alt.energy.renewable

dkelvey@hotmail.com wrote:
> On Feb 28, 6:34 pm, janpa...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Feb 29, 7:18 am, "dkel...@hotmail.com" wrote:
>> ...
>>> A little physics will show how this doesn't work.
>>> The problem is that the gear box does apply a force. This would cause
>>> the flywheel
>>> to precess to a point that is would no longer apply force to the
>>> gearbox( IOW align
>>> to the polar axis ).
...
> Such responses are made without actual physical law. Conservation of
> momentum
> has never been broken by any experiment. Why do you think this
> flywheel trick will break it,

It's not that it wouldn't work in a way. It's that it wouldn't work
very well, very long or provide any power to speak of.

Think of the gearing required to go from 1 revolution per day to
whatever is required for your electrical generation. A typical
generator works at thousands of revolutions per minute. Even if
your generator works as slow as 100 rpm, you're looking at a
gear ratio of 144,000/1. Friction in the gears would probably
consume all your power.

Think of the scale of such a device. You would need something the
size of a mountain, spinning, to generate anything significant.

Taking this to the extreme, you're slowing down the rotation of
the Earth to power the device. What if everyone did this? If you
thought global warming was bad, think of global slowing!

Anthony