Ah thanks so much for explaining this!
Ok now this leads me to my next question. I have a friend of mine that wants to try an experiment. This experiment will fail and he knows it too, but there's 1% of him that believes it may work. I do not believe it will work period because it violates the law of conservation.
His idea is this.
He believes that if he gets a electromagnetic induction device like those shaker flash lights, and he mounts several of them to a large disc, and then rotates that disk, the shakers will generate current.
Now he thinks that by push starting this device he could hook up a motor, and the motor would only need to give the device a smaller push to keep it going since the device would already have momentum working. Just like a car already moving, doesn't need as much power to keep it going once it's already moving, he thinks the motor won't need much power to keep the device spinning.
He thinks because of this, the "shakers" will generate enough power to power the motor plus a bit excess.
He's trying to calculate the power of each shaker, the mass of the whole unit and the momentum.
Could someone please explain why this is stupid and will not work? He thinks because gravity is helping spin the machine that it's somehow different than perpetual motion.
Frank
