Perpetual Motion
I made an entertaining misstep when I once tried to enlist the help of a machine shop to build a 'perpetual motion' machine. I was head of an engineering transfer program at the time, and I wanted a corridor demonstration that would be intriguing to the public. I thought of a machine that would appear to run without an obvious source of power, but which in fact derived power from a well disguised coil which absorbed energy from the building wiring. I drew up plans and delivered portions to a local machine shop. The owner of the machine shop pointed to a bearing in the plans and asked what type it was.
" Oh, I'll find something," I said, and a couple of days later I returned with a sloppy little bearing that would probably do the job.
" Oh this won't do," the machinist said. " If this is a perpetual motion machine you need a really low friction, precision bearing."
" No," I replied, " this isn't a real perpetual motion machine. This is a fake."
He looked at me oddly, as if wondering why anyone would build a fake perpetual motion machine. I really didn't know how to take his reaction. I thought to explain that there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, but decided that I might offend the only machinist who seemed willing to help me. What did it matter anyway? I had an adjunct faculty member who truly believed in cold fusion, after all, and perhaps this machinist truly believed in perpetual motion. On the other hand, he might be thinking I was some sort of cheat trying to perpetrate a fraud. At any rate we continued to mis-communicate for a while longer, and finally let the project die.
The documented search for perpetual motion begins in the 13th century. Villard de Honnescourt drew designs for such machines at that time. There may be earlier designs, but perpetual motion is closely linked to machines, especially rotating machines, and machines are neither widespread nor very sophisticated before this time. Before the invention of electric...
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