Video: Working Gravity Wheel?

[Low-Q]

And this is what my intuition says too. What if we use a plastic roller with eclipse shaped piece of steel inside? Just to help oscillations to continue? We can also gear roller and wheel together...

No. Nature doesn't care about the shape. If oscillation occour, the movement will be around an "average point" where the ball would be if there wasn't any oscillation.
This device cannot work because there is no energy that keeps it running.


Vidar

[gauschor]

The ball or roller just get to the max sticking point and stays there, fixed.

I did this experiment with a slightly different setup several years ago and it worked only for few seconds (sometimes 10 to 15 at most.)   Very frustrating.   The steel ball slips/sticks and gets out of sync with the wheel very easily.

Would it work, if one uses some kind of "cage" to prevent the ball getting to the sticky point? See image below: the wheels must not be connected, but both must be fixed strongly to the same axis. Then a cage can be put in between the wheels to give the ball a certain bandwidth to roll up and down?

Edited Image: perhaps the "cage" needs also some "rollers" on the inside to keep the rotation of the ball continuous and not causing an abrupt stop, when the ball touches it. This would still cause a small friction though.

[Joh70]

maybe someone can try it
ball should be steal
magnet looks not like a neodym, maybe its pure iron magnet, old style
the wheel is probably milled out of aluminium, double sided
(aluminium has strange effects while a magnet is moved over it, although it isnot much magnetic)
the angel is approx. 45°, half of the weight is lifted by magnet,
other half lies on the wheel, so can speed it up
oscilation is important, because ball needs to push the wheel and roll at the same time and same position
a soft, kind of auto-adjusting magnetic field should be best, its the edge of the rectangled bar-magnet
someone should try it...