Japanese Inventor's Motor Uses 80% Less Power 1095
novakane007 writes "A Japanese inventor named Kohei Minato has created a new kind of motor. It uses magnetism to perpetuate the motor motion. As a result the motors uses 80% less energy than a conventional motor, while still maintaing the same horsepower. "Minato assures us that he hasn't transcended the laws of physics. The force supplying the unexplained extra power out is generated by the magnetic strength of the permanent magnets embedded in the rotor. 'I'm simply harnessing one of the four fundamental forces of nature,' he says."
On top of the energy savings the motor runs cool to the touch and is significantly quieter than a tradtitionally powered fan. Sound to good to be true? Well he's already started selling the fan to a chain of convience stores in Japan. Hopefully soon the design will make it in to your home PC, allowing them to run much quieter."
Quiet PCs? (Score:3, Interesting)
What? I wasn't quite aware that computers generated their own power yet... Also, the article says the engines are quite large- probably impossible to be able to use them in a laptop setup. Plus, anyway, power supplies are quite quiet anyway, and they don't generate their own power. The problem with the noise from computers these days is unbearably loud hard drives and harsh fans.
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:5, Interesting)
CompactFlash (Score:3, Interesting)
didn't I read back in 1993 that we'd all be using solid state hard drives by now??? Guess that was a sure thing in the days of $600 hard drives.
Pricewatch.com tells me I can get a CompactFlash card reader for USB for under 20 USD and a 2 GB CF card for under 200 USD. There also exist adapters to plug CF cards into ATA cables. It seems that the desire for more capacity in a 3.5" desktop HD enclosure has outpaced the desire for larger persistent solid-state memory in desktop machines.
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, none of the flash memory densities have really scaled like this, and are just being left in the dust, sadly. I'd love to have an iPod with a SD/MMC card reader so that I could exchange songs with a friend at school if they wanted me to listen to something really quickly, or so I could pull data off the iPod and put it into a computer.
Speaking of putting an SD/MMC card into a computer, when will Dell start shipping memory card readers in their machines that have dumped floppies, or are they just going to chalk it up to rewriteable CD drives and abandon solid state memory cells altogether?
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:5, Informative)
2.)In terminal (on OSX) type "cd
3.)type "ls" (your ipod (whatever you named it) will show in the list).
4.)type "cd <your iPod's name>"
5.)type "ls -a"
6.)explore the folders whose names begin with "." (dot).
all your music is in there. use "mv" as needed.
I'm sure on windows, the command line, or at the very least, Cygwin can accomplish the same task
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:5, Informative)
There also exist many third party utilities [ipodlounge.com] for extracting music from iPods. These can be used to generate filenames, which the iPod often discards as it exclusively uses ID3 tags to populate its database.
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I find it odd that this is the first application that occurred to the poster.
Gentlemen, this new motor design will make battery-powered cars a reality, reduce industrial energy consumption by a third, possibly save the world from global warming
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, 80% less power consumption is going to shave one heck of a lot of battery weight off a 100% electric car, or give the hybrids way better mileage. Hell, it might even bring us a little closer to solar powered vehicles.
Real Electric Motor News (Score:5, Interesting)
Raser Technologies recently (ie within the last year) introduced technology to convert existing electric motor designs to run not more effeciently, but more powerfully. Their patented (with a real US patent) design allows a motor to produce up to three times as much power than previously achievable. All electric motors can be "overdriven" to provide more power in short bursts. This technology (which they dub Symetron) allows the motor to run at those higher powers at a sustained rate without burnout or explosion.
Unlike Kohei Minato, Raser Technologies has been to various trade shows, hosted several demonstrations and posts results done by 3rd party test facilities. Also unlike Japan Magnetic Fan Company, Raser Technology is a publicly traded company under the stock symbol RSTG.OB.
Although not as revolutionary or jaw-droppingly-fake, this new technology does have a huge amount of practicle applications. For example, currently to run an electric car you need about a 50-HP motor. Here's an example of how big [baldor.com] a motor that's rated for 50 horsepower continious usage can be (610 lbs). A counterexample would be this video [rasertech.com] from a trade show where Raser Tech runs a bus on 500 horsepower motor that is noticably smaller.
Yes, these motors still have the same efficiency rating as the motors without the Symetron adjustment, but they are extremely small for their power ratings. The key is truly the power density.
Re:Real Electric Motor News (Score:5, Informative)
Now compare it to a modern switch mode power supply typicaly used in a laptop computer's power supply. They typical also use a iron core (powdered iron) and copper wire just like it's 60 cycle counterpart. It still provides the 100 Watts of power but due to the 50 thousand cycles it runs, the amound of iron needed to provide reactance is much less. Because the core is smaller, the windings can be shorter to reach around a smaller core. Shorter wire means less wire IR squared losses. Now a 100 watt transformer is smaller than a golf ball and makes less heat. This is the simple reason 60 cycle power is not used on airplanes. 400 cycle power is typical. Motors and transformers are much smaller for the same power.
Comparing a 60 cycle AC 50 horse motor with the high frequency ac motor used in the new Toyota Prius will show a huge size and weight diffrence even though the horsepower is close to the same.
Taking a 2 phase DC fan motor and going from 4 pole to say 32 pole at high frequency will increase the effeciency of the motor simply because less iron and wire are needed in the windings.
Large electric motors typicaly have effeciencies of over 80% Don't expect the breakthrough to triple the output of an 80% effecient motor. It can't. Small inefecient motors can see vast improvents in effeciency however. Good examples of low effeciency small motors are vaccuum cleaners, electric drills, skill saws and such that get hot.
Prfft... (Score:5, Funny)
rasertech (Score:5, Interesting)
We know something you don't know
&
Yes, but we'll sue them
What worries me are phrases like "proprietary design innovations", "proprietary scientific principles", "strict confidentiality agreement", etc. I read their Press Briefing [rasertech.com], which left me more and less satisfied. The best i can piece together is that they've got better cooling, some special design tweaks and a "means for increased magnetic energy storage" The deeper you go the curioser it gets...
Just for shits and giggles they make almost the same claims [rasertech.com] as our Japanese friend. "300% more power" anyone? Their SEC filings make for veryinteresting reading. they've only spent 600K on R&D since raser's inception, they haven't obtained patents yet (only applied for them), "Raser's auditor's report contains a "going concern" qualification", "Our officers have no long-term experience with electrical motor sales"... I just can't understand... If their tech is so mindblowing how come it isn't everywhere?
Re:Real Electric Motor News (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:4, Funny)
With an input of 540 watts and an output of ~1.57 KW (when hooking the motor to a generator) all you need to do is split the output of the generator between the motor and some other load, and your generator is now powering the motor that drives it and up to ~1KW load. That's 1KW of free energy!
I think it has a very high likelihood of being BS, but if it's not, then hell... I can't wait to see it! Live-off-the-grid time for me!
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:5, Funny)
obsessive. This morning I caught her trying to dissect her own
raincoat.
Homer: [scoffs] I know. And this perpetual motion machine she made
today is a joke! It just keeps going faster and faster.
Marge: And Bart isn't doing very well either. He needs boundaries and
structure. There's something about flying a kite at night that's
so unwholesome. [looks out window]
Bart: [creepy voice] Hello, Mother dear.
Marge: [closing the curtains] That's it: we have to get them back to
school.
Homer: I'm with you, Marge. Lisa! Get in here.
[Lisa walks in, chuckling nervously]
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:5, Informative)
JOEL JOHNSON -- After reading the story about Kohei Minato's super-efficient motor, reader Chris Drake wrote in with this explanation:
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:5, Informative)
This statement is wrong several ways. First, you probably mean RMS ("root mean square") current, not "average current". The average current in an AC signal is of course typically zero. AC multimeters display RMS current and voltage.
Second, you cannot in general calculate average power from RMS (or average) voltage and current, even if the voltage happens to be constant and the current is somehow time-varying. The familiar P=VI formula is for instantaneous power, i.e. P(t)=V(t)*I(t). It happens that if the current and voltage are in phase (i.e. the load is purely resistive) then the average power is the product of the RMS voltage and current. This is a special case.
Third, it is not that hard to get even a good multimeter to read a time-varying current incorrectly. They are designed for low frequency signals. If your current is time varying with even moderately high frequency (e.g. >1000 Hz) most multimeters will not correctly read even the RMS current. A poor multimeter might not even give an accurate RMS current for a low-frequency but non-sinusoidal signal.
This is not the first time someone has produced a free energy device scam based on the faulty assumptions that P=VI holds for average values and a multimter always gives an accurate 'average' voltage or current, regardless of how complicated the waveform of the signal is.
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:5, Insightful)
The claim is that the new motor uses 80% less energy (I assume they left out per unit of power). Ergo, an electric car would need 20% of the a current model's energy storage. If that is true, since a modern electric car is almost viable, then one built with this motor will absolutely be practical.
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:4, Interesting)
To make a viable, sellable purely electric car, you need batteries that weight AT LEAST 1/4 as much and cost 1/10th as much as today's best.
While we're at it, inventing power transistors that are nearly lossless would be nice, since switching losses are the other major diffuculty.
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:5, Funny)
What'll happen is this. You'll have a 9-volt battery that you take with you when you leave for work in the morning. You use this battery to run a little half-watt motor (540 mW, according to the article). Now, clearly this isn't enough to move your car - but wait! This motor drives a generator, which makes 1.755W of output! (from the article). This still isn't enough, but we might be able to work something out...
The 1.755 W drives a 1.7 W motor. This motor, in turn, drives a generator. This generator can generate 5.525 W of electricity. We'll use this energy to drive a 5.5 W motor. That motor will turn a generator, which thanks to the mysterious power of magnets will generate 17.875 W! Amazing!
This still isn't enough to move your car very fast - but wait! We're not done! If we use our 17.875 W to drive a 17.5 W motor, it can drive a generator which produces 58.09 W!!! That's a lot of power! It's almost 1/10th of a horsepower! Next, we'll use that electricity to power a fancy 55 W electric motor, which (because the magnets have eternal power forever) can turn a generator producing 178.75 watts! Clean! Cheap! Quiet! With this power, we can operate an electric motor which in turn drives a generator generating an awesome 580 Watts of power! Using this electricity to drive another motor / generator pair, we can generate 1.888 kW of clean, wholesome electric power! It's amazing!
Now, let's say we've got a 1.8 kW motor in the trunk. This motor drives another generator which produces 5,850 W of power - that's 7.842 HP in your trunk. We'll use the electricity to drive another motor, this time a 7.8 HP motor - notice we're allowing for (I^2)R losses - which in turn drives a generator. This generator puts out a whopping 18.85 KW of power - that's as much as 10 hair dryers! But, rather than dry all 10 of our passengers' hair at once (can't do *our* hair, we're driving!), we'll use that electricity to drive a 25 HP electric motor. This is a big motor, but not as big as it would be if it didn't use the amazing power of magnets! It can drive a generator that makes 61.26 kW of electricity, which let me tell you is quite a bit! This electricity will be used to drive an 82 HP electric motor - as much as a small electric car. But you don't want a SMALL electric car, nosiree Bob! We use that dinky-assed commuter-car motor to drive a honkin' big generator, which pours out a torrent of electrons - almost 200,000 watts worth! Yikes! That's enough electricity to drive a 265 HP motor! Wow!
But why would we want a pitiful little 265 HP motor in our car? We're carrying 10 passengers, remember? Let's keep going! If we use that 198 kW to drive a motor/generator pair using Minato's incredible magnetic technology, we can generate 644 kW of clean, efficient electricity! That's enough to drive an 863 HP electric motor, which thanks to its use of magnets, can be as small as a gallon paint can - and just as quiet!
Isn't this incredible? Using a single 9 volt battery - preferably an Energizer or Duracell - and 14 super-quiet, incredibly efficient electric motors along with 13 revolutionary electric generators, we're driving an 863 HP super monster screamin' machine with 10 passengers! We're passing Corvettes and Ferrarris like they're glued to the asphalt, and we don't need any gasoline to do it!
Tune in next week, as I show you how it takes only 20 motor/generator pairs - using Minato's incredible magnetic technology - to generate 1.21 Jigawatts - twice! You can send TWO DeLoreans "Back to the Future" at the same time, and STILL have enough electricity to run that bangin' DVD player in your sun visor!
Now, I realize that this all seems a bit hard to believe, but that's just because you don't understand the incredible power of magnets.
Re:Quiet PCs? (Score:4, Funny)
This is perpetual motion in another guise.. (Score:5, Funny)
I explained that energy in a system worked like a bank account (bank guard -remember?) You put energy in and you can take it back out, but you can't get quite as much back out as you put in because there was a service charge in the form of friction. He begrudgingly understood. I complemented him on his nice drawings.
"In this house we obey the law of thermodymanics" - Homer Simpson
You forgot the savings account (Score:5, Funny)
*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC? (Score:4, Funny)
What do you think turns the blades now? (Score:5, Informative)
"feel her up in assembly" (Score:4, Funny)
Man, you had to do that in assembly? I would think a compiled language would be easier, but still not as easy as just using your hands and the more traditional analog interface.
Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC? (Score:3, Informative)
Even the motor in your hard drive is magnetic.
You just don't have to worry, because the magnetic fields are not very strong.
Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC? (Score:5, Insightful)
-B
Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC? (Score:5, Informative)
To your "how a drive ... can operate next to it"... I think this is the explanation.
That way the field will be super-strong next to the magnet, but super-week even a short distance away.Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC? (Score:4, Informative)
to "Randomize" the magnetic "markings" on the disk, you need a Degausser. (Gauss being the pioneering physicist on the subject of magnatism.
A Degausser is an electromagnet that creates a magnetic field that is constantly changing. that is what you need to "Randomize" the magnetic alignment of the particles on the disk in order to erase it entirely.
For the record, I took a full, height, five-and-a-quarter hard drive apart, (I think it was on the order of 1 GB) and there were two extremely strong magnets in the head actuator mechanism. they were so strong that you couldn't pull them apart, you had to slide them, so they were kind of offset and twist them.
I still use them to re-magnitize screwdrivers and bits
Easy. (Score:5, Funny)
You can get them at Radio Shack.
They are on the same shelf as the Flux Capacitors.
Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC? (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly how did you think that an electric motor functions? The electrons don't line up all nice and pretty and start pushing the armature around and around. Their dizzying speed doesn't induce a partial vacuum that drags the armature around in its wake. No siree, Bob. They're enslaved to make a magnetic field that alternates attraction and repulsion against a set of fixed magnets.
Magnets! They're everywhere! Argh!
Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC? (Score:5, Informative)
The use of permanent magnets in motors has been common practice for over 20 years, since high-strength permanent magnet alloys became good enough.
A permanent magnet contains stored energy from when the magnet was made. An electomagnet uses electricity on the fly. Note that one of the two magnets in a motor *must* be an electromagnet (usually the stator, for convenience of wiring, but occationally the rotor, especially in DC motors) since the motion requires a varying magnetic field.
Speaking of DC motors: ALL motors run on alternating current in some form. In a classical DC motor, the alternating current is produced by the motion of the motor itself by having the electromagnet be on the rotor, and have the brushes leading the current onto the rotor brush against a "commutator" -- two half-cylinders back to back -- instead of slip rings. Unfortunately, this requires brushes, which wear out and are generally unpleasant to deal with. As a result, especially higher-power motors have generally switched to using brushless AC motors using electronic commutators.
Porcelain engine running on water (Score:5, Funny)
Porcelain engine running on water (Score:5, Funny)
By the way, the porcelain engine with water? I've got one in my bathroom. It turns on when you flip a metal lever.
Re:Space Cakes! (Score:5, Funny)
You'll need a piece of letter or A4-sized paper and a sharp new #2 pencil to complete this proof.
Take the paper, and fold it in half lengthwise, then unfold. Turn the paper upside down so that the crease is pointing up. Rotate the paper so that a short side is closest to you (perpendicular to your eyesight). Take each of the corners furthest from you and fold them back to the crease at a 45-degree angle, leaving a point at the end of the crease. Fold the previously folded area towards you. Take each of the corners furthest from you and fold them to the crease, one centimeter shy of the point. Fold the point away from you. Turn the paper upside down. Fold it in half along the original crease. Orient the paper so that the original crease is towards you. Fold towards you on an imaginary line connecting the corner on the folded side that is furthest away from you with a point approximately three centimeters away from the original crease on the unfolded side. Flip upside down and repeat. Pick up the paper and relax the last two folds to a 90-degree angle.
Throw gently.
Eat the pencil.
Oh, you wanted a mathematical proof? You should have presented a mathematical assumption.
Re:Porcelain engine running on water (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.siscom.net/~louisekramer/index.htm
Re:Porcelain engine running on water (Score:5, Funny)
Just to be clear.. (Score:5, Informative)
So there's nothing real to be seen here. Move on.
Re:Just to be clear.. (Score:3)
Yeah, when you discover it violates the laws of thermodynamics, you can safely ignore it because it doesn't really exist. :-)
Re:Just to be clear.. (Score:3, Funny)
What will come next, dogs mating with cats?!?!
Dogs and cats (Score:4, Funny)
Venkman: "Or you could accept the fact that this city is headed for a disaster of Biblical proportions."
Mayor: "What do you mean, Biblical?
Ray: "What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor. Real wrath-of-God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky. Rivers and seas boiling."
Egon: "Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes."
Winston: "The dead rising from the grave."
Venkman: "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria."
Re:Dogs and cats (Score:4, Funny)
WALTER PECK They caused an explosion!
MAYOR: Is this true?
VENKMAN: Yes, it's true. This man has no dick.
If it violates the laws of thermodynamics, (Score:3, Insightful)
Extrordinary claims require extrordinary proof, and this is a very extrordinary claim.
Re:Just to be clear.. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, every ferrous object in the universe does have a (usually very small) force being applied to it from every magnet in the universe.
Similarly, every mass in the universe is *right now* exerting a gravitational pull on every other mass. Most of them are so small as to be insignificant, of course.
In both cases, because of those forces, the "potential energy" (in this case it's perhaps more accurate to say "positional energy") of your object can be lowered by moving it closer to the magnet or large mass. That change in energy can be used to do work, like acceleration.
All energy is real.
"I have a magnet which I had when I was little, and it is now much weaker."
This is a completely different effect, related more to entropy than to the expenditure of energy. (See below.)
"Magnetism is an effect of small electric currents within the magnet; doesn't it stand to reason that when the magnet is used, it could lose power by disturbing some of those currents?"
Not really. In the case of most permanent magnets the 'current' is really just a single electron circling it's atom. A noticeable magnetic effect comes when all the spinning electrons line up and all their infitessimal little contributions add together instead of canceling each other out. Naturally magnetic materials have the spins 'locked down' through various low-level physical and chemical mechanisms.
This is why you can 'magnetize' a nail or needle by rubbing it on a magnet... the magnetic field will (temporarily) align the spins within the needle. Eventually, however, without some mechanism to lock those atoms in place relative to each other, the spins will wander off alignment and the magnetism of the needle will fade.
Re:Just to be clear.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm curious if the motor IS better than usual, just not to the extent claimed, or if it's ALL hoax. I cannot get to the site myself... japan.com surrendered to the
Re:Just to be clear.. (Score:4, Interesting)
But, "In Japan, no one pays for 40,000 convenience store cooling fans without being reasonably sure that they are going to work."
And if that didn't convince you:
Hopefully soon the design will make it in to your home PC, allowing them to run much quieter.
Because we all know that the noise generated by the fan comes from the motor and not from air hitting the fan.
How can you contradict such a logical and fact laden article?
Re:Just to be clear.. (Score:4, Informative)
disclaimer: IANAP (I am not a Physicist)
In an AC circuit is quite possible to measure an AC voltage and amperage which if multiplied give greater than the power input. The trick is that power is not equal to the RMS voltage times the RMS current if the voltage and current are out of phase. For example the peak current happens during off peak voltage and vice versa.
Re:Just to be clear.. (Score:5, Informative)
If you get a higher output power than input or a higher input power than output, it means that you forgot to check the reactive power
Four laws of electrical science; there are no exceptions to these, ever:
1. Voltage is equal to current times impedance
2. The algebraic sum of all voltages in a loop is zero.
3. The algebraic sum of all currents in a branch is zero.
4. The algebraic sum of powers in a circuit is zero. (aka, power in = power out).
If your measurements ever violate any of these laws, you either f*cked up, or you need to file a patent because you just found a way to violate a _law_ of electrical science. That's a big deal, like violating gravity
Judge for yourself (Score:5, Informative)
US Patent 5,594,289 [uspto.gov]
Note that I'm not speaking for or against his claims, but if you want to see how it works, there you go.
Re:Judge for yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Judge for yourself (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In this article, we do not violate the laws (Score:5, Insightful)
It's fake if this is true, I can't get to the article to verify myself.
-Jesse
Magnets store practically no energy (Score:5, Informative)
This energy is small. Like, really small. I'm involved with calculations on magnetic materials, and we typically use units of meV (milli electron Volts) for a magnetic interaction coefficent. That's 1.602 x 10^-22 Joules. Values are typically between around 2 up to maybe 30. Might be higher with the special rare-earths, dunno.
Iron has 8 interactions per atom. Thus, a magnetic energy of the order of 2 * 10^-20 J per atom. One mole of iron will therefore have of the order of 2 * 10^-20 * Avagadro's number = 2 * 10^-20 * 6 * 10^23 = 12 * 10^3 J. That's 12 kJ of magnetic energy, in 55g of the stuff. [0]
So, a post about says that the moter has a discrepancy of 1.2 W (can't get to the article myself). With 55g of iron permenant magnets then, that's enough to run that system for 10 000 seconds. Might sound a lot, but that's 2.7 hours. If I'm within an order of magnitude, that's a runtime of the system of around a day at most, assuming 100% conversion of the magnetic energy into rotational energy. [1]
No. There is not enough magnetic energy in the parmenant magnets.
[0] In fact, I think that you could only get 1/2 of that out. Still, I'm ignoring that, cos I think that this is only within an order of magnitude.
[1] Which I doubt. A lot. In fact, I've never seen any suggested method for doing that.
Re:Magnets store practically no energy (Score:4, Informative)
No, that force doesn't 'come from nowhere' any more that the between my desk and my monitor 'comes from nowhere'
Yes, a permentant magnet will lose the observed properties (the macroscopic dipole). Eventually the magnetic domains will end up cancelling each other out. It's a relativly slow process (years typically to noticability, at room temperature), even in the situation you give (opposed magnets).
The fallacy in your logic is to assume that a static force and a force with motion are the same thing. They are not.
Consider the monitor on my desk (or yours, if that's simpler). There is a force from the desk on the monitor holding it up (other wise, it would fall to the earth, due to gravity). Work done is force * distance [0, and thus, as the monitor is not moving, no work is being done. Now, if you move that monitor, work is being done.
Thus it is with magnets - In this case, if the magnets are permentant, there is as much total force forward as backwards, during a full rotation. If the elecromagnets are use to push the ring round, then that is the source of energy.
[0] for a constant force.
Re:In this article, we do not violate the laws (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In this article, we do not violate the laws (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the exact same argument every peddler of perpetual motion machines uses to claim that his invention is not a perpetual motion machine, but is somehow harnessing external power which is just hanging around out there to be used.
The Earth's electromagnetic field is a popular choice among these hucksters. With this guy, it's magnets.
The very fact that this showed up on the front page of /. shows that they've given up all pretense of caring what they publish here.
Re:In this article, we do not violate the laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Or they think that pointing out incredible claims for scrutiny is a good way to test them. Note the "from the skeptical-eye-on-the-science-guy dept." tag on the article rather than, say, "from the holy-shit-give-this-guy-a-Nobel-quickly dept."
Re:In this article, we do not violate the laws (Score:4, Funny)
Erm.... the word you're looking for is fallacy. I suppose your invented hybrid word might mean "mistake with a penis", as in "Bill Clinton commited lots of phallacies".
But then, you are an AC so maybe it was on porpoise.
Re:In this article, we do not violate the laws (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:In this article, we do not violate the laws (Score:5, Insightful)
5. Someone is deliberatly measuring actual power incorrectly so he can sell crappy motors for more than they are worth.
Re:Just to be clear.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The 'no formal training' genius.
Power out > Power in
Use of the words 'over unity'
A tale of skepticism from scientists
Little guy vs. big guyes woes
Failing to identify the 'fundamental force of nature' that is being harnessed.
But in the end, you don't need to look futher than the violation of the laws of thermodynamics.
Summary is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The noise in your pc is caused by air turbulence caused by the fan blades. Even if the motors inside your fans were 100% efficient, your computer would not be significantly quieter.
threat to national security (Score:5, Funny)
Definitely a violation (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheers,
Justin
Re:Definitely a violation (Score:5, Insightful)
Asside: For those who arn't EEs you can use magents to spin things in various ways: induction, rotating fields generated by coils, reluctance, etc. Reluctance motors are 10-20% more efficient they their syncronous counterparts, but tend to be limited in size, hard to manufacture, and difficult to control. A lot of research has gone in to the different ways to make the magnetic stator to make the motor easier to make, control, and scale up.
At best he's invented a particular rotor/stator combination that creates a really odd magnetic field that he can actually control. My guess is that the motor he has made runs syncronous after spinning up and that his particualar arangement of magents makes it possible for the motor to get enough torque to spin up at non-syncronous speed (i.e. start when you plug it in, and possibly give it a spin).
IF this does work, IF he can get the reliability to the level of syncronous motors, IF it runs at a reasonable power factor, IF its reasonably EMC, AND IF it doesn't require complicated or expensive control mechanisms, he will have a good product on his hands. This would likely be used in a lot of factories, and in HVAC systems in cars. It's probably not that useful for speed control based applications (if it's a reluctance based motor, it's running at syncrous speed) so that excludes it from replacing induction motors and DC motors, unless it's so much more efficient that adding a variable AC supply to the control equipment leaves it still more efficient.
Honestly though, I think the countless posts here are probably right: he invented something and only THINKS it works.
Re:Possibly not... (Score:3, Funny)
I recently invented just such an engine that taps into new unexplained laws of physics. I think that you are just the sort of investor I need to have this project take off. Please send your bank account number.
Henry
P.S. There may be some scoffers, but what is to say that I'm wrong? After all you are reading this on the internet. It must be true.
Re:Possibly not... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no "interesting anomaly", there's just a claim phrased in the language of junk science. We don't find new models for physics on the basis of undocumented, unreviewed, unrepeated claims.
Re:Different violation (Score:5, Informative)
If you attended college, I'd ask for a refund. The first law of thermodynamics *IS* conservation of energy. Check out this [maricopa.edu].
That being said, this device definitately violates it.
Cheers,
Justin
Re:Definitely a violation (Score:5, Interesting)
This definitely looks like a stupid scam.
Re:Definitely a violation? (Score:4, Insightful)
If he hooks up the miracle motor to generator and uses that generator to power up the motor and it keeps running (should be easy with 330% efficiency, you can also draw infinite amount of energy from the circuit while at it) then he has either found the invisible and so far unexplainable power source or has proven that laws of thermodynamics don't work and perpetual motion machines are possible, you can bet that million physicists will swarm in to observe it and everything we though we know will be turned upside down. He'll also be worlds richest person in no time.
Carefully observe how he fails to do that, and instead relies on (probably wrongly calculated or rigged) simple electrical meter. Now ask yourself why? Simple answer: because it doesn't work, and this is nothing but a con.
the truth will set you free (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That depends... (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong, you need to review your physics a bit more. Work is defined as force times distance, W = F * d. Since the levitating magnet is not moving, no work is being performed. A levitating magnet is simply a balance of forces, nothing more. It is exactly the same as putting the magnet on a table (gravity provides a downwards force, the table exerts an equal force upwards).
I'm looking at the pictures.... (Score:4, Funny)
It'll need a big case, in any event.
Bullshit is this weeks magic word (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm.. Simple reason why. If you supply power to the motor using a carnot engine
and use the power from the motor to drive a carnot refrigator.
Then there will be an overall flow of heat from cold to hot..
Breaking the second law of thermodynamics..
Bullshit is word of the week.
Simon.
If you (Score:4, Informative)
I always get suspicious when those sites say, "and my motor/generator at full load begins to get cold"
I've seen it (Score:3, Interesting)
As all of these sorts of posts are appended IANAP, so I could be wrong.
Measurement error or fraud? (Score:5, Interesting)
Either the proponents of this device are complete incompetents, or they are complete frauds. I'm inclined to believe the latter, as incompetents tend not to have the sales skills evident in the article [japan.com]
Produces more energy than it consumes.... (Score:3, Insightful)
A conventional electric motor motor uses at most 1.6 Joules of electric energy to produce 1 Joule of motion energy (German Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]). If you reduce that by 80%, you use only 0.3 Joules to produce 1 Joule... nice perpetuum mobile.
Geek.com Commenters Already Ripped This Apart (Score:4, Informative)
I call Shenanigans (Score:4, Funny)
This sentence pretty much tells you this is another perpetual motion hoax:
With the help of magnetic propulsion, it is feasible to attach a generator to the motor and produce more electric power than was put into the device. Minato says that average efficiency on his motors is about 330 percent.
Wooo-Hooo we can replace coal, oil and nuclear by just string these things together like Christmas tree bulbs!
The other clue that this is a scam is the entourage of bankers and investors to the demos, not physicists and engineers.
Joining us are a middle-aged banker and his entourage from Osaka and accounting and finance consultant Yukio Funai. The banker is doing a quick review for an investment, while the rest of us just want to see if Minato's magnetic motors really work. A prototype car air conditioner cooler sitting on a bench looks like it would fit into a Toyota Corolla and quickly catches our attention
Magnets wooho! (Score:5, Insightful)
Magnets, to many people, can explain anything, becuase they do not understand them properly. Just as you can not construct a perpetual motion device using magnets, however, you cannot raise efficiency using magnets as an energy source. Magnets can only raise efficiency by acting as frictionless bearings, but that is not the case for these motors. This is blatant fraud, and I cannot believe these people fell for it.
this article deserves the foot, not einstein (Score:4, Insightful)
What do they draw a paycheck for again?
whatever... it's a hoax (Score:5, Interesting)
It's one of Bearden's"Japanese Overunity Engines"! (Score:5, Informative)
It's fascinating to read Bearden's views. He claims that what we know as Maxwell's Equations are actually gross oversimplifications, made by Heaviside, of the real Maxwell's Equations -- and that a lot of amazing physics would be possible if we would go back and exploit all the possibilities in the real Maxwell's Equations. Heaviside's "arbitrary crippling" of Maxwell is basically the reason we haven't yet colonized Alpha Centauri.
There is a lot of overlap between Kohei Minato's research and Bearden's [google.com]. Bearden made quite recent comments about Minato's motor [netscape.com].
By the way, Minato's invention is called the "MagMotor." Does anybody know whether this is related to the Magmotor Corp. of Massachusetts [magmotor.com]?
Re:Conversely... (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazingly enough, if you had read the article before posting, you might have gotten your answer:
That alone makes it sound fishy to me, but IANAP.
Re:Conversely... (Score:4, Informative)
Minato says that average efficiency on his motors is about 330 percent.
Mention of Over Unity devices in many scientific circles will draw icy skepticism. But if you can accept the idea that Minato's device is able to create motion and torque through its unique, sustainable permanent magnet propulsion system, then it makes sense that he is able to get more out of the unit than he puts in in terms of elctrical power. Indeed, if the device can produce a surplus of power for longer periods, every household in the land will want one.
Re:Right next to the disk drive... (Score:5, Informative)
I though you were supposed to be nerds.
Re:Right next to the disk drive... (Score:5, Funny)
You're new here, aren't you?
Re:Right next to the disk drive... (Score:5, Funny)
Computer chips contain very little space pixie smoke, and must be heated to staggering temperatures to get it released. I did, however manage to make a UV-erasable PROM glow (UV erasable chips have a little window in the top so you can see the actual chip through the case, and thus expose it to UV) once by accidentally connecting the power supply to one of the data pins. Just like a little lightbulb, all those tiny circuits worked nicely as a filament.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Which is entirely possible - what they don't say is how slow it goes
What would be impressive is getting that golfcart from 0 to 100 in 6 seconds.
Re:The question is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amazing idea (Score:5, Insightful)
And for this you got +5 Informative?? Are there actually that many people on /. that would for even one moment believe that this device actually does what the "inventor" claims.
There have been hundreds of these bogus devices trotted out in the past. They never quite seem to work, but the inventor always promises that it just needs a little more tweaking, once he gets enough investors lined up. Not one has ever accomplished anything beyond emptying the wallets of the suckers that invest in these scams.
Minato doesn't sound like he's just made a measurement error, he sounds like a fraud. The fact that he fooled the reporter doesn't make his invention any more real.
Re:Amazing idea (Score:5, Informative)
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence: this guy provides none.
Re:I NEED MY LITHIUM!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
<voice style="scott-evil">
Ripoff! Magnetrons are what make microwaves work! What'll they do next--put a "laser" on the moon and call it the "Alan Parsons Project"?
</voice>
Toyota Prius (Score:5, Funny)
If I calculated correctly, not a Toyota Prius outfitted with one of these motors would excrete 1.3 litres of gasoline every 20 miles. (it is beyond a matter of getting "great gas mileage": the car would put out more gasoline than it takes in).