Free Energy Scams and Fakes

[Terabyte2007]

Lately, I have been seeing quite a few free energy scams or claims with some really crazy ass circuits and contraptions which claim to provide free or perpetual energy. What is up with these idiots? Are people buying into this and sending these people money? Or are they delusional and really believe this is possible. If you have any good stories of crack pot ideas or ridiculous looking circuits please post them. This is getting quite humorous to me!

[GreyWoolfe]

No different than the 'Nigerian' scams going on every day in the ham radio community.  W.C. Fields said that there is a sucker born every minute.  Why should electronics and free energy be any different.

[cybermaus]

This is getting quite humorous to me!

Yeah, I used to go browsing YouTube for over-unity just for entertainment. Except after a while Google thought I was really into that stuff so the ads and suggestions became rather focussed. Now I stay away, afraid to trigger that part of Google again.

[dfmischler]

W.C. Fields said that there is a sucker born every minute.

I never heard this attributed to W.C. Fields before.  It is usually (wrongly?) attributed to P.T. Barnum.

[Terabyte2007]

This is getting quite humorous to me!

Yeah, I used to go browsing YouTube for over-unity just for entertainment. Except after a while Google thought I was really into that stuff so the ads and suggestions became rather focussed. Now I stay away, afraid to trigger that part of Google again.

LOL, That's exactly what's happening to me now!!!

[EEVblog]

Are people buying into this and sending these people money?

Yep, that's why the persist.

Or are they delusional and really believe this is possible.

Many of them do unfortunately. A seller who passionately believes this stuff works is probably more dangerous than a straight out crook.

[EEVblog]

I actually get quite a few emails a year from people have have bought into these free energy scams (Steorn? Orbo for example), and want an independent opinion on whether they work and should continue to invest etc. I don't enjoy telling them they've been had.

[nctnico]

Lately, I have been seeing quite a few free energy scams or claims with some really crazy ass circuits and contraptions which claim to provide free or perpetual energy. What is up with these idiots? Are people buying into this and sending these people money? Or are they delusional and really believe this is possible. If you have any good stories of crack pot ideas or ridiculous looking circuits please post them. This is getting quite humorous to me!

Lutec from Australia is my favorite :-)

edit: http://www.rexresearch.com/christie/christie.htm

[Icarus]

People have some weird tendencies. They want to invest their money to things that they have no idea.
For Instance,  If you are going to open a dinner, you should be a good at cooking. So when your chef quit, you should be able to keep cooking.

[daqq]

There's a lot of them! I'm guessing that part of the videos are just troll physics, some are ad-money grabbers and some are investor magnets. But some of them look really great, like this one:

http://hackaday.com/2013/11/30/gravity-powered-generator-real-or-fake/

[Terabyte2007]

Proving that perpetual energy exists is like proving Bigfoot exists. Where is the scientific proof that these work? Show me a machine that uses no input energy and produces 500 watts out! It's give and take, some type of energy is needed to produce a reaction, and there are always losses. Some losses may be smaller than others, but there are losses. Solar is not free energy, the sun is burning fuel and radiating that energy with losses. Magnets require energy to produce, even small machines that attempt to operate off magnets are still not producing more than they have put in, and again with losses. Ugh!

[nuhamind2]

This kind of scam has taken a university as victim in my country. The rector resign after the scam exposed, yet they insist they are not scammed instead "breach of cotract".

[GreyWoolfe]

W.C. Fields said that there is a sucker born every minute.

I never heard this attributed to W.C. Fields before.  It is usually (wrongly?) attributed to P.T. Barnum.

You are correct, yet another senior moment.  Actually, they are not senior moments any more, they are all the time .

[FrankBuss]

There's a lot of them! I'm guessing that part of the videos are just troll physics, some are ad-money grabbers and some are investor magnets. But some of them look really great, like this one:

http://hackaday.com/2013/11/30/gravity-powered-generator-real-or-fake/

Nice, this is some really impressive CGI work see their webpage: http://rarenergia.com.br
I wonder which program they used. Of course, they were a bit sloppy with this image: http://rarenergia.com.br/imagem11a.JPG The lights and shadows look very wrong and the workers as photoshoped into the image.

[rolycat]

Proving that perpetual energy exists is like proving Bigfoot exists. Where is the scientific proof that these work? Show me a machine that uses no input energy and produces 500 watts out! It's give and take, some type of energy is needed to produce a reaction, and there are always losses. Some losses may be smaller than others, but there are losses. Solar is not free energy, the sun is burning fuel and radiating that energy with losses. Magnets require energy to produce, even small machines that attempt to operate off magnets are still not producing more than they have put in, and again with losses. Ugh!

I rather think you are preaching to the converted on this forum, Eric.

I also think that few of the nutbars currently wasting their time on this nonsense believe the free energy they will very soon be harvesting is being created from nowhere, or can be extracted without losses.

There is generally some foggy notion of a vast pool of gravitational energy, or zero point energy, or whatever. Tapping into this will overcome the mechanical losses in their revolutionary gadget and also provide the floods of free power which make them rich any moment now.

[lewis]

My workshop aircon unit uses 1.6kW of electricity to produce 5.5kW of heat. Stick a load of efficient thermocouples in series between the hot and cold bits of the heat pump and BAM! Free electricity. Easy.

Kickstarter anyone?

[ConKbot]

Youtube is full of people that are all about free energy etc...   I saw a video about a ball bearing motor (you have a shaft on two bearings, apply DC or AC across the bearings, and the localized heating where the bearing contacts the race causes expansion and the motor to spin, but its not self starting) A simple physics demonstration, that Ive seen in the past. But there are people insisting that:
A) its an induction motor (never mind the fact current is running though the rotor, and there is no windings...)
B) its a homopolar motor (better guess than induction but still wayyy too much friction for that)
c) people who say its a scam (fair enough, enough crap on youtube to be doubtful first)
And last, but certainly not least:
D) The BEDINI MOTOR OVERUNITY, YOU CAN USE THIS WITH PULSER CIRKIT TO GET 4-10V OF POWER AND TO CHARGE AND SUSTAIN ITS OWN POWER SUPPLY.


Gah, I see all sorts of stuff that makes me ask 'why!' People winding all sorts of elaborate motors and windings, and magnets, and so much effort put into it just to fart around, where if they put that much effort into learning the underlying physics, then  they wouldnt even need to mess with this and could do something productive with their time.   I know 4hv has to actively chase off the overunity crowd. Though I'm sure they find the simple winding of a tesla coil secondary passe and boring by now :p

My workshop aircon unit uses 1.6kW of electricity to produce 5.5kW of heat. Stick a load of efficient thermocouples in series between the hot and cold bits of the heat pump and BAM! Free electricity. Easy.

Kickstarter anyone?

Its fun to use careful wording to get the ire of physics teachers/etc in school.  "5.5 KW out, 1.6 KW in, thats 344 percent efficiency!"   

You can tell that in their heads they are thinking  'YOU CANT BE OVER 100% EFFICIENT EVER, GAH! '

So they use the term "Coefficient of performance" for heat pumps, so above heatpump would have a CoP of 3.44, and it doesnt tweak the over 100% efficiency nerve 

[Terabyte2007]

It all comes down to "The Law of Conservation of Energy". You can't argue with physics!

[KD0CAC John]

The real problem I see with the free energy , is that it takes away from any alternative energy sources getting a foothold and helping with are moving to better other sources , especially decentralize or distributive energy .
I think there was a point in recent history ,  that education made people resistant to BS , but the powers that be / or want to be , have use the DUMBING DOWN in the schools , to make it easier to bull crap the masses .
What is the worst thing about the believers = people who have limited knowledge fall into being sheep !
Just my understanding of why we are not reaching almost any potential , most the corruption of greed .
The classic definition of propaganda = if you can not hide the truth / you mix it with so many lies that no one will figure it out .
 

[Sigmoid]

The real problem I see with the free energy , is that it takes away from any alternative energy sources getting a foothold and helping with are moving to better other sources , especially decentralize or distributive energy .
I think there was a point in recent history ,  that education made people resistant to BS , but the powers that be / or want to be , have use the DUMBING DOWN in the schools , to make it easier to bull crap the masses .
What is the worst thing about the believers = people who have limited knowledge fall into being sheep !
Just my understanding of why we are not reaching almost any potential , most the corruption of greed .
The classic definition of propaganda = if you can not hide the truth / you mix it with so many lies that no one will figure it out .

Well it seems you've fallen for a bullshit of your own choosing as well - the conspiracy theory bullshit.

There is no concerted effort to make mankind stupid. Mankind is stupid enough by itself. And if a tendency can be explained away by plain old human idiocy and good-intentioned bad decisions, then according to Occam's razor, one should not hypothesize the existence of some secret, undetectable pink invisible spaghetti monster that plots and conspires to make people stupid and immoral through media and education.

EDIT: Actually, I think the anti-establishment conspiracy theory thought that you too are advocating, is the main reason people are more prone to believing scams these days. The reason selling over-unity scam stuff was harder 50 years ago (was it?) is not that people were smarter, but that people trusted science and scientists.
Nowadays, if a physics professor stands up and speaks out against over-unity scams, many will simply dismiss him as "a pawn of the powers that be / big oil / the reptilian space jews" or whatever.
Conversely, an underdog "inventor" con artist, who is borderline schizophrenic, blames all sorts of outside interference, and says something totally contrary to any accepted tenet of science, sounds "authentic" to many, because he's an underdog, and because he goes against the authorities... which makes him a "good guy".

[nctnico]

The real problem I see with the free energy , is that it takes away from any alternative energy sources getting a foothold and helping with are moving to better other sources , especially decentralize or distributive energy .
I think there was a point in recent history ,  that education made people resistant to BS , but the powers that be / or want to be , have use the DUMBING DOWN in the schools , to make it easier to bull crap the masses .
What is the worst thing about the believers = people who have limited knowledge fall into being sheep !
Just my understanding of why we are not reaching almost any potential , most the corruption of greed .
The classic definition of propaganda = if you can not hide the truth / you mix it with so many lies that no one will figure it out .

Well it seems you've fallen for a bullshit of your own choosing as well - the conspiracy theory bullshit.

There is no concerted effort to make mankind stupid.

Keeping people stupid is a well known method to control people. Look at how religion works and how religion doesn't want science to explain nature.

[Sigmoid]

Keeping people stupid is a well known method to control people. Look at how religion works and how religion doesn't want science to explain nature.

Which religion? Anyway, conspiracy theory and anti-establishmentism IS a religion of its own, and one of the more vicious ones.
(Even hardliner islamists tend to inoculate their children against diseases. Conspiracy theorists often don't.)

[KD0CAC John]

The real problem I see with the free energy , is that it takes away from any alternative energy sources getting a foothold and helping with are moving to better other sources , especially decentralize or distributive energy .
I think there was a point in recent history ,  that education made people resistant to BS , but the powers that be / or want to be , have use the DUMBING DOWN in the schools , to make it easier to bull crap the masses .
What is the worst thing about the believers = people who have limited knowledge fall into being sheep !
Just my understanding of why we are not reaching almost any potential , most the corruption of greed .
The classic definition of propaganda = if you can not hide the truth / you mix it with so many lies that no one will figure it out .

Well it seems you've fallen for a bullshit of your own choosing as well - the conspiracy theory bullshit.

There is no concerted effort to make mankind stupid.

Keeping people stupid is a well known method to control people. Look at how religion works and how religion doesn't want science to explain nature.

That's part of my use of the term believers , I think the potential for narrow minded thinking , or my term mono- theistic-thinking .
I would be happy to be convince that there are not some of these conspiracies , I put the challenge to you , but with the hateful tone it would be highly unlikely - starting off on the wrong foot .
I personally try to avoid even the concept of believing in my own mind and try to use in its place understanding .
Much like science vs. believing I am open to new information to calibrate my thinking vs. believing and having the blinders on and being hateful of anything that does not conform to my view .   

[NiHaoMike]

First, define "free energy". Perpetual (or nearly perpetual) motion is indeed possible (the Earth orbiting in space is one!), but you can't extract energy from it and still have perpetual motion.

If you define free energy as any energy that costs nothing in itself, you actually have alternative energy.

[Terabyte2007]

First, define "free energy". Perpetual (or nearly perpetual) motion is indeed possible (the Earth orbiting in space is one!), but you can't extract energy from it and still have perpetual motion.

If you define free energy as any energy that costs nothing in itself, you actually have alternative energy.

I am mainly referring to perpetual energy or energy from apparently nothing or motion that self powers with no reduction in speed or loss. The earth is fueled by energy from the sun and other forces which influence the rotation (Even this slows over time). In space where there is zero gravity atomic particles still exist therefore collisions and some resistance will be encountered. I will admit, these forces are small but not truly perpetual. Even light traveling for millions of light years can be distorted and altered by these obstacles.

I have no problem with alternate forms of energy when they are practical and proven to work. I also agree that highly efficient forms of energy do exist, but they fall short of true perpetual.