I have been reading about a lot of different devices and ideas and am trying to take it all in. I have been thinking about the effect of using two concepts in a generator.

Consider first this animation: http://www.westfield.no/GravityEngine.avi.
Now, replace the right hand "elevator" with an Adsitt Spiral Ramp or similar SMOT devices.
Videos here were helpful to me: http://www.theverylastpageoftheinternet.com/menu/adsitt.htm.

Test #10 as well as some of the other movies (particulary the one with the stairs called "section2") seems to indicate that a roller can climb upwards from a starting position a few inches from the first magnet (from state of little or no inertia). If we can raise a roller or a spherical ball/magnet to a certain height using a magnetic spiral and let it fall as indicated by the gravity engine, then at the bottom it might roll a bit on a slope and get caught once again in the magnetic spiral. However, we have extracted some work from it turning a generator on the way down. Any thoughts on this setup?

Do you believe that the gravity engine would work if constructed?

In theory, the Gravity Engine would operate at exactly 100% unity at best, with no otherwise-unnecessary force available for turning the generator, I'm afraid. And then when you build it in real life, friction comes in and screws up everything. Now, there ARE methods to eliminate all friction entirely, which would allow us to produce an exact-unity machine. Which is a step in the right direction.

Don had the best of intentions when he did those first experiments but he was incorrect on the Adsitt ramp.  The only stored energy was when the ball or magnet is introduced into the pathway.  He understands were he went wrong.

Rich

>>Now, there ARE methods to eliminate all friction entirely, which would allow us to produce an exact-unity machine. Which is a step in the right direction.

If you really can eliminate all friction, you are where you are going to get.  You might as well quit spending more time on it.  (I don't understand the fascination with trying to disprove simple physics)

In my opinion time would be better spent trying to come up with ways of utilizing energy that is really there in better ways.

If I were going to make a 'perpetual motion' machine, I would at least add an antenna or some odd looking appendage to harness some unseen force, so it wouldn't look like I was completely ignorant of the fundamental laws of physics.  No arrangement of magnets, weights, levers, or clever mechanisms is ever going to achieve perpetual motion.  So, put an antenna on it to harness the great unseen force - maybe that will work.

Perpetual motion would require adding energy to the system (not gravity or magnets - they don't add energy to the system without requiring that energy to be put back).  To add energy to the system would require a source for that energy.  Why not harness solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy, or whatever?

If you drop something, you have to lift it to drop it again.  If you stick something to a magnet you have to pull it away from the magnet.  It always takes at least as much effort to lift the object or pull the object away from a magnet as you gained going the other direction.  This doesn't seem so hard to grasp.  (easy to deny, it seems)

In other words, we will always be the same place we have been for the last 2000 years on perpetual motion - "almost there".  On the other hand, things like heat pumps will be actually out there doing real work, leveraging energy that is already there in more efficient ways than before.

Making a car engine 5% more efficient would be of greater benefit to mankind than to have a perpetual motion machine that would just turn itself, but no more.  The perpetual motion machine would just sit there and do enough to turn itself, and no more - no real benefit to mankind.  An engine that was 5% more efficient could reduce fuel consumption by 5% - a measurable, beneficial thing.  I would rather waste my time improving a heat pump or a combustion engine than to sit around trying to disprove the laws of physics.