4 ms·

Thanks for the comment. Pardon my ignorance. I read about entropy on wikipedia. But didn't get a clear picture about it. Does it mean that because of entrop

by ankeshk 18y ago

Thanks for the comment. Pardon my ignorance. I read about entropy on wikipedia. But didn't get a clear picture about it. Does it mean that because of entropy - the rotor in a vacuum will stop movement? (What I'm curious about is: "A thing in motion keeps on moving at the same speed in a vacuum" - is that an incorrect statement?)

bdfh42 18y ago
A thing in motion will continue at the same speed and in the same direction until another force acts upon it. OK - you have spotted that drag from air can quickly slow down an object here on earth and that thus an object in a vacuum will spin (or whatever) for a lot longer without air slowing it down. But drag from air is not the only force likely to affect the motion of your theoretical object.
- nopassrecover 18y ago
  The problem as I understand it is this. Let's imagine that the rotor spins forever. At some stage that rotor has to be attached to something else to actually harness the energy and here some friction will occur.
bdfh42 18y ago
There is some good discussion of the issues here http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=89128 http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=89128