9 ms·
Wild eyed idea. Could we run a cable across this. Have it turn a gear. Then gear it up to a one million to one ratio and turn a giant generator with the motion?
by mrfusion 9y ago
Wild eyed idea. Could we run a cable across this. Have it turn a gear. Then gear it up to a one million to one ratio and turn a giant generator with the motion?
Free continental drift power?
- SteveNuts 9y agoSomething with that much gear ratio would essentially be locked. It would most likely just tear the mechanism apart before it did any actual work.
- agumonkey 9y agoThen a thousands of them over the split with a thousands less ratio :P
- deadmetheny 9y agoConsidering the drift is occurring at a rate of a couple millimetres a year...no.
- rplnt 9y agoWith high enough gearing that is plenty. The issue is we are not capable of building strong enough gears.
- IdiocyInAction 9y agoSeems like someone already had that idea, atleast for the continental shelf: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8258638 https://patents.google.com/patent/US8258638
- marshray 9y agoI love this idea, but the speed of separation is just a couple of cm per year. Unless the cable had absolutely no temperature expansion, weather changes would probably have a far greater effect on cable length than the imperceptible drift of the endpoints (which suggests another crazy idea interesting in its own right). One might build this deep underground to minimize temperature changes and provide the hard rock anchor points necessary for the forces involved.
- NegativeLatency 9y agoGo deep enough and you might as well just build a geothermal power plant.
- deadmetheny 9y agoWhich would have the side effect of actually generating power!
- theandrewbailey 9y agoKenya is way ahead of you: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/business/geothermal-energy-grows-in-kenya.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/business/geothermal-energ...
- nojvek 9y agoKenya generates 47% of power from geothermal and 35% from hydro. For a third world country, it’s quite greener than most developed nations. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/business/geothermal-energy-grows-in-kenya.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/business/geothermal-en... I do hope Kenya gets a electric car boom, because all of it’s fuel is imported. Solar + other methods could power the whole economy with relative ease. Being on equator means plenty of sun throughout the year.
- sannee 9y ago> weather changes would probably have a far greater effect on cable length than the imperceptible drift of the endpoints (which suggests another crazy idea interesting in its own right) There is a clock running for over a century based on a similar idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Clock
- userbinator 9y ago...and the commercial version, which is still in production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmos_clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmos_clock Not cheap (few k$), but not as expensive as some other high-end timepieces either.
- jacquesm 9y agoYou'd stand a better chance to get that to work by using hydraulic pistons that are used to compress a working fluid using an appropriately placed lever.
- tzahola 9y agoLol! I hope this is not indicative of the level of physics education software engineers are exposed to nowadays.
- deadmetheny 9y agoConsidering my comment below was downvoted to -3, I don't have a lot of hope.
- krastanov 9y agoOr you both can consider stepping down from your high horses. It is a fun tongue-in-cheek idea, and the author explicitly mentioned the need for a gearbox. I am teaching physics and I will probably use this example in a lesson soon, because it is actually interesting to discuss why this idea would not work in practice (in principle all you need is indeed just a perfect gearbox).
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- marshray 9y agoPhysics taught me that all pulleys are frictionless. Mechanical Engineering may find some issues with it though...
- dang 9y agoPlease read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, which ask you not to snark or to post shallow dismissals. A good version of this comment would explain what's wrong with the original idea, so that readers who don't know could learn something.
- pvg 9y agoThere’s lots of other ‘free’ and ‘infinite’ energy around that is much easier to collect. You could go to the moon and make strawberry jam and then market it as ‘Space Jam’ but it’s simpler and cheaper to skip the whole moon part.