Unsuitable

Mercury wheel by Bhaskara, 12th century

At first glance, an ingenious gravity drive. The mercury flows outwards from the 12 o'clock position, thereby lengthening the lever arm.
However, the animation is an illusion because the wheel is actually not capable of running. The long levers extend beyond the 6 o'clock position and in this way have a counterproductive effect. In addition, the masses effective on the right side are in the minority. This is because of the same reasons that can also be observed in Leupold's design (see next object). By the way, you could also use balls instead of mercury.

Ball running machine after Jacob Leupold, a contemporary of Bessler from Leipzig. He worked intensively on the mechanics of machines and published his ideas in several books that have survived to this day. The most famous one is called “Theatrum machinarum generale”. See the following links:

http://books.google.com/books?id=sNMUAAAAQAAJ&source=gbs_similarbooks
http://www.deutsches-museum.de/bibliothek/unsere-schaetze/technikgeschichte/leupold/
http://www.faq-chemnitz.de/foerderzentrum/Rt/Leupold.htm

In order to understand the conditions in this wheel more quickly, the author colored the balls differently. The five red external weights are balanced on their own. The remaining two blue weights on the left edge are supposed to lift five inner weights. The unsuitability of this concept is so obvious that one wonders whether Leupold didn't want to see it. At least it was naive to go public with it without experimental verification. However, this did not harm his reputation in the least.

Designs by Leonardo da Vinci, none of them capable of running

Suggestion from an unknown inventor

Here is another “gravitational drive”. When looking at it, it's best to start with the weights to the right of the 12 o'clock position. (Not all have been colored.) The red lines represent the legs of a torsion spring located at the center of B. Weight B is held in its internal position by this spring as long as no additional forces are applied. When the wheel turns to the right, weight A moves downward along the circular arc from approximately the 2 o'clock position. It pushes the spring together and weight B outwards. A must therefore have a significantly larger mass than B. From the 6 o'clock position, A rolls back again. This allows the spring to partially relax and pull B up again.

The concept is characterized by at least two inconsistencies. If the torsion spring holds weight A in its position up to the 2 o'clock position, it is impossible for A to remain in its new position all the way down. It would be pushed back sooner. The A masses, which move clockwise by the length of the respective circular arc, shift the center of gravity of the right half of the wheel downwards. The only slightly longer leverage of the lighter B-weights is certainly not enough to compensate for or even exceed the resulting excess weight on the left side of the wheel. This concept (like many others) ignores the potential energy balances of each individual mass. At the end of this article, the issue is formulated more clearly in lighter blue.

Hypothetical Bessler wheel according to Alavanja Lazar,
an alleged great-grandson of Nikola Tesla

Above is a particularly good example of how the eye and mind can easily be fooled by a single wheel position when viewed superficially. With a further slight right turn, the weight 6 tips to the right and, due to the relief on the left side, gives the impression of a strong excess weight on the right side of the wheel, which apparently keeps the movement going. In reality, however, this is not the case, because here too the weights are clustered near the center. The lever length of weight 2 is not enough to lift the three weights 6, 7 and 8. (The blue weights are balanced by themselves when turned slightly to the right.)

The black surfaces are masses arranged eccentrically in a gear. These gears rotate on the axles shown in green, which in turn are connected to the arm colored red in the manner of a trailing arm. The arm can be rotated in the middle around the blue axis. The large circle represents a ring gear, the teeth of which point inwards and mesh with the teeth of the eccentrics. (Due to a lack of suitable software, the teeth could not be displayed here.) If you move the outer gear ring in the same direction but more slowly when the red arm rotates, you can ensure that the eccentric masses are always deflected by 90° in relation to their stationary surroundings. One might think that this would mean that the red arm would have to be constantly out of balance and that in this way a functioning gravitational drive would have been realized.

If you rigidly connect the blue gear with the surroundings, it becomes more obvious. It must have the same diameter as the two eccentrics. The additional green gears roll on this central gear, reversing the direction of rotation. In this way, the eccentrics are held in the desired position during rotation.

However, for the reasons already explained, it doesn't work. The red arm is in balance in every position. The animation therefore shows a fiction that cannot be transferred to reality.

Even a concept that seems so visually obvious is revealed to be unsuitable through experimental testing. Testing surpasses studying.

Here, too, the eyes and the mind are mistaken. It is not taken into account that the eccentric wheels do not cause the lever to be lengthened or shortened when they are rotatably mounted. To do this they would have to be rigidly connected to the red arm. Then everything would be over after a 90° turn. It doesn't matter what position the individual eccentric is in, the same force always applies to the green axis. The entire structure is therefore constantly in balance and, contrary to the assurances of its inventor, does not rotate independently. Driving the gear ring even uses additional energy.

This also applies if you use a central gear instead of the outer gear. By turning this wheel, additional energy is consumed and nothing is gained.

These facts become even clearer in the example above. The red weights attached to the side do not cause the right part to lower, and do not turn the rectangle into a parallelogram.

The eccenter concept is unsuitable as a gravity drive. It doesn't have any of the other well-known Bessler wheel properties, either. Therefore, it goes without saying that Bessler's mechanism could not have looked like this.

In summary, it can be described as a phenomenon that the designs of some inventors have survived the centuries (see Bhaskara), even though they were absolutely useless concepts that should have been thrown in the trash immediately. This probably has something to do with the fascination of the topic of “perpetuum mobile”. Nobody would think of including the following “inventions” in history books, for example: matches that cannot be used to light a fire - pencils that cannot be used to put anything on paper - a glue that is unsuitable for joining things together, etc .

It should be mentioned at this point that unsuitability can also mean social harm in individual cases. There are people who take advantage of the good faith of those around them in this context. They claim to be at the forefront of research in the field of alternative energy production, overunity, perpetual mobility, etc. and have already achieved spectacular results. Of course everything is top secret. Anyone who wants to participate in their findings must make financial advance payments. Be it that he has to pay a one-off fee or that he has to become a regular paying member of an “elitist” club, where he is promised to be let in on the secrets behind closed doors. In reality, however, it is a case of dupery.

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Back to the ball race machines. The greater the number of balls, the greater the confusion of the viewer and possibly the inventor. It is obvious that such a machine would have to run with two balls arranged opposite each other if the basic concept were functional*). So when considering any design, you can limit yourself to two spheres and imagine the rest. If you then let the expected movement run through your mind's eye, you will notice that a standstill occurs in a very short time. Nevertheless, when experimenting with ball running machines, there is a great temptation to achieve with more weights what cannot be achieved with fewer weights.

*) This statement only applies to ball running machines. With other operating principles it is quite conceivable that a recurring imbalance requires more than two weights.

Here it becomes clear that every time the number of weights doubles, the additional angle that the wheel can be deflected by gravity is halved. With two weights positioned opposite each other it is 90°, with four weights it is 45°, with eight it is only 22.5° etc. Purely mathematically you could use any number of weights and the total would never reach 180°. However, this value would not only have to be reached, but even exceeded in order to achieve constant movement using the ball running principle.

With more weights, a non-functional concept cannot be converted into one that behaves as desired in the sense of a “perpetuum mobile”. A good example is Leonardo da Vinci's design, which can be seen again below. A single three-wing ball raceway does not rotate constantly, but rather reaches a stable state after a short time. This does not change even if you arrange ten, twenty or even a hundred such tracks on a common axis, each slightly offset one behind the other. It remains an unsuitable system.

A functional gravitational drive cannot be achieved with a ball-running machine that is based on only one operating principle. Many have tried different ways and all have failed. In summary, the following statement can be made for this concept:

Any mass that moves downward loses potential energy, also known as height or position energy. If you want to bring this mass back to its original position so that it can develop its effect there again, the lost energy must inevitably be completely restored to it. If the latter is to be gained by the downward movement of another (same size) mass, the height differences between the two masses (before/after) must be equal, regardless of where the two masses are currently located.

Even if one ignores the fact that losses occur due to friction and air resistance, it initially seems impossible that, taking into account the above law, the effect of gravity not only causes the endless rotation of a wheel, but additional energy can be obtained for other purposes. Most physicists are therefore firmly convinced that Bessler's wheel could not have worked and must have been a hoax. You correctly assume that, taking into account the lines printed in bold above, potential energy cannot be used for a permanent wheel drive. However, they do not consider that pairs of masses acting in opposite directions can lengthen or shorten the effective lever without changing the balance of potential energies. The author presents such a concept on the "Solution" page. He does not share the view of school physics and considers it unacceptable that it still denigrates Bessler as a charlatan.

In the article "Bessler - a fraudster?" The author deals intensively with why people quickly resort to declaring things they don't understand to be a deception.