I mean, I always used to fancy as a kid why can’t we use magnets to keep a fan going in circles? Why can”t we create a perpetual machine using magnets? Even if the magnets get worn out, we can still use them for considerable time. What is the science behind it that makes it impossible?
In: Engineering
There is no way to arrange magnets in a way that they don’t cancel the motion they create out. Yes you can offset two magnets and as they pull towards each other they will induce motion, but you can’t control the direction towards which they’re attracting each other, meaning that as the moving magnet rushes towards the stationary magnet and goes past it, suddenly the same force that was accelerating it is now pulling it back and decelerating it.
Even gravity, which can in many ways be compared to magnets though the scales are vastly different, cannot induce perpetual motion, not truly. Yes bodies can orbit each other for billions of years, but no orbit is perfectly stable. They all eventually decay and the bodies come together, just like two magnets in a vaccuum would orbiting each other primarily due to magnetic force with no other force acting on them, which cannot really happen.
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