100% Efficiency

Does anyone think that it will be possible to create a 100% efficient machine? It might be possible if you could cancel some forces and allowed for others. For example: consider a pendulum. Put it in a vaccuum for no air resistance, but keep it on earth for the use of gravity to make it fall and swing. Take away the friction in the hinge (impossible, I know) and it should theoretically be 100% efficient. Is it actually possible? (In space or on earth).

Unfortunatelly, friction is a bitch. I don't think it would be possible, unless you were to use magnetic fields to hold the moving parts together instead of an actual physical connection.

Perpetual motion.Now there's a dream.

An object would theoretically move through space forever.So an object could also spin forever once put in motion but the act of tapping it as an energy source would slow it and eventually stop it.

It would depend on how you define efficiency. Every machine works 100% efficiently; you put energy in and you get motion plus heat out. The more heat, the less motion.

The equations always balance, so in that sense there's efficiency. But if you want "frictionless work with no influence from gravity or other forces" then no, there's no way to make something 100% efficienct.

Speaking purely from a physics standpoint, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that through any action energy will always be lost, therefore assuming this theory is valid only 99% efficiency would be possible. However, I should state that energy is never lost, rather one could say it is misdirected, with that energy being the one or less percent.

Yep, whether it's conservation of energy, or Newton's law of motion...

Though I remember Lazar (*ignores the groans*) had some interesting ideas about how the alien reactors get around this....

In this forum we obey the laws of thermodynamics!!! Just kidding, but if there were ever a machine that was 100% efficient, it would be incredibly simple.

The only way to do this would to have no friction at all. You would need the following:
1. A total vaccum
2. No friction (frictonless joints or one peice)

I suppose you could take a hunk of metal, take it into space, and then spin it. It would be 100% efficient because it would go forever with no additional energy. Unless, of course, it spins into a gravity well of some celestial object.

yes, but harnessing that energy would cause friction

Bah, who says you have to do anything with the machine? If you were to harness the energy then yes, it would cause friction. Thats why you don't harness the energy. You can look at it all you want, just dont' touch!

so then it is 100% efficient as a form of entertainment.(at least for those of use who are easily entertained)

He never said it had to be useful in any way.
As for a usefull 100% efficient machine, I cant think of a way to possibly construct one. Not with our current technology.

I suppose it could work if we discovered some sort of... super lubricant... or something. Yeah, thats it. Super lubricant. Man, im good

Frictionless surface, eh? Never. SupreLube, maybe. Maybe, if you gene-engineered some bacteria that assisted motion or something. Cannibalistic ones. Wierd.

DE

Originally posted by John bull 1
Perpetual motion.Now there's a dream.

This reminded me of a story of this guy who claimed he had invented a perpetual motion machine, some kind of wheel made principaly of wood I think. I can't even remember where or when I heard of that, but I did a quick search on google and found that, and I think it's probably what I heard of.

Interesting story.

www.spartechsoftware.com...


[Edited on 5-1-2004 by m0rbid]

Wow! Great site. But that Orffyreus is a bitch...
Did he really discover perpetual motion? If he did, that throws a lot of our physics rules out of the window...

There are some frictionless things out there, but they do require maintenance. Consider for instance superconductors. You can have closed loop superconducting coils in which the current just keeps running, but won't require an external power supply to keep the field up.
You just have to keep the coil at 30 K or so.

if light hits the spinning thing, then its going to gradually slow it down too. ever seen one of those little glass bulbs with the black and white spinner inside that spins via light boiling off electrons or something on the black side?