WhWhy exactly don't SMOTs(Simple Magnetic Overunity Toy) work?

Question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMOT

I know it doesn't work, I know there is no such thing as free energy but what is the actual practical reason why smots don't work.

Gravity wheels and such have been shown why they really don't work, but I still haven't seen anyone explain why a smot fails.

Answer 1

It is very obvious why this doesn't work: if the magnet is powerful enough to cause the ball to move upward, it will NOT fall down, it will smash into the magnet. Don't let your fingers get in the way, or they'll get crushed.

Try it if you don't believe me. Use neodymium for your magnets.

Answer 2

Simple Magnetic Overunity Toy

Answer 3

It doesn't work because all it's doing is exchanging potential energy for kinetic energy and back again. If all the KE in the ball-bearing is stored as PE, and then all the PE is converted back to KE, then the cycle will continue indefinitely. But if anything -- friction, or a load attached to the "perpetual motion machine" -- robs the ball-bearing of any KE, it will slow down and fail to complete a cycle.

This may not be immediately obvious, but: Anytime you have a permanent magnet *without* a piece of steel stuck firmly to it, you have some potential energy stored up in the magnet and steel. You would certainly have to do work separating the steel from the magnet if they were stuck together. Some of that energy will be stored up as PE, and converted to KE as the steel is attracted towards the magnet.

Answer 4

The reason is that machines according to the 2nd law of thermodynamicw cannot function as a machine experiencing work without energy loss to its surrounding.
The Human body is an example ; It cannot do work unless it uses energy and while doing work it loose heat Energy.
Inertial motion of any mass structures that was given power to move must loose a certain amount of mass in order to move at that velocity.
The Celestial bodies of the Universe follow the Same rule.
That means that they experience continual mass changes ,as they velocities continually changes.

Answer 5

You can always blame friction. No matter how amazingly great your perpetual motion machine is, it will always produce friction and expel energy. This "regauging" is past me, but the idea is that the energy does not come or go from the device. Friction, especially air friction in this case, may be negligible to some, but it is always there.

Answer 6

The device does not gather "free energy" as is sometimes advertised. It does convert potential energy in the form of the steel ball's distance from the magnetic source to kinetic energy as it rolls towards it - just as is done by any object when it falls. Similar conversions of energy from potential to kinetic and back take place in the swinging of a pendulum, but the representation is created by the perceived increase in gravitational potential energy as the ball rolls up the ramp. The eye is not attuned to see the decrease in magnetic potential energy as it moves towards the magnet. Any device constructed to extract the energy from the system will not work forever just as no pendulum will oscillate forever as dissipative forces (such as friction) will eventually damp the motion. Thus, in this conception, the device is not a perpetual motion machine since it will eventually stop, and there is no "overunity" efficiency achieved.