Re: [femm] Modelling the new discovery of electrostatic rotation

["Ivan Reede" <i_reede@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A few corrections... but yes, I think I inderstand how this may work and how
it can be explained by standard electro-dynamics... nothing magic, nothing
special, nothing new...

There is a very important fact stated in the html reference below that can
explain eveything that is going on. I don't see this as a "startling"
behaviour once these few facts are understood.

When they charge the two outer cylinders, they create an electric field
between them.
They go about saying in the document that they must strat the engine by
giving it an initial spin.
That is a very important fact that in part explains that the motor may work.
They also go about saying that the motor draws current... thus it is not a
perpetual motion system.
Like any motor, it converts electric power into mechanical power.

OK, so now, how does one explain how it works.

In a nutshell, it's a paddle wheel. Much like gravity pulls a paddle wheel
loaded on one side with water and empty on the other side, the electric
field between the two out cylinders pulls any charge deposited on the
insultaing material on the inner cylinder from one charged cylinder to the
other. This is simply a capacitive displacement (e-field) motor.

So let's go intor finer detail. Let's look at the first fact. If there is
current being drawn by the motor, that means that charges are leaving one
cylinder to go to the next.. i.e. there is some leakage through the air. The
central cylinder is an insulator. If a charge that is leaking away from one
of the external cylinders comes in contact with a molecule of the cetral
insulating cylinder, it may get deposited there. Once deposited, it may bond
to that molecule. Now, that charged molecule is in the e-field. There is a
known measurable force, predicted by classic electrostatics, on that
molecule since it has a charge and is in a e-field. That force wants to
bring the molecule to the other cylinder.

Now for the second fact. A starting rotational impulse is applied to the
motor. Until now, the motor won't turn because that force is balanced.
However, when a rotational impulse is applied to the central cylinder, the
charged molecule in is now set off'balance from the e-field. It's now to one
side of the e-field and therefore, applies a torque to the central cylinder.
Since the molecule is an insultor, it's can't propagate (read conduct) the
charge through the e-field, it's stuck to drag the entire central cylinder
in a rotational movement toward the second outer cylinder. There the charge
is ripped off and sent to the second outer cylinder. Thus when the molecule
not rotates to the oposite side of the second cylinder, it doesn't counter
balance the force that brought it from the first outer cylinder to the
second outer cylinder.

Then net result is a simple paddle wheel motor, picking up charges at the
first cylinder, bringing them down the e-field to the second cylinder and
dumping the charges there. Yes, this may indeed work. If this explanation is
correct, the motor should work as well in either direction of rotation.

Now for the inside cylinder. Having an isulating coating allows it to "trap"
charges on it's surface. Having an interior metallic or conducting surface
allows this surface to become charged through electrostatic induction to 1/2
of the potential or the charged outer cylinder. This makes for a good charge
attraction (one of the two plates in a capacitor) to the insulating surface.

At the limit, one should expect that increasing the "leakage" at the outer
cylinders will cause more charges to be pulled across the e-field thereby
increasing the more torque yielded by this motor. The only limiting factors
as the resistance of the insulating surface on the central cylinder to the
pounding caused by charges banging in to it's surface on one side and being
ripped off on the other side... i.e. it's resistance to arcing or surface
plasma.

Now for the nice part... if you put thin into effect into any e-field
simulator... or standard e-field equations.. it will predict the torque.FEMM
should be able to predict that torque, assuming charge on one side and no
charge on the other side. Now the bad side. In practice, the dynamics of ths
motor are NOT controlled by simple electorstatics.Yes electorstatics control
the torque for a given charge. However, electrical properties of the
insulating material and the gases ... their ability and ease to aquire and
relinquish charge... controls tha amount of charge that will leak through...
and this is what gives you actual power.

One should also notice that this is quite an ill-behaved motor... in that it
is not RPM limited. The only thing that will limit the RPM of the motor is
the load torque and possibly, how fast charges can be acquired and removed
from the central cylinder insulating surface. In fact, torque should be
inversly proportional to RPM as what's driving the motor is the energy drop
experienced by the charges as they travel through the e-field. The RPM is
not bound, the power is... to that supplied by the electrical source. This
is exactly the same as for a series DC motor.

Hope this is helpfull to you,

Ivan Reede


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <djsquires@xxxxxxxx>
To: <femm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 11:21 PM
Subject: Re: [femm] Modelling the new discovery of electrostatic rotation


> This isn't new at all. There is actually a leakage current in
> the microamp range that when multiplied by the voltage gives
> the power as in P = VI. If you raise the voltage to 25KV
> to 35KV you get some pretty strong rotation if allowed to
> rotate freely. You only have to allow the center sphere
> to rotate. Plus you can do this experiment with coke cans
> (cylinders) and get a line concentration of charge between
> cylinders instead of a point concentration with spheres.
> To see this go here:
>
> http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/pftm2.htm
>
> There is even a video of this running with a model airplane
> propeller. This was done a couple of years ago.
>
> DRS
>
> > A recent startling discovery in electrostatics has been made, which
> > 200 year old physics predicts, but which for some reason has been
> > overlooked until recently.
> >
> > Apparently if you charge up a sphere to a modest few kilovolts,
> > fixed in place, and then suspend two other spheres close by, the
> > other two spheres rotate. In the experiments described in the
> > references below, they didn't
> > actually rotate, but instead torqued up their suspension filaments
> > until the restoring force equalled the torque.
> >
> > 1 Wistrom, A.O and A.V.M. Khachatourian (2002)APL, 80(15), 2800-2801.
> > http://homepage.mac.com/awaspaas/rotation.pdf
> > 2 Wistrom, A.O. and A.V.M. Khachatourian (correction) (2002), APL, 81
> > (25), 4871.
> > 3 Wistrom, A.O and A.V.M. Khachatourian (1999), MST, 12(10), 1296.
> > 4 A.V.M. Khachatourian and A.O. Wistrom (2003), J. Math. Phys., 12
> > (10), 1296.
> >
> > They characterise this effect as a "Coulomb motor". My question is
> > this: If it's a motor, where does the energy come from?
> >
> > I assume that femm could model this in axisymmetric mode...but would
> > it come up with the observed torques?
> >
> > -Andrew
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------
> This message was sent using Plix Web Mail.
> http://www.plix.com/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>