You need a catapult in the back to fling the magnet ahead of you, you get pulled forward, pick up the magnet and fling it again. This technology has existed since the '20s but Big Internal Combustion Engine is repressing the tech.
No, because in the end, something needs to keep moving the magnet forward to keep the truck moving forward.
This thought processes is exactly how scammers on YouTube make perpetual motion seem possible, but by definition, the forces always have to cancel out.
Sure, but you’ll need something to turn the gears.
Typically, we use a crank that converts a reciprocating motion into a rotation. Then we move a piston up and down by putting a little explosion at one end. Connect it to a tank of explosive fuel and badaboom, perpetual motion, as long as you have explosive fuel in the tank of course.
The truck will be attracted forward towards the magnet, but the magnet will also be attracted backward towards the truck with equal force. The backward force will be transfered through the arm holding the magnet and the net force on the whole system will be 0. If there was no arm holding the truck and the magnet apart, the truck could move forward slightly and the magnet could move backward to meet it. (The magnet would move much more than the truck since they would still have equal force applying to them, and the truck’s mass is much higher than the magnet’s.)
And then to continue moving this way you’d have to unstick and move away the magnet, which would require just the same energy it takes to move the truck this far away
Funny thing is that this isn’t technically true. If the fan is strong enough, the current will hit the sail and reflect backward and to the side, creating some very inefficient thrust. Any fan strong enough to achieve this would do better to remove the sail entirely and just point the fan backwards, but it would technically work.
If the fan blew across an airfoil aligned perpendicular to the axis of the boat, it can definitely generate thrust. The top of the airfoil will develop a lower pressure than the bottom, and the difference in pressure causes force that moves the boat. It’s just way more efficient to use a fan to push the boat.
I am a complete idiot and I would also like to know.
The magnet pulls the truck to the right. The truck pulls the magnet to the left. They both have the same amount of pull. No one wins this tug-o-war.
The best you can hope for is for the truck to move slightly to the right and the magnet to move far to the left until they meet
Because the magnet is attached to the truck bed, so the bumper is being pulled forward and the bed pushed back, and the forces cancel out to 0.
Dumb follow up question. If there’s a way to reverse the direction the bed is being pushed, with gears or something, will that work? lol
You need a catapult in the back to fling the magnet ahead of you, you get pulled forward, pick up the magnet and fling it again. This technology has existed since the '20s but Big Internal Combustion Engine is repressing the tech.
No, because in the end, something needs to keep moving the magnet forward to keep the truck moving forward.
This thought processes is exactly how scammers on YouTube make perpetual motion seem possible, but by definition, the forces always have to cancel out.
Sure, but you’ll need something to turn the gears.
Typically, we use a crank that converts a reciprocating motion into a rotation. Then we move a piston up and down by putting a little explosion at one end. Connect it to a tank of explosive fuel and badaboom, perpetual motion, as long as you have explosive fuel in the tank of course.
Newtons laws of motion, most clearly the third.
“If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions.”
In simple terms: metal is just as much attracted to magnet as magnet is to metal, this is fundamental and doesn’t change under any circumstances.
So the force driving the car forward is exactly equal to the force driving the car backward, and you can’t have one without the other.
The truck will be attracted forward towards the magnet, but the magnet will also be attracted backward towards the truck with equal force. The backward force will be transfered through the arm holding the magnet and the net force on the whole system will be 0. If there was no arm holding the truck and the magnet apart, the truck could move forward slightly and the magnet could move backward to meet it. (The magnet would move much more than the truck since they would still have equal force applying to them, and the truck’s mass is much higher than the magnet’s.)
And then to continue moving this way you’d have to unstick and move away the magnet, which would require just the same energy it takes to move the truck this far away
Imagine that instead of a magnet there’s a spring there. Why is it more obvious now that it doesn’t work? How is a magnet different than a spring?
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Funny thing is that this isn’t technically true. If the fan is strong enough, the current will hit the sail and reflect backward and to the side, creating some very inefficient thrust. Any fan strong enough to achieve this would do better to remove the sail entirely and just point the fan backwards, but it would technically work.
And by the same principle, you could shine a powerful laser towards a very reflective sail and actually move, with the laser as a part of the boat.
I too always found this very funny. Confuses the hell out of people who just understood why the OP would not work.
I believe you’ve invented an air boat.
See the following reference material: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074564/
Full disclosure, I’m an idiot, so I could be misunderstanding something, but im pretty sure that this is based on that principle.
If the fan blew across an airfoil aligned perpendicular to the axis of the boat, it can definitely generate thrust. The top of the airfoil will develop a lower pressure than the bottom, and the difference in pressure causes force that moves the boat. It’s just way more efficient to use a fan to push the boat.