On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 6:39 PM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote:
Therefore, if no heat is detected within the gas at the conclusion of the > cycle, then there is no work done on the piston by that gas. For this > reason it is not possible to measure the output of a Popp type system just > by looking at the effect a pulse has on the piston movement unless the > final energy is actually measured within the gas. > I can see where this thought experiment leads to this conclusion in the middle of a run of cycles. But where I'm having difficulty is the conclusion that, absent heat, there is no work performed, when we consider the beginning of a run. To make the problem clearer, consider an extremely heavy, frictionless flywheel that is at rest. You have to put in a considerable amount of work to get the flywheel to spin rapidly. After that, it will continue to spin without losing energy. If we further suppose that there is a way to turn on magnetic brakes and convert the angular momentum in the wheel back into stored energy, one that operates perfectly and does not give rise to heat, you would then be able to apply that stored potential back into kinetic energy later on. But that would be after the initial work that was put into the system at the very start. I suspect that work must necessarily be done on the Papp popper at the very beginning, during the first discharge, and that this work can be measured and tell us whether the cycle is overunity. Eric
