powerunlimited, I couldn't agree with you more, very well said and good experiments.

One question though, were you loading your grinder mechanically or was it near full speed already?

Anyway obviously I do not believe it's a magnetic field at work.

To Aether 22:
I bought the ryobi grinder at home depot and removed all of the things wheels ect its a bare motor except for a plastic wheel with holes part of  the optical tach and thats a very very tiny load.
No addtional load was applied,plasic wheel on one end bare shaft on other end ,the variac was adjusted to make the motor run slow but stable,since in a lot of experiments that Thane has done the motor is run at a low speed by adjusting the variac,motor speed was not effected by a strong magnet near the bare shaft  i used a ceramic magnet.I use the laminated part of a  refrigerator fan motor  with the moving part removed pluged into the 120ac voltage, i also put the open part where the ac field is strongest directly on the shaft no effect
now the motor speed tends to drift ,not accelerate, but i made the rpm as stable as possible no effect.The ryobi motor is very shielded as far as construction goes.My conclusion is no magnetic field or ac magnetic field effects this motor at the bare shaft so at two feet away forget it as in videos 1,2. Now to the non believers because a ac magnetic field  or static magnetic field has no effect on the ryobi motor this does not mean Thanes device doesn't work only that what gets to the motor isn't a magnetic field.

Quote from: powerunlimited on March 08, 2008, 06:03:09 AM
To Aether 22:
I bought the ryobi grinder at home depot and removed all of the things wheels ect its a bare motor except for a plastic wheel with holes part of  the optical tach and thats a very very tiny load.
No addtional load was applied,plasic wheel on one end bare shaft on other end ,the variac was adjusted to make the motor run slow but stable,since in a lot of experiments that Thane has done the motor is run at a low speed by adjusting the variac,motor speed was not effected by a strong magnet near the bare shaft  i used a ceramic magnet.I use the laminated part of a  refrigerator fan motor  with the moving part removed pluged into the 120ac voltage, i also put the open part where the ac field is strongest directly on the shaft no effect
now the motor speed tends to drift ,not accelerate, but i made the rpm as stable as possible no effect.The ryobi motor is very shielded as far as construction goes.My conclusion is no magnetic field or ac magnetic field effects this motor at the bare shaft so at two feet away forget it as in videos 1,2. Now to the non believers because a ac magnetic field  or static magnetic field has no effect on the ryobi motor this does not mean Thanes device doesn't work only that what gets to the motor isn't a magnetic field.

I think you need a load, but since it was running slow then you had load however tiny, so yes you bust pretty effectively that any claim that a normal magnetic field causes the effect.

I think we can see why Thane had to go to such lengths to get his motor to speed up slightly in the test where it actually did respond to a magnet when the effect with the generator is so powerful and robust.

So I am going to stop saying 'back-emf' and say aether/whatever instead when referring to what must be moving from (likely) gen to motor.

Quote from: OilBarren on March 07, 2008, 10:37:20 PM
Polar:
"The energy stored in the rotor is NOT "free" - it is supplied by the motor, which in turn is supplied by the electrical power input. In addition, for some of the experiments, the power to help the rotor get up to speed is supplied by Thane's hand".

OK - NOW I'VE HEARD EVERYTHING!

Thanks for setting me straight.
Thane

No problem, Thane, it's often good to have another pair of eyes looking at the results because it's easy to miss something. The key point that I think you need to work with is that the energy stored in the rotor does not change in the steady state so it's irrelevant how it got there. The fact that you had to get it up to speed by boosting it with your hand, as shown in the video, may appear to some to be "cheating" but it isn't a problem at all because the start-up phase isn't relevant: what's important is the steady-state. The proof of this effect can only be established by making measurements at steady-state, measuring the power in vs the power out and comparing them under different conditions.

I've looked at this from a theoretical viewpoint and I've come up with a hypothesis which maybe someone could test with a real motor/generator setup. I am assuming that the motor that's being used is a synchronous AC motor. The hypothesis is as follows:

A synchronous motor runs at a fixed rpm which depends on the frequency of the AC supply (and is more or less independent of load). If that frequency is changed, the motor speed will change accordingly to re-establish synchronism. Attaching the "generator" device to the shaft sets up an alternating magnetic field in the shaft of the motor, at a frequency which is a multiple of the speed of the motor (because there are multiple magnets/coils on the generator). This perturbs the alternating field in the motor, delivering an effect equivalent to using a higher frequency AC supply. In an attempt to re-establish synchronism, the motor speeds up.

There are several ways that immediately come to mind in which this hypothesis could be tested on the setups that are already in place. Comments?