Physics

[Preest]

All pretty solid info above. If you need any clarification, just ask me on vent. I'm an industrial electrician with associate degrees in Electrical Engineering and Instrumentation Engineering (Instrumentation is a hybrid of electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering). I'm also a physics buff, and have read many books on theoretical physics (both Quantum and Relativistic).

We'll chat it up on vent.





(Finally, we can talk about something I actually know a little about!! I'm so happy!! )

[Preest]

I just got home and thought I may be able to add some things that may have gotten left out.

Basically my questions concern mainly magnets and loss of magnetism. The next question would be strength and distance of strength of the magnets. Also I want to know the lifespan of magnets if they are in constant contact with other magnets.

I'm guessin here but I'd think that the force a magnet would feel would weaken by the square of the distance between the two magnets, much like how gravity acts.

Also, most magnets can loose their magnetism by banging them, or subjecting them to an alternating magnetic field. However some magnets are so strong, that they continually re-enforce their own magnetism.

Other questions as far as physics are concerned are how does friction actually calculate into loss of momentum and how is the conversion of movement put to power such as in the way windmills create power.

See Junn's post for friction. Although I'd like to add that friction increases as a non-linear function when you get to very high speeds... But for everyday life, the linear equation will do.

As far as power production I want to know how much force it takes to create energy and also basically a table that shows force to power output. I will stop with that I have a lot more questions but that will do for now.

The relation between force, power and energy is as follows. Force is what is being applied to an object. It could be gravity, friction, magnetic or a zillion other things.

Energy is the amount of potential an object has to do work. Just lifting a book off the table will give that book an amount of energy, or potential to do work.

And now power. Power is the rate at whitch work (work = change in energy) is being done.

Now given the above, even if you exert a force on an object but the energy or potential of that object has not changed, then no work is done.

An example of this is if I walk up and push a wall. If the wall does not move, I have done no work, no matter how hard I push.

[Preest]

Space? They're working on an ion thruster that produces a small amount of thrust at a very low energy conversion rate that I think uses electricity, but what the electricity comes from I don't know.

They get the power from a nuclaer reactor. You can then use the current produced to make and focus a magnetic field to propell small particals at very high speed (ions)...

The thrust you get is actually the ions pushing back against the space craft as they get shot out the ass end.

[Nachozcrisis]

Also, most magnets can loose their magnetism by banging them, or subjecting them to an alternating magnetic field. However some magnets are so strong, that they continually re-enforce their own magnetism.

This is because most magnets are in an equilibrium phase and banging them or changing the field induces enough energy to alow them to go through a type 1 phase transition. Similarly you can demagnitize pretty much anything by heating it enough (most magnetic materials have a critical temp), in fact most magnets are made by cooling a material in the presence of a strong magnetic field.

[Gunn]

Oh priest I’ve worked out one part of the friction problem I think. I’m going to suspend the drive axel with magnets the same way I plan on producing the energy. I will do it just like how they suspend monorails. I think it will work but right now I’m trying to focus on doing a small scale mock up. A lot of things will not be the same on the large scale because of safety and cost but, the small scale will be made mostly from PVC and other cheap materials. I will have all the stuff in like 4 days then I think it will take about another 2 days to build so in about a week I’m going to test it then video tape it. When I build it I will post pics of the way it looks.

[Junniper]

Magnetically suspended axles?

Are you building a flywheel system? That would be cool. I heard they're pretty neat.

[Gunn]

Im building a machine that produces power.

[Warthog]

Most newer turbo pumps (used in hi vacuum) have the turbine blades suspended/levitated with magnets to create a frictionless envirement. This keeps the envirement clean due to the lack of greases and permits higher RPM's. The downside is any cavitation is catastrophic.

The other issue I see is the magnet size to produce large amounts of current would be prohiitive.