Roll on the 20th June

[JohnGalt_USA]

Watch him get murdered on June 19th.

He seems like the crazy type that would commit suicide on June 19th just to spite us all.

[zerotensor]

...
These are two entirely different scenerios.  a kid trying to lift a car with a pulley,
vs.a kid sitting on the end of a long teeter-totter lifting the car with ease.
...

ahem...

If your kid gets a LONG (and rigid) teeter-totter, then my kid gets a block and tackle. <edit: and lead boots>

The lever only allows one to trade force for distance, same with the pulley.  The amount of work is the same regardless.  The "effort" is reduced, but the work (energy) stays the same, with or without the help of these simple machines.

[zerotensor]

Example::  support a bicycle on its side, and wrap the weighted string  around the axle. and let it spin the wheel
now turn the bicycle upright and attach the weight to the top of the wheel and let it go.

"wrap the string and let it spin the wheel":  The string plays out, but the wheel keeps turning.  The weight is lifted back to its starting position, and the wheel stops.  The weight once again begins to rotate the wheel (this time in the opposite direction), and the cycle continues.  In the absence of friction it will oscillate like this perpetually.

"attach the weight to the top (12:01) of the wheel and let it go":  The wheel gains speed until the mass is at the bottom, then it slows as the weight is carried back up to the top (11:59), where the wheel stops.  The mass now causes the wheel to rotate in the opposite direction, and the cycle continues.

Same overall behavior.

[badassdjbynight]

I fear no one will be helping me with this problem (see picture) any time soon.

zero.. I'm glad someone is here who can explain and debate what I've been thinking but didn't know how to express.

Let's take the small weight added to the top of heavy ballanced wheel to make it start spinning.  Starting at rest you do have to add enough weight to overcome friction and make the wheel start turning.  If you have it attached to a generator you have that means passing magnets across coils to generate electricity... magnetic friction.  I think archer is smarter than me, but I think some of his suppositions are incorrect.  Yeah, a heavy ballanced wheel if you get it spinning fast will have inertia (or is it momentum) and torque (which is newtonian) and will tend to stay in motion and could be difficult to stop because it's a heavy wheel.  So he's on to something in that.

Sliding weights around methods...  you have to look at where they are in relation to the ground at all times.  If you have to take them from 7:00 back up to 1:00 - that's a distance that has to be traveled.  Without an energy source to move them up... gravity will win, sliding weights or not.  So he uses a perm magnet to do it... ok..

His smaller device with the perm magnets sounds interesting and I see why he worried that it would be called a toy.  Ever since I starting following this I thought that it was wrong for engadget to call him crazy.  I also thought that using magnets was a good idea, and hoped that it might work.  I don't know if the device he describes can work or not - hopefully someone here can make it and let us know.  But scale is an issue with magnets.  To make large ones you need electricity.  And as soon as you switch to electromagnets you're basically making a motor.  Attaching a motor to a generator to make perpetual motion can't work unless both are 100% efficient (actually better)... over unity.

Archer IS over unity.  Look how much energy he's gotten out of us compared to what he's put in.  There's your free energy machine.

I think there are a lot of smart people here and archer is certainly one of them.  I think the efforts could be used to make MORE EFFICIENT use of energy.  Lots of energy is wasted all the time.  Inventing ways of harnessing potential energy that no one has though of yet and no one's using is really what we need.  It is so freaking hot in Vegas during the summer and there has to be a way to turn that into enough electricity to cool my house.

Archer I wish you luck.  Sorry to be negative.. now go prove me wrong.

[badassdjbynight]

Example::  support a bicycle on its side, and wrap the weighted string  around the axle. and let it spin the wheel
now turn the bicycle upright and attach the weight to the top of the wheel and let it go.

"wrap the string and let it spin the wheel":  The string plays out, but the wheel keeps turning.  The weight is lifted back to its starting position, and the wheel stops.  The weight once again begins to rotate the wheel (this time in the opposite direction), and the cycle continues.  In the absence of friction it will oscillate like this perpetually.

"attach the weight to the top (12:01) of the wheel and let it go":  The wheel gains speed until the mass is at the bottom, then it slows as the weight is carried back up to the top (11:59), where the wheel stops.  The mass now causes the wheel to rotate in the opposite direction, and the cycle continues.

Same overall behavior.

Unfortunately we live in a world full of friction and decay.  True story: today I saw my grandmother's hands and they looked old and frail, the skin was thin and wrinkled.  Then I looked at my 2 yr olds hands which are young and pink and healthy.  I thought, why can't the aging process just take longer?   But even longer would be too fast.  The problem is that we live in a world that is dying and decaying.  No one and no thing lives forever.  A good pendulum with a heavy weight will go for a very long time, but as soon as you try to harness that energy you introduce friction which will slow it in opposite proportion to the amount of energy you are harnessing.