6 ms·
Part of me likes to thing something crazy would happen if you turned it from the other end. Turn one gear once and the gear at the far other end turns a googol
by _underfl0w_ 7y ago
Part of me likes to thing something crazy would happen if you turned it from the other end. Turn one gear once and the gear at the far other end turns a googol times but melts somewhere around a trillion rotations. Almost doesn't feel too outlandish given a scope that already includes "more energy than the entire known universe has" (per the article) for a measurement.
- warent 7y agoAll this time we've been fussing about clean energy and perpetual motion machines when all we needed was this machine to apply essentially infinite leverage and generate a universe of energy at the flick of the wrist
- peteradio 7y agoWoops accidentally solved fermi's paradox and the mystery of what created the big bang, in one shot.
- tuco86 7y agoAt first there was God. Then Adam and Eve. Then one of their descendants built this machine and prayed for god to turn the last wheel. Bang! (a big one)
- taneq 7y agoStep 1 is have a universe's worth of energy in your wrist. ;)
- hnuser123456 7y agoIn the hour-long video, from the start to the end, only the first seven gears move visibly, and the 8th moves maybe a pixel. You probably couldn't move anything past the 3rd or 4th gear with your hand, depending on how low-friction the bearings are, how strong you are, and how little you care about hurting your hand. You could attach a long lever to one, but that'll only get you one, maybe two gears further.
- tunesmith 7y agoYeah, but that's just an engineering problem.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> that's just an engineering problem It's not - it's a physics problem - it reaches fundamental physical limits of the universe.
- FortCollinsDev 7y agoOkay, time for me to go sit in a dark room and think for a bit.
- jagged-chisel 7y agoLike he said, an engineering problem.
- Aeolun 7y agoPfft, hold my beer.
- samstave 7y agoYour arm is poorly engineered for this particular problem, so you are correct.
- ivalm 7y agoYes, especially if you have a physical system I am curious what happen (eg, do we shear the axel somewhere?)
- eyegor 7y agoI'd like to think there would be a way to turn it, but I'm fairly confident it isn't possible. With that much mechanical advantage, no material will stay together. I'm not sure whether the frame/axles will break first or if it would just strip the gear teeth.
- peteradio 7y agoIn an imperfect build like this, it would simply bind with any attempt to turn it the other way.
- nostrademons 7y agoYou would need a tremendous amount of torque to move the last gear, because gears multiply the angular velocity on one side and multiply the torque on the other. If it took one newton-meter (about the weight of one apple on a lever a meter away from the gear) to move the first gear, it would take a googol newton-meters applied at the other end of the device.
- kibwen 7y ago> one newton-meter (about the weight of one apple on a lever a meter away Aside, but I'm delighted to learn that one Newton is approximately one apple's worth of force. :)
- iamaelephant 7y agoMaybe if you have a very big apple. 1 nM is the force of 1 Newton (1kg on Earth) at 1 meter.
- pmorais 7y agoIt’s actually much worse than that because of reflected inertia. The inertia of the first gear as seen from the last gear is proportional to the square of the gear ratio
- ASalazarMX 7y agoWith each gear reducing your force 100 times, there would be a point when moving the next gear becomes impossible without destroying the machine. So you either spin the fast gear an impossible number of times, or spin the slow gear with impossible force.