'Free' electricity

[Straylight]

Check this out.

http://www.rexresearch.com/meg/meg.htm

It's called the "Motionless Electromagnetic Generator", and it produces electricity for "free". The one shown in the picture produces 6.764W from an input power of 3.25W. More efficient versions have also been built

This isn't a hoax, a patent was actually awarded for the device back in 2002. To get a patent, your idea has got to work...

From a scientific point of view, I haven't read much, but apparently the device works because it makes use of longitudinal electromagnetic waves. Energy is taken from this resource by the device and turned into seemingly "free" electricity.

With a bit of extra circuitry it should be possible to loop some of the output from the device back into the input, thereby creating a standalone power plant which produces electricity indefinately.

Looks pretty easy to build as well...

[Technomancer]

It was awarded a patent, which is now under examination as are the examiners themselves. Then again, there are a numbr of silly patents kicking around.

In any event the device described doesn't do what it says it does. Basically they've screwed up because they've ignored effects that happen in real transformers (as opposed to ideal ones). Specifically, they've ignored displacement currents, and thus failed to read their instruments properly. It's somewhat similar to seeing a giant voltage spike in a single component of an oscillator and concluding that they've beaten Kirchoff's voltage law.

[Straylight]

If that's true, how did they manage this?

[Inferno]

Ok, that's just freaky!

[Link Antilles]

Interesting.... doesn't this little patented science project break some kinda' law of energy some scientist came up back some 50 or 100 years ago?

[mechana2015]

If that's true, how did they manage this?

...
Theres enough of the back of the black box hidden to have a power cord behind it... or they *could* have photoshopped it out.
Also all the wires except for 4 seem kinda extranious.

[AZheng]

It's a hoax. Machines like the ones you've described you can find hundreds of advertisements for if you look hard enough (for example, on the Internet or in the back of magazines such as Popular Science). Besides, it breaks the Law of Conservation of Energy. It doesn't matter what they do, it's simply impossible to take out more energy out of a system than you put in originally.

[Straylight]

it breaks the Law of Conservation of Energy.

Their explanations say a lot about invisible longitudinal electromagnetic waves (not to be confused with transverse EM, which is already proven and exploited). The existance of these waves is apparently a bit of an argument among physicists. (or was, at least at some stage)

If this thing is doing what they say it does then it's simply acting like a water wheel, tapping into the so called longitudinal EM waves and converting their energy into electric current.

However if these "longitudinal EM waves" do not exist then it's probably just an anomaly as Tech pointed out.

As far as hoaxes are concerned, it'd have to be quite a big one as they've actually got a few pages up telling you how to build these things along with lots of journals and stuff...

[Technomancer]

What Bearden has built is a transformer; we should expect there to be output power. Basically, an alternating current is applied to the primary coil, the resulting magnetic field induces a current in the secondary coil, which is not electrically connected to the primary. What's powering the bulb is the power source attached to the primary. That the bulb itself lights up should be no surprise, since by the experimenters admission it's a 1-watt bulb (follow the Randi link).

http://www.randi.org/jr/052402.html

Good explanations are also available at:
http://www.phact.org/e/z/bearden.htm
http://www.phact.org/e/z/bearden/

It's worth noting that Bearden et al have declined to publish this in any journals relating to power systems (IEEE or IEE).

[LorentzForce]

Free energy does not exist, period. Just high efficiency between energy changes and bad calculations make it all look like it's making energy from nothing.

[Shinja]

cool, hope its real

[Bobtheduck]

If you want free energy, live somewhere in the boondocks where it is really windy and buy a few windmills... In California, Edison will pay you back if your meter spins backwards due to the windmill (because it is producing more than you use up) connected to the grid. In the Desert, where I used to live, this is more than possible... People are doing it.

[LorentzForce]

That's not free energy, that's just converting atmospheric convection currents into electricity. In the end there is no such thing as free energy. Free as it it comes from nothing. If you mean a large amount of newly found source of energy that won't disappear in near future then that would be just a lot of potential energy, waiting to be tapped.

[Ingemar]

Noz, in this forum we OBEY THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS!!!