Waldens inertial drive is an optical illusion

[CuriousChris]

Hi All I am new here.

Sorry my first post is a bit of a downer, I have recently decided I wanted to try and create a reactionless drive or inertial drive as its often called, in fact I prefer the latter.

Of course I did my due diligence and searched over many patents. I came accross a thread here talking about waldens inertial drive
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6387.5

I hadn't heard of that one so immediately took a look at the patent.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20080168862.pdf

At first I thought wow so ingenious, so simple, an offset axis creating an ellipse where the inactive load travels a shorter path in the same time as the active load. therefore it must travel slower than the active load and by that virtue the active load must have greater inertial value.

It wasn't until later that night lying in bed thinking about how to construct my own device that it hit me.

Wait a sec! The path the weights follow is a circle not the ellipse that it appears to follow. the offset axis makes it look like an ellipse, but if you ignore (cover the axis and arms with a white sheet of paper if you cant imagine it) you will see the weights travel an exactly circular path.
Therefore the centrifugal force is equal in all directions.
Therefore the device creates exactly nil thrust.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news to anyone that was holding out hope that this invention may have been for real.

If the inventor claims that it passes the pendulum test then he must be thinking of another pendulum (it may make a great weight to hang on a pendulum and use to regulate a big clock) but it will not exert a force in only one direction. any claim that it produces thrust or unidirectional force is a total fallacy.

If you then say what about his other 'embodiments' then I am afraid they are all the same just a little more confusing to decipher.

Anyway back to my research...

CC


P.S. inertial thrusters are not antigravity devices any more than a rocket is an antigravity device.

[FredWalter]

Yes, the path that the weights follow is a circle.

However the offset axis results in constantly changing velocity and acceleration vectors, which results in a constantly changing force vector.

Do the math, eh?

The question is, does the force vector cancel out over one full revolution.

[CuriousChris]

The illusion is because when looking at it we automatically cut the circle at the pivot point. It looks like there are two arcs, one longer than the other. Therefore for the masses to travel over these two arcs one must go faster then the other.

This is NOT the case, the curvature of both arcs are of course identical.

It may look like the angular velocity changes but it doesn't. Because both masses are always in line they MUST both be traveling at the same velocity otherwise one would start to catch up to the other.

The masses don't have a changing velocity in respect to each other or the supporting structure.

Don't get me wrong I am convinced Inertial Drives can be done. I am close to building my own which will either prove or disprove my own theories. Hence why I looked at as many patents and ideas as I could find.

I do think it is important that we report when we believe a claim is in fact false and why it is. Otherwise people devote too much time and resources following a line of enquiry which can only fail.

[FredWalter]

It may look like the angular velocity changes but it doesn't.

Force/velocity/accelleration are based on the center of rotation *not* the center of the circle that is used to constrain the paths of the weights.

The center of rotation is offset from the center of the circle that is used to constrain the paths of the weights.

The angular velocity changes w.r.t. the center of rotation.

Do the math.

[CuriousChris]

I really screwed that up didn't I

I answered too quickly and couldn't remember much of my original reasoning.

It wasn't until I lay in bed and thought, "You Idiot!" (about myself)

So I decided to review it again. If it did work then we should see it in use already. We don't and the obvious answer is because it doesn't work.

So why doesn't it?

It didn't take long for me to work it out.

Firstly most inertial drives that use varying speeds of the mass or masses to provide the kinetic energy, use a weight propelled at speed to generate the 'main' force, then return the weight to the start point at a slower speed.

What they fail to realise is that the weight at slower speed may have less kinetic energy, but its acting for (much) longer therefore the total kinetic energy is exactly the same as the weight at higher speed for a shorter duration. the two vector forces thus cancel out.

The good news is, due to the off centre pivot point this is not happening here.

The bad news is, due to the off centre pivot point, during a portion of one full cycle you have two periods where both weights are on the same side of the true center of the circle. This means both weights are exerting force in the opposite direction of what is actually wanted.

My guess is that the summation of these vector forces will result in a net vector force of zero. See the attached image.

Please feel free to "do the math" and prove me wrong.

CC