What is the problem with SMOTs?

[psychopath]

Hi, this is my first post...so...er...yeh...

I was wondering what the specific problems with SMOTs are. Although I haven't built one yet and I don't exactly know what the secret is to making the ball drop, I have seen SMOT balls drop and I have also seen the ball drop into another SMOT. I have seen the ball start without an initial kick, so it can be placed anywhere on the ramp and it starts.

I find it hard to believe that Greg Watson made perpetual SMOT kits which needed such "fine tuning" that they couldn't be transported. I think that he either made a perpetual smot and kept it a secret, or he didn't make one at all.

So, what is the problem that everybody keeps running into? Why is it that we haven't yet seen a real working SMOT?

Thing is, the ultimate sticky spot has been overcome, simply by dropping the ball. So what is it that stops us now?

[Dyamios]

Well generally it will be found through many different setups and experiments that if you remove the sticky spot at one point, it reappears somewhere else in the system... sometimes in a different form.

Generally magnetism should be considered a conservative form of energy (in its simplest state... there are oddities to magnetism that make it not so, but in its general nature it is). This means that, while a magnet will attract a metal ball or another magnet with seemingly no energy input, it will require energy be "put back in" to the magnet in order for this energy to be useful.


Think of it like this: the metal ball will have a potential energy whilst at rest at a certain distance away from the magnet. Since there is friction, the ball is kept in place if far enough away from the magnet. But once the ball gets close enough, the magnet will convert this potential into kinetic (movement) energy, until the ball gets stuck to the magnet.

When the ball gets stuck to the magnet, it is in a state of zero-potential energy, and maximal-static kinetic energy (in a way... the ball isn't moving per se, but the normal force of the ball pushing off of the magnet is equal to the kinetic energy  the ball would have if the magnetic field of the magnet was there, but the magnet itself was not).

Therefore, in order to remove the ball, you must return the potential energy to the ball by pulling it away.


The problem with this is that no energy is gained. You have merely sent the ball on a magnetic form of a roller-coaster hill. The ball gains kinetic energy, losing potential. Then it gets stuck to the magnet. Then you add the potential back to the ball by pulling it away.

Similarly a roller-coaster car has potential when resting on top a hill, gains kinetic whilst going down, losing potential. And then regains the potential when it rises to the next crest of the next hill.

In both cases the net energy gain is 0.


-^THIS^- is what everyone forgets about when making SMOT's or other types of magnetic overunity toys.

Whilst the ball may go up an incline, the ball still gets stuck at the sticky point, but gravity is what re-adds potential energy to ball instead of your hand pulling it away. The net energy gained is still 0, regardless of what re-adds the potential.

Ofcourse there are anomalies, there always are and there always have been. And this what we have to explore in depth. Perhaps gravity-based potential energy is somehow "lead out" (Tseung's Theory) of the system by the ball.

Just my two cents.

[psychopath]

That is interesting but I have a hard time believing in "conservative forces". Here is why:

If you let a magnet be attracted to another one and it moves, it moves. Nature doesn't "know" that you might separate the magnets again. The magnet actually moves, it doesn't "just" move(or teleport), it actually passes all those points between the destinations and disrupts other things.

That's just my opinion anyway.

Also, I want to know the specific technical problems people have been having with SMOTs. Not a general problem such as the law of thermodynamics, but what problems people actually keeep encountering.

ps By the way, many probably think that by creating a magnet you store energy in it, and this eventually is used up. This is wrong. The energy you put in making a magnet is used up in aligning the domains, so you sort of let the domains "let out" the energy rather than put it in yourself.

Also, electromagnetism IS energy. Electromagnetism consists of photons, and these photons are energy. Or you can look at it as waves, and then the frequency is proprtional to its energy.

[Dyamios]

And thats the heuristic many people seem to be stuck on:

Whilst yes, metal objects and other magnets do move towards other magnets, the energy gained MUST be put back into the system (as potential) at some point in time. And thats the catch. Nature doesn't know nor does it care when you pull the ball away from the magnet, but only cares that eventually it must be (or until the universe implodes/explodes or ball&magnet are vaporized or something).

Yes in theory you could make a magnetic generator by continually supplying steel balls to a magnetic field to which they are attracted, but eventually the field will become saturated and you will run out of room to put more balls.

Think of magnets as a "credit card" for energy. You can take energy out of the bank now, but eventually you'll have to pay it back (in the form of potential).

And that's what its conservative. You can gain energy temporarily, but in order for that energy gained to be considered a net gain, it will have to be more than the energy required to remove the object from the magnetic field.

And this is what people struggle with their whole lives, trying to figure out a loophole. There very well may be, but its most likely not going to be simple, or it would already have been discovered and exploited. Sure there may be little energy gains here and there, but they would measure only very little, and be insignificant in practical applications.


As for why people have problems with SMOTs: just like with any other fickety analog device, they must be tuned properly. They're generally not something you can just whip together willy nilly. Usually some math goes into it and precision machining usually helps too.

[Dyamios]

You can not misconstrue electromagnetic raditaion with electromagnetic fields.

Radiation, like you said, *is* energy. It can do work, and it is not conservative. Photons are quanta of this energy, and must be created from some source: excited electrons moving down energy levels. These electrons cannot excite themselves out of nothing. Some energy must be given to them in order for them to be able to jump and fall energy levels.


Magnetic fields, on the other hand, are merely the result of the orbits and rotation of the electrons themselves. In permanent magnets, it is a static field, as the electrons in the material are all aligned to a specific domain (rotation), in which they aren't readily changed. They do NOT emit photons or quanta of energy in any form. They merely interact with the fields produced by other electrons with similar or different domains. This interaction IS conservative in its entirety.


You cannot misconstrue these two dramatically different concepts. The term electromagnetism refers to a collection of different concepts and theories, not just electromagnetic radiation.


Also, the idea that "energy" is "used up" in permanent magnets is technically true, but also very false. The domains of the magnet will tend to become misaligned and the magnetic will become degaussed. This only occurs when there are repeated interactions with other magnetic fields, and happens very slowly. When you make the magnets, the energy used to make them isn't "stored" in the magnet itself. The electromagnetic field used to align the electron rotations of the magnetic materials does not lose energy in this interaction. It merely forces the electrons to change their rotation. The energy is used in this procedure because in their nature, electromagnets expend energy, whether they are interacting with other magnetic fields or materials or not. The amount of energy an electromagnet consumes is not dependent on the environment, but on the energy supplied to the magnet. Therefore the very idea that permanent magnets themselves store energy is patently *false*.