1
Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Has an invisibility cloak been invented in Canada?
« on: 13/07/2013 14:23:39 »I think it's nonsense. I'm reminded of Bruce DePalma's N-machine that was being discussed on talk radio in the early 1990's. It was supposed be a perpetual motion machine. It was a simple rotating magnetic with a copper plate attached to one end. It's also known as a homopolar generator and can be found in certain electrodynamics textbooks. Supposedly one needs to understand relativity to understand its operation. A favorite quote of mine is from a philosophy of science class I took as an undergrad which said that nonsense can have some surprising twists to it sometimes and can be entertaining in a certain sense. So with that in mind I came I looked into it. And sure enough I was entertained by it. I learned that on does indeed need a good grasp on relativistic electrodynamics to understand it.
I created a web page to describe the physics of the device at
http://home.comcast.net/~peter.m.brown/em/rotating_magnet.htm
But the claim that it was a perpetual motion machine was garbage. The author was a fraud and the people who have web pages about it seem too afraid to respond to comments on them. But a lot of people called the radio station claiming that they worked and that implied that they were getting out more energy that was being put in. This is like your current subject. It too is crap.
Great answer! Cheers.