Electronic Levitron...How the heck does this thing work?

[Qwert]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7740EhgwfII

I'm suspecting hoax anyway.

[TinselKoala]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7740EhgwfII

I'm suspecting hoax anyway.

Not a hoax, the apparatus operates as shown, it does produce rotation in the center magnet spinner.

However the "explanation" is totally bogus and there is no "magnetic vortex" produced by this, or any other arrangement of permanent magnets. The rotation motion is powered by Mister Hand, and it's easy to prove this. You will never see such an apparatus working where the outer ring is rigidly mounted so that it cannot move. If there were such a "magnetic vortex" the rigid mounting would not affect the result. Mister Hand is a critical component of the complete apparatus and it will not rotate without his assistance.

The difference between the "center of repulsion" caused by the outer ring of magnets, and the point of contact of the center spinner with the substrate, creates a torque couple which results in the spinning of the spinner. To maintain this couple the outer ring needs to be moved, slightly but continuously. The presenter is fooling himself by thinking he is not applying any work to the system, and the reason he is able to fool himself is because he is _theory-driven_, and will always seek to explain observed phenomena in light of his dearly-held theory, rather than using observations to test his theoretical hypotheses by doing proper, true experiments.

Ask him why the device does not spin when the outer ring is rigidly  mounted, and you will get in return some more gobbledegook "explanations" that still attempt to salvage the bogus theory, rather than a factual and true interpretation of what the observation indicates: No magnetic vortex exists and the spinning is due to some other cause, namely the continuous movement of the outer ring, caused by Mister Hand.

The famous "Minato Motor" is another case of this phenomenon. The Minato Motor consists of a simple, non-powered rotor with all magnets facing the same polarity outwards around the periphery of the rotor. You hold a stack of magnets in your hand, and approach the rotor with the stack at various angles. Eventually you find an angle and distance which gives constant rotation of the rotor. But when you try rigidly  mounting the hand-held stack in the "exact same" position and angle... it doesn't work. Since you "know" that your theory is correct, you waste hours, days and weeks of your life trying to get it to work without the hand-holding part... when in actuality, an _observation-based_ approach to performing True Experiments will very quickly reveal that you are in fact "pumping" the system with slight motions of your hand, actually caused by trying as hard as you can to hold the stack still, but since the passing rotor magnets are pulling/pushing, your little out-of-phase motions are actually providing the input power to rotate the rotor.

As Richard Feynman said, the easiest person to fool is yourself.

[Pirate88179]

Lidmotor is way in advance of us poor tinkerers over here, he is the King of pulse motors. I envy his fine designs and his excellent results. He would just be bored stiff, in between bouts of hysterical laughter, looking in here.

Funny you should mention that.  I heard back from Rusty (Lidmotor) and he said he has now read this entire topic.  He said that years ago he tried building a Levitron using hall sensors and an op-amp but could not get it to work.  He said that later, he built an infrared device that worked quite well.  He said he will be following us here to see what is going on.  He did mention that TK should be able to build this new type of Levitron if he has enough time.

So, there you have it TK, a vote of confidence from Lidmotor.  I, for one, can not wait until your hall sensors show up.

Bill

PS  No pressure.

[Qwert]

Thanks, TinselKoala. This site becomes very helpful thanks to some dedicated guys including you. Keep doing this, please.

[allcanadian]

@Dave45

We'r listening, it does feel good to give thats a human condition that enhances the soul.Thank You for the magnetic bearing.

Like many here I have the usual assortment of unworkable devices and as TK mentioned ... the easiest person to fool is ourself. However even an old dog can learn new tricks and sometimes an original thought and sheer luck may converge.


I noticed a couple of unfinished projects collecting dust which have an interesting premise. One is that I found a way to vary an off the shelf capacitor (capacitance) from min to max value on the fly which I thought impossible prior to actually build one. Another is a self-synching grid tie inverter which does not use boost conversion or transformer action to raise the source voltage. Nor does it use an "H" bridge on the output section which raises all kinds of questions doesn't it?. I'm not quite ready to disclose these yet and simply mentioned them so that people might consider the premise and how such devices might work. It's all left field outside the box kind of stuff which I enjoy working on.
I understand many things seem impossible however the seemingly impossible is actually a pretty straight forward process. I use a thought process related to Critical Thinking (observation and analysis of our thinking concerning the observation) and Looping (observe, deconstruct, change/reverse premise and process, repeat). It works and multiple loops are formed at which point the dots are connected to form other loops and at some point solutions.

AC