What do perpetual motion machines do

If the friction is low enough, you really wouldn't need to add much energy at all. With that being said, I am going to make some guess as to how this works. Here are my ideas. Temperature Difference. There is some type of tiny temperature difference between the top and bottom of the device.

This means that there could either be a convection current or some type of expanding gas that can get this wheel to rotate. Another option would be to take this temperature difference to power a thermoelectric device and here is how those work. Solar Powered. Not real solar powered with a solar cell and a motor—that might be too obvious. Instead it could use solar power as a method for differential heating. Yes, this would be just like the previous idea unless it uses some type of actual solar cell which I don't see.

A Frickin Battery. Yes, this is a real possibility. The stupid wheel could just have a battery in there that keeps it spinning for long enough that no one can tell. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a battery with all the other things added as a distraction. I guess we will never know how it works—unless I get my hands on that letter with the answer.

But if you think about it, this perpetual motion machine is a great example of the nature of science. The machine is real life, and we the humans are trying to figure out how it works. We come up with different ideas and then find some way to test if our ideas are legit.

Suppose I think the sucker is solar powered. Collecting Bugs in the Amazon. How to Make Science and Nature Films. Will Cortisone Make Things Worse?

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Niagara Falls: A short journey to an epic waterfall. Understanding Plant Hormones. Monocots vs Dicots Explained. The secret is now kept in an envelope in the archive of the Royal Society, to remain closed for the next 30 years, with the exception of those entrusted with its maintenance — it turns out that the machine may require an occasional nudge to keep it going. In addition to devising ingenious and implausible inventions, Jones was a qualified chemist and has the distinction that one of his entirely practical but still ingenious creations has left planet Earth: his papers in the Royal Society archive include work on a chemical garden designed to investigate growth without gravity.

Chemical garden designed by David Jones. However, there is no doubt Jones is best remembered as a gifted author, journalist and communicator of science. His perpetual motion machine was created to engage puzzled onlookers with the laws of science — to question what is possible, and what is not. Attempts to create a perpetual motion machine go back at least as far as the twelfth century, when Indian engineers proposed a machine that worked on the principal of an unbalanced wheel, with spokes weighted by mercury that would shift as the wheel rotated, redistributing weight and forcing the axle to continue turning.

The lure of perpetual motion, however, is such that designs continued to be submitted to the Society, by individuals as diverse as reverends and shoemakers, even after it had been repeatedly debunked.

There appears to have been a mistaken belief that the Society offered a prize for anyone who could solve the conundrum, as it did for a reliable method of determining longitude. In fact, solutions were sometimes submitted for both at the same time, perhaps revealing motives more monetary than investigatory.