Perpetual Motion Machine - Periodic Table of Videos
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- Опубліковано 5 жов 2024
- Can you solve the mystery of The Professor's Perpetual Motion machine? Leave a comment!
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Sir Martyn: "Can you keep a secret?"
Audience: "Yep."
Sir Martyn: "So can I."
* waves fists in Anger* how can you just leave us without explaining!!
(P.s. I really quite enjoy your videos!!)
Oh, that's quite simple. They terminated the recording process.
He just said the fun lies in guessing what powers the device, what do you think makes it work?
there's a battery in that box... it's an elaborate motor.
a nuclear battery
precisely - kinda disappointing isn't it?
Occam's razor makes believe it might just be a low power. Long lasting battery using a simple circuit and electro magnetism to rotate the wheel. With all of the whistles and bells being a distraction intended to make you think it's based on some clever use of thermodynamics
I agree. The copper pipes and heat sinked box, while being apart of the structure I also suspect to be red herrings. In fact I think it is a lot of little red herrings intentionally.
But yes, a really well balanced slowly revolving wheel like that on dry bearings and in an enclosure will take very little energy to keep rotating. And Prof Poliakoff said it had been going for approx two years at this point. Seems reasonable.
That makes sense, keeping in mind that Poliakoff said he felt a bit cheated, when he knew the answer.
That was my thought...possibly with a clockwork on/off connection to the electro-magnets...which means we are probably wrong cause that seems obvious and I assume someone else in the past would have suggested that.
But only One person has guessed this?
Electro magnetism. It probably operates like a magnet train using electronic magnetic levitation. Using the poles of the magnets to create levitation.
"The secret is safe with Neil."
Of course it is. Neil just looks like a vault.
For those disappointed in the decision to keep the true mechanism a secret, I try to view it like this: Sir Martin himself said that its true explanation is rather disappointing and lackluster, implying it is something very basic. The real magic of this machine, therefore, is obviously not in the possibility of true perpetual motion, but instead of what we do with our imaginations to reach that unknown. In this way, as long as the inner workings remain a mystery, the machine can be thought of as a sort of perpetual machine. Not one that produces energy, but one that invokes a sense of wonder and curiosity, and helps us to generate any number of creative solutions. Looking at some of the other comments, I've seen many very interesting, if questionable, theories. If we knew how it works, these wonderfully imaginative ideas would've been lost, at least to me and those with a similar mindset.
Wonderful video, all in all!
Synchron I love the way you think :D
hear hear!
And
Carlos Vazquez
Or
NAH, FK THAT. TELL ME NOW!
Perpetual motion machine. Attach toast with jam to cats back.
Lift cat, and drop.
Cat always lands on it's feet. Toast always lands jam down.
The result can only be a perpetually spinning cat stuck in mid air.
PJ put it in a washing machine drum and ta-da, free electricity
uhm actually .. thats how a washing machine works
but you need lift, so you wrap the cat in magnets and drop it on opposite pole magnets that are designed to stabilize rotating cat mid air. cat is immortal so no need to worry about food
The cat is in an ambiguous state until observed. Fail.
Except if the cat lands on its feet (which would happen) then the toast hasn't landed at all.
This guy... He put decoy elements of common (fake) perpetual motion machines on it to throw us off. He added weights similar to the unbalanced wheel, he added unmarked boxes in locations that could be anything from magnets to batteries to motors, he even added copper tubes running from one side to the other which would suggest a heat transfer...
I hope you're starting to see my point here: we cannot get the same enjoyment and wonder of asking the now deceased man (rip) if our guessed are correct or not and since it contains elements from literally every perpetual motion machine ever made, there is no way to know if we are getting any closer to an answer...
I respect your wishes to keep the inner workings a secret, but I just wanted to let you guys know that it leaves the viewer in kind of awkward position.
Btw: Love your videos, have been watching and subscribed for years. I started with Brady's early stuff around 2012 until I caught up with the backlog. Keep up the good work.
Agreed, it's intentionally elaborate, as a show piece, presumably, lot of impersonations of other ideas, and I suspect the answer will just come down to a battery somewhere in the mechanism - the professor noted it /had/ slowed a little over a couple of years, but since we can't dismantle/inspect it there's no real way of disproving the long list of fake PMM methods this device mimics. No complaint though, would love to know, but isn't too important, not going to be the basis for any future inventions most likely, and was a very cool video, both the object its self and the pleasant discussion and conversation around it =) Great work as always.
I agree with Thomas here, Sir Martin will probably not read through the comments and engage (neither will Brady, "don't read the comments"-HI), so there will never be any way to verify any theory without building dozens of perpetual motion machines and waiting 40 years...
I think a good solution would be to release the answer in a week or two
Everyone looks for an electrical or magnetic source of power, while the true secret is that it is most likely entirely mechanical in nature. Everything else is misdirection as in most claimed perpetual motion devices. The secret is to leach power from natural souces while keeping friction losses to an absolute minimum. Think self winding clocks and watches...
Thomas Rad agreed. The boxes and pipes are decoys.
Why, if you think you have an answer, build it yourself...
Would be answer enough for me...
My theory is that it's a real perpetual motion machine with a battery powered brake release, and as the battery slowly goes flat it can't hold the brakes off as well and they start to clamp in and slow the machine down, tricking everyone into thinking it's not really perpetual motion :-)
Vink genius!
That sounds very Daedalus. I second your proposal.
Excellent suggestion, but Martyn would have to be easily disappointed if that's what the letter says.
But... then its not perpetual because it cannot run forever
Vink You are joking right?
Its not an RTG is it?
Humm... seems to check out, it would need heat dissipation. something with a fairly short half life like perhaps tritium? How much would it actually need? If so seems unlikely that this would be sell-able.
Watching the video again I think it wouldn't be a thermal generator but electrostatic so RSG. Essentially the radioisotope generates an electric charge and as the charges recombine they delver energy to the wheel. perhaps the "thermal fins" are actually there to ground the device? at any rate its probably not that radioactive or the professor wouldn't be anywhere near it given how he is about perceived safety.
You should build one! even if you are wrong in this particular devices function I bet you could still recreate the effect!
Yes, the circle on the side of the deadco sign does look suspiciously like a radiation window.
I think I will build one! it wont be as large... but I think I could get something to wok.
Speaking of magicians, Neil is truly the Teller to Poliakoff's Penn.
Everyone's talking about "Occam's Razor" and batteries, motors, etc. If it was a battery or any sort of low power engine, someone in a group of engineers and physicists surely would have guessed that easily. We need to go simpler: I say *EVERY* bit and bob is a red herring. This is nothing but a greased wheel in a sealed container with the air removed. It's then spun, and the lack of significant air resistance, low friction, and minimal opposing forces allows it to continue spinning for an extremely long time.
Anyone who's ever spun a freshly lubricated bicycle wheel will understand. Those things spin and maintain their initial velocity far, far longer than you ever expect them to. If you get the balance just right and remove as many outside friction/forces as possible, two years isn't so far fetched.
Matthew Thomas Given the speed of rotation, you don't actually need a vacuum. Inertia alone is sufficient. Watch some of the fidget spinner videos to see how once they slow to a couple of revolutions per second, they just keep going, for an hour or more in some cases.
2 years is 700 days.
If You think it will spinn for 2 years bc of vaccum - You are out of your mind.
Btw, oil in bearings - additional resistance. Ceramic is better.
The three boxes along the rim might just be weights, to add mass and thus capacity for kinetic energy storage during the spin-up. Presumably the machine must be kept on its cart and wheeled around without tipping at all on an uneven floor, meaning the bearing wouldn't have an uneven friction anywhere inside.
A sealed bearing filled with dry graphite would be best I think.
This was a silly comment but let me just state for the record, that as of Adam Savage's video where he looks at this same device, it's made quite visually clear that it cannot be vacuum sealed. So my silly guess is not correct
I remember seeing mantel clocks a number of years ago that seemed to have no source of power, yet ran forever. The key was that the clock only required a microscopic amount of energy to keep running. That tiny bit of energy was provide by a piece of metal that would expand a little when heated and contract when cooled. The normal daily room temperature changes were enough for this tiny stretching & contracting to be converted into the mechanical motion of the clock.
Gnomes. Gnomes pedalling on little bicycles inside the boxes. There is no such thing as physics. Its all gnomes.
it got slower over the years as the gnomes ran low on rations after he died
It's a kinda maaaagic.. magic... MAAAAGIIIIC
Poor gnomes.
Always has been.
There's something that looks like an old electrovoltaic cell on the end of the DREADCO box, the kind of textured glass surface you see on old light meters.
well spotted. I had one meter with a cell exactly like that.
the box is obviously a battery... it's a simple electric motor.
it undoubtably also uses a battery
bashful The trouble with that hypothesis is that the wheel would stop in the dark. Restarting that mass with that low a voltage would be impossible.
I agree about re-starting. I'm thinking it harvests enough energy in, say, eight hours to keep it spinning for twenty-four.
The heat sinks are probably a red herring, but if I had to guess, it's some strange configuration of stirling engine?
Well the Stirling engine depends on a heat gradient so the heat sinks may very well play a part in it if it is a stirling engine...
Stirling engine also needs a a cylinder for the expansion and contraction of the gas and I don't see any devices for mechanical power transfer to the wheel
Theoretically you can create an air draft just from cooling/heating air, as in PC heat sink heat pipes (used a lot in laptops, and now phones).
Chalk Chalkson the pipes themselves could serve as gas storage
There are several, like the nozzle blowing into the small cups near the hub. Also there could be a solar panel inside the DREADCO box behind the circular window. Also it could be some sort of energy harvesting devices inside there, combining all the available sources of energy (heat gradients in the room, radio waves, light etc.) to overcome friction.
My guess would be a sealed vacuum capsule from a barometer driving a self winding watch mechanism. Atmospheric pressure changes wind the escapement mechanism while the mass and momentum of the wheel sustain rotation. Gradual loss of vacuum in the capsule and wear in the components has reduced efficiency over time and hence the wheel is slowing gradually. An additional rotating weight could also contribute to winding the mechanism every time the wheel is moved. Essentially just a big version of a self winding watch. All the other bits bolted on are for misdirection, to increase mass, and provide perfect balance.
i said spring in axle & thought perhaps a watch winding simulacrum
Michael Kaliski and where does the wind come from...?
I'm GChaser The word "wind" is a bit ambiguous as it has two meanings, to blow air and to twist or apply torque to something. The wind I was referring to was meant in the torque twisting sense. All such machines which (may) rely on atmospheric or other environmental changes to power or recharge their mechanism, ultimately derive their power from solar emissions. The secret to discovering how it works is to consider how much energy is needed to balance friction losses in the system, then find a way to extract that energy from the local surroundings in a way that is not obvious to an observer. Microwatts are trivial, a few milliwatts requires careful engineering and design. The size of this machine distracts from the actual energy required to just sustain motion. Then there is the obvious solution of just using an external magnetic field to adjust or boost the speed of rotation periodically.
You did not answer my question... my question was where is the source of wind?
I'm GChaser you don’t need wind as such, just changes in air pressure that happen as weather changes.
I like this idea, it’s clever.
It is remarkable the way all your videos capture all my attention. I make a instant stop and run to my big screen to see it. (Mostly more than once). Really love this 5 minutes with you guys.... You took me out of a cruel reality that we are having in my country the once Great an Mighty VENEZUELA... You give me the energy... Those five minutes are one's treasure. Thanks Professor And NEAL (And the crew behind cameras).
My guess is it's being powered by a Zamboni pile battery cell or similar. The same sort of battery has been powering the Oxford Bell since 1840 so it helps explain the longevity of the machine while also accounting for it's gradually slowing rotation.
ya. its probably just a battery powered device, but i love the illusion
My hunch too, especially because the small copper cups on the perspex disc around the hub are traced by two electrodes. So this could simply be a high tension motor with one electrode charging the cups to kilovolt potential acting as the tinfoil ball static electricity physics experiment, repelling them at one side and the other electrode attracting and discharging them. Though it looks like an ordinary bike hub in the center, it is a low friction naked bearing, which is needed for this to work?
I reckon there's a battery there - possibly concealed in the black boxes around the rim but just as likely in the hub (where I anticipate there to be a kind of electric motor). Battery possibly of a type where air provides the oxidising agent (similar to hearing aid cells)
Always been a lousy student regarding chemistry but these videos have ignited my love for this branch of science :)
While some comments are lamenting the inability to ask the creator if they're right about how it works, I think the main take away from this particular video is that not knowing how something works does not mean that it works in impossible ways.
Excellent point!
Niel frowns when he’s trying not to smile. I love it.
Reed switch and electromagnet hidden in one or both of those black metal pieces on either side of the wheel. The heatsinks and that center wheel are red herrings, unless it's an electrostatic motor. Nothing with enough heat output to warrant those heatsinks would last 2 years running continuously
Teth47 I believe I saw an old style photovoltaic cell on the side of the Dreadco box which would provide a small amount of power for this set up.
One for Martyn: In the Kensington Scuence Museum, they used to display a small mechanical clock which never needs winding up. It has no external winding mechanism. It works by diurnal temperature changes acting on a metal diaphragm, which is one side of a container of air. Expansion and contraction of the air does the winding, and a 3°F temperature change (and any ambient air pressure changes) each day will keep it running.
My (very likely wrong) guess for that wheel is that it contains a crystal set, tuned to a local transmitter, maybe TV or FM, and that charges supercapacitors or a cell, which keeps it rotating via magnetic fields. _Delete this comment if I'm correct!_
Or do they leave it up, knowing we would think it must be false if it's not been deleted? Besides, any action would be an "answer" of sorts and clearly no answers are forthcoming.
I cant understand why people want this machine beng magnetic or electric. Just keep it simple: thermal!
I'll go with occam's razor here: the middle box in the middle with "DREADCO" on it has a small motor with a battery that's been set to run really slowly. the pipes, heat sinks and other boxes are there just to throw people off. this was a guy who knew perpetual motion machine were fake and sold it to people who also knew it was fake. so he was just having fun with them. that's my guess anyways
Someone (in fact nearly everyone) would have suggested that. I'm tempted to go the other way. I'm thinking that all the odd elements of other perpetual motion machines all sort of do a little something. I'm hoping it is a Rube Goldberg machine or sorts.
fatsquirrel75 Prof. Poliakoff says "Oh, it's just that." That would be an obvious clue wouldn't it?
12mjk21 I agree with you. I even thought of something like a winding spring. That would slow down over two years.
even simpler i imagine, you would be amazed how small electric motors can be, the size of a pencil, 3 cm long, would be planty to run this thing, and there is so much space fo batteires, in all the boxes attatched to the wheel, and the copper pipe, the heat sink, the "magnet looking things"
I also think it's a battery device. But we've got to keep with a solution of 1981. The best battery would be Alkaline, the best motor would be... well, less efficent than today, I'd guess. (Which isn't to say it hasn't been upgraded and lasts longer today than originally.)
Don't forget dry pile batteries, guys. There's a battery called the Zamboni pile that's been powering the Oxford Bell continuously for almost 180 years.
It might be a year ago, but I'd still like to express my condolences.
Good to see he left the mystery of this machine in a fun way, that means the secret didn't immediately get lost with time, and without spoiling the fun.
So easy. I mean, I've almost finished my own over-unity (by 5%) perpetual motion machine. Well, when I say "almost finished", I'm 94% of the way there but that last 6% should be easy, right?
I worked out how it (probably) worked and built my own version in about 1990, which was displayed in the tech workshop at school. My youngest son aged 3 saw it and I asked him how it worked. He said "It's got batteries in". For those familiar with some mystery clocks the mechanism is well known.
Inside one of the tin cans mounted on the wheels is a very small geared motor simply driving a small offset weight. This shifts the C of G of the whole wheel and around it goes. At least that's how mine worked. If he has been very clever the batteries are in the other boxes and there are some thin wires hidden around the rim.
Wow, that could actually be it.
Donald Sayers this machine spins atva constant rate
If it were as you said the wheel would accelerate and slow down with each passing of the boxex
So if you laid the machine on it's side, it would stop turning. They should have tried that on the video!
viermidebutura
, No it wouldn't. The offset mass always hangs downward, if the motor drives it at a constant rate, the wheel goes around at a constant rate.
Interpret this as you will, I copy and pasted this from my prev comment:
I found a BBC documentary on this exact machine with the same prof present and they measured an electromagnetic field near the box with the heatsink and the DREADCO box. No other magnetic field was found anywhere else.
When the Professor pointed at Neal I waved at Neal.... and Neal waved back!
He's truly scary. How did he know? What other powers does he have?
Eliphas Leary why did you wave at a video?
either takes your meds or lay off em dude.
yesterday right, I heard my name being called, and just as I looked up, standing there, was someone I knew. freaky right?
I think it moves by sending pulses through to the 2 horse-shoe shaped electromagnets (black tape covers their small coils). There are 3 iron boxes to weight and balance the wheel and get attracted towards the relevant magnet, when it's powered. The power switching circuit knows the position of the wheel through those pointed rods on the box in the middle acting as (friction free) hall effect type sensors on the brass studs on the perspex disk passing near them. There is a battery and control circuitry either in the middle box, or in the box on the bottom and wiring is all hidden in the plumbing and frame. I guess you can make a low voltage system to move the wheel slowly for a long time. The glass case is there to act against air currents and to stop people fiddling with it. That's my guess!
I wouldn't be surprised if most of the equipment is there as a distraction, and otherwise has nothing to do with the movement. The product was created on the premise of being phony, so why couldn't a lot of the hardware also be non-productive?
Well he has heat exchanges, weights, magnets etc in there - all elements from different types of 'perpetual motion' machines. My guess is all of them are non-functional and the real mechanism has nothing to do with them at all - perhaps they are used to hide the actual mechanism that is turning the wheel from view.
Hi, my theory: First law of Newton
It has extremely eficient bearing, it has not air inside the box. It has not any transformation of energy inside the box, it would will generete losess.
Inside the boxes are bacteria and food. A small hole on one side is the only release of gasses produced by the bacteria which gently pushes the wheel round.
That's right, it's powered by fart! 😂
I like this idea
Lucid Enigma no obviously not, the gas would travel around the container until it pushed the wheel in the opposite direction
That wont work...
There is too much weight there for it to be propelled by low pressure gasses.
Also take not that he said, it is slowing down, if it was biochemical, it wont last too long, and it wont slow down, well it will but only in a short period, then the weights of it all will stop its motion..
An invisible hamster is walking on the wheel. That's why the professor felt cheated.
@Periodic Videos
My best guest: This perpetual motion machine moves because the center of mass of the wheel is not at the axis, but a bit off to the left, making the wheel rotate counterclockwise. And the center of mass gets constantly shifted towards the left as it rotates, in order to keep it going. It does this by means of those three boxes that are positioned exactly one-third away from each other along the wheel, which (I think) contains some weighted objects that changes their relative position within those boxes whenever the box passes one of the two U-shaped things that are positioned at equal heights to each other, but both are slightly below the axis of the wheel (which I think there is an important reason for that to be the case).
When a box passes the U-shaped thing (let’s call them key slots) on the left (going down), the weight inside it moves by some means outward. This changes the center of mass slightly towards the left, but enough such that gravity makes the wheel turn. Not soon after this, another box ahead of the wheal passes another key slot on the right (going up). This makes the weight inside it (which would at first be positioned outwards) move inwards, which again would shift the center of mass to the left. Let’s call these changes in center of mass inside the boxes a “switch”: switch+ when the weight is moved outward and switch- when the weight is moved inward. The reason why these key slots are located slightly below the center of the axis is because these changes must occur in at specific positions, at specific times in relation to each other. If the key slots were located at the same hight as the axis (or higher), the switch- would happen to late, the center of mass would move too far to the right making the wheel slow down. Likewise, if these key slots were positioned too low, the switch+ would happen too late, which has the same effect. And perhaps there is another reason why these key slots are located slightly below the axis (which I will explain below).
Exactly how the weights within the boxes “switches” around like this, I am not quite sure. I am more certain that magnets at the key slot are used to move the weights inside as the boxes passes the key slots, because magnets weaken over time and it was noted that the motion of the wheel had slowed down. But in what way these weights are moved, I don’t know. There are probably thousands of different working mechanisms you could use within these boxes, so I don’t think it is important to guess what the mechanism is. Whatever it is, the mechanism ensures that the weights are fixed in one position until the box passes a key slot, which makes the switch happen. And if my suspicion that the key slots contain magnets is true, there must also magnets inside each box that are attracted (or pushed) by the magnets of each key slot. The boxes react in the exact same way to each key slot, so the mechanism inside the boxes must be exactly the same. The set-up of the key slots must be different in order for the boxes to react differently when passing the slots. So I guess that at one key slot, the magnet attracts the magnet inside the box, making the switch go one way. At the other key slot, the magnet is flipped so it repulses the magnet inside the box, making the switch go the other way. I can’t think of adding any more details based on inductive reasoning alone. One other thing I noticed is that because the key slots are located slightly below the axis, the boxes passes the key slots at an angle and this isn’t symmetrical when you compare the passes at both key slots. At switch+ (going down) the box passes bottom (the side of the box glued to the outside of the wheel) first, and at the other slot the top side goes first. Since this asymmetry is slight, perhaps this isn’t important. If it is, it could have to do with how the slots make the switch go in different ways. A different way of approaching the magnet (bottom/top first) could change the switch inside the box.
As you would have noticed, I didn't mention the copper tubes with the heat sink, nor those electric wires near the axis. These are clever red herrings to send most people on the wrong track, making them think the wheel spins on electricity or even on heat transfer like stirling engines. However, both electricity and thermodynamics requires contact (well, thermodynamics can work without direct contact via air, but it is more efficient with solid objects, which is required in this case because the wheel spins too fast for it to run on heat transfer), and since the only direct contact that happens to the wheel is via the axis itself, which appears very clearly to be just a simple axis with no motor or fancy heat transferring mechanism to drive the motion of the wheel.
So, did I get it right?
Why is there a "window" on the DREADCO box.. hmm
for a machine built in 1980 though?
yes solar calculators came in the 70s
oh of course :facepalm: now i'm having flashbacks to those casio calculators
Yeah looks like an infrared beam detector. Maybe a timing/switching mechanism.
most likely had a light on it at one point or lights up when its initially spun. since it spins at a constant speed imperceptibly slowing down, you'd conclude that its never going to stop. most likely took the light off as it made it easier to solve.
Instead of a perpetual motion machine, let's instead call it a perpetual imagination machine. For whilst it's workings remain a mystery, it invokes a multitude of imaginative ideas as to how it works. For me that's the real gift of this machine and the man who made it.
I have a guess. It might be wrong, but I think it's strong enough that you shouldn't read this post if you're still trying to figure it out...
it's a solar-powered electric motor. The windows in the sides of the DREADCO box are solar cells: there are wires hidden in the frame that run to U-shaped electromagnets on either side. The magnets pull on the metal boxes mounted to the wheel. But timing is crucial! The metal cups mounted to a plastic disk are electrically charged, and an electronic circuit (a MOSFET-based flip-flop?) senses this charge using the round ball electrode on the left side of the DREADCO box. This turns the current to each electromagnet on as the can is approaching, and off as the can moves away.
The cleverest bit is, how do the little metal cups get their electric charge? The pointy electrode on the right side provides it. The high voltage required is probably created by electromagnetic induction as the coils are switched on and off -- it's like the ignition coil in an old car, but much weaker.
The copper pipes and heat sinks and such are just red herrings.
If it is indeed slowing down tho, it seems less likely to be solar power and electromagnets. If its slowing down then it's more likely to be a very efficient battery or chemical reaction.
maybe the battery are dying
Could be that the bearings on the wheel are wearing out and the friction is increasing over time.
In a BBC documentary, they measured electric fields and could only find them in the heat sink and the DREADCO box.
I imagine it is very simple. The three boxes are magnets that are repelled by opposing magnets (the horse shoe shaped). The excessive insulation on both the boxes and the horse shoes is to limit the repelling force of the magnets to eliminate the 'clunk' effect. The machine slows down owing to the bearings fouling with dust and the oil depleting. The wheel itself is isolated from the frame by the glass housing of the bearings at it will also become magnetised. You can see the bearings actually spin slightly slower that the centre shaft, again, there may be resistance in those to allow for fluid movement. The rest of the items like the Dreadco box, the anode/cathode, the heat sink and copper pipes are all smoke and mirrors.
For once Wikipedia is no help at all: David E. H. Jones "is also known for his series of fake perpetual-motion machines".
Edit: My guess is a nuclear isotope thermo-electric generator...
P.S. I used to love his columns as Daedalus in New Scientist...
Your guess actually sounds believable - batteries and chemicals would run out much faster. Meanwhile, nuclear isotopes are still powering the Voyager probes (which were launched a few years before this machine was built).
YES that's what I was thinking about.
I hate to copy paste answers, but I didn't want to retype the entire thing either, so sorry for the repetition:
TLDR; Probably not nuclear batteries, even though that would work.. maybe evaporation/sublimation or temperature gradients in the room.
Yea, you could theoretically just have a few grams of plutonium, each gram generates about half a Watt in thermal power decaying by half every 88years. However I strongly doubt this is what is going on.
He built it in the 80s, sort of a highpoint for RTGs, but Pu238 was still super expensive and not available for the general public. In fact very few nuclear materials are.
An isotope that was relatively easy to obtain is tritium, this has a half-life of ~12.5years and the decay emits ~19keV which comes out to ~1W/g of tritium. This isotope was commonly used for watched and signs/markings showing emergency exits, so a civilian would have had an easier time picking it up. After 40 years it would only provide 10% of the power at the beginning though, so we can probably cross that off the list, too.
My guess would be that a simpler temperature gradient is exploited, some water is evaporating cooling some bits down a tiny bit, maybe iodine? Or maybe this device is efficient enough to draw from the temperature gradient between the top and the bottom of the device.... I don't know is any of these would be possible though
To start moving you need to overcome the friction of the system ... and a bicycle wheel of that size isnt a featherweight. Added to it are some metal boxes which wont make it lighter. I doubt that such TINY things like a temperature gradient will be enough to overcome it and anything involving nuclear decay needs a way to "transform" the energy from the radiation into electrical power ... which is quite a big operation and wont work without "protection".
I suspect it's something else, just because that would be pretty easy to test with a Geiger counter.
My take: It's a very simple motor. Inside the cans are permanent magnets that are pushed/pulled by the coils at the end of the arm. The center hub contains at least a few magnets that cause magnetic reed switches to close when the magnets pass by. When the reed switches close, they energize their respective coils which push or pull the wheel.
Inside one of the boxes is a set of batteries. The reason the machine can run as long as it has is that the coils are on for a very short period of time (aka a short duty cycle) and are likely current limited by either a high-winding coil with very thin copper gauged wire, or else a resistor. The low friction of the bicycle wheel allows for the wheel to continue spinning with very little energy needed to make up for friction-heat loss.
A possible variation of this (though unlikely for something made in the 1980's) is a hall effect sensor in the place of the reed switches. The cans themselves also don't necessarily need permanent magnets in them if the cans are made of/contain steel or another ferromagnetic material.
Message to the keeper/s of this machine - you will want to replace the batteries every so often to prevent leaks. Otherwise, you'll end up with corroded contacts and a messy cleanup.
I think there’s a 10:1 ratio of misdirection within this device. My guess is that the heat sink and copper pipes are simply conduit for electrical cable.The black boxes and ‘horseshoe magnets’ are probably non-magnetic aluminium or plastic.The Dreadco sign is thick enough to house a certain something.There’s a lot going on around the axis of the wheel...hmmmmm.
its probably just a dc generator/electromagnetic motor.
My guess would be something to do with a secret battery compartment and electromagnets. The electromagnets might turn on and off when triggered by the smaller magnets closer to the axis of the wheel.
Simple but yet functional.
but yet it has been running for apparently a couple of years without intervention.
It's also slowing down, adding to the battery theory. You don't need much juice to keep this turning.
what if the wheel needs to be re-oiled or somethin and thats the cause of the slowing??
Including parts that need lubrication is about the biggest mistake you can make when building a "perpetual motion machine".
Wolfram like Nova said, that would be a big mistake. Bearings without oil run faster than bearings with oil. The oil helps against heavy wear, but that is no problem here.
I'd guess something with electromagnetism given the coils, and especially given the fact that they've slowed down over time as if the battery powering it is begun to run low.
I actually thing the Centre of Mass is not balanced (due to the boxes, which I assume could be a magnet itself) as a small push would then leave it rotating around and the copper tube there is providing some sort electromagnetic force due to rotation of bicycle wheel.
I suggest the boxes contain any kind of switch (Hg) that finds, if this box is in between 6to0 hour position when a mass is shifted closer to the axle, and between 12 and 6 hour it is moved away from the axle powered by a long lasting battery in each of these three boxes. In order to start motion from any position three boxes are required.
The wheel stays still, and our hopes of free energy rotates the universe around it.
I found a BBC documentary on this exact machine with the same prof present and they measured an electromagnetic field near the box with the heatsink and the DREADCO box. No other magnetic field was found anywhere else.
the11382 could you link the video or give me a name I would love to watch that.
If true, then my hypothesis may be in jeopardy.
As I see there are two main possibilities.
1. The machine is getting power from outside (ie, a thermal machine, vibration collector, etc.).
2. The machine has a slowly discharging potential energy source inside of it (battery, spring, compressed air, slow chemical reaction, etc).
I have no doubt that I could create something that managed to have the same effect using several different methods. Exactly which method might or might not have been used on the machine in question is fairly useless speculation, especially since there have obviously been deliberate methods of misdirection employed to prevent guessing which method was actually used.
I have made similar comments about magic tricks in reference to the Penn and Teller show Fool Us. Others may disagree but a good magic trick is one in which I have no guesses as to how the trick was accomplished. If I could figure a way to replicate the effect, even if it is not the same method that was used, the trick has lost its luster.
Yes but then the number of tricks is severely reduced. Tricks of the calibre you described are difficult to come up with. Clearly this has provided amusement (glance at the like bar for confirmation).
My grandfather once had an Atmos Clock. It ran by changing air pressure in a expansion chamber. Changing temperature expanded or contracted a gas in the chamber which moved a spring counter weight. If the Professor's Wheel is stored in an air conditioned environment, it might not have enough temperature difference to keep the wheel running quickly. Or there is slight leakage with the gas. Less gas, less pressure difference and less motion.
electrostatic from the needle. aka an ion breeze into the cups
Wut?
This has to be the correct answer.
Magnetic equilibrium... it cant work
Because you noted the believing what we see bit I am inclined to think that the case itself contains bateries and possibly it's using magnets to rotate the wheel, or maybe even a little motor. Those would be my guess.
The highest level of clickbait
I mean... What were you expecting? Obviously it wasn't going to be a video about a real pmm
At least he could explain how it "works"
professor level clickbait
It can't be click bait.
There's no bold red circle at an arbitrary position on the thumbnail!
@Nicholas, where would all the fun of speculating go, if you knew the answer?
Build two yourself and do the experiment; On machine, where you explain it after some years and another working differently, where you don't explain how it works. Then measure how long/much people talk about the machine.
My guess: I think the three can like objects contain a long-lasting set of batteries and also an electromagnet. There is a timing/control logic board in the large box in the center marked DREADCO. The small spike and ball like objects may also be sensors that either help count the number of brass-like buttons that are on the inner plastic wheel. In any case, the logic board signals the box-cans on the outer rim to very briefly charge their internal electromagnet just as it is approaching the apparent permanent magnets they go through on the X-axis. This provides just enough perfectly timed impulse to keep the wheel rotating in the counterclockwise direction. Obviously the batteries used must be very long life (possibly mercury cells) and the amount used to drive the electromagnets must be very low in order to conserve power. Basically this is not unlike low-power clocks and watches that can run for 10 years or more with the slightest power.
David Jones said that most of what you see is mere distractions. Those who know how it works all say they are disappointed by how simple it really is. I believe the center square tube houses a double spring arrangement, just like a garage door spring, but smaller, and the "dreadco" box houses the gears, which are just scaled up watch gear arrangements. Just like spring wound watches, it takes along time for them to wind down. But watches have a very small spring. It is just a scaled up watch, and nothing more. That is why it is "so simple", and it only goes around for about 2 years, slowing down before it stops, just as spring watches do. It is as simple as a watch. There is no electricity involved. Even David Jones said it is almost all it is distraction, and the secret is hidden just like a magician would do. Thats why all the copper, and magnets do nothing, and the spring is hidden inside what seems to be just the housing of the object.
Seeing the copper pipes and those metal fins make me think there’s a heat transfer going on
That was my thought as well. But the professor said it was running down, so likely it's just a battery.
Possibly a peltier element exploiting some heat gradient
A battery that lasts 30 years? Get real guys.
My guess is it's probably taking in the air on the top, cools it and threw the flow to the other side to the nozzle next to the wheel it drives it. Might have slowed down because the air changed humidity over the years.
Copper and heat sink will suggest that.
I thought this too until I sneaked a peek at the letter
this is not a perpetual motion machine but a flywheel of incredible efficiency
Ten years working with the Prof and we’re only just finding out he owns a perpetual motion machine!
There are several hints in the video that helps us to make a good guess:
1) The fact that the wheel has been turning for two years, but been slowing down over the time period suggests quite a clever process, but one that is probably dependent on an electrical battery.
2) The steady rate of turn of the wheel would tend to reject the use of magnets, unless there were magnets all the way around the circumference of the wheel.
3) The question remains, how does the battery tranfer its work energy into the wheel?
Clearly some sort of nuclear decay going down in there. Bicycle bearings ar not near the bests of the industry, so a lot of energy is lost at each rotation. Even if the case is holding a vacuum the energy consumed by the bearing would be too high, and it can´t also be any form of recovering this energy because I can´t think of an insulation strong enough to contain it within the case. It can´t be using battery or chemical power, because at least I don´t know of any form of chemical stored energy dense enough to keep this going for years (Tesla would be crazy to buy it in that case lol). That´s a mini thermonuclear machine, just grab a Geiger counter and test it!
If it were something based on nuclear decay, that would be very easy to check with a geiger counter.
"clearly"
The professor owns a perpetual machine? It makes sense why he replied to my question about the subject when I emailed him ages ago about this...amazing!
The design I envisioned would have had mirros and lens to focus sunlight into a point (or more) to spin magnetically levitating graphite disks in short.
Although not a true perpetual motion machine by definition, it would have been an interesting concept that I never explored further.
I'd assume the Professor's machine works by carefully balancing a few different systems, one of which might be a gas condensing and evaporating due to temperature variation in an endless cycle inside the machine (boxes, tubes), offsetting the weight of the wheel and making it spin.
Much love to you all and the ones reading this.
Tell us how it works plz
Not sure if you're the one and only Clorox Bleach, but I've seen you in the comment section of SO MANY videos I watch. I feel like I've seen you in livestream chats too...
dELTA13579111315 jheez please tell me you are joking. There are thousands of accounts called chlorox bleach, and the same pp. they all think they are funny and original.
- chaz nah man, it's the internet. That kinda stuff doesn't happen
1:09 I've seen a wheel spin by putting a negative charge on tips like the one on the right, causing electrons to be released from the tip. My guess would be there's a battery in the Dreadco box with its negative end connected to the tip on the left and its positive end connected to the ball-shaped electrode on the left. The tiny metal pieces in the wheel would catch some electrons, thus causing the wheel to rotate counterclockwise mainly due to coulombic forces and some inertia from the "electron beam".
Not sure if that would count as disappointing, though. But if it was just a motor spinning the wheel, more than just 1 person would've gotten it right.
The secret is that the three boxes contain some dark energy and dark matter in a balanced proportion where the attraction and repelling forces causes the rotational spin.
This video is about how one scientist wrote a letter to another scientist. Bravo!
4:16 There's something on top of the box
Prof, it's just a spring on top of the box isn't it?
June 2018 is here! This channel will be turning 10 years old later this month!
1:06 The motion of the wheel and bearing are out of sync.
Ball bearings my friend. they'll be rotating at a fraction of the speed the bearing spins.
Top of ball v=bearing speed
Bottom of ball v=0
Center of ball v=bearing speed/2
Connor Wiebe Oh! Thanks
Bicycle wheels are amazingly free running and small battery powered clocks seem to run for ages using only very small batteries. So my guess would be to conceal a battery and a clock mechanism style circuit inside the hub. This is essentially a tiny pulsed stepper motor and gears. The mass of the wheel would serve to smooth out the pulsed motion normally seen on the second hand of quartz clocks.
Such a delicate mechanical linkage would probably be damaged just from moving it across the room.
You should check out Reidar Finsrud's perpetual motion machine. It uses a series of pendulums and magnets to send a steel ball around in a circle. It's really quite clever and can stay moving for weeks. Also the guy who built it is a bit of a mad scientist/sculpter/painter, and keeps the machine locked away in his basement because he's afraid the world isn't ready for his revolutionary invention.
Ze Rubenator but this has been going for years
This has been going for years, but it also employs some cheap trick in order to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if an electric motor or gyros are involved. Energy is being _perpetually_ put into the system by some device. Finsrud's engine runs on its own.
Finsrud's machine runs on its own, after being started of course, but does end: it is not a perpetual motion device, with an efficiency rating of 0.8. Finsrud himself admits to this
One has to remember the technology that existed when this was built. A lot of the guesses are based technology which did not exist when the machine was built. One clue is the professor says he knows it's been running contentiously for two years. Prof also said it's slowing down. I'm thinking batteries with a switching motor. Remember this is a nearly perfectly balanced bicycle wheel which once it starts spinning will has very little friction and will continue to spin with very little energy.
Interesting that only one person has figured it out, and only one other was close.
Temp difference
again i have to say i feel so happy and excited to see more frequent uploads from the channel. Thank you Prof & Brady.
My gut is saying magnets
Magnets would be cheating ... due to the use of magic.
Magnets are not a power source. They may be part of the solution, but you still need some power source. I think it's simply a battery.
Magnets? How do they work?
Corvette C7.R the answer cant be that obvious, because other people guessed too, they probably thought magnets too... since that is the majority
As Pyriold points out, magnets are not a power source.
A mechanical source such as a fan to cause rotation requires too much power. Therefore, I don't assume its anything like that. Now as far electrical goes, I believe the middle of the wheel which has those little cylindrical features are ferrous material which are pulled by the circular shaped object near them. The circular object is magnetized by a batter source in the middle of the wheel. The boxes are actually weights which are needed to hide the pulling force. If the angular inertia was too low, the jerky motion would be detected. The power required to magnetize the metal rod would be enough to compensate for the losses of friction in the bearings and minor loss of the air. If I could see the thing in person, I would make a better guess at it. Thanks for posting either way, it is fun trying to guess how he did it.
I would say that each of the three boxes contain a long life battery, (maybe lithium?) a coil of wire and some electronics. There appear to be two magnets opposite each other along the outer frame. As the wheel turns, when the boxes pass by the magnets, a small current is induced in the coil which is sensed by the electronics in the boxes. This triggers the electronics to send a small current pulse through the coil. This gives the wheel a tiny push (electromagnetically) using energy from the battery. If the device was very efficient, it could easily run for several years. The copper tubing and heat sinks are just for show. I'm quite sure that this is what's going on, I would be surprised if it worked in any other way. There are many conversation pieces that are based on this principle...
Yep
The only thing Neil was thinking was hurry up Professor. The sun is out and I want to go ride my motorbike.
I love watching Neil trying not to laugh as he's being called "inscrutable." xD
he loves it. That's probably the sole reason for him not speaking for 20 years, to one day be called "inscrutable" or something similar :P
My guess is all that tubing conceals an antenna, and that it steals ambient radio, television, and cellphone transmissions to power weak electromagnets to keep the wheel spinning. It probably has a battery so that it can store power to keep it going when signals are weak or absent, and it's this battery which is beginning to degrade.
Would it be best to store it with the axle facing north/south rather than east/west? So there would less gyroscopic stress slowing the unit. Seems like these miniscule forces WOULD add up eventually?
I think that there is a small motor inside the axle which is powererd by a battery (presumably inside the dreadco box) connected to either side of the axle. It wouldn't need much torque to compensate friction losses. All the surroundings look like they are just drawing our attention.
I believe their are 2 spirings inside the center support bar, similiar to what garage door springs look like, but much smaller. The "dreadco" box has a gear winding mechanism inside. All the rest is pure distraction. David Jones even said that most of the gadgets you see are just for distraction. It operates just like a spring wound watch, but because it has the spring wound across a 2 foot span, it can operate a much larger wheel. Spring wound clocks slow down as they wind down, which is why they have to be adjusted every month or so. This machine does the same.
Brady, the Prof and others have been making Periodic Videos for years and this is the first time we hear of this machine?! DREADCO broke the laws of thermodynamics and it is perpetual motion.
The ultimate way to troll someone. Instead of gifs in the future I’m just going to paste this video to my enemies; and friends!
My guesses:
1) The three boxes mounted to wheel each contain a small electromagnet, battery and simple circuity including a reed switch. As the box passes the magnet at a specific position, the reed switch closes (due to magnet force) energizing the electromagnet. A pulling/pushing force is generated between the electromagnet and permanent magnet. The trick would be ensuring the correct bias on the reed switch/timing to prevent the wheel from being stalled as the magnetic fields 'align'.
2) There is a small electric motor in the beige project box below the hub and axle. Perhaps a friction drive wheel is hidden in the horizontal square tubing.
There's a motor in the wheel with it's axel fixed so that the wheel and motor are rotating instead.
Energy cells (batteries) are located in the aluminium box covered in heat sinks for misdirection, and wires are concealed within the copper pipes (again, for misdirection) and within the box sections supporting the fixed motor axis.
If you pause around 2:30, you can see the motor hidden inside the wheel and notice how it's screwed to the clear acrylic plate.
My guess is that the two metal things coming up from the Dreadco box are plates of a capacitor. They induce a slight electrostatic charge in the ring of bolts on circular acrylic plate. I "feel" the shape of the capacitor plates are important for creating an asymmetrical charge imbalance (hence why one is pointy and the other is short and round). This may provide a very slight acceleration to the wheel. The atmosphere in the box could also be prepped to reduce capacitor leakage. I think this could produce a fairly efficient device and there is plenty of room in the device to stuff as many batteries as you would need. The boxes on the outside of the wheel may just be for decoration, or they may act as flywheels to increase the angular momentum of the device.
If I had to guess, it's an extremely well-balanced wheel that harvests an extremely small amount of ambient thermal, EM, and gravity energy to make up for the entropic loss. The reason it is going slower is that the permanent magnets on the wheel are starting to lose power. The inner gizmo and the copper plate with the copper tubing are what give it away. It is slightly hotter at the bottom of the case than at the top and there is an extremely sensitive gas in those containers on the wheel. The wheel's balance is SO sensitive, and it spins so freely, that it can detect the small change in buoyancy. This wheel is also attached to the spindle at the center which also acts as an electromagnetic field harvester. That reflector on the side looks like the same lattice you see on IR remotes. It is probably harvesting ambient EMF and storing it in a capacitor that pulses once it has enough in it. This is synced up so that it pulses on one of those tiny magnets in the center to generate motion. The biggest red herring are the two U magnets on the side. I think they are there to help keep the wheel's motion smooth, and by doing so, keep the magnetic impulse in phase with the magnets in the center. There might even be some hall-effect trigger in there to fire off the capacitor once it detects a field pass through it. But either way, my guess is a combination of leveraging thermal energy differentials to harvest gravitational energy, and an EMF harvester to use radio noise as energy. I BET it wouldn't work at extremely cold temperatures inside a faraday cage.
In other words, this is not so much a perpetual motion motor as much as it is an EMF DETECTOR that spins a wheel based on how much EM is present, and requires a room-temperature operating environment to work.
Of course it's hard to make a real guess based on the quick glimpse we got from the video. But the simplest explanation I can think of is just that there's a motor in the "Dreadco" box that has a little solar panel on it. Maybe an induction motor.
I believe it's powered by static electricity and photovoltaic cells seen on the side of the dreadco box. The rest is just a distraction and you can tell by the lack of effort in the box's on the wheel or piping at the base.
Also notice how the wheel is mounted on a Perspex frame, with also a Perspex wheel holding the metal cups. This is to contain the statically charged cups until the reach they ball end tip on the left of the dreadco box. The pointed tip above the right of the dreadco box repels and charges the cups, the left discharges and perhaps attracts.
Yes, I thought this was one of David Jones's machines. A brilliant man. He was a regular in the 1970s and 80s in the German scientific quiz show "Kopf um Kopf", where pupils from the science classes competed against non-science teachers of the same school. Experiments were shown, and the teams had to explain what happened, and why. In the end, the correct explanation was given by scientists. It was very unpretentious, without any show-off effects (although some experiments were impressive), but you could really learn a lot. Too soon it was decided that it was not "modern" enough, and it was cancelled, although it ran for 20 years, which isn't too bad, I guess.
Works by electromagnetic induction. Motion of the metal wheel induces a current in the copper frame which pushes the wheel off at a finely balanced distance. It will eventually slow down to a halt due to Lenz's law, but with clever architecture might go on for a few years.
I think there is a lot of misdirection built into the device. Copper piping and heat sink don’t do anything. Neither do the boxes on the wheels. I am guessing it’s powered by electromagnetic force, the clear ring embedded with magnets and the round probes. Battery powered, probably in the Dreadco box, but it doesn’t matter the location.
"We believe whatever we see."
Here's something I've never seen: two years, uncut, footage of that machine running. I propose that there is an inductive charging system and a small battery. For displays/exhibitions lasting less than a few days, there is a small relay/switch system which allows current to flow briefly as magnets move away from coils giving them a tiny amount of propulsion.
Alternatively, there is an air current in the container and PMM1 is essentially and "open-cylinder" Sterling engine. This requires a bit more dishonesty on the part of the owner, but in a closed system, you could imagine a tiny amount of fuel lasting quite a long time.
If it's neither of these, then it's a cat.
I don't know how it's a cat, but experience tells me that "mysterious, unseen, notice forces" are usually cats.
The axis of the wheel is not actually rotating on bearings, it's suspended by a magnetic casing that keeps a gap space( so no friction) and also same concept to prevent it from sliding to the side. And after the wheel was given its' initial spin the entire enclosure was thoroughly vacuumized. So the wheel will eventually slow down more and stop, but it will take a long time.
I think it has to do with temperature.
The boxes might move due to convection currents; On the other hand what heats up the inside could've been a radioactive material that is running out of fuel with time.
Or, a thermocouple converting heat into electricity getting movement onward. Or the combination of both
So there are several things here, a perpetual motion machine, theoretically, -which is possible; what is not possible is an over-unity device, one which appears to draw energy from nowhere. If you took a flywheel, set it in a perfect vacuum on a magnet bearing, and set it spinning, it would spin forever. It would readily spin down if you tried to take energy from it, however, and would only retain what was put in.
This device resembles that, in a way, but as we saw the wooden base beneath the enclosure we can be reasonably certain that this is not under high vacuum. Now, the heat sink tells us something (if we assume that it is part of the actual working bits and not simply for decoration), heat sinks are usually used on things that consume a great deal of energy, power transformers, microprocessors of many FLOPS, microwave devices. No such apparatus could be in this device, if it were dissipating heat it would have a very powerful power source like a radiothermic generator, which I find unlikely. Instead, if we are assuming the heat sink does something, it must be there to take in energy from around, or perhaps to ever so slightly chill something inside, for purposes of exploiting temperature differentials related to air-flow and human presence/observance of the device. I posit that this device is a type of Stirling generator or similar.
Of course it's entirely possible that this is an elaborate hoax and that there's an atomic battery in one of those boxes. Obviously he's acknowledged that it's "fraudulent", but it would be interesting to know what the "defeat condition" is- does it run down in a vacuum, or simply over time?
It looks like it is powered from the box near the axel. The electrode on the right is an electron emitter. The one on the left is a sink. A long-lasting high voltage battery is attached between them. The cups on the wheel get charged as they pass the right side electrode. The cups get discharged as they pass the left side electrode. The electric fields between the electrodes and the cups makes the wheel turn. The battery is very slowly discharged as the cups carry small bits of charge when the wheel turns. Very, very nice.
Undoubtedly it is very wise to build a machine that intrigues, keeps secret the
components of the mechanism, and does not bring any gain in the evolution
of humanity. That's really cool! Brilliant, or awesome,.. Mind blowing, actually!
My first guess is it's a sterling engine. My second guess is there are magnets in the little cans and the magnets push them to one end of the 3 cans and back to the other end. So that as the wheel turns, they are sent to the rim side by one magnet and the other side by the other magnet. So that the weight in the cans is sent to different sides in the cans. Thus rising, the weight is more toward the center and dropping its more toward the outside. Or maybe it's two systems. The heat engine creates air flow over the wheel from the copper pipe and the weights keep it going when their's no heat differential from the top and bottom of the machine.
Without much to go on i would suggest it is a stirling engine, or some sort of variant of it. Could it be driven by convection?
I doubt only one person guessed how this worked. Is clearly electromagnetic and the energy source is a battery.
Batteries are likely in the 3 boxes and they put a bit of energy in to the system each time they pass next to the two permanent magnets. There are 3 boxes so that only one box will put energy in to the system at any one time. The amount of energy is small as it just needs to counter the friction in the system.
Of course it can also be the other way around and the permanent magnets are inside the 3 boxes and the electromagnets are on the side with the battery in the bottom box but it will make more sense to have batteries in each of the boxes as they seems to have a lager volume.
Because the machine has apparently been working for decades without maintenance, we can exclude the possibility of it using (almost) any kind of electrochemical source of energy (e.g. a battery). Therefore, as it has already been stated many times in the comments, the unit is most likely powered from an old-fashioned photovoltaic cell, which the round element on the box seen at 1:56 very closely resembles. Inside the box, there may well be a motor from a cassette recorder (these are known for being able to run even at very low power) which turns the wheel via a friction drive. The dark ring painted on the wheel's acrylic inset probably serves a purpose of concealing the friction drive wheel when the machine is viewed from the other side. The friction drive theory is also confirmed by the statement that the machine used to run faster before: the small rubber wheel of a friction drive has worn out over time and the gear ratio has changed.