How does this work?

Question

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020819/first.jpg

Answer 1

My dad and uncle actually built this when I was a kid, and it didn't work then either.

Notice there are more weights being lifted on the low-torque short side than the high torque long side. Offsets the length difference.

Answer 2

It doesn't.

It's typical of the "overbalanced wheel" genre of perpetual motion machines.

A perpetual-motion sampler:

Villard’s reasoning isn’t entirely clear, but apparently he assumed that at the wheel would always have four hammers on one side of the axle, and three on the other side, keeping it in continual unbalance. Villard did not realize that the whole system would reach static equilibrium with three masses at either side and one in the middle hanging straight down. Even some of today's perpetual motion inventors fall into the same trap. This is what I call persistence of limited vision: eight hundred years have passed, and these lessons have not been learned!
http://www.hp-gramatke.net/perpetuum/english/page0020.htm

The Prevailing Type
A wheel that is furnished at equal distances around its circumference with levers, each of which carries a weight at its extremity, and is movable upon a pin, so that in one direction it can lie upon the circumference, while at the opposite side, being carried along by its weight, it may be forced to take the direction of a prolonged radius. This granted, it will be seen that when the wheel revolves in the direction a, b, c, the weights, A, B, C, will deviate from the center, and, acting with more force, will carry along the wheel on this side. And since, in measure as it revolves, a new lever will turn up, it follows, it was said, that the wheel will continue to revolve in the same direction.
http://www.todayinsci.com/cgi-bin/indexpage.pl?http://www.todayinsci.com/11/11_30.htm

Another, and the one most frequently built, was an overbalanced wheel with weights hanging off it on jointed arms, or with chambers inside containing small weights. The (wrong) idea is that the wheel, given a push, will spin forever as the weights fall on one side and rise on the other.

There are endless other varieties based on nearly every known physics principle. Generally, thermodynamics aside, they are based on misunderstandings and miscalculations of the machine system’s forces.
http://archives.stupidquestion.net/sq32703.html


Typical of the mechanical perpetual motion devices that have been proposed was one that had overbalanced wheels and utilized rolling or swinging weights. One of these was a wheel with jointed arms attached to its periphery that was expected to turn when the arms, with weights that rolled to their ends, were extended on one side of the wheel. Actually, all of these devices were perfectly balanced whether the arms were extended or not and would not turn perpetually.
http://acnet.pratt.edu/~arch543p/Craig.html

Here's the original diagram in context:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020819/perpetual_nonsense.shtml

Answer 3

This works great. Get enough of them moving in the same or opposite directions and you can shuck corn. Scale fish. Clean rust etc. etc.

Answer 4

the legs gather at the botttom, while the falling enertia of the top legs push the gathered legs. the ends of the legs are probably weighted quite a bit to make it keep going.

Answer 5

I would image it is meant to be a perpetual motion machine. It would not work, any fool could see that.

Answer 6

It's an attempted perpetual motion machine.
I doesn't work.

Answer 7

poor attempt at perpetual motion...now thats a utopian stage for humanity

Answer 8

No clue but I want to know too now lol...