Perpetual Motion

perpetual motion, the action of a device that, once set in motion, would continue in motion forever, with no additional energy required to maintain it. Such devices are impossible on grounds stated by the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

Perpetual motion, although impossible to produce, has fascinated both inventors and the general public for hundreds of years. The enormous appeal of perpetual motion resides in the promise of a virtually free and limitless source of power. The fact that perpetual-motion machines cannot work because they violate the laws of thermodynamics has not discouraged inventors and hucksters from attempting to break, circumvent, or ignore those laws.

Basically, there are three kinds of perpetual-motion devices. The first kind includes those devices that purport to deliver more energy from a falling or turning body than is required to restore those devices to their original state. The most common of these, and the oldest, is the overbalanced wheel. In a typical version, flexible arms are attached to the outer rim of a vertically mounted wheel. An inclined trough is arranged to transfer rolling weights from folded arms on one side of the wheel to fully extended arms on the other. The implicit assumption is that the weights exert more downward force at the ends of extended arms than is required to raise them on the other side, where they are kept closer to the axis of rotation by the folding of the arms. This assumption violates the first law of thermodynamics, also called the law of conservation of energy, which states that the total energy of a system is always constant. The first such device was suggested by Vilard de Honnecourt, a 13th-century French architect, and actual devices were built by Edward Somerset, 2nd marquess of Worcester (1601–67), and Johann Bessler, known as Orffyreus (1680–1745). Both machines gave impressive demonstrations by virtue of their ability to operate for long periods of time, but they could not run indefinitely.

Another unsuccessful attempt to create perpetual motion by violating the first law of thermodynamics was the closed-cycle water mill, such as one proposed by the English physician Robert Fludd in 1618. Fludd erred in thinking that the energy created by water passing over a mill wheel would exceed the energy required to get the water back up again by means of an Archimedes screw.

Perpetual-motion machines of the second kind attempt to violate the second law of thermodynamics—namely, that some energy is always lost in converting heat into work. One of the more notable failures in this category was the ammonia-filled “zeromotor” developed in the 1880s by John Gamgee in Washington, D.C.

Perpetual-motion machines of the third kind are those associated with a continuous motion that would supposedly be possible if hindrances like mechanical friction and electrical resistivity could be eliminated. In fact, such forces can be greatly reduced, but they can never be completely eliminated without expending additional energy. A prime example is the superconductive metals, whose electrical resistance disappears completely at low temperature, usually somewhere around 20 K. Unfortunately, the energy required to maintain the low temperature exceeds the work that results from the superconductive flow.

Other types of perpetual-motion machines have been proposed based on misunderstandings of the nature of certain energy sources. An example is the self-winding clock that derives energy from changes in the temperature or pressure of the atmosphere. It depends upon the energy delivered to the Earth by the Sun and is not, therefore, a perpetual-motion machine.

Scientific and governmental sanctioning bodies have looked askance at perpetual-motion claims for many years. Since 1775 the French Academy of Science has refused to correspond with anyone claiming to have invented a perpetual-motion machine. The British and U.S. patent offices have long refused to expend time or energy on such claims.