Posted by grim (206.162.192.40) on August 18, 2002 at 04:32:46:
In Reply to: Regarding the Applet, errors posted by Øystein Rustad on August 18, 2002 at 03:34:59:
Oystein you've been right about the "flywheel effect" all alomg. The model neglects the momentum contained in the forty weights plus the momentum in the frame.
Bessler's bi-directional had to be started with a push, therefore it too had "dead spots" and the flywheel effect must have carried it past them. A poor example would be a lawnmower engine. If you could rig the ignition system to be independent of the flywheel, and then removed the flywheel, good luck starting it. Also enough energy stored in it to require a soft key in shaft connection to keep flywheel from breakin the crank if something hard is hit and engine comes to sudden stop.
I wonder how Tony's model would behave if one could plug a momentum figure into the calculation?
regards, grim
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: : Hello All,
: : Thanks for your post, Joel. However, my discussion board program limits the size of a post to 100,000 characters. This is to prevent a malicious person from posting a message so large that it fills up my hard drive.
: : Anyway, the verbage that Joel posted comes from a book entitled "The Century of Inventions" by Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester (with commentary by Henry Dircks). The entire book is available online, together with many of the drawings and diagrams. The specific page from which Joel copied his verbage, which addresses the Marquis' overbalanced wheel is here:
: : http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/dircks/His111chap1.html
: : And this link will take you directly to the section about the overbalaced wheel, the section titled "An advantageous change of Centres":
: : http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/dircks/His111chap1.html#454
: : Though the Marquis' overbalanced wheel is interesting, and indeed seems like it might work, the wheel actually balances. In fact, here is a website where Tony Townsend went to a lot of trouble to prove it will always balance, no matter what. He even wrote a java applet which allows you to adjust the various parameters and see how it behaves.
: : http://www.comappls.com/tonyt/Applets/Wheel/Bessler2.html
: : Interestingly, Tony seems to be confused in thinking that this was Bessler's wheel. Nevertheless, his analysis and calculations are rigorous and quite convincing.
: : -Scott