OPNIONS WANTED sounds too good to be true

[Mike]

can we get back to the original topic?<p>is it possible to build a device to satisfy the claims made at the site?<p>and, we got 2 figure out why they are trying to scam us out of 20 bucks. you'd think they would have it start at 2000 right? but 20 bucks times 1.6 million people is a pretty good amount of money when you think about it.

[Mike]

well lets get back to the original topic.<p>is a device that satisfies the claims on the site even possible to build?<p>and, we have to figure out why they are trying to scam us out of 20 bucks. doesn't seem like a lot. but, i guess 1.6 mil people times 20 bucks is a lot...

[perfectbite]

Mike, We've come a long way from the lode-stone. Some of the more recent rare earth magnets are so powerful that even small magnets will crush and cut intervening flesh to get to each other and normally magnetically passive metals can be temporarily made to become very strongly magnetic. <p>If that magnetic potential force is continually converted to kinetic force through a well balanced device we could have a perpetual motion machine or as close as we'll ever get to seeing one.<p>Imagine a flat and level smooth road in the middle of a vast windless desert. Imagine also a beach ball slowly rolling along this road under its own power after being given an intial push. <p>The ball's motion is generating just enough extra power to cause a Simpson meter needle to barely deflect so yes, the ball is producing more energy than it is using.<p>Are we getting enough extra power to make it worth pursuing? If we allow a gentle headwind against the ball, the ball will stop and won't start moving until it is pushed to move again after the headwind has died down so there's not a lot of power available.<p>Is bigger better? Build a bigger beach ball and tap its increased energy overflow? OK. Let's say we build an hermetically sealed over unity device as big as a 2 storey house. Realistically, not only would we have to gather the materials and expend energy in the building of this device but we would also have to expend energy maintaining it e.g. lubricating, replacing worn parts &c. <p>What if, even as big as a 2 storey house, it only gave enough 'free' energy to light a single 100 Watt bulb forever? Assuming of course that the 100 Watt bulb never burns out. Would it be worthwhile building and maintaining?<p>Speed and torque are not the same thing yet one 'blurb' on the over unity machine's websites seemed to be saying that a high rpm is indicative of something. A shaft could be doing a billion rpms but if you could stop it dead with your fingertip there is no power there. I didn't read any power numbers (they weren't there to read) to take its energy producing claim even slightly seriously.<p>In my opinion a passive Solar panel renewable energy source, with its very low but getting better efficiencies, is a safer bet than a just barely breaking even over unity device (at a guess) - 5% versus .000001%. Probably one short sunny winter's day would return far more 'free' energy than a year of running the 'over unity' generator. Of course, the sun could go out but then solar panels and over unity devices would be the least of our worries.<p>I don't have $20 to spare on the video tape, although perhaps it would make a great 'Harnessing perpetual motion for dummies' (a companion tape to 'Brain surgery for fun and profit) 'gag' birthday present.

[dacflyer]

wow..so many responces in such a short time..cool...
i figgured that it was a bunch of BS just wanted to know if it was ligitimate,,,
wonder if the places he said really do exhist..

[Ron H]

See also an extended ASCII chart (scroll down).

[haklesup]

OK, This guy is just a "Dealer" of the promised equipment. If you click on the link to the parent company "United Community Services of America" (sounds like a charity to me) in his FAQ the link is bad but searching on Google for the same turned up several more dealers.<p>This one http://www.ucsofa.com/ had lots more propaganda on his site but still falls short of actually proving the point. As evidence, he has several pages of a description of a meeting with a Kansas senetor but all the links were broken making it difficult to substantiate any of the made claims. This last one even makes appeals based on Religon and patriotism.<p>The States of Maine and Idaho have actually filed an injunction to prohibit the promotion and sale of this technology injunction. Read what you want into that.<p>The first website claims to sell other products he lists at the bottom of the FAQ but provides no links (wouldn't you in order to make more sales)<p>I could go on but this whole think just wreaks of "Network Marketing" where lots of money changes hands for dealerships and rights but hard products are rarely ever sold. Carefully metered information and claims that sound authoratative but are difficult to substantiate are red flags to a ripoff.<p>
Back to the technical: Converting electrical energy to mechanical incurrs losses, so does converting it back to electricity. So how do you expect anything to make a battery more powerful. It would have been more believable if he suggested using solar power as the input.<p>A motor turning a generator experiences little resistance in the form of torque. As soon as you add a load to the generator output, the torque increases as the electrical load does.

[jollyrgr]

Actually you can buy one of these generators from the local military surplus store. They are in the same aisle as the DVD rewinders.

[dacflyer]

jolly rodger >> Oooooo Ooooo i so badly need a DVD rewinder ! LOL ! :p

[perfectbite]

I wrote -<p>"The ball's motion is generating just enough extra power to cause a Simpson meter needle to barely deflect so yes, the ball is producing more energy than it is using."<p>In re-reading this, it occurred to me that if the ball is producing more energy than it is using (over unity), under the conditions I have described, then the ball would actually be under acceleration. That extra power would be added to the ball's RPMs. If the flat, level, windless (let's make it airless) and smooth desert road were of infinite length and the ball never needed patching and never had to change direction then perhaps, in a few centuries or even decades, the ball's momentum would become quite significant. <p>(Even the impact of tiny flecks of paint travelling at tens of thousands of miles an hour can punch sizable pits in spacecraft windows. I don't know the Joules to Watts conversion factor.)<p>So, we have two kinds of unity devices - Unity and Over Unity.<p>Perhaps the real scam is that a unity device is being touted as an over unity device. Cue the black helicopters.<p>So, Jolly Roger (Oh Ahrr), is that surplus store DVD rewinder a unity or over unity device?<p>[ June 05, 2004: Message edited by: perfectbite ]</p>

[Ron H]

If you were entertained by the 1.6 million overunity generators that are going into households across the country, maybe you should lie on the floor before you start reading this one, in order to prevent injury caused by falling off your chair.
Be sure to check out the legal stuff at the bottom of the page (I think this is the crux of this invention).

[Will]

Ron,
Thanks for the insight - reading your link about magnetic tape heads as generating devices - made my day. I really can't think about it without giggling.
There is no doubt sbout it - You could generate electricity by passing a magnetized tape over a reader head - whenever you have a conductor in the presence of a moving or changing (In field strength) magnetic field then, providing the conduction has a vector or element which is at right angles to the direction of the magnetic field then you will generate an emf and, consequently a current if/when you apply a load of finite resistance to the conductor terminals. But why use a tape and field head to do this. Are electric generators/dynamos not better for this. ?
When you turn the conductors of an electric generator (EG) in a magnetic fieldthen an emf is generated - when you apply elctrical load to the terminals the ensuing current in the conductors (In accordance with Lenz's Law it generates back e.m.f) then completes all the requirements of an electric motor i.e. current carrying conductor moving in a magnetic field . . and generates Torque - the problem with this is that this torque opposes the motion of the the driving device/engine so that you then have to opoen the engine throttle to apply more gasoline i.e. more energy input for more energy output. Gasoline has an energy equivalent of about 20 Btu/lbf, 3412 Btu = 1.0 kWh and the motor efficiencies are usually 20 - 25% so that, for every 1.0 lbf of gasoline you put in you will get about 1.3 kWh out of it if the dynam,o is 100% efficient. Exactly the same rules will apply to the tap/tapehead configuration the more energy you get out of it the more energy you have to put into pulling the tape, across the tape heads (The back emf) and I can almost gurantee you that the tape/tapehead configuration will be considerably less efficient that a putrpose built EG.
As for the wheel running along the flat road - It doesn't generate any energy at all i if it generated any electrical energy due to the movement of the metal molecules against the arth magnetic field then that energy would simply be lost as heat inside the ball and would cause it to slow down even further. If you applied a force of 100 pounds to a 100 pound metal; sphere and pushed it through one hundred feet with constant force applied (With consequent continuously increasing ball velocity due to the uniform acceleration) then, by the time you got to the end of the 100 feet (By which time you would be running at 54.694 miles per hour) then you would have applied a force of one hundred pounds through 100 feet so the kinetic energy of the ball would be 10,000 foot pounds. Due to friction with the ground contact and air resistance (Pushing the air out of the way of a body travelling at 54 mph requires real work.)
Forget about over-unity perpetual motion, with electricity generation, unless your have a fission or fusion process then all you get out in electrical energy is what you put in in thermal/mechanical energy less mechanical/efficiency losses. Some time ago a bunch of guys believed that we could generate energy with so-called (Over unity) cold fusion - but even they, althought they could not reproduce results, believed that fission (Tritum formation etc) was occurring. But tha5t's all dead now. What fun
(PS for those interested in the math you would have pushed the ball for 2.49 seconds assuming 100 per cent efficiency.

[perfectbite]

RonH, It is very clever. Instead of having a fuel driven, energy producing, 'clashing' magnetic field generator it uses a magnetic field sine wave 'impressed' onto the actual tape with the tape machine's read head as the power source for the tape driver motor with the driver motor using less power than the overall power produced. A Dimitropoulus (Tropo) generator. I can smell a Nobel prize if it works and is developed properly.<p>In a larger version or even a small very high speed version (using a start up push) - a motor or air turbine powered (or even the over unity machine that started this thread, then it would all be 'free' power) driving a rotating low mass, non magnetic, superbly balanced, air or magnet bearing'ed' horizontally laid (for the prototype at least) drum with very powerful magnets very firmly positioned in a continuous sine wave pattern around the drum's circumference which magnets pass very close to a line of dioded current pick-up coils which could conceivably/perhaps produce significant surplus over unity power.<p>Enough perhaps for a quiescent home (depending on its size and appliances) and it truly could be a well over unity device requiring transformers and Hz changers and all. Like the drum, the frame should be constructed of wood or plastic so that the magnetic fields aren't dampened or distorted and, with the use of some room temp. (they are getting there) superconductors (this layout lends itself to the existing extremely brittle and therefore 'cast' superconductors), it should be able to at least run a fridge for free. Or not. (!?) It certainly couldn't compete with the thousands of % return promised by cold fusion but it's a start. The world has some brilliant, brilliant minds and given the present magnet and superconductor technology, if they ran with it - who knows?<p>'Selling' surplus power back to the electric utility company from home built generators may not be possible unless 'stacked' devices filled a house and then where would one live? <p>Renting or buying a warehouse and filling it with these machines and rotating them in and out of service for maintenance (nothing is absolutely free) would be a full time occupation and skill but perhaps worth it. They could end up being the size and weight of a heavy suitcase with battery cable sized wires coming out of them. (The military ones could be the size of a briefcase). They could run 24/7 independent of daylight and wouldn't be killing birds like the wind power generator airfoils and all the muss and fuss and corrosion of tidal power would be avoided.<p>There you go Mike. Forget your troublesome Amplifier web page. Building and proving this over unity Tropo generator, with all its tweaking, and royalties per unit sold/installed to Basil Dimitropoulus and possibly his University in Athens and a little something to RonH for finding it, could save you money, save the Earth and provide a rewarding and worthwhile livelihood for you. (Look out for the energy companies, the lawyers, the black helicopters and those powerful magnets).<p>I'd be interested in your progress if you decide to pursue it. Don't try to sell me a video tape though. I'll take your word on its performance. Post the prototype images, with Volts and Amps produced and used on your web page. If you build it, they will come.

[jollyrgr]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Mike:
well lets get back to the original topic.<p>is a device that satisfies the claims on the site even possible to build?<p><hr></blockquote><p>Mike,<p>The energy has to come from somewhere and as one of my high school teachers was fond of saying "You don't get no free lunch." <p>Since I was a little kid I heard stories about the 100 mile per gallon carburetor. If you have never heard this story, let me explain. There were these engineers "in Detroit" that developed a carburetor that fit in place of your existing carburetor. It mated to your existing throttle linkage, intake manifold, fuel lines etc. and was available to all sorts of cars. By simply replacing the carburetor you currently had with this "magic" carburetor you would go from getting 8 to 12 mile per gallon to getting 100 miles to the gallon. Supposedly oil companies bought the guys off that developed it (or bought the rights to it) and purposely kept it off the market. There are some urban legends where a big wig at one of the big three (usually the maker the person telling the story liked) made a custom car for one of the retiring executives. Somehow this magic carburetor was installed on his car and he was able to go thousands of miles between fill ups. Finally the mistake was discovered and his car was called back in. The "magic box" was removed and replaced with a conventional carburetor and he had to fill up like normal people.<p>As a kid I believed the stories as adults must know this to be true and would not lie. As I got older and understood how the world really worked I knew such a device could never actually exist. The sad thing is I STILL hear this rumor/urban legend/falsehood and from people that should know better. For those that actually understand how a car works I have them explain just how the fuel system and internal combustion engine works. I have them explain in detail how a carburetor works. Soon they explain it to themselves and realize the device simply does not exist.<p>As to generating electricity. There are two primary ways of going this, not counting disposable batteries. Photovoltaics and electromechanical. Photovoltaics is commonly know as solar power. In this case a panel of material is exposed to the sun. The light striking the panel releases an electron (actually billions) and causes a current to flow. Not many houses have these to run the full house. The big practical application around the home is solar yard lights.<p>The majority of the electricity used in homes, cars, airplanes, trains, and so on come from a spinning mechanical device. This may be a perma-magnet or an electromagnet. Friction, magnetic repulsion, and so on all work to stop the spinning of this magnet. The energy required to do this must come from somewhere. In the case of cars the energy comes from the internal combustion engine. In power plants they come from burning a fossile fuel, splitting atoms, or by falling water. In all cases this is at some cost to humans; dirty air, radioactive waste, a dammed up river.<p>There is a way to convert fuel from a hydrocarbon directly into water, carbon dioxide, and electricity. Still you need a source of fossile fuel. <p>Do you think that if this worked the utility companies would not build them then sell you the electricity?<p>[ June 07, 2004: Message edited by: Jolly Roger ]</p>

[perfectbite]

From Jolly Roger: <p>"Do you think that if this worked the utility companies would not build them then sell you the electricity?"<p>My understanding was that the costs of building and maintaining transmission systems are quite significant and require LOTS of expertise to manage. Certainly no ordinary homeowner could afford to build and operate their own nuclear or fossil power generating plant however perma magnet technology AND capacitor technology AND higher temperature super conductors have made great strides in the last few years and it seems to me that some point we may be able to harness our very own storm in a teacup i.e. the repetitive lift and carry of the Earth's water to rain to water cycle producing hydropower could be supplanted by super tech. It would be nice if each home could have the equivalent of its own water wheel. No more transmission lines but NEMA would still have its charts.<p>Fusion is at a standstill, the temperatures and pressures beyond control. Cold fusion fell heavily by the waysiude and could not be rescusitated. On NPR last Friday there was an interview with a scientist who stated that a quantum computer made up of just 50 (fifty) atoms in a tube could have more computing power than anything existent was in the works. There are lots of technical problems to be overcome, stay tuned.<p>My point is that given progress, at some point a super tech over unity device should be feasible. Maybe not this year or within the decade but perhaps within a century or so. (Dyson spheres, the ultimate over unity devices, are not foreseeably feasible). And possibly, hopefully not, given the economies of scale, it could take something the size of the moon to centrally power smaller cities like Philadelphia or Kyoto. What if it was very expensive to maintain and manage? There goes the free ride.

[High4Volts]

it still all boils down to the old rule. You can only convert it, not make it or destroy it. But you gotta love it none the less. :p