The thermal energy has to come from somewhere. It’s not limitless.
It could be coming out of the air.
Free energy from the air.
Yeah, right, and where is that “air” coming out of?
I got to invest in this invention using the money I made on the microwave reactionless thruster.
I’d pay you back using the royalties I intended to earn on that thruster, but unfortunately, the one and only prototype is headed out into deep space and I can’t catch it….
It’s being heated by the sun, because we don’t live on a frozen iceball?
(I believe “limitless” here refers to duration, not quantity per unit.
“An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors”.
This has been hyped for a few years now, and I can believe it might manage to extract enough energy from ambient heat to provide *a few milliwatts*.)
In addition to conservation of energy (First Law of Thermodynamics), there is also the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Second Law is not a conservation law, rather, its consequence is that thermal energy cannot be converted into work (mechanical or electrical energy) without drawing heat from a source at one temperature and discharging it to sink at a lower temperature.
It is analogous, perhaps, to the non-existence of a reactionless drive, which on the face of it would not violate the First Law either if energy is used to do work in the form of force-times-distance, but if violates conservation of momentum.
I’ve been working on this self-powered skate-board you never have to step off from. You just walk along the top of it in the direction opposite you want to go. However, the prototype doesn’t seem to go anywhere once I reach the end. I think it’s because it’s not long enough….
But where’s the thermal sink to run a heat engine?
Random thermal motion is harvested to push energy through a gate…okay, right. What are the losses at the ‘gate’ and if it is “random motion” how can this scale to useable levels (without the ‘random’ cancelling itself out)? Usable meaning something above “microvolts and milliwatts” without being more hassle than substance…?
I am getting the mental image of a Rube Goldberg contraption with thousands of fleas running in hamster wheels…
Your mental image is making my head itch….
And Maxwell’s Demon doesn’t exist.
My take on this exactly.
A little early for April 1 but a good try.
Nice little AC inverter to DC rectifier you got there. I remember when vacuum tube based car radios had a ‘vibrator’ in them to stir up some AC for transformer boost to run the B+ voltage. It was the little buzz you heard when you turned them on. What happens when the device labeled ‘battery’ gets tired of being charged and discharged? Maybe I can use my Newman motor to recharge it?
The thermal energy has to come from somewhere. It’s not limitless.
It could be coming out of the air.
Free energy from the air.
Yeah, right, and where is that “air” coming out of?
I got to invest in this invention using the money I made on the microwave reactionless thruster.
I’d pay you back using the royalties I intended to earn on that thruster, but unfortunately, the one and only prototype is headed out into deep space and I can’t catch it….
It’s being heated by the sun, because we don’t live on a frozen iceball?
(I believe “limitless” here refers to duration, not quantity per unit.
“An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors”.
This has been hyped for a few years now, and I can believe it might manage to extract enough energy from ambient heat to provide *a few milliwatts*.)
In addition to conservation of energy (First Law of Thermodynamics), there is also the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Second Law is not a conservation law, rather, its consequence is that thermal energy cannot be converted into work (mechanical or electrical energy) without drawing heat from a source at one temperature and discharging it to sink at a lower temperature.
It is analogous, perhaps, to the non-existence of a reactionless drive, which on the face of it would not violate the First Law either if energy is used to do work in the form of force-times-distance, but if violates conservation of momentum.
I’ve been working on this self-powered skate-board you never have to step off from. You just walk along the top of it in the direction opposite you want to go. However, the prototype doesn’t seem to go anywhere once I reach the end. I think it’s because it’s not long enough….
But where’s the thermal sink to run a heat engine?
Random thermal motion is harvested to push energy through a gate…okay, right. What are the losses at the ‘gate’ and if it is “random motion” how can this scale to useable levels (without the ‘random’ cancelling itself out)? Usable meaning something above “microvolts and milliwatts” without being more hassle than substance…?
I am getting the mental image of a Rube Goldberg contraption with thousands of fleas running in hamster wheels…
Your mental image is making my head itch….
And Maxwell’s Demon doesn’t exist.
My take on this exactly.
A little early for April 1 but a good try.
Nice little AC inverter to DC rectifier you got there. I remember when vacuum tube based car radios had a ‘vibrator’ in them to stir up some AC for transformer boost to run the B+ voltage. It was the little buzz you heard when you turned them on. What happens when the device labeled ‘battery’ gets tired of being charged and discharged? Maybe I can use my Newman motor to recharge it?
TANSTAAFL.