Help explaining that perm. mag. motors don't work

[Vanadium 50]

Ah yes, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. Thing is, they also laughed at Laurel and Hardy.

Your argument reduces to "maybe you're just wrong". A logical possibility, but not anything there is any evidence for.

 

[zoobyshoe]

how about this one?

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895

Or this?

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

There are a lot of quotes like that. These demonstrate that experts are sometimes wrong.

Cholley's dad should not give up because some authority said it can't work. He should give up because the magnets can't do what he wants them to do. That is something he can find out if he analyzes the magnets more carefully and thoroughly. That could take him a really long time, and with no solid experimental method he might still not figure out that they aren't really capable of what he now thinks they are capable of. He should look into conventional physics, not because this represent the authority stand on the matter but because it represents a long history of tried and true analytical methods and amazingly helpful shortcuts. It took something like 2000 years for physics to correct the errors disseminated by Aristotle. In that whole time no one figured out Newton's 3 laws of motion, yet today these are considered the trivial, beginner concepts. A person can read and understand and accept them in a few minutes, yet it took 2000 years for someone to grasp them from scratch and put them all together. Cholley's dad should look into physics for his own edification, because there's incredibly useful information there (especially for an inventor), not to make sure he isn't breaking some "law" that will ruffle some authority's feathers.

Cholley said this is something like the fifth different version. The dad is obviously working by trial and error rather than from an understanding of motors and magnets. That's a tremendous waste of effort when all the information he needs is already available. Hundreds of years of great insights are collected and written down. Really, it's good stuff!

 

[russ_watters]

That's really the best advice: the only way to really convince a trial-and-error inventor is to get him to learn how to analyze his devices using the body of scientific knowledge available. Then he'll be able to predict what it can do before he builds it - saving him the trouble of building something that couldn't possibly work.

 

[Dr Mess]

Dont make the mistake of thinking that he ows you anything. You speak of his money, your future??

Let him do as he pleases, go get a job and support youself. If and when he fails and goes bankrupt, you help him out, with a hug and a smile, do everything you can for him, because he brought you into this world. He is your father. You owe him everthing. Love and support him, that's what family are. If you can't do that, your not a good son are you.

 

[Averagesupernova]

Dont make the mistake of thinking that he ows you anything. You speak of his money, your future??

Let him do as he pleases, go get a job and support youself. If and when he fails and goes bankrupt, you help him out, with a hug and a smile, do everything you can for him, because he brought you into this world. He is your father. You owe him everthing. Love and support him, that's what family are. If you can't do that, your not a good son are you.

That's a bit of a stretch. Tell that to someone who was brought into this world who's family couldn't give a hoot less about them. I will agree that he should support himself and etc. but I was raised this way: If I was warned repeatedly about something and I still screwed up, then I could expect no help from those who warned me. As a parent I would expect nothing different from my children. A parent should know better. Unfortunately, I see it all to often where the grown children (20 something) seem to have more common sense and are better at staying out of trouble than their 40 something parents.