It also gives a basis for considering another lesser goal of perpetual motion, which is to produce a device that will run forever with no further external inputs. It clearly states that the goal of getting more energy output than the energy input is impossible. This law is, therefore, a good basis from which to analyze perpetual motion machines. This law is based, however, not on this negative result, but on all the experiments performed to date in which energy is carefully accounted for. The nonexistence of perpetual motion machines, despite centuries of effort to design them, has been used to support the law of conservation of energy. Patent Office has a policy to not examine applications covering perpetual motion machines unless the applicant furnishes a working model. To prove that a particular design of a perpetual motion machine will not work can be very time consuming, and the predictable negative result has never been worth the effort. Wilkins proposed using the magnetic material lodestone, not a superconducting magnet. Was proposed by John Wilkins in the 1670s. The first perpetual motion device using magnetic forces The details can be quite complicated, but when any design is correctly analyzed it is always found that the energy required to turn the magnetic or electric field on and off, or to move the field from place, to place exceeds the work obtained by the falling weight. The magnet can continually lift and drop the weight. Then, when the magnetic field is turned off or taken away, the falling weight can be harnessed to do useful work. For instance, a weight can be lifted by a magnetic field, perhaps produced by a superconducting magnet, with no power loss. Would-be inventors frequently employ magnetic or electrostatic interactions because these forces are less understood (by them). Friction will always cause such a water wheel to "grind" to a halt even in the absence of doing useful work. The only problem with this device is that it took more energy to pump the water than the entire energy output of the water wheel. The remaining portion of the output could then be used to operate a flour mill. He designed a pump to drive some of the output from a water wheel to recirculate water upstream, which would then run over the wheel again. Robert Fludd in 1618 was one of the first to discover it is impossible to get something for nothing. The impossibility of a perpetual motion machine also implies that the speed of light cannot forever be constant.The idea of perpetual motion, which has been around for centuries, is to make a device that will produce more work output than the energy input-in short, to get something for nothing. The rejection of the possibility of a perpetual motion machine requires recognition that the Earth itself is not in perpetual motion, and that its instability is increasing, which is one of the many Counterexamples to an Old Earth. Despite this, websites have professed to offer "free energy" devices for sale. Since both types of perpetual motion machine are flawed in both theory and in practice, they are clearly pseudoscience. This is prohibited by the First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that energy must be conserved. The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Hebrews 1:10-11 predict that a perpetual motion machine is impossible, and none has ever been created.Īn even less plausible type of perpetual motion machine would continue to perform work without any input of energy, thereby serving as an unlimited energy source. Because entropy is always increasing isolated systems, indefinite motion is impossible because an increase in the disorder of the system will inevitably disrupt the motion and require additional energy to "fix" it. Many attempts to build such a system have failed for a simple reason: entropy (disorder) is always increasing, and a perpetual motion machine would defy that law.Ī perpetual motion machine would try to use its initial energy to remain in motion perpetually. This is not possible in reality because a siphon requires its "output" to be lower than the "input".Ī perpetual motion machine is a hypothetical isolated system capable of having internal motion indefinitely. Robert Boyle's self-flowing flask appears to fill itself through siphon action.