Homopolar Generator Revisit.

[tinman]

I have not yet located my old setup,as i spent most of my weekend building my new toroid transformer,and today was also Bathurst race day-the biggest car race in Australia,so the television got most of my attention today.

@ Poynt and Vortex
Have you guys given this any more thought?

[antijon]

Hey guys, just had a couple of postulations about this.

Everyone brings up good questions and points, and this is definitely a paradoxical machine. I think one of the big questions it brings up is, does the magnetic field rotate with the magnet, or is it stationary even when the magnet is rotating?

We all know that a magnetic field is made up of lines of magnetic force, so they should rotate with the magnet because they emanate from the magnetic domains.

To prove this, we can:
1. rotate the magnet but leave the disc stationary. Of course, the brushes would also have to move with the magnet.
2. spin the disc and the magnet in opposite directions. If the voltage increases, this proves that the magnetic field spins with the magnet.

The question here, though, is why are the brushes required, or can attached wires produce current. I also say, no attached wires cannot produce current, yes stationary brushes are required. But I'll also suggest a test with brushes that should not produce current.

We know that when the disc is moving relative to stationary brushes, current is developed. This is due to the fact that the disc is behaving as a single conductor, or wire, between the brushes. An analogy would be wires emanating from the axis, like a bicycle wheel with spokes. Because a wire moving in a magnetic field creates current, so does the disc (between the brushes).

The first image demonstrates a current carrying wire in a uniform magnetic field. Two important principles to understand here is that,
1. the section of the disc between brushes produces a magnetic field similar to a single conductor, and
2. Lenz law is in effect when the disc is generating.

First, about Lenz law, whenever a current is induced, the magnetic field created by the current will always be in opposition to the inducing magnetic field. Therefore, when the disc is generating, back-torque is produced in the disc, whether the magnet is moving or not. Simply, the current is trying to motor in the opposite direction that you are spinning it, and it has no effect on the brushes because it happens in the disc.

Now the complex part of the HPG. Because it is a single conductor, a disc, current cannot flow without brushes. This is because there is no individual point for the current to traverse. As the entire disc produces current radially, the produced magnetic fields (in the disc), cancel each other out and prevent current movement.

The final image is the test I propose.
A dome shaped conductor with it's edge in a trough of mercury. It's exactly the same as a disc with brushes except for one difference, the entire edge of the disc is touching the brush simultaneously. I speculate that this design cannot generate current or motor for the same reason as above. The generated current cannot produce a non-uniform magnetic field, and therefore cannot have current flow.

[MagnaProp]

...We all know that a magnetic field is made up of lines of magnetic force, so they should rotate with the magnet because they emanate from the magnetic domains...

Not sure I agree. I think the magnet is just the tip of an ether hose. If you rotate the black tip of a water hose, shown in the image, the water running out of the hose will not start to spin. Even if you put a wire mesh on that spinning tip, the water will not start to spin.

If you want to say the tip of our hose has little water jets, then you might have a point at relatively slow spin and if our water jet tip and the disk were very close together. If you spun such a water tip fast enough the water should never reach our disk since it would just fly out 90 degrees from centrifugal force. I think having a magnet on both sides of the disk straightens out the magnetic lines and they travel fast enough and through any object easily enough, it's as if the magnetic isn't even there as far as the field it pumps in concerned.

[MagnaProp]

Just to clarify. I do think permanent magnet fields have spin. Tinman has shown this in the water experiments. But I think it is very weak. Between two magnets, the spin or curved field lines get straightened out very quickly. They are also easily cut and reattached. So if the magnetic domain it emanates from is spinning, the flux line may just detach and quickly reattach to the next nearest one, essentially keeping the flux line in place. So if the straightened field lines rotate, they are essentially uncoupled from the magnet and may spin relatively slowly depending on where the next domain is that the straightened flux line reattaches to. 

When you have two magnets, the flux acts like the either hose I posted previously.

[ayeaye]

So, has someone tried to rotate the brush at the edge of the disc, instead of rotating the disc? Rotating the brush should take much less energy than rotating the disc, because it has much less mass, and less friction due to that.

In my mind, rotating the brush should rotate the electrons. Which then get some radial force because of the radial sum of the vectors of the force of every magnetic dipole near it. An no lenz law should work against that radial force component.

So just thinking that maintaining these electrons on orbit around the atoms with a constant speed contributes a part of the force, and this comes free for us (except zero point energy perhaps), then this supposed to give some additional energy. Just as i think about it now, i cannot be sure that my understanding of what happens is exactly accurate.