Before I got into engineering (high school), I was fascinated with creating a perpetual motion machine ... at one point, I thought I had it. And I still think it's a good idea.
Basically, I figured that if there way a way to ''fool'' gravity, then perpetual motion would be possible. If you loop a rope around a pulley, and the right-side of the rope is heavier because there's somehow more gravity on one side, then the rope would rotate around the pulley.
In any case, I had a nice diagram drawn out of a system that was similar to the one described above. I had a buoyant tube looping around a two pulleys .. one side of the loop was in water, the other in air ... the loop was made of rubber so the side that was in the water would have positive buoyant force directed up ... the side that was in air would have gravity pulling it down. I had an interesting way of solving the water pressure problem at the medium between air and water.
Another similar idea I had was freezing ice in a vacuum, and then having the ice float to the top of this contraption that was filled with water under a vacuum (similar to holding the top of a straw filled with water) ... the less pressure, the easier it is to freeze water. My hopes in this particular experiment would be that the amount of energy it would take to freeze a block of ice, could be recovered by buoyant force of the ice floating up the vaccumed-water-contraption.
*** of course, in these cases, you would always need a supply of heat i.e. the sun, or you'll end up with ice ... but on Earth, that wouldn't be a problem
I would love to have a chance to test some of these ideas out one day (I have a crap load)... I know perpetual motion is impossible, however, I think it is possible to find alternative sources of energy, and perhaps we can find some of those answers by approaching the problem from a less sophisticated point of view.
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