Endlessly or nah?

#asknostr

nostr:note1eugnje4shfxx02tc36ldmwp70hqp3aq07plera3ey2mjluuguegsnvun4e

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Nah.

No such thing as perpetual motion...

Energy is abundant, but all energy comes at a cost. Otherwise we could use a bunch of these to spin turbines to make electricity to mine bitcoin for free...

Perhaps if its a windy day... Something is driving that movement, otherwise it will slow and stop. Could it do a few revolutions? Sure, but only enough to use up the force put into it. If there's wind driving the fan blade though, that could keep it spinning until that external force stopped.

Makes me wonder... Is there a measurement for potential energy stored in a segment of rubber? I'm sure its air perturbations that keep it unbalanced, but surely the rubber wears out eventually, so it could be given a number for how much work it can do.

Its going to be a measurement based on how much force was used in pulling it. Looking at those bands, the pulling of one band has to use up its force pulling the next band. Energy is lost in this system from friction of the rubber against the rod (minimized with lubricant) and the movement of the air as a result of the fan spinning. As well, some heat is lost heating up the rubber (the side effect of the tension of the rubber changing). Some is also lost in friction of the fan shaft.

I posit that the fan (if there is no inbound air force) would likely spin longer without the rubber bands given the same amount of input rotational force.

I'm not sure. I'll take the other side, and posit that the air hitting the fan is making it spin longer. The lost energy could be a loss of elasticity in the rubber.

If you use it to power a video editor, the ribbons go faster than the speed of light.