4 ms·

I don’t think I’m talking about perpetual motion at all... When I say never loses a charge I don’t mean it’s limitless capacity. I mean it could be charged 1,0

I don’t think I’m talking about perpetual motion at all... When I say never loses a charge I don’t mean it’s limitless capacity. I mean it could be charged 1,000,000 times without any affect on the capacity of the system? Maybe a better way to say it, a battery that does not degrade with each use. Superconductors allow for the perfect transfer of electrons without any loss? So like if I had a giant earth sized graphene wire superconductor for this example: could I have the energy travel around the ring indefinitely so long as it’s closed?

Arbalest 7y ago
The second law of thermodynamics basically stipulates this is impossible. All materials wear out no matter what, even black holes eventually turn to entropy. You could create one with much better resistance to wear, but never completely resistant. Also I doubt true superconductors exist, it may be their losses exist below measurement error, but the fact that electrons are in relative motion, and are subject to the effects of the world around it, they must lose energy at some point. Edit 1: Second, not first law Edit 2: In your second paragraph, you literally described a perpetual motion machine, electrons going around a circuit is still 'motion'
- garmaine 7y ago
  Um, no there are such things as frictionless machines which without interruption can run forever. That’s actually what superconductivity is—moving electrons without resistance (friction).
  - Arbalest 7y ago
    That is what superconductivity is defined as, perhaps, but I'm saying, no such material is, nor can any construct be built to insulate a subset of the universe from the rest of the universe. So even if you magically made a material that in itself causes no friction, the electrons still have the rest of the universe to deal with. For example, how would electrons go around corners without having a force applied on it? How do you prevent magnetic interactions of electron in motion with things beyond the material from causing friction?
    - ouid 7y ago
      I'm definitely not an expert, but just because you need force to go around corners doesn't mean you need work. An unchanging magnetic field in fact exactly accomplishes this, as it always accelerates an electron perpendicular to its motion, thereby leaving the energy of the electron unchanged.
      - Arbalest 7y ago
        That sounds a lot like a slingshot maneuver around a planet to get more momentum. Strictly speaking you're taking energy from the planet/sun to do so. An unchanging magnetic field still exists in the real universe, and I find it difficult to believe that it would be completely unaffected by the interaction. fwiw I'm also no expert edit: I'm taking unchanging to be a practical implementation of say a permanent magnet here, rather than a theoretical construct.
        ouid 7y ago
        no, what I'm talking about is more like a perfectly circular orbit around the sun, where the direction of the acceleration is always exactly perpendicular to the motion.
        soulofmischief 7y ago
        But there is no perfectly circular orbit around the sun. The mass of the two bodies causes the center of mass to be slightly off center from the sun, and both the sun and earth orbit around this center of mass in a fashion that AFAIK loses energy.
        garmaine 7y ago
        If the two objects were either perfect spheres or tidally locked, then a circular orbit would continue forever. There are no losses due to pure motion in a vacuum.
        7y ago
soulofmischief 7y ago
Ok I see, by "not losing its charge" you meant not wearing down from repeated use. Technically speaking the charge would be the amount of electrical potential energy stored in the device. This system is still subject to the laws of thermodynamics, however. AFAIK ideal superconductivity does not exist outside of theoretical physics, just as ideal platonic solids do not exist in the real world. Things get bumpy close up, and then they get fuzzy. Even if you could maintain a "perfect loop" of electrons along a wire, perfectly insulated from outside forces including EMI and gravity, any observation of the system would still introduce entropy from the outside world and eventually degrade the system unless it is self-correcting. An ambient self-correcting conductor would be a massive breakthrough.
- gingabriska 7y ago
  Charge is not amount of electric potential. Charge is a property of matter which causes experiencing a force when placed in an electric field. Strength of the electric field is electric potential. And charges arrange in some form under this field which wouldn't be so in absense of this field and how tight is that form depends on the strength of electric field. And this can be used to perform some work but this is not storing charge as the total charge before arrangement is same as total charge after arrangement there is no new charge added. We are storing electric field here. In all such storage devices, strength of the field goes down after sometimes. No I don't know how it can help in case of batteries but assuming you use capacitor to store electric field the leakage can be decreased by using better insulation which in many cases is thicker and the capacitor is limited to some specific size, if you can decrease the surface area of the conductive plates, you are able to use thicker insulation which results in lower leakage so graphene can help here as it's just one atom thick.
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    > Charge is a property of matter which causes experiencing a force when placed in an electric field. From Wikipedia [0]: "A battery's capacity is the amount of electric charge it can deliver at the rated voltage." Another way of saying this is that a battery can store potential electric charge which is discharged from the battery during use. The maximum potential electric charge a battery can store is its capacity. Similarly, a rock raised above your head is not "storing gravity", but it still contains gravitational potential energy. When we talk about batteries however, we tend to colloquially refer to this electrical potential as "charge" due to the way words like "charger" and "discharge" have entered the vernacular. Phrases like, "How much charge does your phone have left?" has become increasingly common. This is distinct from the definition of electric charge that you lifted from Wikipedia's page on "electrical charge". It's just the way language has evolved. > And charges arrange in some form under this field which wouldn't be so in absense of this field and how tight is that form depends on the strength of electric field. And this can be used to perform some work but this is not storing charge as the total charge before arrangement is same as total charge after arrangement there is no new charge added. We are not measuring the total charge. We are measuring the electrical potential across a circuit. The total "charge" remains the same, but the electrical potential decreases when the battery discharges. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_battery#Capacity_and_discharge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_battery#Capacity_and_...

Arbalest 7y ago

The second law of thermodynamics basically stipulates this is impossible. All materials wear out no matter what, even black holes eventually turn to entropy. You could create one with much better resistance to wear, but never completely resistant. Also I doubt true superconductors exist, it may be their losses exist below measurement error, but the fact that electrons are in relative motion, and are subject to the effects of the world around it, they must lose energy at some point. Edit 1: Second, not first law Edit 2: In your second paragraph, you literally described a perpetual motion machine, electrons going around a circuit is still 'motion'

garmaine 7y ago
Um, no there are such things as frictionless machines which without interruption can run forever. That’s actually what superconductivity is—moving electrons without resistance (friction).
- Arbalest 7y ago
  That is what superconductivity is defined as, perhaps, but I'm saying, no such material is, nor can any construct be built to insulate a subset of the universe from the rest of the universe. So even if you magically made a material that in itself causes no friction, the electrons still have the rest of the universe to deal with. For example, how would electrons go around corners without having a force applied on it? How do you prevent magnetic interactions of electron in motion with things beyond the material from causing friction?
  - ouid 7y ago
    I'm definitely not an expert, but just because you need force to go around corners doesn't mean you need work. An unchanging magnetic field in fact exactly accomplishes this, as it always accelerates an electron perpendicular to its motion, thereby leaving the energy of the electron unchanged.
    - Arbalest 7y ago
      That sounds a lot like a slingshot maneuver around a planet to get more momentum. Strictly speaking you're taking energy from the planet/sun to do so. An unchanging magnetic field still exists in the real universe, and I find it difficult to believe that it would be completely unaffected by the interaction. fwiw I'm also no expert edit: I'm taking unchanging to be a practical implementation of say a permanent magnet here, rather than a theoretical construct.
      - ouid 7y ago
        no, what I'm talking about is more like a perfectly circular orbit around the sun, where the direction of the acceleration is always exactly perpendicular to the motion.
        soulofmischief 7y ago
        But there is no perfectly circular orbit around the sun. The mass of the two bodies causes the center of mass to be slightly off center from the sun, and both the sun and earth orbit around this center of mass in a fashion that AFAIK loses energy.
        garmaine 7y ago
        If the two objects were either perfect spheres or tidally locked, then a circular orbit would continue forever. There are no losses due to pure motion in a vacuum.
        7y ago

soulofmischief 7y ago

Ok I see, by "not losing its charge" you meant not wearing down from repeated use. Technically speaking the charge would be the amount of electrical potential energy stored in the device. This system is still subject to the laws of thermodynamics, however. AFAIK ideal superconductivity does not exist outside of theoretical physics, just as ideal platonic solids do not exist in the real world. Things get bumpy close up, and then they get fuzzy. Even if you could maintain a "perfect loop" of electrons along a wire, perfectly insulated from outside forces including EMI and gravity, any observation of the system would still introduce entropy from the outside world and eventually degrade the system unless it is self-correcting. An ambient self-correcting conductor would be a massive breakthrough.

gingabriska 7y ago
Charge is not amount of electric potential. Charge is a property of matter which causes experiencing a force when placed in an electric field. Strength of the electric field is electric potential. And charges arrange in some form under this field which wouldn't be so in absense of this field and how tight is that form depends on the strength of electric field. And this can be used to perform some work but this is not storing charge as the total charge before arrangement is same as total charge after arrangement there is no new charge added. We are storing electric field here. In all such storage devices, strength of the field goes down after sometimes. No I don't know how it can help in case of batteries but assuming you use capacitor to store electric field the leakage can be decreased by using better insulation which in many cases is thicker and the capacitor is limited to some specific size, if you can decrease the surface area of the conductive plates, you are able to use thicker insulation which results in lower leakage so graphene can help here as it's just one atom thick.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  > Charge is a property of matter which causes experiencing a force when placed in an electric field. From Wikipedia [0]: "A battery's capacity is the amount of electric charge it can deliver at the rated voltage." Another way of saying this is that a battery can store potential electric charge which is discharged from the battery during use. The maximum potential electric charge a battery can store is its capacity. Similarly, a rock raised above your head is not "storing gravity", but it still contains gravitational potential energy. When we talk about batteries however, we tend to colloquially refer to this electrical potential as "charge" due to the way words like "charger" and "discharge" have entered the vernacular. Phrases like, "How much charge does your phone have left?" has become increasingly common. This is distinct from the definition of electric charge that you lifted from Wikipedia's page on "electrical charge". It's just the way language has evolved. > And charges arrange in some form under this field which wouldn't be so in absense of this field and how tight is that form depends on the strength of electric field. And this can be used to perform some work but this is not storing charge as the total charge before arrangement is same as total charge after arrangement there is no new charge added. We are not measuring the total charge. We are measuring the electrical potential across a circuit. The total "charge" remains the same, but the electrical potential decreases when the battery discharges. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_battery#Capacity_and_discharge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_battery#Capacity_and_...