EEVblog #708 - Free Energy BULLSHIT!

[czdt8m]

Great video.

Learned a lot from it!

Also convinces me even more that belief begins where knowledge ends.

Sadly not only in engineering. 

[westfw]

Isn't the circuit essentially a standard NPN/PNP "Relaxation oscillator" ?
Like http://zpostbox.ru/relax_e.htm

[mcinque]

Great video! 

[rob77]

Guys, we got it wrong... the formula is very simple....
 1 Quantum Vacuum = 1 AA cell !   

[MrZwing]

  WOW! I learned a TON of stuff from this video, very interesting wish I could get my 5 min back from when I found that free- energy BS video.

  thanks Dave this is one of many reasons I follow your channel science is great stuff!

/MrZwing

[G7PSK]

I have some magic led's, they came from party balloons. They were turned on in October last year and the green one was still visible in daylight new years day if you shaded it with your hand and looked straight down on the led, and they were powered by 2 No.377 watch button cells each no requirment fo any electronics just the led straight across the cells. 

[max666]

I suspect that the "original" circuit oscilates somewhat faster than Daves, as it has a lower inductance value.  Hence it will transfer more energy to the LEDs than Daves, and hence draw more input current.....

But doesn't a lower inductance value also means less energy transfer per oscillation? I have my doubts that a faster oscillator, due to lower inductance, has more power

[number33]

I remember this basic circuit from my apprentice days.  If you replace the inductor and LEDs with a small loudspeaker and adjust the component values then you have a simple audio tone generator useful for all sorts of applications.  A resistor in series with the capacitor makes the on-time more predictable.

The on-time is controlled by the capacitor and its series resistor.  The off time is controlled by the capacitor and the 100k, so varying the 100k varies the frequency without affecting the on time and replacing the 100k with a potentiometer makes a simple variable tone generator.

Removing the 100k and connecting a pair of probes makes an audio resistance meter useful for trouble shooting circuits or connecting any sort of resistance based sensor gives it an an audio output.  It can be quite sensitive detecting resistance values in the MegOhm region.

Replacing the potentiometer with an electrolytic capacitor and a series resistor makes a circuit that starts at a high frequency when you switch it on and the frequency falls like a siren to zero, ie it stops.  I still have a doorbell, sadly no longer in use, which I made using this circuit over forty years ago.  The bell-push simply shorts out the electrolytic.

Of course it's not suitable for any sort of manufactured product because the performance depends on the gain of the two transistors so is highly unpredictable and it always has to be tweaked but it can keep an apprentice happy for hours.

We hadn't heard of 555 timers in those days.

[eneuro]

Yep, now "inventor" of this great free energy source should make more powerfull version and send to Dave lab, while he has very nity legendary kilowat meter: Weston Model 310 AC/DC Wattmeter from 1944! 

Anyway, after a few modifications this bloody circut maybe could be usefull as very simple low power SMPS ?
What do you think if we add 1k resistor between PNP and NPN base (to limit gate current) does it change much switching frequency defined by 100k and 47pF RC which gives about 200kHz from simply calculation and looks like it was in this range in Dave experiment?

Of course we need to remove those crappy LEDs in parallel and put there fast diode like 1N4148 and make galvanic insulated higher voltage source, eg. to switch on 230VAC AC mosfets switch which require very small amout of charge but higher gate voltage 10V-15V...from Solar  PV cell..

Update: Maybe 1k is too big for 1.5Vin and around 100 Ohm could be better....but for 12Vin maybe 1k could be fine?

[EEVblog]

BUT, in order to debunk strongly held misconceptions it is necessary to eliminate opportunities for the proponents to fire back pointing out the differences between the original circuit and the one you demonstrated with.

No point, I won't change their mind.
I didn't do this video for them, I did it as an interesting going through the motions engineering exercise.

If your intention is to overcome that unsupportable belief then you ought to do everything possible.

You generally can't change deeply held beliefs. In this case the guy has been studying whatever it is for 16 years, he's not going to suddenly admit that it's all bunk and he's wasted 16 years of his life. Most them just double down.

Dave, I also noticed very recently you are using a Brymen multimeter and your Rigol 1054Z scope. Is there a reason for that? Was it just what was at hand nearest the clear bit of the bench at the time? Or is it part of a commercial arrangement?

I've said this countless times. There is no "commercial arrangement" for product placement, either paid or implied, never has been, never will be.
Yes, they were near to hand. They also have the advantage that both are small, and so frame in a crowded shot like this easier.
I like the Brymen, it's cute.

[rob77]

Dave, I also noticed very recently you are using a Brymen multimeter and your Rigol 1054Z scope. Is there a reason for that? Was it just what was at hand nearest the clear bit of the bench at the time? Or is it part of a commercial arrangement?

I've said this countless times. There is no "commercial arrangement" for product placement, either paid or implied, never has been, never will be.
Yes, they were near to hand. They also have the advantage that both are small, and so frame in a crowded shot like this easier.
I like the Brymen, it's cute.

I'm very happy to see you using affordable gear in your videos (and i bet i'm not alone!)  big thumbs up for that  (actually it would be boring and annoying to see you probing a $2 circuit with a 1GHz scope )

[mswhin63]

Guys, we got it wrong... the formula is very simple....
 1 Quantum Vacuum = 1 AA cell !   

More accurately is the the space between the posters ears.

[bartm]

Dave,

Great video, again. I'm a professional systems designer for nearly 20 years now, and I have been following your blog since the beginning.
I also recommend it to colleagues and beginners. It has tons of information and learning opportunity packed in an entertaining presentation.

Much respect also for the, in my view, respectful way you give feedback and comment to those who are completely ignorant or full of …
(solar roadways, grafeen capacitors, free energy etc). That must mean something, as i'm from the Netherlands and apparently regarded as being 'direct' 

Keep up the great work in entertaining and teaching the community.

regards,
Bart

[rob77]

Guys, we got it wrong... the formula is very simple....
 1 Quantum Vacuum = 1 AA cell !   

More accurately is the the space between the posters ears.

hmm.. measured it... the space between my ears is filled with a strange bubble - diameter definitely larger than the length of an AA cell... so you must be wrong 

[Fungus]

16 years of study?

That's about a million opportunites/places to stuck a multimeter in the circuit and take a measurement or two.

[VanitarNordic]

ROFL. https://www.youtube.com/user/Deirones

That guy is crazy. Well, you have probably seen his videos.

 

I don't know why this should generate 220V and not for example 50V? and if I select the longer wire maybe I will have more near 1000V! 

Google AdSense attached to most of the videos, this is the free energy 

[max_torque]

I suspect that the "original" circuit oscilates somewhat faster than Daves, as it has a lower inductance value.  Hence it will transfer more energy to the LEDs than Daves, and hence draw more input current.....

But doesn't a lower inductance value also means less energy transfer per oscillation? I have my doubts that a faster oscillator, due to lower inductance, has more power

It's all rather complicated! (which is why SMPS design is not straight forward)  I'm also going to guess that the series resistance of the  OP's inductor is also considerably lower than Daves (being a large copper tube).  Hence, the inductors current at switch off will be significantly higher.  Also, with only 1 turn and a massive core area, the core average magnetic field density will be very low.  We don't know what the core loses of Daves test inductor were, but it's physically a lot smaller, with a much higher field density etc.

Anyway, all this swings and roundabouts is really a way of saying "Unless you use exactly the parts, in exactly the same layout" as the OPs circuit, it's not surprising the input current, output power, and overall efficiency are very different"  ;-)

[Arp]

Great video. Odd how these magic devices always require a power source. Nobody every fires one up and then pulls the battery. Wonder why? 

This guy does...


It was actually featured on a discovery channel show about fake science on youtube.

That loud spark threw me back a bit 

A follow up. Apparently he was just trolling :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1972730961&feature=iv&src_vid=ljKX9Om7Z4s&v=-poc9JSHoWA

[FrankBuss]

Interesting video, I didn't expect that a battery would be only discharged by a few percents with a short for a minute.

Recently I found another video (I think he did a Kickstarter project and I read about it somewhere here in the forum, but can't find it anymore) :

The video is really boring, you should not watch it, but the interesting part is from minute 30 to minute 37: He measured with a scope the phase angle of the voltage and the current at the input side of his device, and it was 10.75 V, 1.466 A and 78°, so a power of 10.75 V * 1.466 A * cos(78)=3.277 W. Then he measured the voltage and current at the output (a resistor load) and it was 5.228 W. Obviously it doesn't work, otherwise he would have done the only thing to prove such claims, connecting the output to the input and then the resistors should still get hot, but where is the error in the calculation or the measurements?

[Arp]

I suspect that the "original" circuit oscilates somewhat faster than Daves, as it has a lower inductance value.  Hence it will transfer more energy to the LEDs than Daves, and hence draw more input current....

Free energy crowds go: "He didn't follow the original design and instead used an inductor. Probably after discovering that ferrite beads provided an surplus of energy" 

[rob77]

after discovering that ferrite beads provided an surplus of energy" 

and that's how the manufacturers are getting 95%+ efficiency with recent SMPS designs - adding a lots of energy generating ferrite beads... while telling us it's because of EMI.... EMI my ass ! it's quantum vacuum's brother from another mother !   

[mux]

Interesting video, I didn't expect that a battery would be only discharged by a few percents with a short for a minute.

Recently I found another video (I think he did a Kickstarter project and I read about it somewhere here in the forum, but can't find it anymore) :

The video is really boring, you should not watch it, but the interesting part is from minute 30 to minute 37: He measured with a scope the phase angle of the voltage and the current at the input side of his device, and it was 10.75 V, 1.466 A and 78°, so a power of 10.75 V * 1.466 A * cos(78)=3.277 W. Then he measured the voltage and current at the output (a resistor load) and it was 5.228 W. Obviously it doesn't work, otherwise he would have done the only thing to prove such claims, connecting the output to the input and then the resistors should still get hot, but where is the error in the calculation or the measurements?

Myriad of things, but it mostly boils down to: phase angle isn't really a useful quantity anymore. It's from the olden days when AC current drawn was still pretty much perfectly sinusoidal.

As current drawn gets more distorted (i.e. SMPS without PFC), phase angle measurements using certain principles get more and more wrong. A proper true RMS AC power meter will simultaneously sample voltage and current going into a mains-connected device many times per second, about 4kS/s minimum, and multiply-and-sum it to get the actual power drawn. Cheapo power meters only measure a couple times per second and assume that 'in between' it's probably a smooth curve, or even worse: it's just sinusoidal. If it isn't, the meter just displays a wrong value because it is based on wrong assumptions.

Even worse, there often is literally no phase angle in SMPSes and other sub-unity power factor devices. The current waveform is perfectly in phase with the voltage, but it's just very heavily distorted. The cosine phi should be 1, but the power factor should be lower.

This is one of the big reasons why cosine phi and phase angle shouldn't really be used anymore in literature. It is just very confusing and doesn't represent what is going on at all anymore. Power factor is a more generalized term which also accounts for distortion instead of just phase angle.

[DaveWing]

Hi All,

This is my first post here, after signing up.

I do believe in good science and proper evaluation and I thank Dave for the time he spent on the debunking video. So in light of this... I will ask have any of you heard of John Bedini and his SG Enegizer? Dave mentioned the Joule Thief so I suspect he may of heard of John's SG circuit.

-Dave Wing

[TopLoser]

Hi All,

This is my first post here, after signing up.

I do believe in good science and proper evaluation and I thank Dave for the time he spent on the debunking video. So in light of this... I will ask have any of you heard of John Bedini and his SG Enegizer? Dave mentioned the Joule Thief so I suspect he may of heard of the John's SG circuit.

-Dave Wing

A quick google and the first page I started to read about John and his Simple School Girl thing had this gem in it:

"more aether radiant energy is being captured, but independently of the strands, sucked up by each transistor mounting plate from the heat sink. Needless to say by using transistor pads and grease you are restricting the aether radiant accumulating process potential"

Hmmm... well...

[DaveWing]

Ok... That is not John Bedini's site that is the site of Erwin-Badertscher.

Anyway we see in the schematic that a pulsed inductor is rotating a magnetic rotor and the flyback energy is charging a second battery of equal capacity. In this configuration the machine will give you some mechanical energy and recover a certain percentage of your input energy via flyback. At the very least one can expect to recover 30% on a poorly tuned machine and recover very close to 100% of what you put in from the run battery, depending upon how the circuit is configured.

-Dave Wing