Here is a simple answer.

[science_man]

How do you extract energy from the system AND keep the balls moving?<br /><br />Well, The ball will keep moving because it is in a vacume and has no gravity stoping it (assume its in space). So now the ball cant stop moving untill it interfears with another object. <br /><br />Electricity can be made because the ball spinning acts as a motor. The motor creats the energy.

 

[agnau]

Once you use the ball as a motor it is interacting (interfered with by) another object.

 

[derekmcd]

<i>The ball will keep moving because it is in a vacume and has no gravity stoping it (assume its in space).</i><br /><br />Even in the vacuum of space, it is still affected by gravity. A vacuum is basically devoid of matter resulting in little to no pressure. The ball may not have to deal with much friction, but gravity is still there. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div> </div><br /><div><span style="color:#0000ff" class="Apple-style-span">"If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson</span></div> </div>

 

[nexus_prime]

Perpetual motion does not equal perpetual energy. Newton's 1st Law of Motion states that an object in motion stays in motion unless an external force is applied to it. In the world today, virtually all energy capturing devices rely on the principle of asymmetry. However all asymmetric systems will entropically devolve towards a balanced energy state. This is the principle of the conservation of energy.<br /><br />So if you're designing an energy capturing device, you need to think about where the energy is coming from, where it's going, and how entropy will affect the overall system. While a perpetual energy machine may not be possible, it could be possible to design a very efficient machine that has an extremely long asymmetric energy state and that could be "perpetual" on human time-scales.

 

[thespeculator]

Well Pioneer I have had that same idea a LOOOOOOOONNNG time ago.... And I too built a model exactly as you are describing. Guess what! It didn't work!..... It didn't work because the magnetic feilds themselves are like balloons. Picture balloons attached to angled sticks aligned in a circle and inside there are other balloons attached to sticks facing the other direction. Those represent the magnets and their magnetic fields. They will squish against eachother and have a lot of potential energy but in order for it to spin each balloon would have to compress then next balloon, so there is your resistance. Now if you even try to reverse the poles on there you would have to think of vacuum nozzels now, there would be resistance pulling away from each nozzel so it would stop where the magnets are closest to eachother.... I even tried several variations putting 5 on the outside and 3 on the inside so there wasn't an equal amount of forces, but what that did was make it turn a little more powerfully for about a quarter turn then stop more powerfully when the forces changed... There really is no way to do it unless you have a way to turn off the magnetic properties of the magnets at the point where the resistance would be encountered.... Hell I even was planning on making one with belts and stuff like that to turn the outer magnets around or at least sideways before the resistance would be encountered but then I realised that all of the belts would create even more resistance and I would still be getting nowhere. <br /><br />So basically you need a way to alter the forces so they don't equal out in order for it to work. <br /><br />The repelling forces of magnets are not like blowers. They are more like balloons. That's where your error is.