Question How do perpetual motion watches work?
I was just looking at Rolex watches, and they have the self-winding mechanisms. How do those work? I know it's movement that winds the watch, but is there a spring inside, or a bettery that gets charged, or what?

Best Answer There is a weight mounted off-balance on a shaft so that it hangs down. It has a one-way ratchet connected to a reduction gear so that motion in one direction winds the spring. In the other direction the shaft just turns freely. As you move about, walking, running, gesturing, whatever, your wrist moves back and forth. As your wrist changes position the weight causes the shaft to turn and the ratchet captures the motion to wind the main spring.

Question I believe I have found the perpetual motion machine. Watch the video. Do you agree?
Apparently magnetism does the trick. Watch the following two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrGW7Fod7y0&feature=channel_page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQS1ZE0TVeo&feature=channel_page What do you say about this?

Best Answer There are two huge issues here as to why this does not qualify as a PMM: 1. The motor is powered by a battery, a battery that, although it might take a long time, will run out of juice eventually. That contraption does not recharge the battery. 2. There is no way to extract that energy shown. So if you hook up something to extract that energy, you will take more than it can produce and therefore kill the machine. Not only does it not recharge the batteries, it does not expel capturable energy. We all dream, but the laws of science (As we know them as of this time) do not allow for the physics "Holy Grail", the PMM, to exist.

Question How did they manage to make it look like they achieved perpetual motion in this video?
http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=CA#/watch?v=oJv58SXx2V8 I know that perpetual motion is impossible, but I can't figure out how they managed to make it look like they created perpetual motion in this video. Do you know how they did it?

Best Answer any number of ways. perpetual motion has been shown to be impossible under the known laws of physics video fakes are so easy you cannot believe anything you see

Question Perpetual Motion Drinking Bird?
Is the famous toy (The Drinking bird) really a perpetual motion device or not? Please substantiate your answer. Some reliable websites confirming this would help. It's for a school project. Help me out Please!

Best Answer Obviously not. Sooner or later the bird will drink all the water and the water needs to be replaced. This represents something being added to the system to keep it running. Perpetual motion requires no input of any kind. What is happening is the same thing as adding gas to your car. If the car was a perpetual motion machine, it would never require gas. The bird is a sophisticated "love meter". This is a glass device with a reservoir on either end. Warming or cooling a particular end will cause the solvent inside to rush to the other end. The bird drinks when evaporation causes the solvent vapor in the head to condense. This draws liquid solvent back into the head. The head then dips down into the water because of the added weight. This wets the red fibers covering the bird's head. The cool solvent runs back down to the other end, causing the head to come back up. The head then cools enough to draw solvent back into it by condensing the vapor again. This will continue only as long as the head can evaporate water. Perpetual motion is impossible because one of the fundamental laws of physics states no transformation of energy is 100% efficient. Some is always lost as heat. One source of energy loss in the bird is the hip joint. It is not frictionless and this turns mechanical energy into heat. Heat is also absorbed by the water on the bird's head to evaporate it. It is then carried away into the atmosphere and never returns to the system. The ultimate source of this heat is the nuclear fusion at the center of the sun. Without the sun, the earth would be far too cold to allow water to exist as a liquid. It would probably be so cold the solvent inside the bird would also be frozen solid.

Question perpetual motion?
I've been told all my life that perpetual motion is impossible. Isn't the earth motion perpetual? Therefore, if we tap into such things as waves shouldn't that be counted as successful free energy. it mukes more sense than the"drinking bird" of the seventies

Best Answer Perpetual motion is the idea that a closed system (with no energy coming in) can continue to produce energy. When you rely on external forces such as wind, solar, etc... it is referred to as renewable energy. The earth spinning around the sun will go on for a very long time, but eventually the system will fail when the sun burns out or slighly before when the sun expands to cover the orbit of the earth... not scheduled any time soon so I wouldn't waste time worrying about it. That was a good question though since it points out the difference between these two energy types and addresses an underlying misunderstanding a lot of people have about perpetual motion.

Question Can the Drinking (Dippy) Bird be used on a large scale to generate power?
Is it possible to use the perpetual oscillating motion of the happy drinking bird (dippy bird) to generate electricity? The turbine will probably generate some amount of resistance, due to opposing magnetic forces, but I have a feeling that such resistance can be overcome. My reasoning is that the drinking bird currently actually overcomes mechanical friction in the axle, so why not the magnetic opposing forces of the turbine? Does anyone know of a feasibility study performed on this idea? I know this idea has been floating for quite some time on the internet, but has anyone actually built a working system, to atleast light a bulb? I know how the drinking bird works! As for some of the answers regarding the transport of water, the giant birds can simply be placed on the shores of a lake or any body of water for that matter.

Best Answer You know how the bird works, right? Evaporation of water on the felty beak cools an alcohol solution which then changes the balance point or the bird? Essentially, what is going on is movement of fluid that heats and expands and then cools and contracts. Sound familiar? The amount of heating and contraction is minimal in the finely balanced bird and the temperature difference doesn't have to be large. Now, the more energy you extract from the system, the greater the difference in temperature will have to be (to move more fluid to overcome more resistance to motion). Well, the idea is already in use, although the set up isn't the same as the bird, the principle is the same. Wherever you have naturally occuring heat close to naturally occuring cold, you can take advantage of the difference to generate energy. Solar heat engines rely on this by concentrating the heat energy from the sun to create the hot side. Geothermal engines rely on this by taking advantage of the cooler conditions underground. The real problem is getting enough bang for your buck. Running a pump this way to move water far from electrical supplies is a good use, but for most other uses, it's just cheaper and more reliable to use some sort of fuel.

Question Perpetual Motion and magnets...?
Second question of mine here... Okay, if you had a non-magnetic tube, and inside this tube were three magnets. The magnet in the center is free to spin around and thus exert it's negative and positive forces to different ends of the tube. Now, attach to the same point on the central magnet two small strings connected to the other two magnets, and another small string connecting the two side magnets. Have both end magnets have the same polarity toward the center magnet(lets say it's the negative side for this). You start the magnets off with one close to the center (magnet1) magnet and one away (magnet2). Magnet2 is far and thus it's string is extending so that only the negative portion of the center magnet is facing Magnet1. Being repelled away by the center magnet, magnet1 will pull it's string tight and thus turn the center magnet and at the same time pull magnet2 toward the center. Magnet2 would then be repelled by the center magnet and would pull it's string to cause the center magnet to turn again and pull magnet1 to the center. Wouldn't this create perpetual motion? Even though you'd need to use some for of energy to start the process, wouldn't the repelling of the magnets and pull of the center magnet when it's opposite faces one of the side magnets create it's own motion?

Best Answer Energy will be lost in each pull of the string. Eventually the magnets will reach a equilibrium state.

Question Perpetual motion with earth magnets. Science Fair. Need examples DONT NEED STUPID or "CAN NOT HAPPEN" comments
I am trying to research a more in depth way of discovering perpetual motion. The best I can figure out is magnets. Although they because useless overtime it is the beset in terms of efficency. Any ideas that might work? Like the nail and 1/2 watt bulb?

Best Answer You can't make anything with "real perpetual motion", but you can make devices that keep extracting power from their surroundings as long as the power source is available and they remain in working order. A science fair project explaining the difference might work. In principle, you can extract energy from the earth's rotation. It would seem as though you could do so with a pendulum or gyroscope You could have a Foucault pendulum with a piece from an old-fashioned grandfather clock that keeps the pendulum swinging despite friction, only driven by the apparent rotation of the pendulum. Or you could have a gyroscope that's kept turning by its own precession. Either way, what would make or break the project is the writing along with it. You would need to write about Foucault pendulums or precession of gyroscopes, but you would also need to write about conservation of angular momentum, and explain why it's a problem for the device in question, and what in the real world actually *does* extract energy from the earth's rotation.

Question can u make a perpetual motion machine with magnets?


Best Answer Here are a few working examples:- 1. The drinking bird toy (the energy comes from small ambient temperature gradients and evaporation, and harnessing the small power output would likely disrupt the working cycle). 2. A capillarity based water pump: in this case, energy would again come from small ambient temperature gradients and vapour pressure differences, although it would be far too easy for the pump to stop functioning. 3. A Crookes radiometer, a partial vacuum glass container with a lightweight propeller moved by (light-induced) temperature gradients. 4. Any device picking minimal amounts of energy from the electromagnetic radiation around it. Some modern smart labels (RFID chips) actually work based on that principle, using the same electromagnetic field used for "reading" them as their powersource. 5. In the Atmos clock the vapor pressure of ethyl chloride changes with temperature and winds up the clock spring.