Magnet motor using repeling magnets (or radial magnets if availbale).

[Liberty]

I speculate that you will find that the attractive force will be dominant.  Guessing that the rotor magnet will attract toward the outer ring and also to inner ring rather than resulting in a rotary force.  Should be a fun experiment though. 

In my experience, if a magnet can find any way to just sit there and lock, it will.   

[broli]

To bring this thread a bit up to date.

Attached is the electromagnet version, and as you can see it looks like the principle behind a dc motor. So if you can accept that a dc motor works why would this then not work??? You'd be denying the very fact that a dc motor works. Also Idea of using repelling magnets is attached + simulation of how the field would look like of a single cross section.

[Low-Q]

If a magnetic field never experience a change in field in front and the back, it will not go anywhere. The discmagnets will never have this change during one revolution. With a closed loop you curve the path in the same time as the rotormagnet are suppose to rotate too. The thing is that the rotor magnet is allways angular to the tangens of the circle, and therefor it never "experience" to rotate. So therefor this configuration will not work.

Br.

Vidar

[broli]

Use the Lorentz force law and imagine the magnet being a loop like illustrated. Now tell me what would happen. Like I said, this is already proved in millions of machines we call DC motors. Magnetic dipoles and electric dipoles are two different beasts. Using this same concept on electric charges would give no rotation. Because the forces are radially to the center of rotation, while magnetic dipoles give rise to the Lorentz force which is perpendicular to the center of rotation.

I'm just using something I've never seen used before, that is a radial magnetic field.

[Low-Q]

Use the Lorentz force law and imagine the magnet being a loop like illustrated. Now tell me what would happen. Like I said, this is already proved in millions of machines we call DC motors. Magnetic dipoles and electric dipoles are two different beasts. Using this same concept on electric charges would give no rotation. Because the forces are radially to the center of rotation, while magnetic dipoles give rise to the Lorentz force which is perpendicular to the center of rotation.

I'm just using something I've never seen used before, that is a radial magnetic field.

A regular DC motor is in fact an AC motor in the rotor because of the different connectors for each coil. The brushes will as the rotor spins, have contact with different coils all the time, so the magnetic force is on the same place and push the rotor away.

br.

Vidar