It's a theory but....

Would a dyno type system powered by a high enough motor produce enough power to turn that motor inturn and maybe another motor or a small vehicles wheel?
As stated above it is just a theory and I thought this forum would be the place to ask the question.

Figures I am using for this theory.
26amps *56.6=1471.6
With a small but powerful motor that uses 500W.

Be interesting to see if this theory would work the motor is more powerful than is required as well.
Please be opened minded I also don't know if this has been thought of before.

No.

sorry my mistake I missed the pointed of using to of the generators. In my equations I used two due to the low amps.

Don't know if this makes any difference.

1st law of thermodynamics is a bummer.

liveforphysics said:

1st law of thermodynamics is a bummer.

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Sorry I am new to the whole world of electronics I was just looking through ways of making myself less dependent on the Grid but also building an electric bike and sort of came up with idea.

Could you explain?

It means energy and matter can never be created or destroyed (unless you're a nuclear reaction). It can only change forms, and every form change involves losing energy/work in the conversion process.

In other words, if you wanted to power other devices, it would be best to power them directly from the same battery your primary motor is running from rather than power them from a generator being driven from your primary motor.

The three laws of thermodynamics:

1. You can't win. (You can never get more energy out of a system than you put into it. Nuclear reactions, which Einstein described and Luke mentioned above, deal with the equivalence of matter and energy.)

2. You can't break even. (There are always unrecoverable losses, known as entropy, such as random motion (heat) from friction or other sources.)

3. You can't get out of the game. (It is impossible to stop all motion of an object, even as small as an atom.)

Cameron

And the million dollar question that EVERYONE asks me is.........."so do you charge it by pedaling" :?

To which I reply, "Yes - I'm doing it right now"

"No you're not, you're just standing there!"

"Yes I am - I'm not pedalling particularly hard, but the amount of energy I'm recovering is very small, so I don't try to overdo it."

"...But you're standing right there, I can see you standing there. You're not pedalling! Screw you!"

Don't be too embarrrassed, this question come up on a regular basis, so you're not the first with this idea. The bottom line is that if ANYTHING in line with your generator-motor-generator-motor-etc is getting warm, then...there is a loss of some of the power when some of the current is converted to heat instead of work.

In the real world, the losses are actually worse than that, but my example above seems to be the easiest for electricity-newbies to grasp. Its a cheap experiment, and its been done many times before, and it will likely be tried some more on a regular basis. Even if we are not completely correct in our explanations, the real-world experiments seem to provide a stubbornly consistant result.

48V is a popular voltage for very large off-grid home-batteries that are charged by a wind-generator/PV-solar panels. When an inverter converts the 48V-DC into 120V-AC to run appliances, there is a fairly common loss of about 30% of the watts involved.

very common question. the guys I work with think I'm stupid for not putting a generator on my wheel to generate e while crusing at 30 mph.

I can tell it really makes sense to them and I try and explain why it's impossible, but I'm terrible with words so it just ends up being they think I'm stupid for not using all that speed to generate some more electricity :wink: oh well

Heh, glad I'm not the only one that gets that question.

My favorite was the guy that asked, "Hey, couldn't you just bolt a prop to a car alternator then attach it to your bike and charge as you ride?" To which I jokingly replied, "Sure, but I have a 72 volt system, so I would need a lot of generators."

A couple weeks later, this guy flags me down as I blow past a bunch of cars waiting at the traffic signal. "What's up?" I ask. He looks excited - takes a quick look over his shoulders and starts whispering, "I got a patent on that thing we talked about, wanna help me build it?" He shows me his drawings of an array of 6, prop-driven alternators

Tried my hardest to keep a straight face, kept it up for a while -wound up laughing so hard- tears were streaming down my face as I doubled up in pain on the sidewalk.

Yep, that first law of thermodynamics is a bitch :lol:

11559 said:

Would a dyno type system powered by a high enough motor produce enough power to turn that motor inturn and maybe another motor or a small vehicles wheel?
As stated above it is just a theory and I thought this forum would be the place to ask the question...

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The question is not very clear.. what do you mean by a "high enough motor" ..
..but are you talking about using an "onboard" wind turbine to generate power to drive a vehicle ?

The most common cause of this error is the belief that you simply spin a motor and it generates electricity without resisting the motion. After all, when you spin the rotor by hand it turns quite easily...right?

Most people that ask me about it are familiar with ICE powered welders. I simply ask them what happens to the engine when the arc is struck, and why do you think it labors so hard?

The acceptance of the explanation gets easier after that.

high enough motor produce enough power to turn that motor inturn and maybe another motor or a small vehicles wheel?

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I would say yes to the OP's question, but as pointed out it may not be practical because the output motor would need to be smaller
then the input motor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNtJTh25j9Y

Tommy

Tommy said:

high enough motor produce enough power to turn that motor inturn and maybe another motor or a small vehicles wheel?

Click to expand...

I would say yes to the OP's question, but as pointed out it may not be practical because the output motor would need to be smaller
then the input motor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNtJTh25j9Y

Tommy

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Sorry, you would be wrong. See my post above, liveforphysics, spinningmagnets, etc. The physics or chemistry teacher at your local college or community college should be able to explain it to you in more detail. There have been a lot of patent applications for perpetual motion machines (which is what you are wanting), and actually some of them have been granted, but there are none in commercial production anywhere (except over the internet). That should tell you something (No, not that there's a big conspiracy against it, if true, it would make EVERYONE rich beyond their wildest imagination, and who - even Big Oil - would be against that?).

Cameron

The best thing people can do is get the efficiency rate as high as possible. So far we haven't come within an ass's roar of replicating the efficiency of plants which are 99 per cent plus efficient at transferring light energy to reaction centres for chemical conversion.

They certainly didn't teach you how this happens in biology - this should ordinary be impossible - 50 per cent efficiency would be a more realistic figure.

The reason plants are so efficient is that they use quantum mechanics - the individual photons, like electrons, are in more than one place at once. In fact they are everywhere simultaneously. That counter-intuitive characteristic allows plants to both collect and process the same photon in different locations at once.

Plants aren't the most efficient at turning light into chemical energy. I think it is because they don't have to be.

If we could use quantum mechanics to efficiently transfer energy to be ready for conversion - efficiency rates would increase also.

I suppose this is nothing new to some members here but it is new to me.

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/PBD-quantum-secrets.html

LiveForPhysics: you could argue that blackholes destroy energy breaking the laws of thermodynamics.

Although I suppose you could also get around that by saying the holes are just high entropy sites with 100 per cent energy loss.

Edit:

Oops wrong about the 100 per cent energy loss - damn you Hawking (it appears you do more than just spot nonsense about unified theory and alien invasions! ). Let's just say high energy loss instead.

There have been a lot of patent applications for perpetual motion machines (which is what you are wanting)

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Not knowing the OP's application I can't say if perpetual motion is his task or not.

example:
If I have a 750W motor powering an e-bike that can go 20miles during the day, if at night I use a small friction drive generator
to supply lighting instead of taking the energy from the batteries would I get closer to that 20mile range then if I just used the
battery power?

In my head I see.
20miles day time.
16miles nighttime batteries only.
18miles nighttime with generator for lighting.

Tommy

Tommy said:

There have been a lot of patent applications for perpetual motion machines (which is what you are wanting)

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Not knowing the OP's application I can't say if perpetual motion is his task or not.

example:
If I have a 750W motor powering an e-bike that can go 20miles during the day, if at night I use a small friction drive generator
to supply lighting instead of taking the energy from the batteries would I get closer to that 20mile range then if I just used the
battery power?

In my head I see.
20miles day time.
16miles nighttime batteries only.
18miles nighttime with generator for lighting.

Tommy

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Nope, unless you set your generator to get less light out (lower voltage/wattage) from your lights than you are getting straight from the batteries. Your motor will have to work harder to run the generator (energy lost there), so you have:

Energy used
w/o generator:
motor (x miles@y mph)
lights

w/generator:
motor (x miles@y mph + energy used to run generator)
lights

Energy available:
batteries

OK?

Cameron

OK?

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yes I believe your math to be right, but, again In my head I see some of the mass in motion energy being turned into
electrical energy with the generator, but not with batteries only.

Tommy

Here is a near analog equivalent:

suppose you want to make homemade ice cream and you have a hand crank freezer.

You come up with a plan where you crank a handle which turns a mechanism that converts mechanical energy into mechanical energy, rotation into rotation. That device is hand cranked by you, and in turn cranks the ice cream maker. There are mechanical losses in the device, which causes you to exert more energy than you would have to without it.

So...

If you have an electric motor that runs on batteries connected to a generator, then both the batteries and the generator are connected to an electric motor doing work, here is what is happening.

Say the motor needs 1000w to do the required work, you could take 1000w directly from the batteries, or you could split the load between the batteries and the generator.

If you only took 500w from the battery and allowed the other 500w to come from the generator, then the generator would need ~510w of battery power to send 500w to the motor because of losses in the generator.

In the end the batteries would have to deliver 1010w to get 1000w to the motor in the split scenario.

The ice cream example is a series example and would look like:
The batteries drive a motor which drives a generator which drives a motor. using the losses described above it would take 1020w of battery to supply 1000w from generator to work motor.

generator losses come in 2 forms:
1. mechanical - there is friction in any moving part, and if the parts are moving fast, then windage (wind resistance) plays a role in losses.

2. Losses from inductance. When an electrical conductor moves through a magnetic field, it induces electricity into the conductor. As electricity flows through that same conductor, it gives off a magnetic field. The more current flows the stronger the field. The new magnetic field opposes the other, like trying to force north and north together. The more you produce electricity from a generator, the harder it is to turn. This inductance has a resistive value denoted as Z. And any resistance is typically sloughed off as heat.

That was a lot of typing. I hope it helps.

I don't know if this applies here, but I thought it was funny...

Tommy said:

OK?

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yes I believe your math to be right, but, again In my head I see some of the mass in motion energy being turned into
electrical energy with the generator, but not with batteries only.

Tommy

Click to expand...

All right,

Do the experiment, and report your results back to us.OK?

Cameron

Do the experiment, and report your results back to us.OK?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Ok.

Tommy

Tommy, you are trying to achieve the equivalent of perpetual motion.

There is only one state that will allow continual movement for infinity (well maybe not infinity - but a long, long time) without adding energy and that is superfluids like super-cooled helium. It does this because it has no viscosity. Although it takes a lot of energy to reach these temperatures - hence it is not perpetual motion.

In the very distant future, when the Universe is dead, perpetual motion will be possible (at least for a certain period of time). Who knows what happens when absolute zero is reached.

Edit: For it to make better sense.