• Pennomi
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    09 months ago

    Did you try flipping the magnet over? If you put the two north ends together they’ll repel instead of attract.

    • @notarobot@lemmy.zip
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      09 months ago

      The beauty is that you can make the mental gymnastics to make it work both ways.

      If they are opposite, the magnet attracts the car which moves the magnet away creating infinite motion

      If they are the same, the magnet is repelled by the car, moving it away, moving the car forward creating infinite motion

      You can even do mental tricks to make the contraption go backwards: Opposites: car attacks magnet which moves the car backwards Same: magnet reppels the car which moves the contraption backwards

  • @chunes@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    When I was a kid I came up with this design during a long road trip. I spent the whole time thinking I was some kind of genius, because how didn’t anyone else think of this before?

    You can imagine my disappointment when I got home and created my prototype.

  • OpenStars
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    09 months ago

    Excellent! It is always nice to see people asking questions - the journey towards the answer should prove most enlightening! :-D

  • @xploit@lemmy.world
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    09 months ago

    The wire/metal holding it needs to be springy and bobbing back and forth to generate the momentum, duh… Half-assed implementation I say.

      • @reliv3@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Oh boy, this is very incorrect, because it sounds like you are attempting to explain magnetism with electrostatic forces. Here is a basic model which separates the difference between the two:

        1. Electrostatic forces are caused by the electric field. Something produces an electric field simply by having an unbalanced charge. Positive attracts negative, negative repels negative, positive repels positive.

        2. Magnetic forces are caused by the magnetic field. Something produces a magnetic field by having an unbalanced charge AND is moving.

        This is why when trying to explain how solid magnets work, we focus on the electrons because electrons are charged particles that are always moving. So they produce both an electric field (being charged) and a magnetic field (being a moving charged system).

        Rhaedas is sorta correct. Any solid system has the capability of being a magnet, but this takes an incredible amount of physics work where iron is special. Iron’s electrons are able to easily maintain a synchronous orbit with each other which results in magnetic forces being observable at a macroscopic scale (seeing iron magnets pull on each other). In most other materials, the electrons orbits are chaotic, so even though magnetic fields are still being produced by their electrons, the lack of order results in no magnetic force being observable on the macroscopic scale; but if you place this non-iron material within a very strong magnetic field, you may be able to align their electrons orbits so that it becomes magnetic on the macroscopic scale (like iron).

        • @theUwUhugger@lemmy.world
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          09 months ago

          Did you use ai to form that? No human has ever, ever written that magnetic force causes magnetic; nor electrostatics force causes an electric field…

          No, electrostatic fields is caused by stationary charges

          I don’t dare imagine what you think an unbalanced charge is, but a moving electric charge is enough to cause a magnetic field.

          ‘It takes incredible amounts of physics work to get something’… You know, ai used to worry me quite a bit but comments like yours calm my soul! We are thankfully not there yet where it’s actually would be capable of replacing hack squat!

          • @reliv3@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Not AI. I’m in academia, so I write academically.

            I specify “physics work” to mean physic’s definition of work (dot product between Force and Displacement).

            And to not connect the importance between the electric and magnetic field as it pertains to the the electrostatic force and magnetic force reveals your basic understanding of the physics. Hence, why your prior comment was so problematic…

            • @theUwUhugger@lemmy.world
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              09 months ago

              Oh academia! Of course you are! Kinda weird you didn’t specify your field and experience… Welp, must have had no space left for that in that reply of yours…

              Kinda odd that an academic would continously write nonsense… Work in the contest of physics (what fucking other context would we use it when we are discussing physics…) is defined as: the energy transferred to or from an object by a force acting on it as it moves through a distance!Aka ‘W = F • s’, its not a dot product its multiplication dear doctor? Also makes absolutely no sense in the prev context you used it… If you just wanted to pick a word to insinuate a sort of insight, you should have used midi-chlorians! Sounds a lot cooler and makes just as much sense!

              So far every single one of your statements had been wrong… I will have to ask you to stop sharing your brilliant insights to beget the spread of misinformation!

              • @reliv3@lemmy.world
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                09 months ago

                It’s very apparent that you are not a good faith discusser and your knowledge of physics is very low.

                I’m checking out of this discussion

                • @theUwUhugger@lemmy.world
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                  09 months ago

                  Could you check out from every physics&whatever else you pretend to be discussion? Again, you didn’t even know the formula of work despite totally being an academic…

                  It genuinely upsets me that people like yours vote equal mine… Hope you know you looked really dumb and desperate the whole time!

          • @prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            9 months ago

            Lol you weren’t kidding… The full sentence is even weirder:

            Any solid system has the capability of being a magnet, but this takes an incredible amount of physics work where iron is special.

            I kind of hope a human didn’t write that…

    • Rhaedas
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      09 months ago

      Real, totally heavily simplified answer. All atoms could be magnets, but most don’t have a force because the electron orbitals aren’t out enough. In fact just about everything can be explained by what the electron orbitals are doing. Even why the chair you’re sitting in feels solid. It’s the orbitals. See Richard Feynman's bit on magnets and the deeper lesson on knowing the right questions to ask.

      • @theUwUhugger@lemmy.world
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        09 months ago

        No, atoms with a symmetrical subatomic structure could never be magnets! And what would be the point of somehow enlarging the electrons orbit? You surely know a magnet needs a positive pole!

        You are also definitely wrong about your third statement!You could never explain anything based on just the electron cloud, much less physics; a whole scientific field that generally works with the atomic core

        • Rhaedas
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          09 months ago

          Missed the first sentence I guess. It’s why I included the video for a much better, although also simplified and incomplete answer, and he says why.

  • @thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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    09 months ago

    need two separate vehicles and two magnets, one weaker then the other

    so the weaker one will repell the other and it will kick forward moving the other forward and rinse and repeat at a sonic speed

    thats gotta generate some kinda motion

    • @msprout@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      This is basically how a rail cannon works, just with electromagnets that can reverse their polarity.

      It’s a powerful way to accelerate anything — I think it’s most famously used in those types of metal roller coasters that start you at a flat-with-the-ground angle, and then just fuckin launch you up a ramp to 45° with electromagnets. The issue is that you need a fuckton of energy to do that.

      What we need for true perpetual energy is to just capture that guy Blanka from Street Fighter.

      • @CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        9 months ago

        That’s not how a railgun works, that’s how a coilgun works. Railguns create a loop of electric current that flows into one “wire” (the rail), through the projectile into the other wire, and back down to the starting point again, this configuration creates a force that pushes the projectile down the rails

        • @msprout@lemmy.world
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          09 months ago

          Ah, I appreciate the correction. I’m not an engineer but the youngest cousin of a clan of them, so I just got the highlights of the true evil genius shit. :p

  • _AutumnMoon_
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    09 months ago

    Because you need to put it on the back and have it repel the truck forward instead of attract it forward obviously

  • @cholesterol@lemmy.world
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    09 months ago

    You ever talk to someone confused by this, maybe ask them to lightly push the front magnet in the direction it’s trying to go.