If you type on the Internet the phrase “perpetual motion machine with your own hands” in the Google search bar, the search engine will helpfully display a very impressive number (over 75,000) of various results, including pictures, detailed instructions and videos with the working models. And although attempts to repeat the “success” of many authors at home invariably end in complete failure, this once again confirms the stubbornness inherent in human nature, which does not allow a person to come to terms with the action of the immutable laws of nature and makes him look for inexhaustible sources of unlimited energy.
In history, the perpetual motion machine is first mentioned in the poem of the Indian astronomer, mathematician and poet Bhaskara, which dates from about 1150. So India can rightfully be considered the ancestral home of the first
perpetuum mobile models
. This poem describes a perpetual motion machine in the form of a wheel with narrow, long vessels, which are half filled with mercury, obliquely mounted along the rim. The difference in the moments of gravity created by the fluid moving in the vessels was supposed to make the wheel constantly rotate. But circumventing the laws of nature failed.
From that moment on, human imagination constantly led to new ideas. However, instead of simple mechanics, modern inventors now offer
use electricity, magnet or gravity. For example, a perpetual magnetic motor involves placing small magnets in a circle and exposing them to a magnetic field of a separate magnet. By design, the repulsion of the same name and the attraction of the opposite poles of the magnets should make the wheel spin without any outside interference. But in reality this does not happen, otherwise for a long time already everyone in the apartment would have had a similar unit.
It turns out that, no matter how much a person wishes, the perpetual motion machine of any, even the most complex design contains flaws and does not work. And all because the principle of its work violates the first or second law of thermodynamics.
In 1775, more than two centuries ago, in Western Europe , the most authoritative scientific tribunal of that time, the Paris Academy of Sciences, opposed the belief in the existence of a perpetual motion machine. Already at that time, many well-known scientists brought a lot of conclusive evidence of the impossibility of perpetual motion. Around the middle of the twentieth century, this fact was recognized by the United States Patent Office, exhausted by endless applications.
Nevertheless, there are still people who say that they invented another model of the perpetual motion machine. As a rule, these are scammers who try to capitalize on gullibility and ignorance of the laws of thermodynamics. However, it is possible that among such people a new genius will appear who will nevertheless come up with a compact eco-friendly engine capable of extracting energy from the world around us in such volumes and with such a long working life that it can be called "eternal".