| Author | Message | ||
     vocasla Unregistered guest |
Hi, I have done alot of research on the gauss rifle and its effect, and I wish to start my own experiments with them very soon. But there are still a few things about the concept I still do not understand, and wish to ask about. I know that when you hit a ball bearing you apply energy into it, and as it gets closer to the magnet, it accelerates. This means that it must be gaining momentum because of F=ma. This also means that it must be gaining kinetic energy because of E=mad or E=1/2mv^2. If the process repeats, the next ball will always be accelerated by the force of the magnetic field until friction and air resistance prevents the balls from further acceleration. I recently discovered from researching that after 4 or 5 magnets, the balls begin to decelerate. What I need to know is whether the ball bearing is maintiaining maximum constant velocity as you keep repeating the same pattern, or whether it will eventually decrease in velocity until there is not enough momentum to release the next ball infront; a subsequent stop. If the former is true, i.e. the balls remain at constant velocity I would like to know if there are any total energy compensations during the cycle. By this i mean whether all the friction, air resistance, noise, is compensated by the magnetic field's attempt to continuously accelerate the ball, (or not) that will result in no total energy losses. If the above statement is not true, then surely the ball must be decreasing in velocity, meaning it is losing energy (converted into other forms of energy), as the length of the device is increased. In addition to the concept of energy, I still do not grasp the idea whether you are applying more input energy than the output kinetic energy of the ball. I am still confused whether an energy input is being amplified because of the accelerating balls that will result in a higher energy ouput, provided whether acceleration stops and that constant velocity is achieved during motion. If that is so, then surely this concept over-unity (you get more energy out than you put in) in relation to energy input and output, can be achieved. Although that this is what my intuition and current understanding of the subject tells me. However, my logical thinking tells me that this is braking the laws of thermodynamics, and that over-unity is impossible unless a closed system is present. (Perpetual motion is not a possibility due to the existence of entropy!) Since a gauss rifle is not an closed system, I am struggling to find a logical explanation to prove that the gauss rifle is not an over-unity device!  I have also read here somewhere that by intensifying the magnetic field by adding more magnets in each step, you continue to accelerate the ball. Does this continue to work for however many times you repeat this pattern until the magnet is destroyed? Or does it have a fixed limit and that you can only temporarily accelerate the ball? And finally, provided that the magnets are totally indestructable and that balls can be continuously accelerated using stronger magnetic fields, can it be possible to accelerate a ball just under the speed of light? Oh, and of course, the mass of the ball would increase enormously if that happens.. (teehee, if that was possible, think of the possibilities of changing mass into energy at the speed of light! :D) I know, the last question is silly, but I seriously would like to know the answers to all of these queries for a very curious mind  I will greatly appreciate all replies! ^__^ thnx, -V.Ocasla | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (sfield) New member Username: sfield Post Number: 115 Registered: 12-2004 |
You are right -- there is no over-unity and there is no perpetual motion. Without the extra magnets keeping the ball going at its maximum velocity, it would slow down due to friction and drag. How many magnets are needed to get to maximum depends on the friction and drag, and on the efficiency of the momentum transfer during the collision. To load the rifle, you must pull the ball away from the magnet. This takes energy, and is the source of the energy in the rifle. To give the ball enormous energy, you would need to put in an even greater amount of energy. | ||
| Mike Unregistered guest |
Magnets have to be losing somthing, though. how else would the balls accelerate at each new stage, even at the first one? we should try measuring the temperature of the magnets as the ball moves toward it. maybe they get colder... | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (sfield) Senior Member Username: sfield Post Number: 378 Registered: 12-2004 |
Don't be silly. The magnets aren't losing anything. If I drop a ball onto the concrete, do you assume the concrete has lost something? The energy is in the distance between the ball and the ground. The more distance, the more energy. To lift the ball takes energy. You are storing the energy when you put the ball on a shelf, and you get the energy back when it falls off the shelf. The same thing happens with the balls and the magnets. You store energy by pulling the ball off of the magnet. It takes a lot of energy to do that -- that's why it is so hard to pull the ball off of the magnet. You store that energy by placing the ball where it doesn't move. You get that energy back by letting the ball "fall" towards the magnet. The energy is NOT in the magnet. It is in the distance between the ball and the magnet which is pulling on it. Imagine a spring between the ball and the magnet. You stretch the spring tight when you pull the ball away, and the spring contracts to pull the ball back to the magnet. The energy was stored in the spring, not in the magnet or the ball. | ||
| MadScientist (madscientist) Intermediate Member Username: madscientist Post Number: 48 Registered: 4-2005 |
Heres an interesting question - I know this may sound stupid, but where does the 'initial' energy come from? ie, Lets assume that a magnet and a ball had never been brought anywhere near each other. There is still an attraction between the magnet and the ball, and if allowed, the ball will gain kinetic energy in the process of moving toward the magnet, until it strikes the magnet, ultimately dissipating the energy as heat. Correct? Ok. That being said, lets assume that the rifle was assembled for the first time without ever having to pull any balls away from any magnets. When the gun is fired, there is obviously potential energy converted into kinetic energy. My theory would be that there is some form of leftover energy from when the magnet was made (the difference between a normal piece of steel and the energy it took to create the now polarized magnet), but as you stated above, the energy isnt stored in the magnet. So where *DOES* that energy come from? | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (sfield) Senior Member Username: sfield Post Number: 383 Registered: 12-2004 |
It comes from the distance between the ball and the magnet. Let's say we heat up the magnet above its Curie point so that it loses its magnetism. Now we place it on the ruler, and place the original ball at the starting point. Now we use a coil to remagnetize the magnet. We carefully measure the energy needed to magnetize it. Now we let a million balls be attracted to the magnet, one at a time, removing each ball after it hits to leave room for the next. We measure the magnetism in the magnet after the experiment and find that it has not changed. The amount of energy we get from a million balls hitting the magnet is much more than we put into magnetizing the magnet. We can continue with another million balls, then another, as long as we like. Meteors hit the earth every day, burning up in the atmosphere making lots of heat, light, and noise. Where does the energy come from? From the distance the meteors fall. The steel balls get their energy from falling towards the magnet. It doesn't matter if the force attracting them is gravitational or magnetic, they are still "falling" from a high energy state to a lower one, releasing energy in the process. | ||
| Ben Hayley Unregistered guest |
I have recently desinged an eficient, and easy to use gauss rifle, but one aspect in the loading process is quite literaly halving my eficientcy. when my "loader" puls the balls away, it encounters the magnetic force that put the balls there in the first place. what I would like to know is; Is it possible to "sheild" a magnet, sop that on the other side of the "sheild" the magnets pull is negated? Note: plese excuse any spelling and grammar mistakes, as i am only 14 and am notorious for bad spelling. | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) Senior Member Username: Sfield Post Number: 562 Registered: 12-2004 |
No, such a shield would violate the second law of thermodynamics. It is the same as stacking bricks. If you had a shield that prevented gravity from affecting the bricks, then you could lift them with no effort, and then turn off the shield to drop them, allowing you to do work without expending energy. Any anti-gravity device or magnetic shield would require as much energy to operate as lifting the brick or removing the ball from the magnet. There is no free lunch. As for spelling, it tells the world one of two things about you. Either you are not smart enough to spell, or you have neglected an important part of your education. Neither one makes you look good. By age 14 most of your friends can already spell quite well, and you look foolish compared to them. Ask your English teacher to help you -- there are remedial spelling programs and books that can help. This message board has a spelling checker with a small dictionary, so it will mark many perfectly spelled words as suspect, but it will very seldom miss any spelling mistakes. If you look up each word it flags in Google, you will usually get a spelling suggestion like "Did you mean: shield" You can then Google for "define: shield" to get a dictionary definition of the word to make sure it is the word you wanted to use. If you do this often enough, you will find that you learn to spell quickly, and need to look things up much less often. Another neat trick is to enter your text into Google's GMail mail program, and have it check your spelling. GMail marks the words but also allows you to click on them and pick the correct spelling from a short list. Microsoft Word also does this, but GMail is free (if you want a GMail invitation, send me an email). | ||
| Ultrafart Unregistered guest Posted From: 203.221.28.151 |
Hey Ben, just ignore "S-I'm-totally-up-myself-Field" and his inane declarations of his superior view of life, the universe and everything... YES there IS a way to "cancel" a magnetic field, or "shield" it as you put it... most materials have a property called "diamagnetism" which actually generates a magnetic field which OPPOSES any field that the material is placed in... the "diamagnetism" is so small as to be negligible in most materials, but a couple of materials have such a strong "diamagnetic" effect that you can actually LEVITATE the stuff over a magnet... the two that I'm aware of are BISMUTH (a metal) and CARBON (specifically the GRAPHITE form)... You will have to tinker and fiddle with the stuff to figure out how best to "shield" your balls from a megnetic field, but it CAN be done - all it takes is the WILL and a bit of imagination... Oh, and you'd best be prepared for a monologue from you-know-who about why any such idea is SACRILEGE and TABOO and all that other crâpola, for daring to step away from the "common wisdom" of the culturally crippled mindset... In the words of that Goddess of the Idiot Box - "you go, girl!"... | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) Senior Member Username: Sfield Post Number: 593 Registered: 12-2004 |
Try it and see. The poster with the funny name has not done so, and does not understand how diamagnetism works. This is why he has all of the ad hominem attacks instead of explaining the science. The property of a material called susceptibility refers to how magnetic flux flows through that material. Materials such as iron that have very high susceptibilities are very good conductors of magnetic flux, and any nearby magnetic field finds it easier to flow in them than in the air around them. You can picture the lines of force crowding together inside the iron, leaving fewer of them per unit area in the air outside. Diamagnetic materials like bismuth have very small negative susceptibilities. This means that the magnetic flux finds it easier to flow in the air around them than through the bismuth, but not by much. You can picture the magnetic field lines being less dense in the bismuth, forcing more of them to go into the air. The magnetic field lines still all go from one pole to the other. Some of them just go around the diamagnetic material. It takes energy to move magnetic fields away from where they have the lowest energy. This is why iron is attracted to the magnet -- the closer the iron is to the magnet, the more magnetic flux can go through the iron, where it takes less energy. To move the iron away from the magnet takes energy, you can feel the pull with your fingers. You have to do work to move the iron off of the magnet. With diamagnetic materials, it takes work to move the material close to the magnet. The bismuth has to displace the magnetic field lines. It is like pushing a balloon under water -- it takes work to displace the water from its low energy state (at the bottom of the container) to a higher state (the water rises in the container as you push the balloon down). So, despite the previous poster's wishful thinking about the laws of physics, a magnetic shield would not allow you to turn the Gauss Rifle into a perpetual motion machine. It would take the same amount of work to move the magnetic field lines out of the way as it would to remove the ball from the magnet. You can't get something for nothing, despite his low opinion of common wisdom. It is also obvious that he has no experimental data to support his misconceptions. But the experiment is really easy to perform. Just place a piece of the strongest diamagnetic substance you can find between two magnets and see if it shields them. I happen to have some magnets and some pyrolytic graphite, which is the strongest room temperature diamagnet known at this time. I place the magnets on either side of the pyrolytic graphite, and they hold on tightly, as if I had placed a piece of glass or wood there.  |
