The 1969 Blackbird wind turbine sailing craft concept

[AnssiH]

Apparently a debate like this is now real life;

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkb3pk/a-physicist-and-a-youtuber-made-a-dollar10000-bet-over-the-laws-of-physics

😂 (Link to the youtube video in the article)

Granted, the vehicle operation principle is slightly counter-intuitive, but I would not expect a physics professor to get tripped for more than 30 seconds if they really are thinking about it.

At least not to the point of starting to call in a violation of energy conservation... “Thanks to the laws of physics, I am not risking anything,” 😅

Anyway, for those who have not yet thought about this, yes it works, no it does not violate laws of physics, and there are very intuitive ways to understand that vehicle...

First of all, the energy content of the wind is not defined by its speed alone! How can there be a physics professor who believes so? A larger mass of air has got more energy content, and to move faster than the wind is nothing but a question of gearing up a leverage over the wind speed - exactly what they do by rotating a propeller by the wheels. That doesn't mean the vehicle gets more energy from the wind than is possible - it just means it leverages larger mass of air to reach higher ground speed than the wind itself.

A more intuitive version of this is to imagine an infinitely long rope, moving along its length at constant speed in a laboratory frame. Now, is it possible to build a device that is able to move along the rope faster than the rope is moving, at sustainable manner, without breaking the energy conservation law?

In a perfect vacuum, no. But if you can - for example - reach the floor of the lab, you can hold on to the rope while rotating generators against the ground, and thus create energy for crawling along the rope. The energy content of the rope is not defined by its speed alone, it also depends on its pulling force. The harder it can pull, the more energy you can generate from the ground movement. This energy can be turned into electricity and spent on electric motors, or you can simply just use some gearing to rotate a wheel against the rope (the speed being limited only by the pulling force of the rope really), and move around as you wish.

(Note that you can also discuss the same thing from the rope's inertial frame, in which case you are simply pulling energy out from the moving lab floor, much like hydropower plants pull energy from the motion of water)

Yes, in the case of the wind vehicle, the propellers are fundamentally getting their energy from the wind itself, but their motion represents a "gearing" as the propellers are rotating against the wind. There is no violation of energy conservation, because only the size of the propellers limits how much energy they can collect from the mass of air - the speed of the wind is not the limiting factor in the available energy content - the mass of the wind also contributes to the total available energy.

Questions?

Actually I have a question - where do I claim that $10000 ? 😇

-Anssi

[Vmedvil2]

1 hour ago, AnssiH said:

Apparently a debate like this is now real life;

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkb3pk/a-physicist-and-a-youtuber-made-a-dollar10000-bet-over-the-laws-of-physics

😂 (Link to the youtube video in the article)

Granted, the vehicle operation principle is slightly counter-intuitive, but I would not expect a physics professor to get tripped for more than 30 seconds if they really are thinking about it.

At least not to the point of starting to call in a violation of energy conservation... “Thanks to the laws of physics, I am not risking anything,” 😅

Anyway, for those who have not yet thought about this, yes it works, no it does not violate laws of physics, and there are very intuitive ways to understand that vehicle...

First of all, the energy content of the wind is not defined by its speed alone! How can there be a physics professor who believes so? A larger mass of air has got more energy content, and to move faster than the wind is nothing but a question of gearing up a leverage over the wind speed - exactly what they do by rotating a propeller by the wheels. That doesn't mean the vehicle gets more energy from the wind than is possible - it just means it leverages larger mass of air to reach higher ground speed than the wind itself.

A more intuitive version of this is to imagine an infinitely long rope, moving along its length at constant speed in a laboratory frame. Now, is it possible to build a device that is able to move along the rope faster than the rope is moving, at sustainable manner, without breaking the energy conservation law?

In a perfect vacuum, no. But if you can - for example - reach the floor of the lab, you can hold on to the rope while rotating generators against the ground, and thus create energy for crawling along the rope. The energy content of the rope is not defined by its speed alone, it also depends on its pulling force. The harder it can pull, the more energy you can generate from the ground movement. This energy can be turned into electricity and spent on electric motors, or you can simply just use some gearing to rotate a wheel against the rope (the speed being limited only by the pulling force of the rope really), and move around as you wish.

(Note that you can also discuss the same thing from the rope's inertial frame, in which case you are simply pulling energy out from the moving lab floor, much like hydropower plants pull energy from the motion of water)

Yes, in the case of the wind vehicle, the propellers are fundamentally getting their energy from the wind itself, but their motion represents a "gearing" as the propellers are rotating against the wind. There is no violation of energy conservation, because only the size of the propellers limits how much energy they can collect from the mass of air - the speed of the wind is not the limiting factor in the available energy content - the mass of the wind also contributes to the total available energy.

Questions?

Actually I have a question - where do I claim that $10000 ? 😇

-Anssi

You know if you think this is possible then build it, it shouldn't be too hard to build and no if it has a source of energy being in this case the wind then it is not breaking the laws of thermodynamics. The wind does have energy just like a rocket's thrust has energy(https://www.windpowerengineering.com/calculate-wind-power-output/).

So, if you had velocity of the wind of 1 m/s, The Windmill blades was 1 m^2 in size, and the density of the Air was 1 kg/m^3 then the power of that windmill would be .5 J/s, assuming 100% of the wind energy is converted into electric energy. Now the average windspeed for the entire world is 3.3081 m/s , The Average air density is 1.225 kg/m^3 and let's say that you used 1 m^2 windmill blade surface area for the car, then the power in joules per second would be 22.1738947056451125 assuming that 100% of the wind energy was converted into electric energy which is a very small amount of energy considering a gallon of gasoline contains 120 Megajoules. The low energy production from wind power is one of the reasons this isn't really feasible for a car to use.

Edited June 30, 2021 by VictorMedvil

[AnssiH]

I'm waaaay too lazy to build this I'm afraid. I'm lucky other people already have done it already, and I have no reason to suspect trickery 😇

But yeah, we should add contributions to those calculations still, that formula is just a windmill energy capture, which is closer to how a static sail captures energy; it ignores the idea of using some of that energy as leverage by giving torque to a propeller.

The air velocity contribution is to the power of 3 (meaning small increases have large effect), and a propeller that is rotating a fast rate of knots is going to produce a strong low pressure zone in front of it, and high pressure zone behind it (it's not just pushing against the wind), making the air force contribution greater than just with a sail (the very operating principle of a propeller). In addition, some of that extra leverage contributes back to the propeller rotation speed (but obviously there are losses and there's a limit to how much you can leverage this, just like with any gearing or pulley systems).

I don't know off the top of my head how to calculate the whole system, but it involves converting linear force to propeller torque, propeller thrust calculations, and the whole feedback loop you get from it. (Hmm, actually calculating the treadmill version might not be too complicated... 🤔)

[Vmedvil2]

1 hour ago, AnssiH said:

I'm waaaay too lazy to build this I'm afraid. I'm lucky other people already have done it already, and I have no reason to suspect trickery 😇

But yeah, we should add contributions to those calculations still, that formula is just a windmill energy capture, which is closer to how a static sail captures energy; it ignores the idea of using some of that energy as leverage by giving torque to a propeller.

The air velocity contribution is to the power of 3 (meaning small increases have large effect), and a propeller that is rotating a fast rate of knots is going to produce a strong low pressure zone in front of it, and high pressure zone behind it (it's not just pushing against the wind), making the air force contribution greater than just with a sail (the very operating principle of a propeller). In addition, some of that extra leverage contributes back to the propeller rotation speed (but obviously there are losses and there's a limit to how much you can leverage this, just like with any gearing or pulley systems).

I don't know off the top of my head how to calculate the whole system, but it involves converting linear force to propeller torque, propeller thrust calculations, and the whole feedback loop you get from it. (Hmm, actually calculating the treadmill version might not be too complicated... 🤔)

The energy you use to give torque to the propeller will generate less energy or equal amounts of energy to the energy used to move the propeller. No, this doesn't just generate free energy. Don't make me have to banish you to the crank motel with the other perpetual motion people. Einput - EFriction. = Eoutput

In no form is perpetual motion EVER Possible!

Anyone that says perpetual motion is possible in any way is a crank... Energy can NEVER be created or destroyed, ALL closed systems have a static amount of energy in them.

Alexander Kusenko, is obviously correct, you cannot exceed the energy from the sources of energy for a object that had no initial energy in the system. That Youtuber is wrong, In our universe that is literally impossible!

That youtuber's claims are sheer crackpottery.

Edited June 30, 2021 by VictorMedvil

[Vmedvil2]

20 minutes ago, OceanBreeze said:

 

As a marine engineer with NOAA, I have heard about this years ago and, after giving it fair consideration, I came to the conclusion it is bollocks. However, there are some PhDs out there, some for it, some against it, and the Internet is cluttered with long running arguments that often get very heated and emotional.

I have not seen any mathematical approach that is convincing, although Mark Drela did write up an analysis, using some ill-defined variables, that claims to support it.

What is missing is a rock-solid demonstration that this works, which could be provided simply by releasing a neutrally buoyant balloon and watching to see if this wind mobile can pass it and stay ahead of it, or not. The fact that this simple demo has never been done is convincing evidence that this is indeed bollocks.

I am not interested in engaging in any heated arguments with the True Believers. Release the balloon and show me the video proof and spare me from all the heated arguments.

 

 

 

As a Biophysicist, I entirely agree with assessment make it happen or it's bullshit, that's why I told the OP to build it and prove it. I want proof not talk, proof.

Edited June 30, 2021 by VictorMedvil

[AnssiH]

Oh I first thought you understood how it works Victor, your answer was slightly ambiguous that way 😛

Anyway, look guys, no one is claiming perpetual motion or energy out of nothing. It is just leveraging force of wind into speed - all the energy is still coming from the air mass (it won't move without wind). What is happening is that slightly unintuitive aspect of this system is throwing people off, including Kusenko. I'm just amazed people can really with straight face start to grasp at straws so hard (I mean his arguments are pretty weak, let's face it) after this thing has been proved many times already, and especially when it's actually quite easy to understand the theory behind it if you let go of a simple "oh it just can't be faster than the wind obviously" idea (I mean sailboats do that all the time, and it can also be somewhat counter-intuitive, but also perfectly understandable).

As I explained in the OP - it's just a system that is pulling more energy than 1:1 speed from the wind by leverage. Just like an engine can turn wheels faster than the engine itself rotates. It is completely analogous to pulley, or a reverse pulley rather. A pulley is a system that converts larger distance and smaller force into smaller distance but higher force. And reverse, if you pull on the other end of the same pulley, you are converting a smaller speed into higher speed, by using more force. 

Just by complete co-incidence, Vertasium posted a follow-up just minutes ago, where they explain the same exact thing, you can see pretty ample video examples of this thing;

In fact, by a sheer co-incidence, the example given at 14 minute mark in the follow-up video is essentially what I had in mind when I was writing the OP about the rope.

Get it? 😁

(The first video, if you have not seen it, is posted here;

If you guys still feel like this must be a crank argument, well first of all you are in good company since Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Dyson also seem to not get it (or they are just trolling Kusenko, I can't tell), and secondly let's discuss in more detail that rope example I presented in the OP. It's much easier to understand the idea of force-to-speed leverage with it, and then it's pretty easy to also understand how it is completely analogous to getting leverage from wind mass.

And if you still are not convinced after watching how it works from those Veritas videos (especially the follow-up which goes more into detail), I have plenty of other analogous examples in mind 😊

Cheers,

-Anssi

Edited June 30, 2021 by AnssiH

[Vmedvil2]

1 hour ago, AnssiH said:

Oh I first thought you understood how it works Victor, your answer was slightly ambiguous that way 😛

Anyway, look guys, no one is claiming perpetual motion or energy out of nothing. It is just leveraging force of wind into speed - all the energy is still coming from the air mass (it won't move without wind). What is happening is that slightly unintuitive aspect of this system is throwing people off, including Kusenko. I'm just amazed people can really with straight face start to grasp at straws so hard (I mean his arguments are pretty weak, let's face it) after this thing has been proved many times already, and especially when it's actually quite easy to understand the theory behind it if you let go of a simple "oh it just can't be faster than the wind obviously" idea (I mean sailboats do that all the time, and it can also be somewhat counter-intuitive, but also perfectly understandable).

As I explained in the OP - it's just a system that is pulling more energy than 1:1 speed from the wind by leverage. Just like an engine can turn wheels faster than the engine itself rotates. It is completely analogous to pulley, or a reverse pulley rather. A pulley is a system that converts larger distance and smaller force into smaller distance but higher force. And reverse, if you pull on the other end of the same pulley, you are converting a smaller speed into higher speed, by using more force. 

Just by complete co-incidence, Vertasium posted a follow-up just minutes ago, where they explain the same exact thing, you can see pretty ample video examples of this thing;

In fact, by a sheer co-incidence, the example given at 14 minute mark in the follow-up video is essentially what I had in mind when I was writing the OP about the rope.

Get it? 😁

(The first video, if you have not seen it, is posted here;

If you guys still feel like this must be a crank argument, well first of all you are in good company since Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Dyson also seem to not get it (or they are just trolling Kusenko, I can't tell), and secondly let's discuss in more detail that rope example I presented in the OP. It's much easier to understand the idea of force-to-speed leverage with it, and then it's pretty easy to also understand how it is completely analogous to getting leverage from wind mass.

And if you still are not convinced after watching how it works from those Veritas videos (especially the follow-up which goes more into detail), I have plenty of other analogous examples in mind 😊

Cheers,

-Anssi

Somehow I am sure this is some sort of misunderstanding of physics this idea of a car with more mass than the air moving faster than the wind, however I don't feel like debating it, as I said you will not create energy from nothing and the energy of the output will not exceed the energy of the input. Energy is never created or destroyed only transferred from place to place, as long as it doesn't break any of those things I am sure it works.

"The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed - only converted from one form of energy to another. This means that a system always has the same amount of energy, unless it's added from the outside."

such that the equation is as follows, (1/2)*Δt*pAir*ABlades*VWind^3 = (1/2)*MVehicle*VVehicle^2 - Efriction , which  Efriction = μMaterial Of Land*Mvehicle*gEarth*Δx

You know this stuff is really easy to calculate using Newtonian Mechanics, if it doesn't follow that equation whatever you are putting out there is wrong.

Edited June 30, 2021 by VictorMedvil

[AnssiH]

Well you know,  you wished someone to build it, and someone has build it, what can I say. I agree on the sentiment though, just believing someone else is not worth much, it's much better to form an understanding of the thing yourselves. On that token, OceanBreeze I would never advice you to "get it" just by believing some demonstration; understanding is much more valuable. Let's do that instead 😇

Really your arguments that it is somehow creating energy out of nothing is merely your confusing on how it is supposed to work. Once you have figured it out, you'll be glad to notice it doesn't break any energy conservation laws - it merely converts the momentum difference between the air/ground into thrust against the air - it's really that simple. There's nothing extra-ordinary or mysterious about this, it's just counter-intuitive because you are thinking about it from an overly simplified angle - I promise you'll be kicking yourselves 😇 (and so will all the beforementioned physicists)

 

Okay, so I thought of another way to form an intuitive understanding on how that thing works, think this through carefully step by step and I'm sure you'll get it (or if not, at least identify where you think it fails).

The initial setup is this;

• Imagine a huge and very heavy flywheel, spinning in our lab frame.
• The flywheel is so massive, it has its own gravity (yes you know where this is going 😅)
• We are in a good old fashioned hot-air balloon, just hovering still above the flywheel that is spinning below us.
• The air in our lab frame is completely still.

First question; is it possible for us to collect energy from the flywheel, and use it to drive propellers, and so have means to move around the "flywheel world" freely?

Answer: Yes, we can very trivially lower a small wheel against the flywheel, and use it to drive rotors completely mechanically. We can obviously direct the propeller thrust into any direction, and thus start to accelerate to any direction we wish. Including the direction that is against the spinning direction of the flywheel (at this point we are already in fact inevitably able to "move faster than the wind" - keep reading).

So where is the energy coming from? From our perspective, it's coming from the momentum of the flywheel. How much force we are able to extract is only limited by our ability to have some "purchase" on the air - which we can improve by driving the propellers. So this propeller business yields simply leverage that allows us to extract more force from the momentum of the "flywheel" than we could with static sails.

Eventually we would have used all of the kinetic energy of the flywheel, it would grind to a halt, and our vehicle would also stop.

(Note also that if we accelerate into the same exact speed as the flywheel, the rotors would stop, and our speed would start to diminish due to air drag)

Okay, if you guys are so far with me, let's move this one step towards the actual case under discussion; instead of imagining the wheel as spinning, imagine instead that the air is orbiting the wheel at constant velocity.

Now the orbiting air represents the rest frame for our balloon - we will be moving exactly along with the "wind" if we are not getting any air thrust anywhere. Of course from our perspective the flywheel appears to be moving beneath us just like before. So again, we can lower a small wheel against the flywheel, and again we can use that rotation to drive a propeller, and use its thrust to accelerate into any direction we wish. If we simply choose to accelerate to the direction that makes the flywheel appear to be spinning faster beneath us, we will be - semantically - "moving faster than the wind" (or that is what the people living on the flywheel would say and have debates about... 😉)

Did we break energy conservation laws there? Nope. This energy is coming from is the momentum of the air, and/or from the momentum of the flywheel, depending on your frame of reference. In fact it's perhaps best to say it's coming from the momentum difference between the air and the flywheel, and from our ability to extract force (with arbitrary leverage) from that difference. Also in this case we would eventually deplete all of the momentum difference, and the whole system would grind to a halt - it's not energy out of nothing.

Likewise, if the flywheel would now also start to rotate at the same speed as the wind, that momentum difference would disappear, and your leverage would be good for nothing. Now our balloon would just grind to a halt after depleting its own momentum on air resistance. In other words, if the "wind dies out", you are no longer able to extract energy from the "ground" - it's still not free energy.

So one last step; the flywheel can obviously be thought of as "earth", and instead of a balloon and a wheel driving a propeller, we can use a land vehicle with its wheels driving a propeller. What the vehicle is doing is it is simply extracting energy from the momentum difference between air and planet earth. When that momentum difference doesn't exist (when wind is still), the vehicle will grind to a halt. When there is large enough momentum difference, the vehicle is capable of pulling energy from that difference to give itself reasonable thrust to any direction against the air momentum - including thrust towards what we land creatures call "headwind". 🙂

Let me know what part of this - if any - you find doubtful.

Cheers,

-Anssi

Edited June 30, 2021 by AnssiH

[Vmedvil2]

20 hours ago, AnssiH said:

Well you know,  you wished someone to build it, and someone has build it, what can I say. I agree on the sentiment though, just believing someone else is not worth much, it's much better to form an understanding of the thing yourselves. On that token, OceanBreeze I would never advice you to "get it" just by believing some demonstration; understanding is much more valuable. Let's do that instead 😇

Really your arguments that it is somehow creating energy out of nothing is merely your confusing on how it is supposed to work. Once you have figured it out, you'll be glad to notice it doesn't break any energy conservation laws - it merely converts the momentum difference between the air/ground into thrust against the air - it's really that simple. There's nothing extra-ordinary or mysterious about this, it's just counter-intuitive because you are thinking about it from an overly simplified angle - I promise you'll be kicking yourselves 😇 (and so will all the beforementioned physicists)

 

Okay, so I thought of another way to form an intuitive understanding on how that thing works, think this through carefully step by step and I'm sure you'll get it (or if not, at least identify where you think it fails).

The initial setup is this;

• Imagine a huge and very heavy flywheel, spinning in our lab frame.
• The flywheel is so massive, it has its own gravity (yes you know where this is going 😅)
• We are in a good old fashioned hot-air balloon, just hovering still above the flywheel that is spinning below us.
• The air in our lab frame is completely still.

First question; is it possible for us to collect energy from the flywheel, and use it to drive propellers, and so have means to move around the "flywheel world" freely?

Answer: Yes, we can very trivially lower a small wheel against the flywheel, and use it to drive rotors completely mechanically. We can obviously direct the propeller thrust into any direction, and thus start to accelerate to any direction we wish. Including the direction that is against the spinning direction of the flywheel (at this point we are already in fact inevitably able to "move faster than the wind" - keep reading).

So where is the energy coming from? From our perspective, it's coming from the momentum of the flywheel. How much force we are able to extract is only limited by our ability to have some "purchase" on the air - which we can improve by driving the propellers. So this propeller business yields simply leverage that allows us to extract more force from the momentum of the "flywheel" than we could with static sails.

Eventually we would have used all of the kinetic energy of the flywheel, it would grind to a halt, and our vehicle would also stop.

(Note also that if we accelerate into the same exact speed as the flywheel, the rotors would stop, and our speed would start to diminish due to air drag)

Okay, if you guys are so far with me, let's move this one step towards the actual case under discussion; instead of imagining the wheel as spinning, imagine instead that the air is orbiting the wheel at constant velocity.

Now the orbiting air represents the rest frame for our balloon - we will be moving exactly along with the "wind" if we are not getting any air thrust anywhere. Of course from our perspective the flywheel appears to be moving beneath us just like before. So again, we can lower a small wheel against the flywheel, and again we can use that rotation to drive a propeller, and use its thrust to accelerate into any direction we wish. If we simply choose to accelerate to the direction that makes the flywheel appear to be spinning faster beneath us, we will be - semantically - "moving faster than the wind" (or that is what the people living on the flywheel would say and have debates about... 😉)

Did we break energy conservation laws there? Nope. This energy is coming from is the momentum of the air, and/or from the momentum of the flywheel, depending on your frame of reference. In fact it's perhaps best to say it's coming from the momentum difference between the air and the flywheel, and from our ability to extract force (with arbitrary leverage) from that difference. Also in this case we would eventually deplete all of the momentum difference, and the whole system would grind to a halt - it's not energy out of nothing.

Likewise, if the flywheel would now also start to rotate at the same speed as the wind, that momentum difference would disappear, and your leverage would be good for nothing. Now our balloon would just grind to a halt after depleting its own momentum on air resistance. In other words, if the "wind dies out", you are no longer able to extract energy from the "ground" - it's still not free energy.

So one last step; the flywheel can obviously be thought of as "earth", and instead of a balloon and a wheel driving a propeller, we can use a land vehicle with its wheels driving a propeller. What the vehicle is doing is it is simply extracting energy from the momentum difference between air and planet earth. When that momentum difference doesn't exist (when wind is still), the vehicle will grind to a halt. When there is large enough momentum difference, the vehicle is capable of pulling energy from that difference to give itself reasonable thrust to any direction against the air momentum - including thrust towards what we land creatures call "headwind". 🙂

Let me know what part of this - if any - you find doubtful.

Cheers,

-Anssi

You know I automatically like you because you have a cat avatar however I think this all is very unlikely to work, how about I lay some tuna on the floor instead?

Edited July 1, 2021 by VictorMedvil

[AnssiH]

I like you guys too, even though I'm not too much into eating from the floor (but I do like tuna so I guess it evens things out) 😅

I didn't expect this to trip you guys up this bad, but then again the motivation for my first post that I got so surprised that physics professionals get tripped hard enough to end up agreeing to a 10k wager about this, so not sure what I expected 😅

Anyway, had you watched that last Veritasium video (titled "A Physics Prof Bet Me $10,000 I'm Wrong" ), you would have seen your arguments have been addressed there.

You would have also seen that Kusenko has already conceded the bet and he has paid Derek that 10k wager. The story doesn't say whether he finally realized how this thing works (and thus the blunder in his logic), or if he just believes overwhelming evidence and still thinks it violates energy conservation... I'd like to think it's the former 😉

Not that Kusenko's admittance of an error should persuade you to change your own minds, but maybe it will motivate you to actually take a proper look at that last video. I promise you you will be sooner or later able to find where your logic fails, and realize this whole thing is just a slightly unintuitive "gotcha" argument that makes it seem like energy conservation would obviously be broken, when in fact it is not. The fact that this thread is now in Silly Claims forum is a bit like having Monty Hall Puzzle in silly claims because someone doesn't understand the logic behind it, and also doesn't believe statistical evidence 😅

Watched it? Got it?

I'll assume you did, so just to get back to the original programming, I guess this thread turned out to become a wonderful demonstration of the difficulty of recognizing valid arguments from invalid (or "crank") ones. All the characteristics of a "crank" are present in the defense of Kusenko. The only reason you don't see it that way is because his arguments re-affirms your intuitive beliefs. That is not how scientific method works. But it is unfortunately far too often how science ends up playing out 😞 There are a lot of unfortunate examples of the sociological effects to our physical models. It's not always that trivial to recognize one's own biases.

Consider the fact that these kinds of vehicles have been built decades ago, and they work, and video evidence has existed for a long time. Here's a fairly detailed video of how to build one, and contains lots of footage of running one (it's a video about building the same treadmill vehicle that Veritas used in that follow-up video):

The reason all of this evidence gets dismissed is because of unwavering belief into one's own intuition, which makes people concoct increasingly exotic explanations to the evidence (because the evidence "just can't possibly be right"), instead of making them seriously investigate their own logic. I mean you guys have told me multiple times you are not interested of investigating my explanations too hard, and instead asking for me to build it, even though multiple people already have. The real reason you are asking for that is not that upon demonstration you would suddenly believe me, the real reason is that you don't believe I could. But whenever someone does build it, the explanation becomes something like "a gust of wind", even though the vehicle is accelerating for 30 seconds straight until it's too dangerous to go on. On the treadmill somehow suddenly reference frames are not symmetrical, or the person holding the craft is sub-consciously sucking the vehicle in with their fingers, or whatever. These are really grasping the straws, and would generally be considered crank strategies.

And yes, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye really did not get it. I guess they have never ran into this little brain teaser before, and it managed to trip them up. But the nice thing about science is that your title doesn't make you right - logic makes you right (as long as science is possible at all). Many people with massive credentials have made very long standing logical mistakes - physicists are only people too. I think these two gentlemen will have spent a moment to think about it, and probably understand perfectly well how this works by now.

The real reason why I was surprised about the wager was not because evidence exists - it was because I'd expect any physics professional to think about this from multiple perspective and start to see inconsistencies in their own assumptions. That was the point of my opening post - there is nothing in the laws of physics that prevents this vehicle from operating, there are only logical blunders that can trip you into thinking so.

I mean, OceanBreeze you keep asking for an experiment involving a balloon - but how do you propose that is different from the paper strips in all the videos you've seen (if you've watched the linked videos)? What's the difference? If you believe someone is fooling you with a paper strip, surely they could fool you with a balloon too, right? My point is, surely it is much better to form an understanding of the vehicle instead 🙂

Another important point is that almost all of physics is logical tautologies (if X then Y). Energy is conserved because of how we define "energy". That has got nothing to do with experiments. If we had an experiment where energy was not conserved, it would just mean we are not defining the energy content of the system consistently. Which leads me to my next important point; OceanBreeze you mentioned you are not really interested of analogies of the system, but rather the system itself. This might be a matter of preference, but at least for me a very important method of checking my logic is to try to think about it from multiple different angles - sometimes with analogies - and make sure I get consistent expectations.

For example in this case, I'd suggest people to think of this from the reference frame of the moving air. What ground-bound creatures may call "impossible faster than the wind motion", air-bound creatures just call "motion" 😄.

So from air-bound reference frame the only question is, if you use a wheel to collect energy from the moving ground, will the loss on the wheel always be at least as large as the thrust on the propeller, I.e. this question about braking force on the wheel vs thrust force on the propeller;

On 7/2/2021 at 1:11 PM, OceanBreeze said:

1)     If you were in a balloon travelling at the speed of the wind, and you lowered a wheel to the ground to generate some power to run your propeller, would the wheel/generator act as a brake to slow the balloon down or not? Hint: Power = Force x Velocity and F=ma.

The answer is no (to my bolded question)! 🙂 The energy loss would obviously be greater if we were driving the vehicle with another wheel, but the propeller represents a way to gain leverage over another medium with different momentum. Ignoring that is the gotcha!

This is what my first post is about. An intuitive way to understand it is to realize that the the propeller gives you leverage over the air. It literally is your ability to grab a better "hold" of the air. It is not free energy; if you think so you are confusing the energy content of the wind - intuitively thinking it's defined by the wind speed. But it's not, it's defined by the momentum of the air mass that the propeller is grabbing onto.

This point is explained in quite detail at around 11 minute mark in that same Veritas video I've linked to (The follow-up one). The math is also presented there, but really it's quite easy to grasp intuitively too.

The really nice thing about that video is that now this device will probably become another example in physics schoolbooks about how intuition can trip us over if we are not careful, and over time it will be a crank thing to claim that it doesn't work 🤔

On 7/2/2021 at 1:11 PM, OceanBreeze said:

As I am writing this, we are underway again, heading well out to sea from Newport, Rhode Island on a one-month science expedition to explore North Atlantic seamounts and need every bit of ship bandwidth for the telepresence experience which you can follow here, if you are interested.  

Oh thank you, I just might! 🙂

By the time you read this, hopefully all went well!

Cheers,

-Anssi

Edited July 3, 2021 by AnssiH

[AnssiH]

For whomever it may concern, here's a pretty good video explaining how this little brain teaser actually works;

She basically goes through the same explanations I've done in this thread, but perhaps some diagrams and pretty pictures make it easier to digest.

But as said, no explanation will ever do any good for you unless you are willing to think about it. First you must get over your intuitive assumption that the vehicle is some kind of impossible closed system - because it really isn't. You have to allow yourself to think about things in order to learn anything.

I think the only reason this thing has been debatable for decades is because people who understand how it actually works are convinced enough to have never bothered to build one, and people who don't understand it do so because they never bothered to think the explanations through. The guy who build the Blackbird said that when he brought this up as a brain teaser, he expected everyone to just maybe trip over once, but then go "ah, right of course" once it's explained to them. I must say that would have been my expectation too, but it's not how we function, sadly! 😛

You know the original Monty Hall paradox managed to trip huge number of people, some with very big credentials, for a pretty long time;
 

Quote

Many readers of vos Savant's column refused to believe switching is beneficial despite her explanation. After the problem appeared in Parade, approximately 10,000 readers, including nearly 1,000 with PhDs, wrote to the magazine, most of them claiming vos Savant was wrong.^[4] Even when given explanations, simulations, and formal mathematical proofs, many people still do not accept that switching is the best strategy.^[5] Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, remained unconvinced until he was shown a computer simulation demonstrating vos Savant's predicted result.^[6]

The full intuitive explanation is all of 1 sentence long; "2/3 boxes are empty, and either empty box choice can always be converted into a price box choice by switching after the host inserts their knowledge into the system."

I think everyone who are familiar with that paradox would agree that a 10 year old can figure it out if they are willing to think a little. So why does it require a professional mathematician to see a computer simulation before they are convinced? Because they refuse to even think about it! They completely trip over a small unintuitive aspect of the problem, and assume that everyone else is just too dumb to see that aspect, and they become completely unmotivated to think it through themselves. Instead they spend all of their energy defending the impossibility of their own misconception 🙄

-Anssi

Edited July 5, 2021 by AnssiH

[AnssiH]

Hey, why is this still in Strange Claims? The bet has been conceded by Kusenko a long time ago, there's a lot of video evidence including videos that are exactly analogous to the balloon version (just with paper strips - should be even more convincing). Historical explanations of the math exist, and also they go through the actual math in that video titled "A Physics Prof Bet Me $10,000 I'm Wrong". There's instructions for building a craft like this and plenty of examples on treadmills. And most importantly, there's pretty clear explanations how this is simply a case of leverage in a little unintuitive fashion. (I know you guys didn't watch those videos because you would have figured it out if you had 🙂 )

Anyways, the point of the OP was not to even discuss whether or not the vehicle works as claimed - to me it's incredibly obvious it does. That's not because I fail to understand bog standard concepts of energy conservation. That's because I happened to think about potential energy harvest from the speed difference between the ground and the wind from an angle that made the topic quite easy to understand. And I thought it should be possible for a physics professor to figure out very quickly how leverage plays critical role in this and nothing in the laws of physics is broken. When I heard about this, it felt to me like a physics professor is agreeing to a 10k wager about the impossibility of this chair:

And not just due to getting tricked by it for a moment, but still argue it's impossible after it's being explained to him. Putting out a whole presentation explaining how "a string cannot uphold a chair". Yes, this chair is easier to figure out, but the same idea; just an unintuitive idea that might break your brain for a brief moment - until you think it through.

Thinking about this, I think the situation really is remarkably similar to some professionals getting tricked so hard by the Monty Hall paradox, like I mentioned in the previous post. In general, once a person knows enough about a topic, they can more easily conclude to themselves that "most everyone around them" simply do not understand the most basic concepts of a topic, and thus everyone else are getting fooled and increasingly confused. And since it's somewhat usual situation in their life, and since their conviction makes them skip any serious attempts to even try to understand the problem, they might keep themselves convinced by their own view of the circumstance for much longer than perhaps those people who are forced to think it through to come up with an opinion. In a way, less experienced people might be able to notice the unintuitive "trick" faster than some professionals...

...which I thought was interesting, because I've seen it play out so many times in my life 🙂

-Anssi

[AnssiH]

20 hours ago, OceanBreeze said:

The only thing your arguments, with no math or logic, have convinced me of; is that you are a crank. So this nonsense stays in strange claims where it belongs. Show me the contraption moving past the neutrally buoyant balloon or save your breath (or typing fingers)

Hi OceanBreeze. No need to get amped up, it's all good 😄 I'm interested of understanding where exactly you stand and how do you think about this.

About the balloons you keep asking about, I remain puzzled - have you not watched those videos I've been linking, or do you think that paper strips are somehow critically different from buoyant balloons? I would think paper strips are more convincing because they require more force to point against the wind. Like this:

See more examples at 8:15 timecode (here: https://youtu.be/yCsgoLc_fzI?t=495  ) I'd be curious to know what you think about them, and especially if or why they are less convincing to you than balloons?

20 hours ago, OceanBreeze said:

By the way, real science isn't settled with crackpot Youtube videos or someone conceding a bet! Just for your information.

Indeed, exactly right! I'm glad you are bringing this up, but you are forgetting that you are the one asking for a video, while I've been harping at the fact that forming real understanding is much more meaningful here. It's not very scientific to just believe other people, that's what religion is for. Science is about forming an actual understanding of a topic.

When you brought up the notion that you could only be convinced by a video featuring balloons, this was the first thing I said;

On 7/1/2021 at 2:38 AM, AnssiH said:

...just believing someone else is not worth much, it's much better to form an understanding of the thing yourselves. On that token, OceanBreeze I would never advice you to "get it" just by believing some demonstration; understanding is much more valuable. Let's do that instead

I didn't say that because those videos wouldn't exist - they do; see above. I said that because convincing oneself on a video is not how scientific method works. Yet, I provided videos with plenty of evidence to perhaps make you interested of thinking this through. Yet you keep asking for essentially the same thing. Hence my confusion. 🤷‍♂️

Alright, and here's another thing. I know some people always want to see equations, as if math is somehow magical in carrying explanations in ways that words can. Yes I know, math as a tool can be much more accurate and carry very unintuitive logic through correctly. But especially in this case there is much greater value in forming intuitive understanding, because if you don't, it is completely possible to represent each side of the fence with math and not realize which version is wrong (because one or the other is simply calculating wrong things).

That being said, for those who find it easier to reason with math, one version of this appeared in 2013 US Physics Olympiad Semifinals, where they got it right. See page 12 in here:

https://www.aapt.org/physicsteam/2013/upload/E3-1-7-solutions.pdf

Albeit their representation is very simple, merely pointing out that the force harvested at the wheel has got potential to push against the wind in a way that makes the vehicle faster than the wind. That is true, and their math is correct, but I wouldn't call this version an "intuitive understanding of the problem" myself. Just my opinion; it's possible to do much better.

On that front, if you are willing, let's explore at what point do you think this contraption becomes physically impossible? May we  simply explore the simplest version of this puzzle (with least amount of logical gotchas), so I understand where you stand;

"Let us have two beams of infinite length, placed one on top of another in parallel direction, but with 1 meter gap of space between them. Let's keep the bottom one stationary in our lab frame, and set the top one in constant motion, so that it acts like a rigid conveyor belt above us. The question is, is it possible to build a contraption that gets its power from the moving beam, but still manages to move faster than said beam, in sustainable manner?"

Cheers

-Anssi

[spartan45]

I cannot understand why this topic posted by AnssiH has caused such a harsh reaction.

The reference below between 3m 18s and 3m 26s shows the ribbon on the front of the car streaming backwards which demonstrates the car is moving faster than the following wind. Xyla, the engineer of the cart, demonstrated that leverage ratios were critical for the cart to achieve moving slowly forward on the treadmill. It seems to me the $10,000 bet was won by hard evidence. To clear any misunderstandings, this topic concerns the continuous multiplying force of leverage and has nothing to do with perpetual motion imho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUgajGv4Aok

[AnssiH]

7 hours ago, OceanBreeze said:

Now, look how low to the ground that paper strip is on the front of the car and how high the propeller is. Do you understand anything about wind gradient? At the height of the propeller, the wind is moving much faster than at the height of that paper strip. Besides that, the paper strip is in the wind shadow of the propeller and the large support structure. Do you understand that the propeller extracts wind energy, thus slowing the wind in front of it?

Yes, the car may be moving faster than the wind at that low height and which has also been slowed by the propeller and support structure. It does not demonstrate the car is moving faster than the free wind speed.

Come on OceanBreeze, you need to at least click the links I give you when you are the one asking for them. I think it's very dishonest for you to ask questions and not listen to the answers. I know you are a smart guy, you will be able to figure this out if you just make an attempt.

The link I gave you literally talks about the wind gradient. If you'd clicked it, you would not be claiming I have never heard of wind gradient. So please, at least make an effort to understand this, and don't just assume you already got the right picture.

Here's the link once again, please, watch at least the few seconds where they show exactly the demonstration you are asking for: https://youtu.be/yCsgoLc_fzI?t=496

And before we go any further, I'm really really really interested of just hearing your opinion of the simple thought experiment I presented at the end of last post? I think that's probably the only single bit you need to respond to, for us to be able to figure out where do we think so differently about this vehicle (it can't be more than couple of steps away once we clear out that thought experiment). I'll give you a hint of the direction you should be thinking about - think about a vehicle pressing wheels on both beams, and using freely any gearing ratio to connect those wheels together. Does the speed of the top beam speed also determine the top speed of the vehicle?

So can we discuss that one?

7 hours ago, OceanBreeze said:

Once again, the ONLY way you can demonstrate what you are claiming that has any semblance of science to it, is to show the car advancing against a neutrally buoyant balloon, preferably floating in the wind at least at propeller hub height.

Someone may or may not done this same test with balloons, I have no idea. In my opinion, a balloon is FAR more unstable indicator for this, as it's impacted by wind gusts much more harshly. But there's no reason to expect it to behave different from the wind strips as far as indicating the vehicle wind speed of course. I'm interested of understanding why do you feel so strongly otherwise, if you do?

6 hours ago, OceanBreeze said:

Another thing, you can obtain that same photo with the car hardly moving at all! The key piece of information is the wind speed, and it is missing.

The only reason I'm posting photos is because you are not clicking on the videos. The photo was from the video, which you should watch, as it shows the demonstration you are asking for. Here is a photo to maybe make you interested again:

If you watch the video you seem they show strips all along the height of the vehicle.

Did you click the link to the US Physics Olympiad semi-final exam which spells this out too? Would it be more convincing if I Latex the same math here?

That second Veritas video really does a very good job at going through large number of evidence and very clear explanation of this, but why have you still not watched it? Also clearly you have not watched all the videos of this same principle being demonstrate on a treadmill, which also explain the operating principle. I'm afraid the burden of proof has now flipped to the other side of the fence, if you really think all of the evidence can be explained by a gust of wind and wind gradients. And you would know that if you'd watched the videos.

But let me tell you already that there's still no reason to become suddenly convinced by a video. Why should you, videos can be faked. But you should become convinced of taking a step back and checking your assumptions about this vehicle. Trust me, you will be kicking yourself when you realize what you've missed about it because it's so simple, but so easy to miss 😉

I mean let me just assure you, this is not some kind of competition. This is not even the topic of the OP. But I can't get to the topic of the OP really properly, until we have cleared out how this vehicle actually works. For that, we have to understand where do we think differently. For that, let's start with that simple thought experiment, right? Pretty please? 🙏 🥺

Regards,

-Anssi

Edited November 23, 2021 by AnssiH

[AnssiH]

21 hours ago, spartan45 said:

I cannot understand why this topic posted by AnssiH has caused such a harsh reaction.

Because what's happening here is exactly the topic I would like to discuss. I guess the way it's playing out is only a good demonstration. The reason why there's such a strong reaction, and why OceanBreeze is asking for evidence yet obviously making no serious attempt to follow up on anything is the same reason why professor Kusenko was so convinced he was right that he dished out 10k on the table and boasted he will use this example to teach people about bad physics; because they both are well versed in physics! (Also the same reason why we had two more well known physicists who initially thought Kusenko was right)

If that answer doesn't make any sense to you, think about it. We tend to make blunders and mistakes when we get so good at something that we stop paying attention. The operating principle of this vehicle seems impossible if you fail to consider the role of leverage. You have figured it out, so it might seem strange to you how people can so persistently miss it. But it can happen if you are good enough at physics, and you look at this proposal from the outside, it's easy to decide there can't be free energy that would accelerate it harder than the energy coming from the wind, and thus not consider it any further. Look at the very first response to this thread.

When you are good at physics, it's also easy to convince yourself that anyone who keeps harping that the vehicle works as advertised, must have simply become tricked by the "seemingly workable but actually impossible" idea of extracting power from the wheels. So then one might become interested of just showing how this is mistaken idea, and never re-check their own assumptions (which failed to consider the role of leverage). Just look at how convinced OceanBreeze is that I'm a crank who simply does not understand energy conservation. I think if you read my other posts on this forum you might see I understand these topics quite well. But the explanation that I'm a crank is the only thing that makes sense to OceanBreeze right now - why otherwise would I keep making such an "unreasonable and obviously false claim"? Right?

This is also why the mountain of hard evidence is suddenly all just "piled up by mistaken cranks". There's never any serious attempt to examine the evidence, and this is in general how scientific advances happen (generally very hard evidence can exist for years before it becomes accepted).

But yeah, you got it right, leverage is the keyword to understand here. There is no free energy of course, but also the speed of the wind does not define its energy content; it's momentum does. I.e. speed x mass. You get leverage by choosing your gearing between wheels and propeller, and propeller thrust further depends on air speed and density, and on propeller profile and size. At this point you just have to understand the principle of leverage to understand that the wind speed is not some kind of magical limit for how much momentum you can push into the vehicle. All of this is fully understandable intuitively. Hence that thought experiment I'd love to discuss with OceanBreeze. I hope he is willing, as I know he is very close to figuring this out 🙂

I'd like to think Kusenko just realized one tiny detail he had missed, and thus conceded the bet. But it's hard to say because he is refusing to follow up on this for some reason. If it's due to embarrassment, I think there should be no reason for it - this vehicle is practically designed to break your brain, and the more you know, the easier you fall prey to it 😄

(And yes indeed, this is not a popularity contest. That's why I want to discuss that thought experiment)

-Anssi

Edited November 23, 2021 by AnssiH

[AnssiH]

Alright then, I'll just walk through all the basic principles as simply as I can so that anyone who wants to understand this vehicle can figure it out.

But first, it occurs to me though that since you did not really check the references, perhaps the only blunder here is that you were assuming the propeller is used to drive the wheels? Obviously that system would not give speeds faster than wind. If this was your assumption, it would explain why none of my explanations gain any traction. It would also explain why you think the treadmill version is completely different design... When it's actually the exact same design... Looking at Victor's first response, it seems to reflect exactly this misconception, as it describes the force of a wind pushing the propeller and generating force that way. (In fact most of Kusenko's arguments imply he also thought the propeller drives the wheels...) No boys, that's not the case here at all.

Maybe that was the only misconception all along, but either way I'll just spell out the whole thing here for future generations to  understand. I'd be really interested of hearing what parts of the following you see as crackpottery (because then we find a misconception from somewhere).

So, the first thing to grasp is that the wheels are driving the propeller -> the propeller is literally there just to act as a form of leverage, converting the rotation of the wheels into increased leverage over wind power through appropriate gearing. This is why you need to have sufficient wind force in order to get anything going (I think they said 10mph wind or so is necessary before there's sufficient power to get going). Same way there are obvious limits to the amount of power this vehicle can collect from the wind - for example if your gearing is too extreme, it becomes hard for the wheels to rotate.

Second, it should be pretty easy to grasp that there's nothing here breaking any laws of physics. Just like a pulley can convert force into larger force (at the expense of speed) or conversely rope speed into larger speed (at the expense of force), so it is also possible to convert lower wind speeds into higher vehicle speed as long as we have a sustainable way to collect enough wind power and convert it efficiently enough into vehicle power. Wind speed is not the same thing as wind power. Know the difference. Our ability to leverage more power from larger mass of air only depends in our propeller size and speed (and propeller shape and air density etc), and the speed of the propeller depends in the gearing ration between the wheel and the propeller.

This is why you need sufficient wind speeds to get the Blackbird even going. No one has claimed this thing produces free energy in any shape or form. They only claim it leverages wind power to gain faster than wind speed. Know the difference.

Kusenko was certain that "because of laws of physics, he can't lose the bet". Just looking at this from the physics fundamentals, he must have forgotten that wind power is not the same thing as wind speed. Wind speed does not yield a fundamental limit to power harvest potential from wind. Once you realize that, this becomes just an engineering problem of inventing a way to leverage ground motion into propeller thrust.

This is completely analogous to the gearing of a car. The rotation speed of your car engine does not yield a maximum rotation speed of your wheels. The power of your engine does, because gearing can be used convert the engine speed into higher wheel speeds at the expense of force. Your engine power is the limiting factor.

From the reference frame of the ground we could calculate the "maximum harvestable wind power" by knowing the wind velocity and the total mass of air "that we are interacting with". Power is a time derivative of work, i.e;

[math] P_{wind} = \frac{d}{dt} W= F \cdot v [/math]  - (Why are these tags not working?)
Non-latex version:
P_wind = d/dt W = F * v

Potential wind power is not just dependent on v, it also depends on potential F we could harvest from the air mass, and that depends on our propeller and gearing design.

Or looking at this from the opposite reference frame, for example the treadmill version, the maximum harvestable energy depends on the power harvested off of your treadmill. Same exact vehicle design, a wheel pushes against treadmill, and that drives the propeller. Again, since gearing has been invented, of course it's possible to use the wheels of the car to drive a propeller with sufficient efficiency that it becomes able to push itself onwards. The energy does not come from nothing - it comes from the treadmill!

Of course we can also choose to describe Blackbird itself in the reference frame of the air mass, in which case the power comes from the momentum of earth - that's what we are using to drive the propeller after all. This is in fact literally a case of Galilean relativity and nothing else. If you think otherwise, it would be good for you to explain why do you think the vehicle designs are different (or whatever other differences you think there are).

I suppose the third thing that makes some people trip over this thing is that it's little bit unintuitive to think of a leverage gained over air mass. This is why I was going after that thought experiment that you did not respond to. It's very easy to understand this by first grasping this form of leverage: https://youtu.be/yCsgoLc_fzI?t=836 (See that time-code for video of exactly same scenario as the thought experiment).

Once you grasp that that vehicle is not breaking any laws of physics - that it's just a gearing system - just imagine that instead of pushing a wheel against the upper beam, we were in fact screwing through it. The screw would still be getting its power by pushing a wheel against the ground, and it would still screw it's way through the beam - it would still move faster than the beam. A lot of power would be necessary to push the drill, but nothing fundamental in physics makes this impossible - the "beam-powered screw" represents a leverage it gains over the beam via a wheel pushing against the ground. See the connection?

Once you understand that version, you should easily understand a version in where we are submerged in some dense liquid. And thinking this step by step, you should understand there's no fundamental difference between air and liquid. Now you should have an intuitive idea in your head how leverage works over liquid. Also a propeller version can be thought of as a kind of "drilling / screwing through air mass". We are not getting a perfect hold of the air of course, but obviously nothing in the laws of physics prevent us from gaining faster ground speed than the wind since we now have a way to shovel onwards "in it", so long that we have enough air density to work with. Once again, it's just an engineering problem at this point (and one that has been solved ages ago).

So you see, Kusenko's argument that leans on the "fundamental impossibility of the vehicle" is exactly equivalent to claiming that it's fundamentally impossible to convert the speed of one thing (rope, engine, beam, water, wind) into a faster speed of another thing (rope, wheel, geared propeller vehicle). I.e. a case of completely forgetting leverage / gearing / pulleys and simply confusing speed with power.

Quoting of Feynman about building new theories, this implies you were still entirely missing the point here - no one is claiming this is new physics or a new theory. This whole thing is completely and very trivially understandably by bog standard elementary school physics if you just look at it from the right perspective. I was really just interested of discussing the reasons why people make these blunders in general, and their ripple effects.

It's just an example of unintuitive thing where it's easy to make a blunder - just like people debated Monty Hall Paradox for years. This is literally a Monty Hall paradox situation when you are asking for a balloon video instead of paper strips. You might as well ask for a Monty Hall paradox on a video, but not accepting the clothes of the host (grasping on something completely irrelevant). In the meantime, the reason I couldn't care less about any videos is that actually understanding this thing is really quite simple, and after that you'd never need a video to convince yourself (much like you don't need a video proof to believe that a pulley works as physicists claim it does). I've consistently said I could not care less about making you or anyone else merely believe this thing, or somehow collect "followers" who believe. Science is not about believing things, it's about understanding things. Know the difference.

I understand exactly and completely intuitively how this kind of vehicle works - wind pushes car, car rotates the wheel, wheel rotates propeller -> we have invented leverage to harvest power more efficiently from larger mass of wind, and the vehicle is "shoveling" itself forward in said air mass. Just the momentum difference between wind and ground drilling it forward, rather than just simply "wind pushing it". No momentum difference, no power. Very simple. Yes it is ridiculous to have debates about something this simple on internet forums for years. Absolutely. Googling around, seems to be nowadays mostly people rolling their eyes on disbelief that some people still don't get this, so maybe tides are turning, but I could be wrong. In which case we really should expand this to larger forums, and teach people how this works. Because if Kusenko was right about one thing, it was when he said there's a lesson to be learned here about bad science. You see that was the topic I wanted to discuss. I wanted to point out how difficult it can be to make out the difference between crackpottery and just unusual but otherwise perfectly valid ideas. I've often been in a situation of correcting some common but persistent misconceptions, or discussing something with an exact 1:1 mapping to standard physics, yet being accused of crackpottery by people to whom something "sounds wrong", but pay no attention to understand the topic (I mean, it's always been on far more complex topics than this one, but here we go again 😄).

The sad reality is that most people are not well equipped to actually understand things, they only "remember" things. The sad reality is that in our education system, often the people with good memory do better than people who spent the time really understanding things. But usually people who rely on their memory will do much worse in situations where they'd have to reason about things themselves. This creates an environment where "ideas that sound unfamiliar" are seldom actually examined by people who would be competent to do so, and instead everything is shot down by an army of mediocre minds who are ill equipped to reason about new ideas and thus differentiate them from the endless sea of crackpottery.

Not saying you specifically, it's just certainly a pattern that repeats itself in science little too often, and case in point, we have people debating for years about wind leverage 🤦‍♂️

And that's why this whole bet thing surprised me so greatly - perhaps Kusenko is not that good at reasoning about things, but very good at remembering things, and thus more prone to fall victim to silly little puzzles like this vehicle.

Cheers,

-Anssi

Edited November 27, 2021 by AnssiH
Trying to make the latex tags work... what are they nowadays?