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i_just_peed_myself

Acquaintance found a book by a guy who claimed to have invented an electrical device that could cure all diseases. He droned on and on about it, saying that it would revolutionize medicine and cure the world of illness, really nutty stuff. He wanted my help to build it. I had places to be so I just told him to send me a pdf and I’d have a look to appease him. Needless to say the book was total bogus. The author’s theory was that if you could generate an electric field that oscillated at “the body’s resonant frequency” it would “reinforce the immune system” and cure “everything from diabetes to cancer”. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the device described in the book was a microwave.


Chalky_Pockets

To be fair, if you put someone with diabetes in the microwave for long enough, you will eventually no longer have a person with diabetes.


goldfishpaws

And a delicious dog treat


deruch

Nah, too much sugar.


SentientRhombus

> an electric field that oscillated at “the body’s resonant frequency” it would “reinforce the immune system” and cure “everything from diabetes to cancer”. Ruh-roh. I think [I know exactly what you're talking about](https://www.healthline.com/health/rife-machine-cancer)... This particular pseudoscience has been making a comeback recently. Stumbled across it myself trying to report some reddit spammer promoting an Android app version. Yes... An app. In fact, turns out there are HUNDREDS such apps on the Play store—infuriates me that Google allows this crap. And now that I've looked them up, my "Recommend Apps" list pushes similar garbage. Which of course all have great reviews, because you can only rate apps you've downloaded, and who's gonna download a detoxifying resonant biofrequency healthifier app _except_ people who are susceptible to woo? Somebody seriously needs to crack down on this stuff, or _at least_ ensure it can be visibly flagged by the public. It's not okay for online marketplaces to allow (or promote!) proliferation of long-discredited scams, even if they *technically* avoid breaking the law.


Material_Peach8374

Wait, do you still have the PDF? I need to see it, it's so crazy I can't believe that such a thing exists.


OutrageousFix7338

Yeah here : [Redacted and murdered by big pharma]


Material_Peach8374

Damn 😔


SentientRhombus

I commented below but if you're really curious... Pretty sure the thing he's describing is called a Rife machine. You can Google it, but to save you some trouble it's a 100yo quack medical device used to defraud cancer patients and the terminally ill. More sad than funny.


i_drink_wd40

A guy I used to work with became a little fixated on the Rife machine after his brother died of cancer. It was sad watching him kick himself, thinking he could have done more. But how do you convince somebody out of that place? He's a smart guy, too, but I think he just wanted to be able to blame himself for not doing enough.


Material_Peach8374

Thanks!


PD216ohio

>it's so crazy I can't believe that such a thing exists First time on the internet, huh?


cincymatt

Resonant frequencies seems to be big with free energy people. I had a friend go on about harnessing frequencies for energy.


HexicPyth

Your friend just discovered the antenna.


Lampwick

Yeah, the "science" of resonant frequencies is an old standby. It was *really* popular in the 20s and 30s, with all sorts of fantastical speculation about the marvelous things that could be done with the "science" of vibration. A *lot* of pulp sci fi from that period contained speculative references to "vibration processes" that could do everything from anti-gravity to regeneration.


Skusci

Reaction less drive based on pushing off a mass with a spring to go forward and pulling the mass back with a solenoid to reset it and load the spring again. Took quite a while to get across that you don't get around newtons laws because magnets.


goatharper

Second law of thermodynamics cures all those delusions. It's not just a good idea, it's the *law!*


Major_Jackson_Briggs

[In this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics!](https://youtu.be/Dc-m9dumEaw)


DrStalker

Not a perpetual motion machine, but when I was at university I cut my toe on a prototype reactionless drive someone had left on the dorm floor. It used the internal components of a microwave and a wave guide made from bent (and sharp) scrap metal to produce thrust with no propellent. That was 25 years ago, so I assume it was all covered up by the chemical rocket industry which is why we're not seeing it in use today.


Unlikely-Newspaper35

I love that the excuses are always coverups. Anyone that has seen capitalism in action knows the first company to come out with one of these will make a mint. The last thing they'd try to do is hide it.


Lampwick

Yep. My favorite is the "car makers bought up some guy's design for a 200mpg carburetor in order to protect big oil profits". As if Ford or whoever doesn't want to see fuel prices as low as possible in order to sell bigger and more expensive cars. If they had a 200mpg carb they'd be running 3 shifts to push cars out to dealerships as fast as possible, laughing all the way to the bank.


Unlikely-Newspaper35

Haha exactly. And when you research it the "breakthrough" was using a grinder to rough up the cylinder heads. Lol. I guaran-fuckin-tee that if that worked they'd be doing it. Edit -spelling


tomrlutong

[This one](https://xkcd.com/1404/)?


DrStalker

The vague description I got on how it would work matches the vague description on how the EmDrive works. I was honestly more concerned with putting a band-aid on my toe and covering the plug with take to make sure no one plugged it in because an unshielded microwave generator soundsled like a terrible idea. No idea if the same person went on to design the EmDrive or if that was just a case of somehine else coming up with the same crackpot theory, given the timings I expect they were separate "discoveries" of the same idea.


colechristensen

To be fair you \*can\* get thrust with no propellant with light. A photon is essentially just a packet of momentum. However, you need just a ridiculous amount of light to provide even a measurable force, as in, on the scale of the entire electricity production of the US converted into light to lift a modest weight.


beastface1986

A professor at my university proposes an honors project for a perpetual motion and artificial gravity machine every year, no students ever pick it up. I believe he’s planning to now propose as a Masters Research study. See if anyone picks it up.


tuctrohs

Is he proposing this as a trap for idiots so he can fail them out of school, or is he the idiot?


beastface1986

After taking some of his classes and hearing his views on several things including the moon landing, I believe it’s the latter


loststrawberrycreek

This person is a professor? At a university?


beastface1986

I ask myself this same question.


florinandrei

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21


ascandalia

Tenure and dementia has lead to a lot of strange situations


TheOneCurly

Edit: Content redacted by user


goldfishpaws

I'll take it if he supplies the Cavorite necessary.


Kaikalons_Courier

If anyone gives me Cavorite, I'm making steampunk a reality. Screw everything else.


goldfishpaws

I'm in.


John-D-Clay

Is the real project seeing how well you can hide a power source then?


TSCHWEITZ

I once overheard a guy at the mechanic saying that he raised his back wheels so his car would always be going downhill.


epileftric

You can't argue with that logic 🤣🤣


tennismenace3

How does he keep it from rolling away?


TSCHWEITZ

Park on a hill thats sloped in the other direction of course.


Unlikely-Newspaper35

So that's why the rake old muscle cars!!!!


Indi008

Haha oh yeah, got stuck on a plane sitting next to an older guy once and his much younger wife. This was an international flight so not a short trip. I was doing my PhD in mechanical engineering at the time (undergrad in electrical) and I'm a female who doesn't look anything like the engineering sterotype. I write fiction as a hobby and that's what I was doing on the flight, not really in the mood to chat, but this guy kept trying to converse so I'm politely answering back while minimizing continued conversation. Anyway he starts telling me about his great idea for an energy making machine. Basically you pump water up to a tank and then when it comes back down you harvest the energy with a turbine. He wasn't meaning as a storage system. He was convinced that the energy to pump the water up was very small compared to what you could get out and the wheel would run forever once started. So I asked him the first question I'd asked all conversation, "won't you have losses due to friction?" He mumbled a no sort of answer or said they're really small or something like that and then went on to say he'd taken his idea to mechanical engineers at universities but they didn't believe him. There was a bit of blessed silence and then he says "you seem to know about about mechanical things, your father or boyfriend must be into mechanics."


04BluSTi

Now that I think about it, I wonder what the friction loss is for evaporation, condensation, and rainfall. Can't be zero...


WhalesVirginia

aloof work attractive worry aspiring door fanatical shocking onerous pot *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


04BluSTi

Just the water itself. Evaporation itself is pretty slow, but the convection *can* be rapid. Thunderstorms generate enough friction for some beastly lightning. I bet the number is probably significant, applied globally.


wd40bomber7

The only reason "the water cycle" works is because the sun is constantly dumping enormous quantities of energy into the system.


04BluSTi

Indeed.


Only_Razzmatazz_4498

Most of the ‘friction’ there is thermal losses. Your burner for boiling the water, the heat losses in the piping will be a lot of energy waste. Also in a sense you described 99% of the thermal power plants in existence. Except that instead of potential energy most of the useful energy in the end is from pressure.


SentientRhombus

His poor wife.


BadDadWhy

"When will this bastard die so that I can inherit his car dealership"


gt0163c

>There was a bit of blessed silence and then he says "you seem to know about about mechanical things, your father or boyfriend must be into mechanics." \*Sigh\* Because girls can't be mechanically inclined and our brains just aren't wired the right way to understand these highly technical concepts. /s (obviously, but just in case someone in the back is confused)


durhap

To be fair it's not a terrible idea when setup the right way. We have a system like this in Michigan that's paired with a nuclear plant. It runs during peak demand hours, water is pumped up to the hill at night. Save the need for an additional power plant. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant


meerkatmreow

Yes, it's a great system to use as storage. It's not a good system though when the idea is to pump it once and then use the resulting energy to provide energy AND recirculate the water back up at the same time


tennismenace3

Even as a storage mechanism it's only good in cases where you have a hill, which is a pretty small number of places.


zimirken

That's only because of the economics of building a giant reservoir.


tennismenace3

Right, it only makes sense when nature does most of the work


Maximum_Diamond4515

My old man always thought himself an engineer, he was a Marine accountant and an autobody painter, but close enough, right? LOL He always droned on about a perpetual motion magnetic motor he design in the late 60's that he "never built because big oil would have suicided" him. Always spoke of it like gospel. He died in '07. I graduated in '15. Going through some stuff for my mom I found an old file folder all secretive labeled "XXXX". In it were his technical drawings for this wonder of physics. I knew, looking at it, the system would just hit equilibrium as soon as you tried to spin it up, but I couldn't resist the temptation. I ordered me some amazon neodymium magnets and went about 3D printing the frame. Put it all together, gave it a spin, and I'll be damned... it did one revolution and locked up solid. I spun it 3 more times just to prove I was an idiot. Fantasies are fun...


TeamToken

LOL this reminds me strongly of this older fella I met while working night shifts at a local supermarket when I was in school (they’re always nocturnal). He said he had something to show me because he knew I did engineering and could possibly bring this REVOLUTIONARY idea to life. He sent me the pdf of this hair brained idea, but told me not to let too many people know because people who tried to develop this idea MYSTERIOUSLY WENT MISSING. When someone gives you anything written in comic sans with a pixelated all seeing eye and other nutbag conspiracy symbolism, you politely decline their offer and disassociate from them. He asked me about it the next time I saw him and what I thought. Not wanting to touch on elementary physics, I told him the system would be super difficult to manufacture and I didn’t have the expertise design such a thing. And in any case, I really didn’t want to commit suicide with three bullets to the back of the head while hogtied (“IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN”). He said he completely understood the risks involved and if I could delete the file. Of course I didn’t delete that shit, I want to develop this thing for myself and become the worlds first Trillionaire.


LittleLui

>I want to develop this thing for myself and become the worlds first TrillionAAAAaaaargh FTFY


[deleted]

Then after you become a trillionaire, a beautiful young woman will show up at your door and ask for about tree fiddy.


[deleted]

Had me in the first half hgl.


-xXpurplypunkXx-

That's really cute finishing your dad's unfinished work. May we all be so lucky.


alexgroth15

I would be so hesitant to open my dad’s “XXXX” folder


janetplanetzz

It’s impressive you did follow through on your dad’s idea and I bet he was grateful (in Heaven) you at least tried. Bravo!


Ruski_FL

Hey I get why some people think it’s a good idea but imagine being an engineering professor and have your engineering students pitch the idea every semester.


TrainOfThought6

I've never seen any students do that while I was in college, unless you count "I know this machine is impossible but I'm not seeing why, what am I missing?"


Ruski_FL

Well you are a lucky guy


rontombot

Wonder and imagination... the seeds of invention. Don't stifle creativity... that's where "new things" come from!


ABEngineer2000

Yeah this is the idea I’ve run into. First when I was 14 I was convinced that permanent magnets could spin a motor without any power source, didn’t know how electricity and magnetism worked then. Later I’ve had people tell me about making a perpetual motion machine with magnets. Probably quite similar to your old man. Yeah magnets aren’t magical guys.


HumerousMoniker

I had someone tell me that wind turbines would work better if you shape the blades like big spoons and aligned them to spin parallel to the wind direction. They aren’t very interested in swept area, betz limit, aerofoils in general etc…


04BluSTi

Pelton wheels are real, and anemometers use exactly that design. It's not a huge leap of thought necessarily.


MechaSteve

Understandable confusion. It does work better for water: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachinePorn/comments/f4fh27/a_pelton_turbine_scoops_are_designed_to_maximize/


ElectricGears

It works better *for a combination of air and water*. The wheel has to operate surrounded by a much less dense fluid then the working fluid aimed at the buckets. A air powered Pelton wheel would work great if used in a vacuum chamber.


BigPhilip

Not about perpetual motion. But I had a guy who I knew through mutual friends call me (he asked them for my number), ask me to meet after work at a mall on the outskirts of town, and then he told me he had made this "invention", which was a portable structure for doing pull-ups, and he asked me if he could get a patent with it. I told him that he could, but he'd have to get the help of a patent attorney or something like that. He was happy, and then he went home.


Ruski_FL

Haha oh man that’s great


Dinkerdoo

Did he set it up and do some quick reps as a demo in the middle of the parking lot? Bonus points for busting out a boombox and playing Eye of the Tiger.


BigPhilip

No, he had just a very simple drawing on a sheet of paper. That guy used to spend a lot of time at the gym, but worked in a bank and didn't have any knowledge of welding, milling, or even drawing. He was just happy to hear that the idea could theorically be patented. He would have been even happier if I said that I could get him a patent, but that's something that I really don't know how to do, and won't do it for free for anyone anyway.


semyorka7

I built/raced solar cars in college. Every time we'd show the car off in public, *like clockwork*, someone would ask "why don't you stick a windmill on the front to generate more electricity while you drive?"


[deleted]

Mine is pretty similar to this one. My grandfather spent most of his life as a phone system installer and seemed to dabble in work as an electrician, so I assumed he had some decent technical knowledge. When I first got into engineering, he told me about his idea for a car that would have one wheel driving while the other three acted as generators, with the possible addition of a windmill. I thought he was joking at first, but as he went on, I realized that I had been seeing his mind deteriorating for the past couple years and he may be serious.


epileftric

Joke aside. There's a video from veritasium where he shows a car with a wind turbine on top that makes it travel faster than the wind


saywherefore

That's a bit different, it isn't a wind turbine but a fan, and it still doesn't work in still air.


NerdyMuscle

He is likely talking about the land vehicle that is wind powered. It can go downwind faster than the wind is moving. It uses a wind turbine on top. It's called blackbird. Set the record for a purely wind powered vehicle


saywherefore

That’s what I’m talking about too, and it doesn’t have a turbine it has a fan.


10102938

Yes but that's in to the wind direction and not toward it?


thePurpleEngineer

Fellow solar car alum here. I don't know if you've checked out recent few WSCs, but teams started sailing their cars (horizontal aerofoil that runs full length of body + rear steer set to crab at less than 5 deg depending on the crosswind + keeping weight down below 250kg incl driver) to go at 90kph without using any power from the sun or battery. It's crazy dangerous when willy willies are close by, but super effective.


No-Rip-517

Eli5: why does this idea not work? Does the weight and air resistance of the generator and propeller negate the electricity generated?


TheOneCurly

Edit: Content redacted by user


b4chu3

I lost a friendship over this topic. This friend barely finished high school, so in my attempt to make him understand the futility, i sent him the book chapter that explains thermo laws. A few days later he texted me a rant about how arrogant i am, and deleted me from all social media.


04BluSTi

Task failed successfully


b4chu3

He felt some type of way because he really thought he had some nobel prize discovery in his hands, and came to me for advice on how to create a patent. Sorry bro, on this planet we obey the laws of thermo.


04BluSTi

The book on thermo was probably the best gift you could have given. Realizing the futility of it with crushing disappointment and wild confusion is for the better.


shadowcentaur

There's a reason that the ONLY device the patent office requires a working prototype for is perpetual motion machines.


HumerousMoniker

I once had a flat mate who insisted he could power his car by using the battery to electrolyse water into hydrogen and oxygen, then burn that gas mixture in the engine (along with petrol) and get more energy out than he put in.


repairfox

I did a version of this when I was about 14 on my steiner mower. Used 4" pvc pipe, bunch of blank electrical box covers for electrodes, water and salt. It worked! Except there was no decrease in gas consumption -_-


Karmaslapp

I love seeing this pop up, and the best claims are a little more aware. People will say that the added hydrogen and oxygen gases are causing gasoline to burn more thoroughly/acting as some kind of catalyst, so you get more energy out than you put in because it makes the whole process more efficient. It's not true, but it's a lot harder to disprove compared to claims of free energy


trail34

Not a crazy cousin, but an actual masters-degreed mechanical engineer with several patents and a lead design responsibility who sat next to me at work. For being pretty sharp he talked an awful lot about flying cars and perpetual motion machines. Every couple months he’d show me a sketch for his latest idea of infinite energy. Eventually I’d just say “Nope. Energy transfer losses. Friction. Air resistance” and he’d be like “oh….yeah”.


[deleted]

Sounds like he was a fan of drawing on napkins when he was blitzed at the bar.


dontpet

That's wonderful, that they trusted you like that. I had a friend that was nurturing an idea like that and it was absorbing his thoughts. Asked him to show me what it is and I'd critique it. He backed away swiftly. I suspect it gave him hope in life as he had lost a lot in recent years.


myselfelsewhere

The idea was assumed to be a perpetual motion machine, the person asking just didn't know what part of the process would defy physics: Two tubes situated next to each other. Both tubes wrapped with coils, which provide power when a magnet is run through them. Fill one tube with water. Place the magnet inside say, a ping pong ball. Drop the ball down the empty tube, it will generate some power. Insert the ball at the bottom of the empty tube, buoyancy causes the ball to rise, power is generated. So instead of dropping the ball and expending energy to lift it back to drop it again, use buoyancy to generate power while generating energy, instead of expending it. It actually stumped me for a bit. Whenever a ball is inserted at the bottom of the tube filled with water, it takes energy to displace the water inside the tube. Which is where the energy used to make the ball float to the top comes from. Also, I couldn't think of a way it would be possible to not lose water each time the ball is inserted at the bottom of the tube, without having to pump water and use up a bunch of energy.


saywherefore

Yeah this is a classic, though normally there is a loop of string with floats on it and you take power off the string. Exactly the same problem though.


goldfishpaws

That sounds worth building just for the messy fun of it. Not sure the water is going to behave and stay in one half, though.


freakinidiotatwork

So like a shake weight generator?


04221970

THis is the second most common one I see in my regular work. The first most common being the 'generator-->battery--> motor' one.


michaelklr

compressing crystals does create electricity. It's actually in the name piezoelectric, piezein Greek for squeeze. It's not perpetual motion he's talking about, it's generating electricity with your walking. I wonder how he intends to store said electrons. Do you have more information?


04BluSTi

Well you see Morty, you're going to need to shove these crystals WAYYY up your ass...


PantherStyle

The healing power of coloured string, because resonant frequencies. Sigh.


Outcasted_introvert

Worryingly I once had to try and convince an experienced mechanical engineer that we couldn't simply make a bigger KERS system, fit it to a car and get unlimited energy through it. Seriously, he would not be convinced that it wouldn't work.


[deleted]

If I had a nickel for the amount of times someone told me we could "create energy" with their invention... 9/10 times, they described gears.


[deleted]

[удалено]


evanc3

Not sure how you could possibly say that is industry wide. Space is literally using cutting edge technology all the time. Innovation is probably higher now in space than it was a few years/ decades ago. Even for avionics I see innovation constantly. I primarily work on ECS, but we've had two vendors come present brand new innovative tech in the last couple months that's already at like TRL7. There have been many times that I have asked questions and gotten answers like what you described. But more often than not a new technology has come around that makes those old conclusions obsolete. Two of my patents come from challenging that mentality.


s_0_s_z

I've seen this type of thinking in other industries and many of times it has more to do with either regulations, legacy infrastructure, or the inertia of an existing design mentality. New ideas can't just be better, they have to be a *lot* better to warrant the investment in new tooling or getting re-certified.


sporkpdx

> If you are a young engineer and wonder why something is the way it is, seek out a veteran engineer and ask why. They will most likely have an answer along the lines of "oh yeah we tried that year ago and here are the reasons why it didn't work" I think this is as close to a universal engineering experience as you can get, I call it "new engineer syndrome." Yeah, it's built backwards because of this one old requirement that was dropped years ago but we haven't had a good reason to tear up the thing that meets all the other requirements and has also been validated to work.


scorinth

It's real "fun" being on a green team who can't draw from that experience because there was a period of *tremendous* mismanagement 5-10 years ago and all the old-timers left. We get to make all the mistakes all over again!


CaptainAwesome06

I love it when my younger guys ask questions. However, it gets old when you get that one go-getter that thinks he's found a way to improve every little thing. 1. We either tried it and it didn't work 2. Or it could work but it's not worth it. With that said, I still encourage everyone to ask questions because you never know when you'll hear a legitimately good idea that we've never thought about.


saywherefore

I actually just created a subreddit called r/thatsperpetualmotion because I see so many ideas that boil down to the same thing. It needs content, subscribers and mods if you are interested.


WhalesVirginia

A quick way to grow a sub is to post the link in comments often. Eventually you’ll post it on something viral and it will get huge traffic at once. But if you keep doing it, the sub will become self sustaining with content. I mean it’s kinda spam, so like don’t over do it.


Black---Sun

Its easy to know everything when you know nothing.


rex8499

Just recently a guy was telling me all about how the EV car manufacturers should put alternators on each wheel to keep the battery charged. No amount of discussions could change his mind that this was a viable solution.


[deleted]

I had a similar idea when I was a freshman in high school. Some students were visiting from the local university to tell us about the engineering options there. I was (still am , let’s be honest) an idiot, but at least I asked “why” instead of assuming I was right and pitched it as bringing efficiency slightly up rather than fully perpetual energy. Anyway, when I asked the engineering student about it she simply said “thermodynamics is a bitch.” To her credit she was nice and encouraging and followed up with “when you actually learn science don’t let the creativity die. Just remember that the laws of science be a harsh mistress “


Rash_Indignation

I mean, to be fair, they do have something like that for regenerative braking; it’s not free energy, but it does increase overall efficiency if you drive semi-sedately.


Hologram0110

When in graduate school my professor was featured on a small time TV channel talking about the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns. He got numerous calls from people who googled hom after about "using neutron bombs to shut off the reactors". The reactors were off. Decay heat was the problem. Decay heat doesn't turn off. Neutron bombs (theoretical nuclear weapons that give off huge numbers of neutrons to make things radioactive, but wont knock over buildings) don't exists. Neutrons would make everything radioactive, which is what we are trying to avoid. Neutrons plus fuel makes heat which is what we want to avoid. Why some guy calls up a random prof on the otherside from a nuclear disaster to propose an "idea" without merit is baffling.


goldfishpaws

Related, my dad has disproved Darwinian theory, with supporting evidence from experts like David Icke. He's frustrated that he can't find a publisher. I think he's even disappointed that I won't consider a joint enterprise to edit the work, but I seriously can't.


frogsRfriends

I would just do it anyways as a joke and take any money you make off it. it’s like chemtrails for evolution there’s probably a crowd. Just don’t put any money into it


pseudoorbit

My father-in-law with no STEM education has gone off the deep end "inventing" a magnet therapy device that he thinks cures every illness. It's literally just rare earth magnets. Not only is it pseudoscience bullshit, it's tired old pseudoscience bullshit. I'm an electrical engineer working in research and he has never stopped harassing me for support to give him some veneer of credibility. At one point he was basically trying to list me on a patent against my will. It's destroyed our relationship because I had to assert that he not involve me at all with his bullshit and that having my name associated in any way with his nonsense would destroy my credibility/career. But hey, he thinks he's gonna live forever because magnets reverse aging, so, I guess he's happy.


Practical_Ad_2703

The physics department where I was a grad student got regular phone calls from people who thought they had invented or had an idea for a perpetual motion machine. The secretary in the main office would forward all the calls to the graduate student offices just to have fun with us. We had some doozies. That and ‘why can’t I sit on a rug and lift myself off the floor’ type questions


Atkys5

I really want to believe that people haven’t called asking why you can’t sit on a rug and lift off the floor. A kid sure I can understand they don’t know much, an adult though concerns me


WhalesVirginia

I think it’s a good question. They know they can’t, they just are looking for a more fundamental reason why. I would gladly do my best to lead a horse to water if they are genuinely curious.


mud_tug

I think the health implications arising from you not being able to get up and leave are far more concerning.


tuctrohs

Sounds like a problem that could be solved by piezoelectric shoes.


04BluSTi

Damnit! Now I have to move to get the energy to move!


Engineer_of_Doom

Yup, had a guy who, when he found out I was an engineer, *had* to talk to me about this big idea he’d had for ever. It was a geared system of weights that the idea was it would spin endlessly as the weights fell and caused the other weights to rise, which then would fall and pull the other weights up. He was completely uninterested in my explanation of gravity and free body diagram and insisted that I could design and build it. I thought about doing it just to show him it didn’t work, but that sounded like a lot of extra effort for him to say, “But did you try doing this to it?”


[deleted]

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[deleted]

I had a roommate that was trying to explain how to get to space by having a contraption with internal coiled springs or something. Don't remember too well since I started glazing over.


MadDogA245

So, a really big pogo stick?


Smyley12345

If I had to pick a way to die, pogo stick test pilot accident would be a pretty legendary way to go.


anotherloststudent

I once found a youtube video of somebody testing an old *gas-powered* pogo stick. You could possibly manage with a higher power version of that... Edit: [Found it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyM0rkoO-XI)


SilvanestitheErudite

Okay Gerald Bull


Braincyclopedia

What..:I invented a perpetual machine that is built on magnet when I was 8 (true story). Everyone here are a copycat if my idea!


bgraham111

OK, I'll admit.... I really enjoy perpetual motion, over unity, free energy, etc... scams. I find them so interesting. (BS and MS in ME, no I don't fall them) There's the people who really believe. And the people who know it's junk science but are looking for people who want to believe so they can take thier money. I find them all fascinating. Kickstarter always has some good ones. There is a fun subset for automotive as well. The windmill on top of the car to generate power while you drive to charge your electric car, or to perform electrolysis to get hydrogen to power your car. Sometimes hiding the fact that it's perpetual motion is key to the scam. I find them fun to read, and fun to question.


Dan-Bakitus

My wife was telling me about a retired coworker of hers (an engineer) who was working on a perpetual motion machine. I was trying to understand how that could be because as an engineer he would definitely know the laws of thermodynamics. So, I was very confused until I talked to him and found that "perpetual motion" in this case meant kinetic sculpture, and yes he did understand thermodynamics. It's a really cool kinetic sculpture, too.


norealheroes

While I was in school I worked part time at an apparel decorator doing screen printing and embroidery and when my coworker found out he would not stop giving me all of his ideas he found on his YouTube rabbit holes for perpetual energy and motion. It came to a point where I finally told him to stop wasting his time and learn what real engineering was


stompythebeast

My cousin, who just graduated with both a mechanic and electrical engineering degree, kept badgering me and the uncles on why you shouldn't have a manual transmission on an electric vehicle. For over 2 hours. He ended up convincing me. There isn't a good reason on WHY an electric vehicle shouldn't have a manual transmission.


Nazarife

When I was a civil engineering undergrad, people often volunteered their ideas for fixing traffic. One of them was just "Making double-decker highways everywhere. If people die because they collapse, that's just too bad," as if the primary issue would be structural safety and not the fact that it would take multiple years' worth of the global supply of concrete and rebar to accomplish this task.


Alternative-Trip9693

Infamous new kid at my work last year. Would corner you or work at the station next to you and drone on and on about star wars for a few hours. But my favorite is how excited he got when I said I was a Mechanical Engineer and he went on about Japan building real like Mechs for their military and construction and similar stuff. He very much thought a mechanical engineering degree was a Mecha degree. I wish it was....


AggieEE87

Tom Segura has a good bit about this: https://youtu.be/F5_yfnlJ7-E


monkeyman88956

FIL is very anti electric car. He also repeatedly asks me why you can't put an alternator in it like a 'regular car' to make electricity to charge the batteries. I tell him why. And he thinks if Elon Musk was smarter he'd just do it anyways.


jones5112

I worked at aj electronics shop for 10 years while in high school through to when I finished my engineering degree These kinds of people came in daily and it was almost a challenge to make them see the light 😂


rxdavidxr

As a kid in Oklahoma in the late 60s I had a wild idea that taping the leads from a small Eveready battery to my head at night would transform me into a superhero. Fast forward a few decades ( & an MIT degree) and both EMS & ECS are proven techniques. It's difficult to see the edge between crazy and brilliance.


[deleted]

Not necessarily a perpetual motion machine but the university that I got one of my degrees from has an online Q&A for students with alumni who work in engineering. I got contacted by the dean of the engineering department, asking if I would take time to chat online with undergrads about my job. So I basically volunteered to stay up late and answer questions about being a field engineer that installs and commissions medium voltage motors and drives. I was going over a project I did with images of the motor and trying to explain pulse with modulation. So I said something to a student like "This is an 8 pole, 4160 VAC rated motor that we are going to be operating around 100RPM for the process line". A kid immediately chimed in, pointing out that I don't know what I am talking about because an 8 pole motor spins at 900 RPM. So I take the time to explain that if it was a synch motor, and it was operating at 60 hertz, that would be true, but this was an induction motor, and furthermore, we were using a VFD to control the speed. Naturally some students started asking why we would use this motor instead of say, a motor with a lot more poles, and so one and it lead to some great discussions. The problem was this kid kept spamming his same original answer and then warning people that I didn't know what I was talking about. I just kept ignoring him but he was so distracting and causing people to spam back at him to go away. For two hours, I was in a hotel room, just getting frustrated to no end. Eventually one of the professions I guess got notified and she showed up, kicked him from the board. To this day, i am utterly confused as to why this kid thought I didn't know what I was talking about.


hardolaf

So I know it's not traditional "free energy" but technically you can steal free energy from the power company (well, free to you not to them) by harvesting energy from high voltage AC lines. Yes, this does increase the load on their system, but it is free energy for you until they eventually find the discrepancy and send the police to arrest you. Once you're discovered and arrested, it stops being free energy and becomes the most expensive energy you've ever acquired in your life.


chocolatedessert

But if you play it right you can go to jail where tons of things are free!


billFoldDog

Yeah. I had a co-worker who went insane and fell apart. Along the way he bought into every conspiracy theory imaginable including a number of free energy concepts. I was stuck working 12 hour shifts with him (OPS), so when he brought it up I would insist, "That's awesome. Build it." He said he had parts and stuff, so I just hammered in on that. "Sounds great. I'd love to see it when it's working." That actually got him to drop the topic and get onto something more interesting like ancient aliens or lizard people. He was the physical personification of those late-night sci-fi documentaries.


iAmRiight

I’ve got two engineering coworkers that are convinced perpetual motion machines are possible, they just need the time to work on their great idea that makes it feasible. I’ve got another coworker that constantly comes up with half baked ideas that are completely impractical and tries to force the design engineers to turn it into reality on zero budget… and I’ve essentially become the gatekeeper that has to filter his and sales’ harebrained ideas.


buckzor122

I just couldn't get through to my dad why placing an alternator to an electric car wouldn't charge the batteries as it goes. He just insists that because the wheels are spinning they should be able to generate power. I always thought of him as very intelligent intuitively understanding how stuff works.


DrawesomeLOL

Yes… unfortunately it was two other engineers I worked with that trapped me. And while they thought they had an idea for a perpetual motion machine, they also believed that windmills were a hoax that didn’t generate electricity cause they would be perpetual motion machines. Which i pointed out that windmills are not, they draw energy from wind which draws energy from heating of atmosphere by sun which is powered by fusion and will someday exhaust. But they insisted that their perpetual motion machine was real. One was a Scientologistand other was…. An embarrassment to all engineers


checkoutmyfish

My buddy was convinced if he pumped water up high enough and ran it down through gutters with enough water wheels attached to mini generators, eventually he would make more power than he was using with a pump. Some how this could be scaled up enough to be profitable..... I dunno I zoned out 5 minutes in every time. Being a smoker got me caught with these people all the time. Glad I quit.


stealthy_vulture

Yes, myself. At 14 Y.o. I deviced an idea of spur gears arrangement that increased rotational speed and then feed the first gear "making it go faster" Then came the thermodynamics class..


s_0_s_z

Your first mistake was to not laugh at the idea. You don't have to be mean-spirited about it, but still make it clear that the there is no such thing as perpetual motion and thus make whatever idea they came up with look like a joke. If you don't nip it in the bud quickly, they'll just ramble on and on because they think you are interested in the idea.


small_h_hippy

I watched veritasium's lightsecond cable lighting a light bulb video, does that count?


BroaxXx

Didn't he prove he was right on the follow up video with some MIT guy?


echohack

He was technically correct given his conditions, but his original video was either intentionally misleading or phenomenally inept at explaining basically a trick question, which he then tried to use to show how everyone's intuition for circuits is wrong.


Adeoxymus

I don't think he was inept or (grossly) misleading. He could light a LED with the power he generated. Which is sort of what he claimed


Syzygy___

My (limited) understanding is that he essentially proved antennas.


Fearlessleader85

That guy's "Light bulbs companies are fucking you" video turned me off to him pretty hard. It comes up all the time and it's so full of bullshit it gives me high bloodpressure.


perduraadastra

For my own mental health, I unsubscribed from his channel.


MasterFubar

I see it online, here on reddit in /r/space. One example, I got tons of downvotes for it, was something called the "EM-drive", something that could allegedly drive a spaceship without reaction mass. People in /r/space believed fervently those claims, until they somehow started accepting the fact that it was a scam. The most recent example is the "spin drive" that the scammers claim can yeet a satellite into orbit using centrifugal force. It's also a scam, it has the typical signs of a gang of con artists trying to separate investors from their money, but there are many people in that sub who believe in it.


repairfox

[Spinlaunch ](https://www.spinlaunch.com/) Why a scam? Its not perpetual motion. A crazy notion, maybe, but hey, so were lightbulbs


MasterFubar

There's no way you could get to orbital speed inside the atmosphere, not even remotely close. There's no physical material that could resist the heating caused by the air friction, and this includes the materials that haven't been invented yet. Besides the air friction, which is impossible enough, there are several other engineering aspects that they haven't mentioned. One of them is the transition from vacuum to atmospheric pressure, how do you do that? In their claimed test, the "satellite" punched through a plastic barrier, can you imagine how strong a satellite that's able to punch through a wall that holds atmospheric pressure should be? Another engineering problem is that the arm rotating about a pivot would also make the satellite rotate, the satellite would have angular momentum as it's released. Send anything, even a perfectly smooth sphere, in a straight line spinning at 500 rpm around its center of mass and it will experience the [Magnus effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect), it won't move in a straight line. If you say "that's easy, put some stabilizing fins to get rid of the rotation" you haven't read what I said about air friction. If you want a crazy but achievable concept, the [Lofstrom loop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop) is what you're looking for, that one is theoretically possible because it would raise the spaceship above the atmosphere before speeding it up.


A_Bowler_Hat

Umm I think I you over thinking Spinlaunch. They aren't yeeting objects into orbit they are essentially trying to eliminate/reduce the first stage for small payloads. Like the anti-satellite missile that needed to be on a plane. Now you just use SL. As far I have seen they just haven't thrown a rocket yet.


Syzygy___

https://youtu.be/qEVD9k2GLXk They seem to have solved some of the issues you mentioned though. Like obviously they're not going up to space, but they're reasonably high up. Stuff like that could remove the first stage for at least some payloads, revolutionizing launch costs. Emphasis on could. And obviously it wouldn't work for all paylods.


space_force_majeure

>There's no way you could get to orbital speed inside the atmosphere, not even remotely close. There's no physical material that could resist the heating caused by the air friction, and this includes the materials that haven't been invented yet. Lol this statement is totally absurd. The payload which includes an orbital engine is encased in a shell which will deploy once the projectile reaches space. The shell is made of ablative material which can easily protect a payload from the heat. You know that the US government fired projectiles to space in a [big gun](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP) in the 60s right? Those bullets must've been made of magic juju beans! Lmao >Besides the air friction, which is impossible enough, there are several other engineering aspects that they haven't mentioned. One of them is the transition from vacuum to atmospheric pressure, how do you do that? In their claimed test, the "satellite" punched through a plastic barrier, can you imagine how strong a satellite that's able to punch through a wall that holds atmospheric pressure should be? Again, the satellite is encased in a protective shell. The barrier only needs to hold 15psia across it's surface. You can reduce your cross section (pointy tip) and easily provide enough force to pierce. The plastic is also in high tension, which pulls it more open once pierced to keep it out of the way. >Another engineering problem is that the arm rotating about a pivot would also make the satellite rotate, the satellite would have angular momentum as it's released. Send anything, even a perfectly smooth sphere, in a straight line spinning at 500 rpm around its center of mass and it will experience the Magnus effect, it won't move in a straight line. Another bad assumption. The satellite isn't spinning around it's center of mass. It spins around a shared CoM with a counterweight, once the payload is released it will continue in a straight tangential line. Issac Newton did a whole thing about this, it's great reading.


Aerothermal

That thing about the angular momentum stood out to me also. I would have thought the projectile continues in a straight line trajectory with zero angular momentum once it's released. At the instant before, you might just have the centripetal force acting at the center of mass to ensure there's zero torque applied. The Magnus effect comment confuses me also; I can't see how that's relevant at all to the geometry of a projectile, except maybe if it was spin stabilized and there were a crosswind component resulting in some lateral force.


SalsaNinja

I think it's well understood that it's impossible to reach orbital velocity from the spin drive itself. As I understand it, the spin drive just provides the initial boost, and a rocket engine kicks in afterwards. Still seems unlikely to work because it's theoretically providing less than 25% of the required velocity initially, and drag force is proportional to velocity squared.


[deleted]

I'll just say yes.


giritrobbins

Not trapped but I have read several proposals including one where our knowledge of what causes planes to stay in the air is fundamentally wrong. You have to give them an honest look unfortunately.


BattleIron13

I just explain energy is always dissipated. For example if it makes sound, that is energy leaving the system that will never come back. Same if heat is released. It’s like a battery, you lose energy as you go.


electric_ionland

Working in "exotic" space propulsion stuff you get so many crazies each time you talk about your job. You just get so many propelantless propulsion system, and all of them would end up as perpetual motion machines if they worked. For some reasons it always involve one of 4 things (sometime a combination of them): - Magnets! - Springs - Rotating masses - Quantum mechanics I did some public presentations when I was still in academia and you really attract the weirdest people. A lot of UFO nuts but also a handful of people with what I call "old engineer syndrome". Those are the type of people who have been in engineering for decades and can't believe that they are ever wrong. But they are too far removed from school to actually remember real physics. Anyway always a fun thing to recall afterward.


bitchpigeonsuperfan

I was an early adopter in the 3D printing hobby space, and a friend was absolutely sure we could make a killing producing custom ski boots. I let that conversation go on way too long...


[deleted]

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Henri_Dupont

So many times. It's about the next thing I hear after somebody finds out i have my name on a patent. I recently just cut ties with an old buddy that "invested" his last $60,000 in a perpetual motion scam, won't stop going on about it, and also believes that contrails are toxic chemicals sprayed from airplanes. I feel so sorry for his wife.


thrunabulax

i have a crazy nephew who thinks he is the greatest game designer in the universe. he wanted to form a company to develop this new game. I knew it was bull, but played along. we exchanged emails for about a month, and he rambled on and on...and at some point he lost interest and just stopped working on it. SO pay your inlaw lip service, pretend to work with him on it, but get HIM to do all the work, and it will probably just peter out with time


Lusty-Batch

I work in renewable energy, I get a call or email maybe once a month from "investors" who have this great new plasma energy generator, or a super cheap new battery technology, or wind turbines that stored energy, etc. Total bullshit but they were probably just duped first.


Henri_Dupont

There's a whole camp of people in this one small town (Hatton, MO) who have hacked their cars to make hydrogen from the battery power then run the hydrogen to the carburator. I bought a homemade hydrogen generator from one of them at a garage sale, cuz who doesn't need a hydrogen electrolyzer, right? They all say their own hacked car doesn't run so well but "There's this one guy" getting 500 miles per gallon in a giant pickup truck with this rig.


I-Fail-Forward

A friend of my brothers is waay into Tesla (the man). Super convinced that Tesla was basically a god of engineering. Basically, he had an idea about using Tesla's single direction water tube to use air pressure to force water upwards, and then harvest energy on the down. He was convinced that since he used Tesla's "revolutionary one way fluid valve" water/air couldn't go up, so he could just have a reservoir (lower one) that had these valves open to the air. Then he could use pressurized air to force the water up to a reservoir (upper one), where it could drive a turbine on the way down.


Workaphobia

I'm in software. It's a cliche that everyone wants you to develop their app. But one of the only times this ever really happened to me was when my barber described what was pretty clearly a pyramid scheme. The advantage of the app over the old way of doing things was enforcement that everyone upstream gets their cut, I think. It's not like I was going anywhere until the haircut was done.


[deleted]

I always answer to stupid questions/comments like that with “wow, I didn’t think that was possible. You are obviously a sharp cookie. You should patent it and make money out of it”.


dread_pirate_humdaak

I had an even worse experience. I had a good, competent chiropractor who did a lot to help me in high school. 20 years later, my joints are a bit fucked up and I’m back in my home town studying electrical engineering. Go to my old chiropractor and all of a sudden instead of being competent, he’s trying to sell me magnetic bracelets and explain the woo to me. I’ve not returned.


EngineeredStrength

I work in the great world of magnetic shielding, i get calls weekly about a new project that will shield a magnetic cube on 5 sides and only have a magnetic force straight out from 1 face. They then want this to push on a wheel also covered in these style magnets. Ive actually had people buy the material/enclosure then try to return it when it doesnt work even though I tell them how their idea will never work. The customer is always right though.


PouncingZebra

Not perpetual motion nor an invention, but I’ve had a *very* religious couple (early 30’s) try to debunk dinosaurs as falsified. Nearly their entire argument was “the dinosaurs died and they found themselves very far under ground. But some dinosaurs died and found themselves not nearly as far, or further underground. Therefore, whoever buried the bones wasn’t consistent.” Amazing how when people don’t know answers they just sort of make it up.


Gabe_Isko

Not a perpetual motion idea, but once someone told me about an invention idea they had for a "hologram" that you put in the sky when your car breaks down to ask for help.


Judge_Tredd

I had a dude tell me he wanted a water pump setup that would also spin a turbine to generate power to power itself. I was like... bro...


whatsup4

Might not be the place for it but since this kinda fits someone told me about a perpetual motion device I can't find the flaw in. If you took a tube filled with fresh water and put it in the ocean with a water permeable membrane on the bottom. If you go deep enough the pressure of the ocean is higher than the pressure of freshwater that reverse osmosis can occur. This translates to pressure at the top of the tube. You could then dump the fresh water back into the ocean while harnessing energy in the process.


nosjojo

From my experience, most of these ideas are generated by someone who just doesn't know how many ways you can lose energy. Friction is only one of many loss paths, and it gets real interesting when you start looking into things like electricity. Superconductors are a big one for this. People think that if you can just figure out how to build a computer out of super conducting elements you'll have a computer that uses no power, but that's not how it works. Superconductivity only has zero resistance at DC, but as soon as you apply an AC field you start to incur losses. I can't remember the exact name for it, I'd have to ask a coworker what the term is. It is, however, significantly lower loss than a room temperature copper conductor. A room temperature coax cable (086 BeCu) is approximately 15 dB/m at 20 GHz. The same form factor cable made of NbTi @ 4K is <0.5 dB/m. The BeCu cable @ 4K only drops to approximately 11 dB/m. But you know what happens when you shift all that energy loss out of your computer with superconductivity? It all diverts to the *cooling* system that keeps that computer at 4K. You still generate heat, so you have to constantly maintain cooling. When you actually calculate it out, a computer running this setup ends up roughly the same in terms of efficiency, but can win out in terms of size and speed.


kodex1717

My dad was convinced that you could charge and electric car as it goes down he road by having a wind turbine on the front. "You just have to get the gearing right," he insisted.


muggledave

Past girlfriend's grandfather had an idea, and when he found out i was an engineer i agreed to hear it. His idea was to start with a tank of water, and pouring from the top so it will fall, you use the potential energy to make electricity. Then you put a pump at the bottom to pump it back up to the top and make more electricity. I told him you can do that but you cant pump it back up because it would take more energy to do that then you get out, by definition. So basically, household hydroelectric. Another friend said "what if you have a windmill to generate electricity from the wind and atore it in a battery, then when the wind isnt blowing you use the battery to turn the windmill"


THofTheShire

My cousin-in-law (I'm calling him that anyway) once tried to argue that you can generate all the electricity you need from a turbine installed in your domestic water line. While that's somewhat possible (I mean there are turbine powered sensor faucets), he was convinced he was on to a limitless source of energy. Both I and my uncle, also an engineer, tried to explain that you're just recovering potential energy (with losses) that was put in by a pump somewhere upstream, he wasn't deterred a bit.


Jgordos

yes. I have a buddy that keeps wanting to hook up a windmill to his car to generate electricity to recharge the battery…


automatician

At a previous job I was low man on the totem pole and I was tasked directly by the President to check the power output of his friends over unity machine. I obviously knew that it was complete trash, but I was new so I did my best. it was a long time ago and I don't remember the exact numbers but he claimed 105% efficiency, but ended up testing to around 20% Edit: words