Wheels, Bombs, and Perpetual Motion Machines
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- čas přidán 7. 12. 2016
- This is a collaboration with the Royal Institution! Go check out their video here: • How To Debunk Perpetua... -- Perpetual motion machines are badly named. And impossible. But that hasn't stopped a lot of people trying to build them. Sure, you could try and argue physics: but there's a more common-sense reason why free energy's not coming any time soon.
I'm at www.tomscott.com
on Twitter at / tomscott
on Facebook at / tomscott
and on Instagram and Snapchat as tomscottgo
You should make an episode that's a little more unsettling than the rest and call it "Things you might not want to know"
I found the 'Life' and 'Bubble' videos pretty unsettling.
nice
halloween moods from tom scott
“Things you might not want to know: Maraschino cherries get their bright red color from a crushed beetle”
XaleManix where was dat
"It worked until the city experienced a power cut."😂😂😂
And the glove snap after that😂
I don't fah'kin know if this is a joke or something
Hurdurhurdurhurdr
Makes sense.
Nah, it was a power cut because the machine couldn't power the city ;)
I prefer to define the term "perpetual motion machine" as "a kinetic sculpture with a very cleverly hidden source of energy."
K.S.W.A.V.C.H.S.O.E
@@ZaHandle ah yes the classic K.S.W.A.V.C.H.S.O.E. fools them everytime
@@System-ru5yt What's the classic K.S.W.A.V.S.C.H.S.O.E that fools them everytime?
@@debarshidas8072 you know... the K.S.W.A.V.C.H.S.O.E. Everybody knows about it
@@debarshidas8072 Check it out, this dude doesn't know what a K.S.W.A.V.S.C.H.S.O.E. is.
Inventor: hey everyone I just made a perpetual motion device that puts out more power then it takes in.
Scientist: He's got a bomb!
Soon after the words "perpetual motion" are also banned from airports.
...wait, so is the word "bomb" ITSELF actually banned from airports? That's... stupid, pointless, and bizarre. Not a surprise, in retrospect.
it's not banned but don't be surprised if you're 'randomly selected' for a check after you say it
Last person I imagined seeing here...
Cody'sLab Why have nukes when you have a perpetual motion machine?
than*
I made a perpetual motion machine once. Unfortunately I left it in the future while testing my time machine.
Both perpetual motion machines and future travelling time machines are quite possible. If fact very quickly moving perpetual motion machine would be a time machine. Now the whole getting back to this point in time, that is just silly.
@@colorado841 r/WoOooSh
Found your perpetual motion machine while testing my space ship... It was rotating a few hundred thousend kilometers from earth.. good thing that its magnetic brake is still working. Nice design... my theory is that the earth moved a little bit since you lost it. Let's meet in 30 years at the front gates of Atlantis at noon.. i want to test this black hole event horizont time travel thing anyway. I be there in 2 hours.
It should turn up someday.
@@colorado841 time machine is not possible
The distinction between "pah-tent" and "pay-tent" was duly noted and deeply appreciated by this American. Thanks for an informative video!
Michael Jenkins So incredibly smooth of him too
He is British but just spent so much time in america his accent changed.
Good catch!
Came here to check if someone else also noticed it.
The fact he pronounced them both differently shows it was intentional. His accent hasn't changed.
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Simpsons is amazing
Hallam Crafer
I was looking for this comment in the comments. The comments did not dissapoint.
You can't force me to obey!
@@sophiacristina *proceeds to make a bomb*
@@lnefty "Did you say a bomb, Obama, or Osama?..."
_"BILL CLINTON"_
My partner works at the UK Intellectual Property Office and apparently they have a room somewhere with all the models sent in by perpetual motion machine inventors who are insistant that they do work. These are usually sent in the post without proper labelling and also cause a bomb scare every now and then
By the gods... all that free power they are sitting on :D
You mean in the sense of "if we put them into the furnace, we can heat the building for a couple of weeks without buying coal"?
@Xevix 291 So there's this thing called sarcasm...
@@jayp.7197 okay well tbf i speak fluent sarcasm and i couldn't tell it was sarcasm, than again i am a dumbass so
@@aromanticfranziskavonkarmais that sarcasm
For those just arriving from the notifications and wondering why it looks like other people were already here: the Royal Institution tends to publish their videos in the morning, so some people have come over from their channel. :)
Howdy, folks!
Tom Scott ok
Hello!
The Royal Institution how you doin' m8
I love they way you said "You've got a bomb!"
"It would keep spinning forever, you just wouldn't be able to get any useful work out of it." No need for a true vacuum, we have plenty of politicians who can manage that right here.
Ooooooooh.
Smooth segue. No unnecessary bias towards a particular party.
I like this burn.
HEYO
damn
The vacuum is cleverly hidden, either inside their skull or where their heart should be.
@@valinhorn42 oooh! Burn!
“Until there was a city-wide power cut.”
*glove snaps*
Great timing and execution.
Nice effect at the end there. I did not expect that.
That couldn't be a bomb, it didn't look like a clock.
It's an older reference sir, but it checks out.
what reference is that?
Correction, he dissembled an alarm clock so it would look like a bomb and took it to school
MP Inc I feel like its important to note that while his family came from Sudan, the kid in question was born and raised in suburban Dallas
MP Inc 1. Sudan isnt a part of the Middle East unless you're going with some very generous (and very recent) definitions.
2. Just stating his family's heritage (or misstating it) isn't a neutral act.
(seriously though I feel like you may be using "Middle Eastern" as a synonym for "Muslim" which is incorrect on many levels)
Has anyone else noticed how Tom marks his videos in the thumbnail? "Things you may not know" videos always have a red bar on the left, and "Amazing Places" videos always have a bar on top, I just thought it was cool.
4 years later:
TYMNK is a left bar, Amazing Places is a triangle in the top left, and Built for Science is bottom left triangle.
Everything else is either no shape or a mistake
Tom Scott's is the most pleasant comment section to have discussions in. In all of CZcams.
Great job in building such an intelligent, educated and amicable community!
Totally agree!
amogus
Fyuocuk
its full of midwits lmao
"US patent office" and "UK patent office"... That's cute.
One of the reasons I love watching Tom's videos. He's bilingual ;-)
gejyspa He, so far as I know, only speaks English. He's not bilingual. He's bidialectic.
PintoRagazzo He only speaks English, but he has a degree in Linguistics.
2:18 for those looking for the timestamp
@@PintoRagazzo Traditional English and Simplified English should be considered different languages.
I used to think about this concept back in like second grade. My theory was put a motor to a generator that in turn powered the motor. To start the machine you need to use a large capacity battery to get the motor going fast enough where the generator would be able to power the motor. And to get energy just slap a few fan blades to the motor so it makes a breeze and then convert that to energy. I know this would not work but it fascinated me as a child
You've hit upon one of the key things that most perpetual motion inventors and supporters ignore: Newtonian physics, particularly the equal and opposite reactions. In order to draw any energy out of the device, you inescapably end up placing a braking force upon it. And with real-world bearings, and in a planetary atmosphere, both the environment and the machine's own internal friction will also supply a small reaction force against its continued movement (...essentially, extracting energy from it in the form of heat and air turbulence).
@Fester Blats Calm down, smartass. Why the hell do you think a second-grade kid like OP was a physic expert all a sudden? At least they aware later on. The real ignorant is you, assuming all young, dumb, inexperienced children having a mind of a physic professor.
@Anifco67 Scientific proofs are always up for being challenged though, that's kind of the core tenet of science. Blind belief is more within the realm of religion. Let kids play around with the idea to figure out why it doesn't work instead of calling them ignorant morons for not just thinking "well this book says it is that way, guess that settles it". They learn more that way.
@Gabriel Howell i mean yes and no. Thats why we call them proofs. If you can proove (and do so correctly) that something is impossible then you can be right. Saying out of your own emotion it is impossible isnt really the same thing.
For example perpetual motion machines that also lets you GAIN energy is and always will be impossible. If ever we do get a perpetual motion machine it would be able to simply power itself....that being said on earth, we can never get 100% efficiency because of friction. So they will always stop
My perpetual motion machine was a dam that used a siphon to bring the water back up.
you didn't have to spin that wheel to know it wouldn't work. the designer knew what he was doing when he put that stop sign in its centre.
"After a few seconds youve got a bomb"
Pressure cooker motto
call them "instant pots" and they'll sell like hotcakes.
And really, they work.
@@tsm688 super convenient
It is really surprising how many people actually belive in working perpetual motion machines
SpektralJo
30% of US population believes in the creation story of adam and eve rather than in evolution…
where did you get that statistic?
I guess it's impossible to really say accurately. A lot of the sources that I have looked at are not credible on their own (huffingtonpost, washingtonpost, wiki (that old chestnut)). However, the main reported numbers I found were over 30%.
then cite the source
+Brandon Hall I dont know if 1028 is a large enough sample size
I like how Tom said patent differently depending on whose patent office he was taking about.
I remember watching a perpetual motion fraud's video a few years ago. It was in principle an unbalanced wheel, but done in a different way. The balls would enter and leave the wheel at certain points and roll to the opposite side on tracks, the ones falling being further from the centre than the ones rising.
When he explained it, it sounded like it would work... until you actually thought about it. You'd need more balls on the falling side to lift the ones on the other side... except they're the same balls. They'd all end up at the bottom very quickly.
I think he had a motor hidden away somewhere.
Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
You're tearing me apart.... Lisa.
Was looking for this!
Aperture Science!
We do what we must because we can
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead.
The Forge Master
Now there’s no sense crying over every mistake.
You just keep on trying 'till you run out of cake!
Just connect a battery to itself. It will charge itself forever.
ASeriesOfSymbols Well i was ironic but thanks for the info :D
Fair enough. I hope you have a good day!
ASeriesOfSymbols Thanks! You too! :)
***** bombs are cool too
Yes. The results will blow your socks (and hands) off! To smithereens!
Any hope for a video on the EM Drive ? Very debated, and dubious, subject but it would be surely fun to do something on it, no ?
Is not EM drive a bit like a perpetual motion machine? What I can see shall it shall be able to output more energy in one direction than it does in the opposite direction, I have to admit that I am uneducated and not very logical, but I can not understand how that would work without changing physics as we know it.
No, the EM drive takes energy and converts it into motion, without moving any matter around. There's no free energy, but it still shouldn't be possible with current physics.
Jim Engström as I understood it, it is not so much a perpetual machine but a machine that could propulse itself. The problem is that there somehow difficulties to prove if it does really work, due to the fact that the propulsion created is really tiny.
+Jim Engström You are right in not understanding the EM drive without changing physics. The thing about EM drive is that unlike perpetual motion machines, one of these has been built by a team of NASA engineers in a controlled, scientific environment and measurements do suggest that it exerts a tiny but significant force. That's what all the fuzz is about, if the experiment were to pass through a thorough process of peer review and be reproduced, it would mean a massive breakthrough in our understanding of physics and the rewriting of some statements that are still believed to be laws of physics.
Therefore the scientific community is VERY skeptical of the whole thing, but it has not been debunked. Yet.
As with the recent claim that neutrinos were measured to be traveling faster that light (which could be traced to a tiny error in cabling) an outrageous claim like this will have to go through stupendous amounts of investigation before even getting close to being accepted.
(on a completely different note: I just realized how many synonyms for "really big" I've learned recently by following U.S. politics)
There is a really good video by Thunderf00t on this, worth a watch.
This is why friends don't let friends use reactionless drives.
I discovered your channel three-ish weeks ago. I-AM-HOOKED. Intriguing content, clean delivery. Very well done. Thank you for all the effort you and your team put in to these episodes.
I love your subtle nod to the differences in pronouncing "patent". :)
2:16 I hear what you did there ;)
Great video as always, Would love to see you present the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures one year :)
I'm not remotely qualified for that! Those folks don't just report the discoveries of others: they're great researchers themselves, as well as being lecturers. I mostly just report on what other people do!
Didn't know you had a shy part Tom
Tom Scott "I'm not remotely qualified for that!” Well certainly not with that attitude...
***** Yes, i did think that, Tom but didn't want to say it haha. It would just be a lot of fun i think.
I know that perpetual movement is impossible but the pursuit of it is so fun, trying to build something more and more efficient, taking every force acting on the machine into account, truly perfecting something, that will never be fully perfected, it’s inherently compelling.
I always love these accessible informative videos, it’s relaxing and still feels a bit like i’m learning something
I loved the way Tom pronounced the word "patent" appropriately [but differently!] for the US and the UK at 2:15
I'd love to see you take a crack at some of the weird stuff like this from the past, like Antikythera machine etc. You have a huge talent for explaining stuff in a way that I can understand. Keep going and thank you
"Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
Took me a full minute to realise this wasn't an Objectivity video. I suddenly thought, "Wait, that's Tom, not Brady!"
I wonder if this will start a turf war between them.. ;)
Firstname Lastname Brady should do a spin-off podcast with Tom like Grey has done with Myke.
T mobile add moment
Frikkin' Solar Roadways!
THORIUM Solar Roadways!
Imagine the number of Jobs they would create... Having people scrub them clean all day long... 80% of america could work in road-cleaning. 100% employment FTW!!!!
...until those jobs are all taken over by road-cleaning robots.
lmpeters dey tookr jerbs!
lmpeters Solar frikkin' roombas?
your subtle editing style is the best. and your theoretical talks about digital dystopias is great. you're one of my new favorite youtubers
Tom Scott for Royal Institute Christmas Lecture :D
The CZcams algorithm just loves you 😂
It always recommends me videos from you from about 3-6 years ago - respect ✌🏻😎
sigh.... now my youtube "recommended" videos will be packed with perpetual motion machines.
I love, love, *love* the amusing little nods you put in your videos that entertain the idea that the impossible is indeed possible.
If you ever went to Czech republic, will you make a video about the Old Jewish Cemetery? It's one of the oldest jewish burial grounds in the whole world, the oldest grave dating as far as 1439. Also, because of space problems, the graves are stacked on each other, sometimes as much as 10 layers of them. (Sorry for any grammar mistakes.)
If memory serves didn't the Soviets plunder some of the stone from those tombs to make cobblestones?
Actually, you spun in the wrong direction.
The concept was that the balls on the left side would drag in the wheel down since they were further away from the center of gravity than the balls on the right. You can even see that it rotates the other way when it slowed down.
"Lisa, get in here. In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics."
It still won't work regardless
Love how they make you wear gloves but let you roughly push it around like that. Haha.
Being used for demonstrations like this is its purpose. Might as well not have it if you can't. But they want the minimum damage given what it needs to do. Makes sense to me.
@PolySaken
Explain
@@pietrotettamanti7239 It is a rubber, not a plastic.
Moisture is what kills wood.
I doubt that the latex actually does more harm than the water.
But, I think it probably comes down to stuff like fingernail scratches and mustard stains. Latex might be more harmful than skin, but it's way more consistent than hands.
I like the fact that Tom says Patent differently for the US and UK offices, attention to detail
Thanks for another excellent video Tom.
Also for rubbing in your superior outlet designs!
thought he was joking when he said it was actually the original
i'm sure someone said this already:
"the hardest part of making a perpetua motion machine, is finding where to hide the batteries"
But then it's not a perpetual motion machine.
@@XtremiTeez that's what the phrase means, you can't build a machine of that kind
@@aratof18 yes, you can. You just can't use batteries,
@@XtremiTeez no, you can't, a perpetual motion machine is physicially impossible in our universe
i just found your channel from a random suggestion and i gotta say i love your channel! I'm gonna watch all your vids so keep up the good work!
Hey Tom. Love your videos. Always interesting, informative and entertaining. Cheers!
Can I just appreciate the relative pronunciations of, “The US Pahtent office and the UK Paytent office” for a second?
Lmao my Provincial government is currently investing in one of those snake oil companies with a concept for perpetual power and no actual prototype or anything.
They have patents in the us allegedly, despite the coffeepot breaking all rules of thermodynamics and having no demo to prove it works.
love the effect at end :D
2:59 Which I really like, because it allows me in sci-fi and fantasy novels to have bombs that aren't the traditional nuclear/antimatter stuff and have interesting mechanics behind them, for example doubling as power cores for missiles.
its not hard to imagine, its hard to do
So that's where Aperture got its logo from...
Thanks for constantly making fascinating videos! :D
The end was very well comedicly performed
Wheels, perpetual motion machines, bombs. You want it? It's yours my friend, as long as you have enough rubies
1:43 *woah!* what if it breaks? easy there.
Although trying to create a perpetual motion machine is a perpetual search, there have been some really interesting designs that are effectively just really efficient kinetic energy storage, which could have some practical use. Most designs are probably too convoluted unfortunately.
Reminds me of a sci fi book I read once where they found a device that did that, that produced more energy than was taken in, and it took ages for them to realize it was not in fact a reusable nuclear bomb.
Would love to read that, any chance you remember the title or author?
@@steronoknex3827 I do actually, it was "Into the looking glass" by John Ringo. Although this was a very small part of that book. It was in the epilogue of this book that they discovered it, it was in the next one in the series that they made a bigger deal about it
Every time I plug an extension cord/splitter into itself, or make a loop in any way, I jokingly say "infinite power!!!!"
The trick is you do it really fast so all the electricity stays in the wire ;p
palpatine moment
Keep in mind that the "bomb" argument doesn't actually disprove the possibility of such a device, it merely points out a dangerous consequence if one could exist.
it does kind of. If these things exist, they should be blowing up like bombs.
@@tsm688 If such a machine could exist, but didn't, no bomb. If such a machine did exist, it could be set up in such a way to be a bomb, but if no such machine has been set up that way - again, no bomb.
I want a... I would really think it would be cool to have a full-length documentary. I know, it would take a whole lot of time, and considerable effort, but... I dunno. I would greatly enjoy watching it, no matter the subject.
When you mentioned the bomb thing, I got instantly went rigid with fear even though I knew nothing would happen.
rule 152 of the internet - created by Tom Scott:
If you face a very convincing perpetual motion machine, just look around, there MUST exist a hidden power source, even if it includes the heat of your room
3:05 God dammit, so close! haha
I love this channel. actual learning
Love what you did there Tom, with the "Patent" bit ;)
Use a small one to power a bigger one kind of reminds me of how the Infinite Improbability Generator came into existence.
When I was twelve I constantly had ideas of how I was going to solve the energy crisis. All of them were perpetual motion machines.
Did one of them involve shining a torch on a solar panel which then powered the torch?
love these vids!
Think you can do another one of those things where you did the movie explosion demonstration, but plug in the thing to itself, and run?
*Question: is a portal logo.*
Turn a power strip into a bomb...
I love your content. Keep it coming.
I agree. This is one of the highest quality content channels on CZcams as far as I know.
that is one wicked cool old piece of tech there ^^
lovely video thanks for sharing
technically if you manage to eliminate any loss of energy from the system (mainly due to friction which would turn energy into heat energy which can escape the system) then you could have a perpetual motion machine (after all, perpetual motion is exactly that, motion that goes on infinitely all by itself), given, of course, that it is absolutely worthless because as soon as you try to use any of its energy, that means you're taking energy out of the system and thereby you slow it down, so at most it would be a fun thing to look at (but probably becomes boring after a while). For this to work, you would need to have it in a vacuum to eliminate any air resistance, it would need to be a single part because interaction between parts would cause friction (even if you minimise friction as much as possible with lubrication and whatnot, and it cannot touch any other object because that also causes friction, so it needs to levitate. so really the only possibility would be something simple given a spin in a 0G vacuum...
Entertaining as always. Will you ever do a video on CRIPSR?
If you guys haven't already seen it, the channel, Kurzgesagt - In a Nut Shell, had a beautifully animated video on CRISPR. Do check it out if you haven't!
Tadaa -> /watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY
What flavour? I always liked prawn cocktail as a kid but now I'm more into ready salted.
Actually, patents for perpetual motion machines aren't just being refused without further ado, however they will only look into them if you have actually built the machine (and it works).
And yet that still does not stop people...
To make a machine that runs forever, you need a secret power input. You need to stagger the input and output so that the load isn't directly resisting the source. My fav perpetual machine uses gravity.
Me with a bomb in my bag at the airport
Security guard " whatch you got there?"
Me " a perpetual motion machine "
You forgot to mention the most important thing: There is a hidden power source!
I've always wondered about plugging extension cords into their self and even done it a few times just to look at it. I never thought about what would happen if the extension cord would also be it's own power source though.
As i'm sure you found out in reality it just loses power. However, if it could theoretically generate more power than it used by feeding back into itself it could reach a point where it was no longer safe to shut it off without causing an explosion from the excess energy.
@@hamsterfromabove8905 or ideally it would have plugs and other ports to plug devices into.
But as we are told gaining more energy from the same energy doesn't work.
@@kairon156 But using other devices just pushes the problem down one level. The other devices would now have to worry about too much energy. No matter what you do with it, making more energy than is being used will result in unsafe conditions.
@@hamsterfromabove8905 hum... I guess that's why the word discharge is used a lot when people talk about safety features.
Mainly it's talking about gas or liquids under pressure needing a discharge valve.
for our self powered extension cord we would need a device made simply to waste energy before there's an overlade.
@@kairon156 But where would that waste energy go? Discharged waste energy doesn't "disappear". It gets converted into a harmless form. However, too much of anything is harmful. That's the biggest problem with an infinite energy source. You will eventually (with enough time) fill anything you try to put that energy in. Even if you just release the energy into the sky, you will one day damage the atmosphere. Even if you put the energy into space, one day in millions or billions of years you'll make your solar system uninhabitable.
Creating theoretically infinite amounts of literally anything is inherently unsafe.
“It worked until the city experienced a power outage”
That motor sure is hidden..
that's a cool perpetual motion machine you have there
1:04 Weird glove flick...totally unnatural.
Huh, I always thought that wheel was theorized to work the opposite way, with the outside balls having more leverage than the other side (thus turning counter clockwise). Still doesn't work of course, but I thought the "inventor" intended the opposite way
I love that you used both pronunciations of "patent"
ty tom for the video
Wow, your grey temples really look awesome.
You just caused the How-I-Met-Your-Mother shattering noise of realizing a thing about someone which is obvious when you know it but never realized.
Only in this instance it is awesome! Really looks great, thanks for pointing that out to me^^
They just came in the past few years, but it really emphasises his intellect somehow. I think that is hardwired in my brain.
Also: You are welcome :)
It just seems that way :D
what about cats taped to toasts?
that's infinite energy everyone knows that
"Cats are inherently clean creatures. Given enough time they'll lick up all the butter from the toast." - Alan Moore
I've got this on loop.
Love your content! Just luvit
So the patent office won't give out patents for perpetual motion machines, but they have no problem giving out blanket copyrights on basic computer functions, like how a group of lawyers owns the ability to scan a document and email it.
Misguided inventor vs business gaming the system.
this didnt show up on my subscription feed?
Unlisted videos don't show on feeds.
Yep, I won't be launching this until my usual time of 4pm, but anyone who came over from the RI's channel can see it early!
milkerfish ....4 hours later
That isn't a question?
I like your extra distinction between the american and the british patent office by the pronunciation (pah-tent vs pay-tent)
I was spooked when Tom plugged the plug board into itself and it lit up.