# Self Sufficiency/Living off the Land or Off the Grid > Making Stuff >  Making Electricity With Nothing

## Rick

I'm a bit of a fan of Sci-Fi movies. Last night I watched Pitch Black with Vin Diesel. The film is a nice Sci-Fi in and of itself but it included a bit of engineering that I found quite fascinating. The shelter the characters used as well as the electric vehicle operated from electricity created by a Crookes radiometer. 

Everyone has seen these little light bulb sized trinkets. They have 4 diamond shaped vanes inside a glass dome that holds a vacuum. One side of the vanes is painted white. The other side painted black and when light strikes the vanes they rotate on a spindle. 

We don't get to see the guts of the system, only the Crookes radiometers, but one could assume that the spindle extends through a generator so light, only light, would be rotating a generator to make electricity. 

It's really quite simple and pretty smart on the writer's part, I think, to consider that. I've never seen that type of application. Has anyone else? 

I'm curious because I would think it would be quite inexpensive and very economical. The only problem I can think of is to have a spindle with a low enough friction coefficient to be able to turn the generator windings. The output could be much higher than photovoltaic cells and much cheaper. You could use an old alternator, for example, as your generator. 

Thoughts?

----------


## 2dumb2kwit

Here's may favorite, outside the box, power generation system. LOL
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower...aterwheel.html

 And don't forget...when I joined this site, I posted a picture of my "mow-gen". I got bored on Saturday, and built a battery charger/generator out of stuff I had in the garage.

----------


## hunter63

I had one of these as a kid, the spindle was made of glass tubing drawn to a point, and rode on a needle.

I thought it was cool, and had it on my dresser for years.
Why it was never "used" to make useful power, I don't know.
My guess is that the amount of power produce wasn't enough to "turn" anything of any size compared, to the area that it would need to make room of big enough "vanes"?

Here's what I found:

http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/Cr...omedyOfErrors/

----------


## SARKY

It won't work, the drag from the generating coils would be more than the work the vane are producing.

----------


## your_comforting_company

If you made a radial array of polar aligned magnets.. so that the tube of magnets all had the same N and S ends and stuck another rod magnet anti-polar through the middle (spindle), then theoretically the inner magnet should float between the array..theoretically..
another magnet antipolar to the spindle, outside the array on each end would keep it from slipping out of the array, thus it would float suspended by magnetic fields and have no touching parts... a frictionless bearing, if it were possible to get strong enough magnetic fields to support the vanes.
friction is the detrement to all of the perpetual motion machines ever attempted. the friction coefficient will not allow the rules of energy to be broken. the rule is:
Energy created by work will always be less than the energy required to do the work, because of loss of energy, due to fricton.

anyone got 40 bucks to order the magnets and give it a try? Rick may just be on to something here...

----------


## Rick

If the vanes were in the 12-18" range and the generator something like 12v car generator or even a smaller electric motor. Every motor is a generator, right? If you have something to turn the motor then it will produce electricity. I think Sarky is right about the drag being the biggest hurdle but I would think if you could find the right sizes at some point the vanes are large enough to turn a small motor.

----------


## your_comforting_company

so who's gonna learn to blow the glass and make us one? this is an interesting prospect, i think and holds a lot of merit. I wanted to give u some recognition, but the power that be's says no!
I'd like to learn more about alternate energy sources and how to build them. I was gonna order that power4home deal while it was on sale for 50 bucks but couldn't scrape it up before the sale went off. Tell me what else you know about this stuff rick... I know u got some science in that ol' noggin  :Wink:

----------


## 2dumb2kwit

> Every motor is a generator, right?


 Well...that kinda depends on the definition. A PM (permanent magnet) motor makes an ok generator, but others work off of basically an electromagnet. First you need power to get it to start charging, and then you use so much power, to charge the "electromagnet" that you use up a bunch of the power that you're making. (As in, it's terribly inefficient.)

----------


## crashdive123

> so who's gonna learn to blow the glass


No sir.  Not gonna do it. :Innocent:

----------


## preachtheWORD

I have been thinking of plans for a fairly large overshot waterwheel.  It occurs to me that the biggest problem (other than making the thing) is electricity storage.  Is there nothing better than a car battery that is easily obtainable?  Also, if you are making DC power, you could not use lights or any other appliance that is designed to run on AC.  How do you work around this?

----------


## Boker

Off topic but on subject.  If you liked Pitch Black check out The Chronicles of Riddick.

----------


## gryffynklm

Here is an experiment using an Ice cube tray strips of copper, and dirt. It will produce 12v, i can't remember what the amperage was. With the appropriate circuit you might be able to charge a cell phone. You can definitely light up LED's. Google Earth Battery and you can find a lot of experiments. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eztcSWZpfJg

----------


## 2dumb2kwit

> I have been thinking of plans for a fairly large overshot waterwheel.  It occurs to me that the biggest problem (other than making the thing) is electricity storage.  Is there nothing better than a car battery that is easily obtainable?  Also, if you are making DC power, you could not use lights or any other appliance that is designed to run on AC.  How do you work around this?


 Golf cart batteries work better than regular car batteries, in this application, and they can be bought at places like Sam's club, at a very reasonable price.

 As far as the AC DC thing, you can either get things that run on 12 or 24 volts DC, or you can get an inverter, to change 12 or 24 volt DC to 120 volt ac.

 If you are really interested in this sort of thing, check out this site...

http://www.otherpower.com/

----------


## Rick

The domes can be purchased. Up to 69". At least that's the largest I've seen. Here's one manufacturer. 

http://www.globalplastics.ca/domes.htm

----------


## SARKY

If you are running a DC system, you are better off in the long run to get DC equipment. a for lights, go with LEDs, very efficient and last forever. Converting to AC from DC you waste power.

----------


## hunter63

Here is another one: Candle power
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8QVgR96lfI

----------


## Rick

Guests can not see images in the messages. Please register in the forum.

----------

