M Drive reactionless drive invented by me

[M Drive Inventor]

How many days does it take to test the proposition that the machine pushes against the track in order to move forward? I've suggested two variants of a simple test of this, that a dedicated experimenter _interested in the truth_ could perform in an afternoon.

At first you had my interest, now you have my attention. (And it's not like I ignored you, I'm just very, very lazy. )

I thought I had to mount wheels along the entire track, and have something hard under those wheels (as my apartment floor is pretty soft, and things will sink down into the plastic floor), which would be pretty cumbersome and somewhat expensive (I figure at least $120 in bearings and materials). Can you tell me more about how marbles and/or glass can be used? I'm all ears here if it only means spending a few "bucks" (I'm Swedish).

Also I'd like your opinion on my other idea to prove it's the gyroscopes responsible for the propulsion. It may not be as good as yours though, but it's free to perform as I already have the materials, so why not, right? Basically, I can set up the gyros so that they can move more or less identically without them spinning (they spin at several thousand RPM). They will jerk backwards and forwards as the scaffold rotates around. The wheels will even 'skip' and the wagon shift about like in the clips.

This will not produce propulsion though. It'll literally stay in one place and simply display normal Newtonian physics.

Then, without making any cuts in the video, I spin up the gyroscopes, move a couple of springs, and start the experiment over. According to physics, this should not affect anything, so if it moves forward this time it should raise some eyebrows, as that simply shouldn't be.

I can do this experiment in conjunction with yours.

[TinselKoala]

You take a piece of _plate glass_ of suitable size and place it on your floor. You level this plate precisely, using an accurate level like a machinist's level, and shims underneath the plate. Then you strew a handful of marbles or other precise spheres like ball-bearing balls across this first piece of glass. They should be far enough apart so that they don't interfere with each other while rolling. Plate glass, also called "float glass",  is made by a process that produces a very smooth and level surface and sheets of constant thickness. You may be able to find large scraps at your local glass supplier; it is used for tabletops, for example.

You then take a second piece of plate glass, preferably ballasted (use modelling clay or whatever)  so it weighs the same as your Device Under Test (DUT), and lay that down on top of the marbles or balls. This provides a pair of smooth surfaces that are nearly frictionless and that can slide/roll freely with respect to each other.

Then you place your DUT on top of the top plate and turn it on. Using a camera on a tripod, you look at the motion of the DUT and the top plate of glass. A fixed pointer, mounted off the moving parts and looking at a reference mark, is useful to track the actual motions of the parts.

If your device is truly reactionless and does not push against the substrate, the top plate of glass will not move at all and the DUT will travel as it does in your videos. However, if the top plate of glass DOES move, at all, in any direction... then it is being pushed against by the DUT. This of course would mean that the DUT is not reactionless.

What I predict will happen is that the DUT and the top glass plate will move in opposite directions, and the _total_ Center of Mass of the DUT+top plate will remain in the same position, or will oscillate or orbit around that same position, and there will be no net travel of the system.

The reason for ballasting the top plate so that it has the same mass as the DUT should be obvious: Conservation of Momentum predicts that the motions of the DUT and the top plate will be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction in that case. If the glass is much lighter than the DUT it will move farther, and if the plate is much heavier it will move less. And if the plate is fixed to the ground, as your track is... then it won't _appear_ to move at all, but of course momentum is still conserved since you are pushing against the Earth itself, and you won't see that move very much.


As to your second part... again, you are making assumptions and asserting them as if they were fact, when they aren't.

Then, without making any cuts in the video, I spin up the gyroscopes, move a couple of springs, and start the experiment over. According to physics, this should not affect anything

No, you have changed the geometry, the amount of stored energy, and the distribution of forces in your apparatus. According to the real physics I learned in school and on the bench, this can make a huge difference in the behaviour of any apparatus. The very fact that your manipulation does indeed affect the motion of the apparatus proves that your assumption is wrong, but it does not prove that gyroscopes can produce unidirectional reactionless motion.

[M Drive Inventor]

in any direction

If the plate twists slightly (clockwise or counter-clockwise), but does not move backwards it should be satisfactory, right? I can't put it into words exactly, but I believe 'action-reaction' is conserved separately from that phenomenon. We're dealing with gyroscopes after all. They tend to twist stuff around.

As to your second part... again, you are making assumptions and asserting them as if they were fact, when they aren't. No, you have changed the geometry, the amount of stored energy, and the distribution of forces in your apparatus. According to the real physics I learned in school and on the bench, this can make a huge difference in the behaviour of any apparatus. The very fact that your manipulation does indeed affect the motion of the apparatus proves that your assumption is wrong, but it does not prove that gyroscopes can produce unidirectional reactionless motion.

Oh sure, I'm not denying I've changed a lot of things, just not in relation to the stick-slip phenomenon. What I meant with "According to physics, this should not affect anything" was simply that reactionless drives should be impossible. Spinning up the gyroscopes shouldn't affect anything in terms or propulsion.

Making a certain motion using normal weights on a wagon shouldn't be able to produce propulsion. Spinning up those weights and making a practically identical motion shouldn't change that. It should still just stay in one spot and display normal Newtonian physics.

Your experiment sounds reasonably simple to perform though. I don't know what "plate glass" is called in Swedish, but I'll look it up. I have bearings I can remove the balls from, and I suppose I only need 2 pieces of glass large enough to hold the machine. Should be simple enough.

[M Drive Inventor]

Hm.. one thing though. The bearings, even if mounted directly on top of a very flat piece of glass, will still have some friction in them. The machine can't produce propulsion unless the wheels move backwards and forwards. The small amount of friction left in the bearings (I've removed all lubricant from them to minimize this) will possible move the piece of glass. Though, that's true in both directions. The wheels will move back, possibly dragging the glass with it slightly, then move forward, and drag the piece of glass with it again.

So just have that in mind. If the piece of glass ends up having moved more forward instead of backward as you predicted, it shouldn't be a problem.

[TinselKoala]

Hm.. one thing though. The bearings, even if mounted directly on top of a very flat piece of glass, will still have some friction in them. The machine can't produce propulsion unless the wheels move backwards and forwards. The small amount of friction left in the bearings (I've removed all lubricant from them to minimize this) will possible move the piece of glass. Though, that's true in both directions. The wheels will move back, possibly dragging the glass with it slightly, then move forward, and drag the piece of glass with it again.

So just have that in mind. If the piece of glass ends up having moved more forward instead of backward as you predicted, it shouldn't be a problem.

Now it appears that you are arguing that the friction IS sufficient to couple momentum between the substrate and the DUT, which is my point exactly.  However, your predicted motion (both moving in same direction) is clearly opposite from my prediction (both moving in opposite directions). So it should be easy to tell them apart by doing the experiment.

If the top plate moves _at all_ it is moving by reaction from your device. What else could be moving it? Twisting, turning, or linear translation/oscillation is irrelevant, really, since nothing can move the top plate in any direction at all, except by reaction from your device.
You are right that angular momentum and linear momentum are separately conserved, but reaction is reaction, whether it is rotational or linear.

Google tells me "planglas" or "spegelglas" might be Swedish for "plate glass".