Question by bellinda jessica c: How does a magnetic motor just keep producing energy?
I’m doing a research paper on motors which use magnets (like the one shown here http://www.magniwork.com/?hop=gbancrig) now, my question is how the motor just keeps producing energy. i mean, isn’t it supposed to be that energy can’t be created or destroyed?
Best answer:
Answer by Hippo
Magnets do eventually lose power as they use it up. So called permanent magnets will last about 400-450 years depending on how fast they expend their magnetism maybe even less. Nothing is created or destroyed, it is just used up very slowly compared to other forms of fuel, in this case the fuel being the magnets themselves.
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You are correct: it is widely believed in physics that the laws of physics stay the same over time, and this simple fact turns out (with some complicated maths) to be mathematically equivalent to the statement “energy can’t be created or destroyed.”
People who are trying to sell you magnets which produce energy are unaware that electromagnetism is the single most well-studied discipline on our planet: it is extremely regular and has actually ultimately been so strongly evidenced as to change our *other* preconceptions (special and general relativity were ultimately created by our understanding of electrodynamics).
We know this stuff. We live and breathe this stuff. We know the laws to fractions of a percent which would boggle any sane person’s mind. And we know that the rules of electromagnetism do /not/ allow for any sort of free energy extraction from the vacuum. Certainly not enough that you could power a house with it.
I just want to add: any physicist would absolutely love to become the modern equivalent of ten thousand Einsteins by publishing some simple, overlooked fact that could power a home out of nothing, if it really worked and was easy to demonstrate. Every single one of us would love to coauthor the paper. Free-energy nuts sometimes tell me that we physicists have a conspiracy to suppress them: I still cannot make sense of this idea. Demonstrable free energy would be like dumping a Nobel prize and a career at any university you chose, directly in your lap. There could be no conspiracy in the ever-critical scientific community when the stakes are that high.