a lot of energy to cool them.

[Caladon]

What they have been developing for years and years, and is now in use in Japan, is elextromagnetic railways. The magnets on the under side of the train is being forced away from the magnets on the rails. When the power is turned on it, for lack of a better word, floats.

Small wheels are then let down to move the train at the desired speed and to keep it at that speed (due to wind resistance), though it takes a small amount of energy to overcome the wind resistance.

Unfortunately, the amount of power required to "lift" the train off the "tracks" (i.e for the two sets of magnets to repell each other) amounts to more than the amount of energy to conventionally power a train.

With perpetual motion...you need to add the "something" in to start with. The cloest we have if Nuclear Power. For the small amount of energy to produce the rods, it out weighs the useage.

As of a couple of years ago, the nuclear powered usa aircraft carrier, eisenhower, had not been refuelled since 1976. and their submarines don't need to be refuelled for 20 years. they are merely limited to how much food that can stock onboard!

[incitatus]

I see where you are going cala, but you still have to burn the fuel, so it aint perpetual. Perpetual motion is really a non starter, because even if you are allowed an initial impulse to start it off you get friction or hysteresis forces slowing it down. Take the magnet thing-the force you feel pushing you back is actually provided by you pushing the magnet forwards- thats your own push pushing you. Some is lost to heat, which is why you can make the magnets touch. so without you pushing you get nothing, and what you get back is, as mentioned above, less thsan you put in. If you want to do perpetual motion, you have to have1) a rotating black hole 2) some very strong string 3) a fishing rod and 4) a banana

[Caladon]

umm the whole point, inc, is that we don't have perpetual motion and i have not said we do. i said the closest we do have is nuclear power because the output the uranium rods give compared to the amount of energy needed to produce the rods in the first place, greatly outways it.

[Caladon]

or outweighs even

[incitatus]

but its a silly argument. if you look at it in terms of energy required to make the fuel and efficiency of transformation of fuel energy into (say) motion, a person riding a bicycle eating blackberrys is way ahead.

[cody]

we can I no how, but I am not going to tell you but I no it is possible. you guys and every one else in the world have overlooked the obveous for so long. I am going to build it patend it and retire.

[Lechoro]

Look at this site it talks about a japanese inventor who has made an electric motor with greater output then input! http://www.japan.com/technology/index.php