@amo: My last set of buoyancy experiments on YouTube appears to have falsified the hypothesis contained in your last paragraph, at least for a pod and its single surrounding ringwall.

The inverted Travis effect gives what it takes, and takes what it gives, minus losses. The addition of multiple U-chambers and more risers .... how can this change things? You can imagine my single riser and ringwall as a black box, call it a "pod" and build another Zed around it..... and you still are not going to be breaking even. Somewhere there has to be a mechanism for excess pressure or volume... this is the only way that "lift" could remain, or that anything of the "input" could be recycled and used in another Zed.
And it is simply logically impossible to have extra volume or pressure, with your moving parts back in the same starting position, unless you have created matter. This is the same thing as creating energy, really, but it's a lot harder for Koalas to swallow when it's laid out so bluntly as that.

I think the first time anyone sees one of these working it's going to be like staring at one of the neverending staircases.
I haven't yet - and possibly never will; but even seeing it happen won't make it any easier to believe...

Dale

I did wrap up my testing on 1U last night and glued in the second riser / retainer pair - barring leaks... I should have a bit of comparison info in a day or 2. I did focus up pressure testing rather than trying to measure volume and lift, the results were a little surprising.

The entire floating weight was 18.5 pounds, the volume being transferred was 3 lbs.
I could lift at 14.5 to 15 water column inches and sink at 13.

Just doesn't seem like a lot of input to cycle almost 20 lbs, an inch up and down.

Dale

@webby: I mean just what I said. For there to be any available "extra" pressure or volume, it has to come from somewhere. Think about it! For pressure to increase over and above what is allowed by volume changes, there has to be something... matter which takes up space... increasing. The only way that I can see for anything like extra pressure or volume to come OUT of the system is for matter to be created WITHIN the system. Do you find this hard to believe? Yet it is the same thing as claiming that extra work comes out of the system.


@wildew: Welcome to the Hydrostatic Paradox. Good work, keep going .... any chance for a new video?

Thanks for the update Wildew.

We can see that as you add layers, it is adding to the "virtual mass" displacement, with some of that displacement being counted multiple times from previous layers.

Hoping the fun starts soon!

Tom