"String" Motor ConceptI recently tested what I call a "string motor" I thought of myself. It consisted of a spool of fishing wire with short ferromagnetic beads of string (like those in dog tags) attached at 1" to 1/2" inch intervals along the string...I placed a strong group of magnets on the floor and fed the string into the magnets standing above it...It pulled the string to it's "end" (not the whole reel yet) with no difficulty thus spinning the reel and theoretically generating electricity.
I didn't have many beads on the string (it gets kind of messy and hard to work with) but the experiment demonstrated that it can work. I would just have to create a line of string long enough that it would keep the reel spinning for a long time before it would have to be rerolled manually or replaced. Once I do that I would of course work on how to make the line of string roll itself onto another reel as it works so I don't have to later.
But, if successful, I like this idea over solar or wind because we can control when the energy is made. It doesn't require that the sun be out or the wind blow or the tides move. We control and create the fuel. And it's clean.
Pros: Is not reliant on nature. Totally man made "fuel". We choose how much of it we want to create.
Clean
Can, and is made to be, reused.
Doesn't challenge the laws of thermodynamics
Could possibly be easily applied to moving vehicles on land, water and air.
Length of string transmits directly to distance a vehicle using the motor can travel on one spool. Ex. if you can fit a 100 mile spool of string in your vehicle, your vehicle can travel 100 miles before your reel of string (fuel) runs out.
Can be used in large power plant energy generation. If the physics works, I could see power plants with giant spools of string miles long and powerful electromagnets generating a constant source of clean energy for cities.
Works on the same principle scientists have been experimenting with magnetic particles at the subatomic level
Principle can be incorporated into a type of "hourglass" design without using string that would allow the motion of falling magnetic (or non magnetic) beads to generation electricity.
Questions:Can a spool of string be made simultaneously small (compact, light) enough but the string long enough to produce a usable output of energy generation?
How strong does a magnet need to be to pull a reel miles long?
Can the string be made to wound around another spool as it's working to avoid manual rewinding?
how big would the "hourglass" design have to be to generate days or weeks of energy before it needed to be "turned over"?
Your thoughts, suggestions, improvements?
Edit: I think I've already thought of a way to rewind the string. It would work like a measuring tape or one of those reel dog leashes or clothes lines. Once the string was fully unwound by the magnet, the magnet would be covered or removed by a lever and the string would rewind itself generating energy in the opposite direction.
Edit 2: Actually there is an even easier way to rewind the string. Instead, fix the end of each string inside the bottom of it's own container or bottle, for example with the spouts facing each other and a spool, with the string wound around once, in between. The bottles will serve to contain and control the string and a magnet will be introduced at the bottom of the bottle the string is being drawn into. As the string is drawn in any direction, it will move the spool in between the bottles. Once the string is exhausted in one direction, the magnet will be removed from the one bottle and applied to the bottom of the bottle now receiving the string where the cycle continues.
Edit 3: I just want to point out that you wouldn't use actual "string" for this design but some super light, thin and strong material.
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/8076/stringmotor.png