Explain Bedini's free energy machine to me

Juustin · 6th June 2008, 09:21 AM

Last night I was at a family function of my wife's. A friend of their family was talking to me, and he's actually a nice guy that I've met a few other times. We talked about the usual stuff, eventually getting to high gas prices. He then started explaining to me how there are already people who know how to create energy and they're being suppressed.

He mentioned he picked up a DVD online that explained Bedini's free energy machine. He said "obviously I can't say 100% that they're right, but all the people talking on the DVD said they've seen it first hand, and no scientists have been able to explain where the energy is coming from.

This was the first time I had heard about this particular machine, but I suspected it may be getting hyped mostly by a conspiracy crowd, since the later part of the conversation turned into oil companies having people assassinated for threatening their business with free energy devices.

So that's the long and the short of it. If someone who's good with this stuff wants to give me a reader's digest version of how it's said to work and what's known about it, that'd be great. I suspected it sounded fishy, but without having any background I didn't have much to say.

canadarocks · 6th June 2008, 09:49 AM

That's wierd, because I was visiting my nephew a couple weeks ago and, during our conversation, he started in on this very topic. He indicated that he is trying his hand at building the "over-unity" machine and started talking to me about how Ohm's law is not a real law (apparently there are things that don't behave in accordance with Ohm's equation [wikipedia indicates this is true, but it is a well known and understood phenomenon]). I immediately referred him to this site to ask his questions (as I'm not an electrical engineer - just a geologist) as there are generally lots of knowledgable people here.

He said that he's listened to both sides of the over-unity issue, and wants to test it for him-self. I told him that he should be prepared to accept that his machine will not work.

GreyICE · 6th June 2008, 09:56 AM

This is the guy who made the CD clarifier, which bathes CDs in a beam that cleanses them, improving the audio quality?

Who would even believe this quack? How dumb do you have to be?

JoeEllison · 6th June 2008, 10:00 AM

Originally Posted by GreyICE

This is the guy who made the CD clarifier, which bathes CDs in a beam that cleanses them, improving the audio quality?

Who would even believe this quack? How dumb do you have to be?

There are lots of people "dumb" enough to believe it. No, I don't get it either.

Gate2501 · 6th June 2008, 10:07 AM

Direct Quote from his (Bedini) website...

Quote:

This system, if properly built and tuned, will furnish "free shaft energy" continually, without violating conservation of anenergy. Remember that the del-phi condition across the battery terminals means that spacetime is suddenly curved there, and conservation of energy need no longer apply.

GreyICE · 6th June 2008, 10:09 AM

Originally Posted by Gate2501

Direct Quote from his (Bedini) website...

Comedy goldmine...

JoeEllison · 6th June 2008, 10:16 AM

Originally Posted by Gate2501

Direct Quote from his (Bedini) website...

I suspect that he understands what he's talking about even less than we do.

tsig · 6th June 2008, 10:20 AM

Originally Posted by Juustin

Last night I was at a family function of my wife's. A friend of their family was talking to me, and he's actually a nice guy that I've met a few other times. We talked about the usual stuff, eventually getting to high gas prices. He then started explaining to me how there are already people who know how to create energy and they're being suppressed.

He mentioned he picked up a DVD online that explained Bedini's free energy machine. He said "obviously I can't say 100% that they're right, but all the people talking on the DVD said they've seen it first hand, and no scientists have been able to explain where the energy is coming from.

This was the first time I had heard about this particular machine, but I suspected it may be getting hyped mostly by a conspiracy crowd, since the later part of the conversation turned into oil companies having people assassinated for threatening their business with free energy devices.

So that's the long and the short of it. If someone who's good with this stuff wants to give me a reader's digest version of how it's said to work and what's known about it, that'd be great. I suspected it sounded fishy, but without having any background I didn't have much to say.

From Bedini's site:

"It is running off the principles of electromagnetics that Nikola Tesla discovered shortly before 1900 in his Colorado Springs experiments. It is running off the fact that empty vacuum - pure "emptiness", so to speak - is filled with rivers and oceans of seething energy, just as Nikola Tesla pointed out.

It is running off the fact that vacuum space-time itself is nothing but pure massless charge. That is, vcuum has a very high electrostatic scalar potential - it is greatly stressed. To usefully tap the enormous locked-in energy of that stress, all one has to do is crack it sharply and tap the vacuum oscillations that result. The best way to do that is to hit something resonant that is imbedded in the vacuum, then tap the resonant stress of the ringing of the vacuum itself"

Signs of woo are here.

Naming of a prominent dead scientific authority.

Using terms in ways that make no sense. vacuum oscillations, ringing in the vacum, ect, ect, ect.

It looks to me like he has invented the electric starter bet the car companies will pay bigtime for that.

Gate2501 · 6th June 2008, 10:22 AM

It may also be worth noting that his website looks much like one I "designed" when I was 16 on geocities. It seems like all of the kooky CT nuts use the most simple web design interface possible...

I CAN VIOLATE THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY BUT I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO WORK THESE INTERWEBS!

Gate2501 · 6th June 2008, 10:25 AM

Originally Posted by tsig

From Bedini's site:

"It is running off the principles of electromagnetics that Nikola Tesla discovered shortly before 1900 in his Colorado Springs experiments. It is running off the fact that empty vacuum - pure "emptiness", so to speak - is filled with rivers and oceans of seething energy, just as Nikola Tesla pointed out.

It is running off the fact that vacuum space-time itself is nothing but pure massless charge. That is, vcuum has a very high electrostatic scalar potential - it is greatly stressed. To usefully tap the enormous locked-in energy of that stress, all one has to do is crack it sharply and tap the vacuum oscillations that result. The best way to do that is to hit something resonant that is imbedded in the vacuum, then tap the resonant stress of the ringing of the vacuum itself"

Signs of woo are here.

Naming of a prominent dead scientific authority.

Using terms in ways that make no sense. vacuum oscillations, ringing in the vacum, ect, ect, ect.

It looks to me like he has invented the electric starter bet the car companies will pay bigtime for that.

Tesla... /sigh

Another hallmark of the free energy nutter is a deification of Tesla.

I have seen this upwards of ten times on websites such as this.

tsig · 6th June 2008, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by Gate2501

It may also be worth noting that his website looks much like one I "designed" when I was 16 on geocities. It seems like all of the kooky CT nuts use the most simple web design interface possible...

I CAN VIOLATE THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY BUT I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO WORK THESE INTERWEBS!

There seems to be a negative correlation between the craziness of the woo and quality of the websites.

Or the more earth shaking the idea, the more eye searing the website.

At least he could have hid the battery. I wonder why does a free-energy device need a battery? A brake I could understand.

tsig · 6th June 2008, 10:38 AM

Originally Posted by Gate2501

Tesla... /sigh

Another hallmark of the free energy nutter is a deification of Tesla.

I have seen this upwards of ten times on websites such as this.

They wave his name like a magic wand.

This whole thing is just another version of "let's take an electric motor to run the generator then feed the generator output to the motor"

tsig · 6th June 2008, 10:44 AM

Originally Posted by JoeEllison

I suspect that he understands what he's talking about even less than we do.

But he used big sciency words and invoked Tesla. Psuedoskeptic!!! Science ahs been wrong and they lauged at Galeleo. Help we are being oppressed be the establishment of athiest scientists.!!!

(should have used caps and colors)

Ziggurat · 6th June 2008, 10:52 AM

Originally Posted by canadarocks

He indicated that he is trying his hand at building the "over-unity" machine and started talking to me about how Ohm's law is not a real law

In one sense, it's really more of a definition of what resistance means than an actual law.

Quote:

(apparently there are things that don't behave in accordance with Ohm's equation

When you think about Ohm's law as a definition of resistance, then what you find is that for some things, resistance isn't constant as a function of applied voltage, but you can still use that equation to define a resistance for anything, even if that value is only valid under specific conditions. Diodes and transistors are rather important examples of where the resistance defined by Ohm's law is not constant (current can vary exponentially with applied voltage).

Quote:

He said that he's listened to both sides of the over-unity issue, and wants to test it for him-self. I told him that he should be prepared to accept that his machine will not work.

Not only that, but he needs to be prepared to be mistaken. With electronic equipment, it's not hard to screw up your measurements so that you think you've gotten over-unity when you haven't. For example, it's easy to make an oscillator circuit which can output more voltage than you input, but it won't output more power.

My guess, if he's talking about Ohm's law violations, is that he may have stumbled on the idea of a diode current ratchet: get a big array of diodes set up to only allow current to flow one way through the circuit, then let thermal noise drive the current around the circuit. Looks on paper like it might work, if you treat diodes as perfect one-way valves, but in practice it doesn't (plenty of people have tried) because the're not perfect valves. It's essentially a solid-state attempt at Maxwell's Demon, but it doesn't work.

The Man · 6th June 2008, 10:55 AM

Originally Posted by Juustin

So that's the long and the short of it. If someone who's good with this stuff wants to give me a reader's digest version of how it's said to work and what's known about it, that'd be great. I suspected it sounded fishy, but without having any background I didn't have much to say.

It is the same old story for most of these “free energy” devices. The readers digest version is a misapplication of Zero-point energy or Vacuum energy, these charlatans explain the over unity (more energy out then in) they erroneously calculate as resulting from the tapping into this energy. But that application is in direct conflict with principle they are trying to invoke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy

Quote:

Because zero point energy is the lowest possible energy a system can have, this energy cannot be removed from the system. A related term is zero-point field, which is the lowest energy state of a field, i.e. its ground state, which is non-zero.[1]
Despite the definition, the concept of zero-point energy, and the hint of a possibility of extracting "free energy" from the vacuum, has attracted the attention of amateur inventors. Numerous so-called free energy devices, exploiting the idea, have been proposed.[citation needed] As a result of this activity, and its intriguing theoretical explanation, it has taken on a life of its own in popular culture, appearing in science fiction books, games, movies and TV series (such as Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis).[2][3]

So if one was to able to extract energy from a zero point field (lower the energy of that field below it’s lowest possible value) it would just force the field into a negative energy state and it would have to take the energy back. Due to the uncertainty principle a zero point field can fluctuate below its zero point value but only for a brief instant or by a small energy fluctuation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

The gist being that any energy that can be “barrowed” from a zero point field must be paid back. The more energy “barrowed” the quicker it must be paid back. So tremendous amounts of energy can be “barrowed” but just for an insignificant period of time and only insignificant amounts of energy can be “barrowed” for any significant period of time.

The apparatus detailed on the web page shows a simple battery-motor-flywheel-generator configuration. Just like the battery stores electrical energy the flywheel stores mechanical energy. A lot of energy is taken up spinning the flywheel up to speed some of which (but not all) can be recovered as the flywheel spins down. If the start up energy used to spin up the flywheel is not correctly accounted for it could seem like you are getting extra energy as the flywheel spins down.

Most of the over unity calculations of such devices are due to appallingly or intentionally bad math. Not accounting for all sources of energy input (spinning up the flywheel) or counting energy losses of the system (heat and back EMF) as additional intended energy outputs (negatives becoming positives)

JoeEllison · 6th June 2008, 11:48 AM

Originally Posted by tsig

But he used big sciency words and invoked Tesla. Psuedoskeptic!!! Science ahs been wrong and they lauged at Galeleo. Help we are being oppressed be the establishment of athiest scientists.!!!

(should have used caps and colors)

Yes, well... I got your point, so I appreciate you skipping the caps and colors!

Blue Mountain · 6th June 2008, 12:35 PM

A layman's restatement of the three laws of thermodynamics:

You can't win
You can't break even
You can't even quit the game

GreyICE · 6th June 2008, 12:53 PM

The sad part is that I really love Tesla. He was a genius, a very interesting man, who discovered some very neat effects that were way ahead of his time. The induction motor, AC power, fluorescent bulbs, the spark plug, so many interesting things. When his circuits in Colorado were reproduced from his notes, they had features that weren't rediscovered until much, much later.

Unfortunately the latter half of his life was characterized by wild claims, OCD disorders, and general signs of insanity. This makes him a magnet to woo, because you can find the wildest claims in the latter half of his life, and use the genius of the former half to support them.

rjh01 · 6th June 2008, 10:49 PM

Please either this device or similar devices were featured in a Mythbusters show. Here is the link http://mythbusters-wiki.discovery.co...Energy+Devices. In the spoiler is what their results were.

UnrepentantSinner · 7th June 2008, 12:57 AM

Originally Posted by tsig

"It is running off the principles of electromagnetics that Nikola Tesla discovered shortly before 1900 in his Colorado Springs experiments.

Hey that's wild. I just watched a DVD the other day where Tesla's Colorado Springs experiments produced a machine that not only would teleport matter, it would replicate it... even living beings!

Beausoleil · 7th June 2008, 02:02 AM

So why Tesla? I think it's because our kooks are English language kooks and his name brings a hint of Eastern European mysticism... vampires... etc.

I wonder if Transylvanian kooks (for instance) invoke Edison.

wahrheit · 7th June 2008, 03:43 AM

Originally Posted by tsig

(should have used caps and colors)

You also forgot to add an out of context Einstein quote.

TheDaver · 7th June 2008, 05:19 AM

Originally Posted by wahrheit

You also forgot to add an out of context Einstein quote.

You mean a quote misattributed to Einstein.

wahrheit · 7th June 2008, 05:44 AM

Originally Posted by TheDaver

You mean a quote misattributed to Einstein.

You are right, that makes it even more authentic.

Is this the machine we are talking about?

Originally Posted by from above link

This is a free energy device which an ordinary person, who knows a little electronics, can experiment with in the basement. To develop it, one is talking several thousands of dollars and a lot of persistence and tinkering; one is not talking millions.

Bolding mine.

If it doesn't take a multi-billion budget, nor a rocket surgeon, can I see the actual device anywhere? No?

theMark · 7th June 2008, 05:47 AM

Originally Posted by wahrheit

You also forgot to add an out of context Einstein quote.

"Einstien". How many times do I have to repeat this?
"If it's a woo, it's Einstien."*

* apologies for the bungled "Miracle Pictures: If it's a good picture, it's a Miracle!" quote.

jsfisher · 7th June 2008, 06:14 AM

Is this Bedini thing just another case where someone has computed input power from current and voltage, but completely ignored power factor?

Ladewig · 7th June 2008, 06:35 AM

Originally Posted by TheDaver

You mean a quote misattributed to Einstein.

You don't even need a quote. The Crackpot Index awards 30 points for "suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate." On the other hand, this version may be a bit out of date in that it does not award any points at all for claiming that one is working with ideas proven by Tesla; surely that should be worth at least 22.75834 points

tsig · 7th June 2008, 08:16 AM

Originally Posted by TheDaver

You mean a quote misattributed to Einstein.

Jest a-workin' in a quotemine.

I guess I am not worthy of woo. I lay down my miner's lamp and leave the ddark side to those better able to do the woo.

tsig · 7th June 2008, 08:20 AM

Originally Posted by jsfisher

Is this Bedini thing just another case where someone has computed input power from current and voltage, but completely ignored power factor?

Looks like he just invented the motor-generator, what's next, the Ward-Leonard system?

gdnp · 7th June 2008, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Direct Quote from his (Bedini) website...

Quote:
This system, if properly built and tuned, will furnish "free shaft energy" continually, without violating conservation of anenergy. Remember that the del-phi condition across the battery terminals means that spacetime is suddenly curved there, and conservation of energy need no longer apply.

It is doubtful that anyone who buys into this will ever see the "free" part, but you can guarantee the "shaft"

I invented a perpetual motion machine when I was in first grade. It was made out of clay, had a central tower with a pour spout, with a base shaped like a moat that was supposed to catch the water, returning it to the tower through a hole in the side. Voila! continuous waterfall!

Fortunately, nothing was damaged as I received a lesson on how water flows down hill and seeks its own level. I remember being tremendously embarrassed at the time, and throwing it out. My parents, I suspect, were proud. Not too many first graders forge their own scientific apparatus.

I wish I had kept it. So much of science I must take on faith, not having, for example, my own particle accelerator.

Dragoonster · 7th June 2008, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by Beausoleil

So why Tesla? I think it's because our kooks are English language kooks and his name brings a hint of Eastern European mysticism... vampires... etc.

I wonder if Transylvanian kooks (for instance) invoke Edison.

I think it's because Tesla was a genius, had some very good and practical ideas, but also struggled to gain approval for some of his more ambitious/theoretical stuff. He was robbed of the "inventor of the radio" title, Edison punked him, and his giant generator was torn down by a fearful government (as a woo person would say). He was a man who could have changed the world except the old conservative powers conspired against him. A decent role model for modern woo artists, unfortunately for his legacy.

The comparison fails in that these folks' ideas aren't good or pratical. Not just free energy, but they haven't built a history of good, functional work that Tesla did before embarking on his giant energy theories. They want to skip ahead to the "conspired against/misunderstood/underfunded" aspect of Tesla, without first establishing the "genius" part for themselves. Any fool can do that.

technoextreme · 8th June 2008, 01:14 PM

Originally Posted by Dragoonster

A decent role model for modern woo artists, unfortunately for his legacy.

You forgot the part where he essentially became woo. Tesla claimed that he could do stuff that is impossible. That's why his name is bandied about so much by crackpot loons. He turned into one.

DeadDesertphile · 30th October 2008, 05:27 PM

I made a YouTube video about the Zero Point Field, explaining why it is impossible to get energy out of it--- but the free energy cultists just called me nasty names. Sheeeish.

As for the Bedini prank motor, it is possible he really believes his claims.

In the year 2004 "MythBusters" did an episode wherein an MIT engineer attempted to examine a "Bedini Motor." MythBusters and the MIT person failed to find any magic energy being created; however, Bedini claims the MIT person did not make a "Bedini Motor" and therefore the test was not just an error, but a deliberate lie on the part of MythBusters.

I have not found any statement by MythBusters answering the charge of deception on their part. If Randi would ask MythBusters to address the charges I would love to read it.

Bedini claims that MythBusters refused to talk with Bedini before, during, and after the examination; Bedini claims that the episode was a deliberate sabotage of him and his miracle device; Bedini claims there were no magnets on the flywheel, which would make the device not function the way Bedini claims it will function.

My questions to MythBusters would be:

1) Did you try to get a Bedini motor from Bedini?

2) Did Bedini try to contact you?

3) Did you try to contact Bedini?

4) Did your MIT person fail to build a Bedini motor?

Make no mistake: the Bedini motor does not work: there is no such thing as "free energy," nor is it possible to get "vacuum energy" from the Zero Point Field, nor do magnetic fields contain energy that can be used to perform work. I just wish to clear up the facts of the issue, and I suspect James Randi would be far more successful at getting answers from MythBusters than I have been.

CORed · 14th December 2008, 02:00 PM

Originally Posted by Gate2501

Tesla... /sigh

Another hallmark of the free energy nutter is a deification of Tesla.

I have seen this upwards of ten times on websites such as this.

As far as I know, what Tesla claimed to be able to do, based on his Colorado Springs, was transmit power wirelessly. His Wardenclyffe project, on Long Island, was an attempt to implement this and also create a worldwide communications network. The wierless power transmission was apparently a mistake, and would have been problematic had it worked, as it would have been difficult to impossible to ensure that consumers of power paid producers.

After Tesla ran out of funding for Wardenclyffe, he pretty much became a crackpot. He made wild claims for "inventions" that existed only on paper or in his head, and the newspapers loved to interview him, but he produced very vew useful inventions in this time period (the Tesla turbine being perhaps the major exception to this). Unfortunately, the "free energy" and "over-unity" crowd worships the crackpot, and misinterpret his "wireless transmission of energy" claims as "free energy" claims. The Tesla who deserves to be worshiped (if anybody does) is the young Tesla who invented the polyphase AC electrical power system that we are still using more than a century after he invented it, not the pathetic crackpot he became later in life.

CORed · 14th December 2008, 02:11 PM

Quote:

I invented a perpetual motion machine when I was in first grade. It was made out of clay, had a central tower with a pour spout, with a base shaped like a moat that was supposed to catch the water, returning it to the tower through a hole in the side. Voila! continuous waterfall!

It works great on paper. At least it did for Escher.

CORed · 14th December 2008, 02:14 PM

Quote:

I made a YouTube video about the Zero Point Field, explaining why it is impossible to get energy out of it--- but the free energy cultists just called me nasty names. Sheeeish.

Well of course. Don't you know that the so-called laws of thermodynamics are lies invented by the oil companies? What oil company do you work for?

Excuse me. I have to go figure out why my HHO generator quits working after the gas (petrol) tank goes dry.

Zep · 14th December 2008, 02:24 PM

I suspect Bedini is making his money not from the motor but from sales of the DVD. Really old, white-hairded scam: Hey everyone! Want to know how to make a million dollars? You each send me $10 and you can find out! The Nigerian scams are a variant, and even Dogbert has sent them up more than once.

GreyICE · 14th December 2008, 10:14 PM

Originally Posted by CORed

As far as I know, what Tesla claimed to be able to do, based on his Colorado Springs, was transmit power wirelessly. His Wardenclyffe project, on Long Island, was an attempt to implement this and also create a worldwide communications network. The wierless power transmission was apparently a mistake, and would have been problematic had it worked, as it would have been difficult to impossible to ensure that consumers of power paid producers.

After Tesla ran out of funding for Wardenclyffe, he pretty much became a crackpot. He made wild claims for "inventions" that existed only on paper or in his head, and the newspapers loved to interview him, but he produced very vew useful inventions in this time period (the Tesla turbine being perhaps the major exception to this). Unfortunately, the "free energy" and "over-unity" crowd worships the crackpot, and misinterpret his "wireless transmission of energy" claims as "free energy" claims. The Tesla who deserves to be worshiped (if anybody does) is the young Tesla who invented the polyphase AC electrical power system that we are still using more than a century after he invented it, not the pathetic crackpot he became later in life.

Also, you have to remember that at that point in his life, Tesla was wildly paranoid, having been deliberately targetted and sabotaged by men paid by Edison, and also having invented several pseudo-enemies that were more figments than anything else (Edison really was out to get him though).

Therefore in his latter years he tended to make **** up just to confuse people.

He also was slightly unhinged. We're talking about the man who, for fun and intellectual curiousity, developed the first viable method of killing every vertebrate on the planet. The next serious contender was the Manhattan project (it was slightly more discriminant, Tesla's weapon would have killed EVERYONE).

gdnp · 14th December 2008, 10:24 PM

Originally Posted by GreyICE

He also was slightly unhinged. We're talking about the man who, for fun and intellectual curiousity, developed the first viable method of killing every vertebrate on the planet.

Where do I get one?

GreyICE · 14th December 2008, 10:34 PM

Originally Posted by gdnp

Where do I get one?

Dynamite. virtually any country could make one. Nowadays you could just use simple nukes. You'd need probably a dozen, two dozen, I haven't done the math. Could be less. And he did it all, energy dissipation, everything.

The trick is you'd need a day or two to shatter all the continental plates, and given that we'd all detect what you are doing long before then, you'd get a kindly greeting from intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Assuming you planned adequately though, and used orbits to get the timing down, you could do it though.

It was easier back when he figured it out because interrupting you was impossible, from a purely physical standpoint.

6th June 2008, 09:21 AM	#1
Juustin Muse Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Schenectady, NY Posts: 501	Explain Bedini's free energy machine to me Last night I was at a family function of my wife's. A friend of their family was talking to me, and he's actually a nice guy that I've met a few other times. We talked about the usual stuff, eventually getting to high gas prices. He then started explaining to me how there are already people who know how to create energy and they're being suppressed. He mentioned he picked up a DVD online that explained Bedini's free energy machine. He said "obviously I can't say 100% that they're right, but all the people talking on the DVD said they've seen it first hand, and no scientists have been able to explain where the energy is coming from. This was the first time I had heard about this particular machine, but I suspected it may be getting hyped mostly by a conspiracy crowd, since the later part of the conversation turned into oil companies having people assassinated for threatening their business with free energy devices. So that's the long and the short of it. If someone who's good with this stuff wants to give me a reader's digest version of how it's said to work and what's known about it, that'd be great. I suspected it sounded fishy, but without having any background I didn't have much to say.
	__________________ Science has all the answers. We just don't have all the science. - James Morrow

6th June 2008, 09:56 AM	#3
GreyICE Guest Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 7,173	This is the guy who made the CD clarifier, which bathes CDs in a beam that cleanses them, improving the audio quality? Who would even believe this quack? How dumb do you have to be?
GreyICE Guest Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 7,173

6th June 2008, 10:09 AM	#6
GreyICE Guest Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 7,173	Originally Posted by Gate2501 Direct Quote from his (Bedini) website... Comedy goldmine...
GreyICE Guest Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 7,173

6th June 2008, 10:20 AM	#8
tsig a carbon based life-form Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 9,403	Originally Posted by Juustin Last night I was at a family function of my wife's. A friend of their family was talking to me, and he's actually a nice guy that I've met a few other times. We talked about the usual stuff, eventually getting to high gas prices. He then started explaining to me how there are already people who know how to create energy and they're being suppressed. He mentioned he picked up a DVD online that explained Bedini's free energy machine. He said "obviously I can't say 100% that they're right, but all the people talking on the DVD said they've seen it first hand, and no scientists have been able to explain where the energy is coming from. This was the first time I had heard about this particular machine, but I suspected it may be getting hyped mostly by a conspiracy crowd, since the later part of the conversation turned into oil companies having people assassinated for threatening their business with free energy devices. So that's the long and the short of it. If someone who's good with this stuff wants to give me a reader's digest version of how it's said to work and what's known about it, that'd be great. I suspected it sounded fishy, but without having any background I didn't have much to say. From Bedini's site: "It is running off the principles of electromagnetics that Nikola Tesla discovered shortly before 1900 in his Colorado Springs experiments. It is running off the fact that empty vacuum - pure "emptiness", so to speak - is filled with rivers and oceans of seething energy, just as Nikola Tesla pointed out. It is running off the fact that vacuum space-time itself is nothing but pure massless charge. That is, vcuum has a very high electrostatic scalar potential - it is greatly stressed. To usefully tap the enormous locked-in energy of that stress, all one has to do is crack it sharply and tap the vacuum oscillations that result. The best way to do that is to hit something resonant that is imbedded in the vacuum, then tap the resonant stress of the ringing of the vacuum itself" Signs of woo are here. Naming of a prominent dead scientific authority. Using terms in ways that make no sense. vacuum oscillations, ringing in the vacum, ect, ect, ect. It looks to me like he has invented the electric starter bet the car companies will pay bigtime for that.
	Last edited by tsig; 6th June 2008 at 10:21 AM. Reason: changed last phrase

6th June 2008, 10:52 AM	#14
Ziggurat Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 15,520	Originally Posted by canadarocks He indicated that he is trying his hand at building the "over-unity" machine and started talking to me about how Ohm's law is not a real law In one sense, it's really more of a definition of what resistance means than an actual law. Quote: (apparently there are things that don't behave in accordance with Ohm's equation When you think about Ohm's law as a definition of resistance, then what you find is that for some things, resistance isn't constant as a function of applied voltage, but you can still use that equation to define a resistance for anything, even if that value is only valid under specific conditions. Diodes and transistors are rather important examples of where the resistance defined by Ohm's law is not constant (current can vary exponentially with applied voltage). Quote: He said that he's listened to both sides of the over-unity issue, and wants to test it for him-self. I told him that he should be prepared to accept that his machine will not work. Not only that, but he needs to be prepared to be mistaken. With electronic equipment, it's not hard to screw up your measurements so that you think you've gotten over-unity when you haven't. For example, it's easy to make an oscillator circuit which can output more voltage than you input, but it won't output more power. My guess, if he's talking about Ohm's law violations, is that he may have stumbled on the idea of a diode current ratchet: get a big array of diodes set up to only allow current to flow one way through the circuit, then let thermal noise drive the current around the circuit. Looks on paper like it might work, if you treat diodes as perfect one-way valves, but in practice it doesn't (plenty of people have tried) because the're not perfect valves. It's essentially a solid-state attempt at Maxwell's Demon, but it doesn't work.
	__________________ "There is certainly not one government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with the ardent prayer that the united States may be effectually split, crippled, and dismember'd by it... We are all too prone to wander from ourselves, to affect Europe, and watch her frowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the world." - Walt Whitman, 1864

6th June 2008, 09:49 AM	#2
canadarocks Thinker Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: North Wales, PA Posts: 155	That's wierd, because I was visiting my nephew a couple weeks ago and, during our conversation, he started in on this very topic. He indicated that he is trying his hand at building the "over-unity" machine and started talking to me about how Ohm's law is not a real law (apparently there are things that don't behave in accordance with Ohm's equation [wikipedia indicates this is true, but it is a well known and understood phenomenon]). I immediately referred him to this site to ask his questions (as I'm not an electrical engineer - just a geologist) as there are generally lots of knowledgable people here. He said that he's listened to both sides of the over-unity issue, and wants to test it for him-self. I told him that he should be prepared to accept that his machine will not work.

6th June 2008, 10:00 AM	#4
JoeEllison Cuddly Like a Koala Bear Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Florida Posts: 7,276	Originally Posted by GreyICE This is the guy who made the CD clarifier, which bathes CDs in a beam that cleanses them, improving the audio quality? Who would even believe this quack? How dumb do you have to be? There are lots of people "dumb" enough to believe it. No, I don't get it either.

6th June 2008, 10:07 AM	#5
Gate2501 Graduate Poster Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 1,334	Direct Quote from his (Bedini) website... Quote: This system, if properly built and tuned, will furnish "free shaft energy" continually, without violating conservation of anenergy. Remember that the del-phi condition across the battery terminals means that spacetime is suddenly curved there, and conservation of energy need no longer apply.

6th June 2008, 10:16 AM	#7
JoeEllison Cuddly Like a Koala Bear Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Florida Posts: 7,276	Originally Posted by Gate2501 Direct Quote from his (Bedini) website... I suspect that he understands what he's talking about even less than we do.

6th June 2008, 10:22 AM	#9
Gate2501 Graduate Poster Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 1,334	It may also be worth noting that his website looks much like one I "designed" when I was 16 on geocities. It seems like all of the kooky CT nuts use the most simple web design interface possible... I CAN VIOLATE THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY BUT I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO WORK THESE INTERWEBS!

6th June 2008, 10:25 AM	#10
Gate2501 Graduate Poster Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 1,334	Originally Posted by tsig From Bedini's site: "It is running off the principles of electromagnetics that Nikola Tesla discovered shortly before 1900 in his Colorado Springs experiments. It is running off the fact that empty vacuum - pure "emptiness", so to speak - is filled with rivers and oceans of seething energy, just as Nikola Tesla pointed out. It is running off the fact that vacuum space-time itself is nothing but pure massless charge. That is, vcuum has a very high electrostatic scalar potential - it is greatly stressed. To usefully tap the enormous locked-in energy of that stress, all one has to do is crack it sharply and tap the vacuum oscillations that result. The best way to do that is to hit something resonant that is imbedded in the vacuum, then tap the resonant stress of the ringing of the vacuum itself" Signs of woo are here. Naming of a prominent dead scientific authority. Using terms in ways that make no sense. vacuum oscillations, ringing in the vacum, ect, ect, ect. It looks to me like he has invented the electric starter bet the car companies will pay bigtime for that. Tesla... /sigh Another hallmark of the free energy nutter is a deification of Tesla. I have seen this upwards of ten times on websites such as this.

6th June 2008, 10:30 AM	#11
tsig a carbon based life-form Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 9,403	Originally Posted by Gate2501 It may also be worth noting that his website looks much like one I "designed" when I was 16 on geocities. It seems like all of the kooky CT nuts use the most simple web design interface possible... I CAN VIOLATE THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY BUT I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO WORK THESE INTERWEBS! There seems to be a negative correlation between the craziness of the woo and quality of the websites. Or the more earth shaking the idea, the more eye searing the website. At least he could have hid the battery. I wonder why does a free-energy device need a battery? A brake I could understand.

6th June 2008, 10:38 AM	#12
tsig a carbon based life-form Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 9,403	Originally Posted by Gate2501 Tesla... /sigh Another hallmark of the free energy nutter is a deification of Tesla. I have seen this upwards of ten times on websites such as this. They wave his name like a magic wand. This whole thing is just another version of "let's take an electric motor to run the generator then feed the generator output to the motor"

6th June 2008, 10:44 AM	#13
tsig a carbon based life-form Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 9,403	Originally Posted by JoeEllison I suspect that he understands what he's talking about even less than we do. But he used big sciency words and invoked Tesla. Psuedoskeptic!!! Science ahs been wrong and they lauged at Galeleo. Help we are being oppressed be the establishment of athiest scientists.!!! (should have used caps and colors)

6th June 2008, 10:55 AM	#15
The Man Scourge, of the supernatural Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Poughkeepsie, NY Posts: 4,850	Originally Posted by Juustin So that's the long and the short of it. If someone who's good with this stuff wants to give me a reader's digest version of how it's said to work and what's known about it, that'd be great. I suspected it sounded fishy, but without having any background I didn't have much to say. It is the same old story for most of these “free energy” devices. The readers digest version is a misapplication of Zero-point energy or Vacuum energy, these charlatans explain the over unity (more energy out then in) they erroneously calculate as resulting from the tapping into this energy. But that application is in direct conflict with principle they are trying to invoke. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy Quote: Because zero point energy is the lowest possible energy a system can have, this energy cannot be removed from the system. A related term is zero-point field, which is the lowest energy state of a field, i.e. its ground state, which is non-zero.[1] Despite the definition, the concept of zero-point energy, and the hint of a possibility of extracting "free energy" from the vacuum, has attracted the attention of amateur inventors. Numerous so-called free energy devices, exploiting the idea, have been proposed.[citation needed] As a result of this activity, and its intriguing theoretical explanation, it has taken on a life of its own in popular culture, appearing in science fiction books, games, movies and TV series (such as Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis).[2][3] So if one was to able to extract energy from a zero point field (lower the energy of that field below it’s lowest possible value) it would just force the field into a negative energy state and it would have to take the energy back. Due to the uncertainty principle a zero point field can fluctuate below its zero point value but only for a brief instant or by a small energy fluctuation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle The gist being that any energy that can be “barrowed” from a zero point field must be paid back. The more energy “barrowed” the quicker it must be paid back. So tremendous amounts of energy can be “barrowed” but just for an insignificant period of time and only insignificant amounts of energy can be “barrowed” for any significant period of time. The apparatus detailed on the web page shows a simple battery-motor-flywheel-generator configuration. Just like the battery stores electrical energy the flywheel stores mechanical energy. A lot of energy is taken up spinning the flywheel up to speed some of which (but not all) can be recovered as the flywheel spins down. If the start up energy used to spin up the flywheel is not correctly accounted for it could seem like you are getting extra energy as the flywheel spins down. Most of the over unity calculations of such devices are due to appallingly or intentionally bad math. Not accounting for all sources of energy input (spinning up the flywheel) or counting energy losses of the system (heat and back EMF) as additional intended energy outputs (negatives becoming positives)
	__________________ "Not a seat but a springboard” (1942 Winston Churchill) "As he who, seeking asses, found a kingdom" (1671 Milton "Paradise Regained") "for it seem'd A void was made in nature, all her bonds Crack'd; and I saw the flaring atom-streams And torrents of her myriad universe, Ruining along the illimitable inane, Fly on to clash together again, and make Another and another frame of things For ever." (1868 Tennyson "Lucretius")

6th June 2008, 11:48 AM	#16
JoeEllison Cuddly Like a Koala Bear Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Florida Posts: 7,276	Originally Posted by tsig But he used big sciency words and invoked Tesla. Psuedoskeptic!!! Science ahs been wrong and they lauged at Galeleo. Help we are being oppressed be the establishment of athiest scientists.!!! (should have used caps and colors) Yes, well... I got your point, so I appreciate you skipping the caps and colors!

6th June 2008, 12:35 PM	#17
Blue Mountain Resident Skeptical Hobbit Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Waging war on woo-woo in Winnipeg Posts: 2,318	A layman's restatement of the three laws of thermodynamics: You can't win You can't break even You can't even quit the game
	__________________ The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French) Canadian or living in Canada? PM me if you want an entry on the list of Canadians on the forum.

6th June 2008, 12:53 PM	#18
GreyICE Guest Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 7,173	The sad part is that I really love Tesla. He was a genius, a very interesting man, who discovered some very neat effects that were way ahead of his time. The induction motor, AC power, fluorescent bulbs, the spark plug, so many interesting things. When his circuits in Colorado were reproduced from his notes, they had features that weren't rediscovered until much, much later. Unfortunately the latter half of his life was characterized by wild claims, OCD disorders, and general signs of insanity. This makes him a magnet to woo, because you can find the wildest claims in the latter half of his life, and use the genius of the former half to support them.
GreyICE Guest Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 7,173

6th June 2008, 10:49 PM	#19
rjh01 Fire Warden Tagger Join Date: May 2005 Location: Planet Earth Posts: 10,819	Please either this device or similar devices were featured in a Mythbusters show. Here is the link http://mythbusters-wiki.discovery.co...Energy+Devices. In the spoiler is what their results were. Results: ---- None work

7th June 2008, 12:57 AM	#20
UnrepentantSinner A post by Alan Smithee Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: USAian is not a word Posts: 23,385	Originally Posted by tsig "It is running off the principles of electromagnetics that Nikola Tesla discovered shortly before 1900 in his Colorado Springs experiments. Hey that's wild. I just watched a DVD the other day where Tesla's Colorado Springs experiments produced a machine that not only would teleport matter, it would replicate it... even living beings!
	__________________ "The permanence of the stars was questioned, the justice of slavery was not" - Carl Sagan in Cosmos discussing the content of the Library of Alexandria. a post by Alan Smithee explained. Blutoski's taxonomy of woo Join my The Not Cool Kids Club

7th June 2008, 02:02 AM	#21
Beausoleil Thinker Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 235	So why Tesla? I think it's because our kooks are English language kooks and his name brings a hint of Eastern European mysticism... vampires... etc. I wonder if Transylvanian kooks (for instance) invoke Edison.
Beausoleil Thinker Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 235

7th June 2008, 03:43 AM	#22
wahrheit Pac-Man Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 5,589	Originally Posted by tsig (should have used caps and colors) You also forgot to add an out of context Einstein quote.
wahrheit Pac-Man Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 5,589	__________________ For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen. D. Adams -- THHGTTG You're a sick man. The Atheist

7th June 2008, 05:19 AM	#23
TheDaver hairy farting brute Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Montréal Posts: 948	Originally Posted by wahrheit You also forgot to add an out of context Einstein quote. You mean a quote misattributed to Einstein.

7th June 2008, 05:44 AM	#24
wahrheit Pac-Man Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 5,589	Originally Posted by TheDaver You mean a quote misattributed to Einstein. You are right, that makes it even more authentic. Is this the machine we are talking about? Originally Posted by from above link This is a free energy device which an ordinary person, who knows a little electronics, can experiment with in the basement. To develop it, one is talking several thousands of dollars and a lot of persistence and tinkering; one is not talking millions. Bolding mine. If it doesn't take a multi-billion budget, nor a rocket surgeon, can I see the actual device anywhere? No?
wahrheit Pac-Man Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 5,589	__________________ For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen. D. Adams -- THHGTTG You're a sick man. The Atheist

7th June 2008, 05:47 AM	#25
theMark Critical Thinker Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Stuck in Old Europe and the 80s, where the music is better than today Posts: 305	Originally Posted by wahrheit You also forgot to add an out of context Einstein quote. "Einstien". How many times do I have to repeat this? "If it's a woo, it's Einstien."* * apologies for the bungled "Miracle Pictures: If it's a good picture, it's a Miracle!" quote.

7th June 2008, 06:14 AM	#26
jsfisher ETcorngods survivor Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 8,132	Is this Bedini thing just another case where someone has computed input power from current and voltage, but completely ignored power factor?
	__________________ As long as Comparison is sunk in the urine of one's mind, new glasses will not help. --Doronshadmi. *A proud member of the Simpson 15+7, named in the suit, Simpson v. Zwinge, et al., and founder of the ET Corn Gods Survivors Group.* By the way, the Nominate button is to your ~~right~~ left, sort of..

7th June 2008, 06:35 AM	#27
Ladewig Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: USA Posts: 10,244	Originally Posted by TheDaver You mean a quote misattributed to Einstein. You don't even need a quote. The Crackpot Index awards 30 points for "suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate." On the other hand, this version may be a bit out of date in that it does not award any points at all for claiming that one is working with ideas proven by Tesla; surely that should be worth at least 22.75834 points
	__________________ When I see all the kooky things posted on the JREF forums, I can't help but think of Max Bialystock's lament: "They come here, they all come here, how do they find us?"

7th June 2008, 08:16 AM	#28
tsig a carbon based life-form Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 9,403	Originally Posted by TheDaver You mean a quote misattributed to Einstein. Jest a-workin' in a quotemine. I guess I am not worthy of woo. I lay down my miner's lamp and leave the ddark side to those better able to do the woo.

7th June 2008, 08:20 AM	#29
tsig a carbon based life-form Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 9,403	Originally Posted by jsfisher Is this Bedini thing just another case where someone has computed input power from current and voltage, but completely ignored power factor? Looks like he just invented the motor-generator, what's next, the Ward-Leonard system?

7th June 2008, 08:53 AM	#30
gdnp useless idiot Join Date: May 2008 Location: New Jersey-You gotta problem wit dat? Posts: 4,999	Quote: Direct Quote from his (Bedini) website... Quote: This system, if properly built and tuned, will furnish "free shaft energy" continually, without violating conservation of anenergy. Remember that the del-phi condition across the battery terminals means that spacetime is suddenly curved there, and conservation of energy need no longer apply. It is doubtful that anyone who buys into this will ever see the "free" part, but you can guarantee the "shaft" I invented a perpetual motion machine when I was in first grade. It was made out of clay, had a central tower with a pour spout, with a base shaped like a moat that was supposed to catch the water, returning it to the tower through a hole in the side. Voila! continuous waterfall! Fortunately, nothing was damaged as I received a lesson on how water flows down hill and seeks its own level. I remember being tremendously embarrassed at the time, and throwing it out. My parents, I suspect, were proud. Not too many first graders forge their own scientific apparatus. I wish I had kept it. So much of science I must take on faith, not having, for example, my own particle accelerator.

7th June 2008, 10:33 AM	#31
Dragoonster Graduate Poster Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 1,155	Originally Posted by Beausoleil So why Tesla? I think it's because our kooks are English language kooks and his name brings a hint of Eastern European mysticism... vampires... etc. I wonder if Transylvanian kooks (for instance) invoke Edison. I think it's because Tesla was a genius, had some very good and practical ideas, but also struggled to gain approval for some of his more ambitious/theoretical stuff. He was robbed of the "inventor of the radio" title, Edison punked him, and his giant generator was torn down by a fearful government (as a woo person would say). He was a man who could have changed the world except the old conservative powers conspired against him. A decent role model for modern woo artists, unfortunately for his legacy. The comparison fails in that these folks' ideas aren't good or pratical. Not just free energy, but they haven't built a history of good, functional work that Tesla did before embarking on his giant energy theories. They want to skip ahead to the "conspired against/misunderstood/underfunded" aspect of Tesla, without first establishing the "genius" part for themselves. Any fool can do that.

8th June 2008, 01:14 PM	#32
technoextreme Illuminator Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 3,338	Originally Posted by Dragoonster A decent role model for modern woo artists, unfortunately for his legacy. You forgot the part where he essentially became woo. Tesla claimed that he could do stuff that is impossible. That's why his name is bandied about so much by crackpot loons. He turned into one.
	Last edited by technoextreme; 8th June 2008 at 01:15 PM.

30th October 2008, 05:27 PM	#33
DeadDesertphile Banned Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 3	I made a YouTube video about the Zero Point Field, explaining why it is impossible to get energy out of it--- but the free energy cultists just called me nasty names. Sheeeish. As for the Bedini prank motor, it is possible he really believes his claims. In the year 2004 "MythBusters" did an episode wherein an MIT engineer attempted to examine a "Bedini Motor." MythBusters and the MIT person failed to find any magic energy being created; however, Bedini claims the MIT person did not make a "Bedini Motor" and therefore the test was not just an error, but a deliberate lie on the part of MythBusters. I have not found any statement by MythBusters answering the charge of deception on their part. If Randi would ask MythBusters to address the charges I would love to read it. Bedini claims that MythBusters refused to talk with Bedini before, during, and after the examination; Bedini claims that the episode was a deliberate sabotage of him and his miracle device; Bedini claims there were no magnets on the flywheel, which would make the device not function the way Bedini claims it will function. My questions to MythBusters would be: 1) Did you try to get a Bedini motor from Bedini? 2) Did Bedini try to contact you? 3) Did you try to contact Bedini? 4) Did your MIT person fail to build a Bedini motor? Make no mistake: the Bedini motor does not work: there is no such thing as "free energy," nor is it possible to get "vacuum energy" from the Zero Point Field, nor do magnetic fields contain energy that can be used to perform work. I just wish to clear up the facts of the issue, and I suspect James Randi would be far more successful at getting answers from MythBusters than I have been.
DeadDesertphile Banned Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 3

14th December 2008, 02:00 PM	#34
CORed Graduate Poster Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 1,286	Originally Posted by Gate2501 Tesla... /sigh Another hallmark of the free energy nutter is a deification of Tesla. I have seen this upwards of ten times on websites such as this. As far as I know, what Tesla claimed to be able to do, based on his Colorado Springs, was transmit power wirelessly. His Wardenclyffe project, on Long Island, was an attempt to implement this and also create a worldwide communications network. The wierless power transmission was apparently a mistake, and would have been problematic had it worked, as it would have been difficult to impossible to ensure that consumers of power paid producers. After Tesla ran out of funding for Wardenclyffe, he pretty much became a crackpot. He made wild claims for "inventions" that existed only on paper or in his head, and the newspapers loved to interview him, but he produced very vew useful inventions in this time period (the Tesla turbine being perhaps the major exception to this). Unfortunately, the "free energy" and "over-unity" crowd worships the crackpot, and misinterpret his "wireless transmission of energy" claims as "free energy" claims. The Tesla who deserves to be worshiped (if anybody does) is the young Tesla who invented the polyphase AC electrical power system that we are still using more than a century after he invented it, not the pathetic crackpot he became later in life.
CORed Graduate Poster Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 1,286

14th December 2008, 02:11 PM	#35
CORed Graduate Poster Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 1,286	Quote: I invented a perpetual motion machine when I was in first grade. It was made out of clay, had a central tower with a pour spout, with a base shaped like a moat that was supposed to catch the water, returning it to the tower through a hole in the side. Voila! continuous waterfall! It works great on paper. At least it did for Escher.
CORed Graduate Poster Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 1,286