Roll on the 20th June

[dirt diggler]

personally, I like the way Archer talks, it reminds me of a regular day at work- or messing around with my never ending projects.  IMO, say it however you want to get your point across,  this is the real world, and some of us like to fuckin swear when we are skining our knuckles working on "stuff"

[fastbreeder]

personally, I like the way Archer talks

It's not his obscenities that are the problem.  It's that for all his ad hominem Newton-bashing, he lacks a grasp of it himself.  His fundamental flaw is that he doesn't understand the difference between linear and rotational motion.  They're very different, but have analgous concepts.
Linear               Rotational
--------------------------------------
mass                moment of inertia
velocity              rotational velocity
force                  torque
momentum        angular momentum
kinetic energy     rotational energy
center of mass    center of rotation

He talks about lever systems with varying weights and lever lengths, but doesn't realize that what he's doing is describing a system where torque on one side of the center of rotation must balance torque in the opposite rotational direction on the other side.

He says 'torque isn't momentum or velocity', or something to that effect.  No, it isn't.  Torque is the rotational analog of force - it's proportional to both force applied, and also the distance from the center of rotation.  This invalidates a lot of his 'gedanken experiments'.  They could be described with the equations of rotional motion, and Kevin could point out where they break down.  Instead, we get ad hominem attacks and an onslaught of question marks.

Magnetism is not completely known - but a lot of the stuff about rotational motion that he criticizes have been tested and verified over and over.  If he intends to invalidate them, how hard would it be to identify which aspects he thinks are wrong?  Because describing a rotational system with linear terms is a poor strawman.

[Sprocket]

Personally, I don't care if Archer ruffles a few of the Newtonian's feathers, he has afterall not shyed away from saying that he believes Newton is wrong.  He is also correct in citing that the very same mind-set had "proven conclusively" that heavier-than-air flight was impossible, despite the Wright brothers having been routinely disproving this in the only way that really mattered, for years before 'official' recognition.

So if Archer does indeed manage to pull this off, and prove it in the only way that really matters, then all of the Newtonian rhetoric is as worthless as the 'heavier-than-air' proof was...

What really is perplexing is the number of raw-Newtonians that post in OU - they supposedly already 'know' that OU is impossible, yet expend huge amounts time and energy here, 'educating' the rest of us - why is that?  But it's when they start raising grammar/spelling issues (probably 'cos they can't reasonably claim AQ is doing it for the money) that they start to look increasingly desperate...

[zerotensor]

Well said, fastbreeder.  I suspect that he doesn't even want to understand.  Oh well.

[Gustav22]

From my viewpoint one of Archer's most important contributions was to draw my attention to the concept of "sliding rods" or "displacable wheel spokes".

To push these rods (fulcrums) towards 1'o clock in order to obtain overbalance and rotation, he uses electromagnets which are mounted at approx. 7'o clock.

I personally  am convinced that this will work but am trying to understand better the underlying principle involved.

I found:
If we don't mount permanent magnets at the ends of the rods but mount wheels instead, the rods can be guided by an arch shaped track (indicated in black in the attached diagram) and there will be no electromagnets needed for the shifting.

The attached diagram shows 1 sliding rod (in three positions).
The rod must be manually displaced into the blue start position. The right (overbalanced) side will fall down and revolve around the 'central'  hub. The rod is guided by the wheels at it's ends which will will run on the black track.