Magnet Myths and Misconceptions

[MileHigh]

The ram pump is just a form of transformer.  Large amounts of low-pressure water can be converted into smaller amounts of high-pressure water.  Big deal.

It's a phenomenon observed on the forums all the time.  Simple ordinary things are believed to be over unity devices by ignorant or misinformed people.

[MileHigh]

Wow you are now the most silly person on ou.com! I am totally gob smacked at your stupidity!

Look in the mirror.

[MileHigh]

The server is totally flaky, I am assuming that other people are experiencing the blackouts.  I have lost a handful of postings because I forget to put them in my copy/paste buffer before clicking the button.

[allcanadian]

@EMJ
A few thoughts concerning the DWFTTW and the SMOT concepts.
In both cases the critics stuck in their own personal flavor of mediocrity have said something cannot work because of certain laws however these laws were always applied in there most basic sense to justify an opinion. That is the DWFTTW concept cannot work because the force on an object from the wind decreases as the velocity of the object increases thus if the object reaches the same speed as the wind there can be no applied force. It is all common sense that it cannot go faster than the wind and must be a perpetual mobile in violation of natural law. Now did you see what just happened here?, they applied the most basic form of the law to a rather complex concept they did not understand to justify their opinion.

The SMOT is really no different because according to the critics it is just like a metal spring and we all know how springs act don't we?. Why it is all common sense and the same laws which apply to a simple spring must also apply to the SMOT and if it could work then it must also be a perpetual mobile in violation of natural law. Again we have a very strange scenario whereby the critics have applied the most basic form of the law to a complex system they may not fully understand.

What is not always apparent, the good part, is that if we actually listen to the critics sometimes their misguided thoughts to justify their own opinion can offer real insight. For instance they believe the SMOT is just like a simple spring and nothing more or it may magically morph into a mythical perpetual mobile. However the inverse to their thoughts is that we want a system which can never act like a spring. You see they have just given us an answer to the single biggest problem we may encounter and under no circumstances can the system act like a simple spring or it cannot work.

Which raises the question how do we build a magnetic system which can never act like a simple spring?. Why if it were me I would look for non-linear relationships such as a spring which becomes weaker with one polarity (incoming magnet) and stronger with another polarity (outgoing magnet). Or a material which changes it's magnetic properties but only under certain specific conditions which we might control or a material which causes the field to move abruptly from one area to the next under certain conditions. I mean the critics have opened up endless possibilities due to their own indifference to the problem which they obviously have no idea how to solve... thanks critics.
It's really quite simple and in many cases we should simply do the opposite of what they are telling us.

AC

[NoBull]

And would be irreversible without remagnetizing the magnet,

Yes

and would require an _input_ of energy to heat the magnet.

In the case of using the heat to free the domains - yes.  Let's neglect the magnetocaloric effect and heat recovery for now*
...but in case of fragmenting the magnet - no.

So you have a situation where energy is input to magnetize the PM, then energy is input to heat it past the Curie point to demagnetize it....  does this sound like an efficient process to you? 

No.
This example was not to illustrate the efficiency of heating up the magnet to release its magnetic energy.
...but rather to illustrate that the forces of chaos will release it if given a chance to act.

Don't forget that the induced voltage is proportional to the time rate of change of the change in magnetization.

...but in an ideal coil the induced current does not depend on this rate of change and neither does the induced electric energy.
Indeed, the induced voltage does depend on the rate of change of flux, but that is useful only for non-shorted coils where this voltage is accessible for measurement.

So to get anything much out of the solenoid you have to have all your domains flipping within a short period of time.

Well, it would be more precise to write that the domains would have to release their energy faster than the resistance would dissipate it away.  In a superconducting coil that time would be infinite and in a resistive coil that time would have to shorter that a quarter of the L/R time constant.

In the situation you describe I doubt if you could reverse the orientation of the two magnets, or half-magnets, by pulsing the external solenoid.

I assume that you are referring to the macro mechanical system that I posted.
Well we would need an experiment to confirm that.

As you said, once the magnet-halves have flipped so they are in mutual attraction, very little of their fields "leak" out, so what will the pulsed solenoid's field be acting upon?

I would think that unless multiple pairs of magnets formed a circle (like a toroid) then there would be still some fringing fields in one pair of magnets for an energized coil to grab onto.  Another arguments for this possibility is that ferrimagnetic materials also are composed of many antiparallel magnetic dipoles yet an external H field is able to grab them and rotate them somehow.  Yes, these domains are much smaller than those two macro magnets, but why should that matter?

So you have to put energy in to "c o c k" the system, then when you release whatever is holding it in the cocked state, the solenoid recovers the energy that you put in in the first place.

Yes, the "cocked" magnet pair could be released effortlessly by e.g. pulling a locking pin

This may be relatively efficient except for the inevitable electrical losses, just as the ordinary "cogging" of a rotor magnet passing a core is relatively energy-neutral except for eddy current losses and bearing wobble, etc.

Yes the electrical losses would be inversely proportional to the speed of the process.
I think 80% efficiency would be a good result.

It also has nothing to do with storing and recovering energy by magnetizing and demagnetizing permanent magnets!

It does a little, but I admit the process is much closer to magnetizing and demagnetizing soft ferrimagnetic materials.
Note that this demagnetization occurs spontaneously in soft ferrites. Here is what Sparks thinks about it:

I see the destruction of a magnetic field as an input in energy from whatever is driving the entropy of the Universe. 

Your comparison of this process to the alignment and de-alignment of domains is a real stretch, I think.

Why?  Don't the magnetization directions of these little domains change similarly to a bunch of pivoting magnets?
The biggest difference seems to be the scale of these magnetic dipoles.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* The Carnot cycle is not my favorite subject for a conversation.