"Perpetual Motion" with Water

[Aaron]

A neat fun idea

Physics: - - - - Gravity Powered, Liquid Surface Tension Engine.





In a sealed container of liquid, a capillary tube raises the surface up against gravity.

At the point where the new surface come to rest, a wick is connected and hangs down.

The liquid soaks into the wick, it then flows down because of gravity back into the container...

read the rest:
Liquid Gravity Motor

[bugler]

Amazing simple idea!

What would be the diameter and height of the pipe and what % of the pipe would be under water?

[Vortex]

A neat fun idea

Physics: - - - - Gravity Powered, Liquid Surface Tension Engine


In a sealed container of liquid, a capillary tube raises the surface up against gravity.

At the point where the new surface come to rest, a wick is connected and hangs down.

The liquid soaks into the wick, it then flows down because of gravity back into the container...

read the rest:
Liquid Gravity Motor

Thank you for posting this Aaron...
You never know when or how a "piece" of the puzzle will fit ..
You're the man, Aaron..! I have a "Name" for my problem.

I've fallen victim of capillary attraction it seems.
My home made batteries keep leaking .. at least I thought they were leaking.
Then I thought they were "boiling" over during charging...
.. it seems there's big time capillary attraction between the pvc pipe and the cut up aluminum cans.
the cells are only like 1.5" high x 0.75" dia. and they keep losing water between the al-can and the pvc pipe. !crud!

Oh... the al-can is sticking out of the pvc about 0.25" .
I'd prefer to keep it sticking out of the pvc, because that's part of the current design.
Maybe tape will seal it off.
That will not stop the capillary attraction from climbing up, but might stop
the draining of the cell.

Randy

[dave_cahoon]

Hi Aaron, group,

A reply I made to creativity over on Overunity.com today.

Funny it hasn't been a week since a wondered about refilling that
and restarting it.

1st thing. The enclosure MUST be airtight sealed...
Another person tried and tried to make it work open, evaporation was
a problem

I did not understand his setup until after he was totally discouraged.

I could not get mine to drip. BUT a droplet would form at the bottom of the
wick and hang there. My cap-tube was not tiny enough to raise the alcohol
far enough, for the alcohol on the wick to become heavy enough, to break the
surface tension. What i did was raise the lower surface until the droplet as
it was forming contacted it and it oscillated like that for years. Sitting on a
window sill and the disturbance was reflected on the wall or ceiling.

The droplet would form, grow, make contact drain away repeat...

DrSpark aka Dave_Cahoon

[Aaron]

water motion

Very cool concept Dave! Didn't realize that was yours!

[dave_cahoon]

Aaron,

I truly doubt that I was the first to think of this, BUT it has been on my site since last century It is an original thought I had and followed.

Dave

[rickoff]

Hi Aaron,

This is simlar to the "drinking bird" effect, as far as the wick action goes. With the felt covered bird "beak" and "head,", though, the wicking action cools the glass tubing and the liquid, and also pulls the head down low enough to vent the bottom end and produce a quick backflow which rights the bird. The glass tubing is normally filled with methylene chloride in liquid and vapor form - with little or no air present, and there is a pivot point about halfway up the bird's "neck." The methylene chloride is sensitive to small temperature changes, and the liquid rises in the long glass "neck" of the bird as the water on the head evaporates and the cooling effect lessens. The rising liquid eventually fills the head with enough weight to produce enough torque to rotate the "beak" down towards an open container of water, and then the cooling cycle begins again.

The "drinking bird" is really a great example of a simple heat engine, but little more than an amusing toy in the size that it is normally built in. Now suppose that you built a similar device that stood 8 to 10 feet tall, and used 1 gallon glass wine jugs for the "head" and the "body," with 1 inch tubing for the "neck." You could probably develop some useful power from that, which could be extracted each time the bird rocks backwards. This extraction could easily be accomplished using a ratchet motion, which could be used to either wind up a spring (like winding a mechanical alarm clock), or to hoist a weight, (as one would do in a grandfather clock.) The energy potential stored in the spring, or weight, could then be governed (as is done in clocks) to produce a constant rpm to drive a generator. The size of the generator would be determined by the size and weight of the "bird," and the force of the spring or weight utilized. If you set this up near a south facing window, and used a flat black heat sink to absorb heat from the sun, and applied that heat to the lower jug, this would speed up the number of cycles that could be accomplished. Making the "beak" absorb water more quickly would also speed the cycles.

Say, while I'm here - do you (or anyone else) recall the other thread about water capillary action that was started several months back? It had something to do with raising water above the surface by capillary action in a tube, and then allowing a small stream to flow out, below the water surface level of the tube, from a vent hole in the side of the tube. I meant to bookmark that, and thought that I did, but can't seem to find it now.

Best regards,

Rick

[dave_cahoon]

Rick,

DippyBird(tm) is a open relative humidity engine.
CapTubeToy is a sealed perpetual motion engine.

I think one of these is a 2nd violation.
The other is not..

Dave

[dave_cahoon]

Rick,

If you could make a teeny pin hole in a cap-tube
and somehow wet it, it will weep forever in a sealed
container. Equally interesting!

Fascinating only from a pure physics POV IMHO...
just like cap tube toy...

Dave

[rickoff]

Reply to Dave

Hi Dave,

The glass tubing of the drinking bird, or "dippy bird," is definitely sealed, and not open to the atmosphere. It works on seven chemical and physical principles, and vilotes no laws.

I had never heard of CapTubeToy, and can't find a reference to it in a Google search using "captubetoy," "captube toy," or "cap tube toy."

Can you supply a link to information about that?

Thanks,

Rick

[dave_cahoon]

Rick,

Its a full moon I'm usually not combative
CapTubeToy is what the topic of this thread is,
A simple forever dripping device.
I really never thought it would go anywhere.. 10+yo
I think i can pop teeeny holes in a cap tube with hv???
Ken Sholders tech???
you got me going now..

Dave

[dave_cahoon]

Rick,

I must add; If you put dippy bird in a box it will stop as
soon as the humidity equalizes. if there isn't a supply of
fresh air to the wet nose it will not be evaporating and
there will be no cooling because of evaporation.
The cold nose-head contracts and sucks its working
fluid off balance.

When it tips, it all stirs up and it rights itself to repeat.
It could pump water in the desert forever if primed

The minto wheel is a rotary device like the dippybird

Dave

[rickoff]

Hi dave,

You can also make the dippy bird work without any water container, and without regard for humidity at all, simply by applying heat at the lower end, which is something I suggested doing with a larger model to speed the cycles.

Yes, I have heard that the Minto wheel is said to work on similar principles, and is also a heat engine.

Rick

[Jetijs]

Here is a video of some very big drinking birds
YouTube - drinking bird

[dave_cahoon]

De-Railment

Rick,

Why did you divert the direction of this thread to the dippy bird?
Why not a solar powered bi-metal wheel or some other obscure heat engine.

What we were trying to discus is not a heat engine.

Back on topic Rick; How does the Drinking bird have anything to due
with capillary action and how the original devise worked?

Rick? What is capillary action? Also while your at it what is absorption.
Rick, Why do liquids soak into some materials and not others?

Dave