Not another Perpetual Motion question.?

Question

I tried this twice before and got good answers but I had already figured that much out as much as they were telling me, so this time I drew as good of a picture as I could and a discription of my question. If any of you super physisics or engineers could give me a little help I'v included a link to my blog where I had more room to frame the question.


http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-B_YS8yk7dK7xe4SNjrtluB357hTQ

Thanks for any help in advance. JohnK

Answer 1

Well, we could figure out how much energy the device would develop if the drawing had dimensions. But the bottomline is it will take more energy to reset the device than it will generate.

Fluid friction is going to eat a good chunk of the energy. Both in transforming the working fluid. As for the weight/float it will take just as much energy to lift it as you can get from it falling and if you're using a fluid to move it around it will take a lot more than you'll get from it.

I'd say a conservative estimate is that it will take 1.67 times as much energy to operate the devise as you will get out of it.

Answer 2

I've been looking at your blog drawing and, if I'm not totally confused, the release of the water - does it go into the adjacent tank or is it simply drained?
If it goes into the adjacent tank, it would only drain half way, or until the level was even in both sides.
Again, if I understand the basic principal, the problem is the weight - it must be less dense than the water and therefore will not be much of an aid in pumping any water back by weight alone.
It appears that the energy is achieved because the water level is such that the weight is displaced and pushed to the top - no problem there - the problem is this energy would be significantly less than that needed to refill the tank. Just draining the water releases all of it's potential energy.
A series of pictures showing the stages of operation is a much better presentation of a device such as this - and what seems obvious to you (four black squares - weights/floats? - two closed doors - valves - etc....) is not so obvious to someone unfamiliar with the device or operation.
It's a different twist on the ol' buoyancy vs. gravity perpetual motion machine.
Interesting stuff.