Has anyone built a faraday N machine that can power a house?

Question

I'm looking for someone who has built any version of the N machine. What advice do you have? I plan on getting the pieces together over the next few years and attempt to power a cabin with one when I retire from the navy in a few years.

Answer 1

what fuel will you use to run it? Solar, wind?

Answer 2

I actually built and tested a model of the N machine. I found that it produced the exact voltage and currents predicted by Maxwell's equations. How surprising is that?

The guy that built the original N machine, Bruce De Palma, claimed that he got 5 times as much electrical energy out as mechanical energy in. This was based simply on poor measurement technique and sloppy lab work. Among his more egregious errors were:

1) Not calibrating a shunt.

2) Failing to account for the huge amount of brush friction involved (Faraday discs run at very high currents, so require very large brushes).

3) Using a V belt drive without accounting for the losses therein.

My experiment is written up in the Skeptical Enquirer. "The N-Machine - A Perpetual Motion Notion".

Answer 3

In a nutshell, the N-machine claims to be able to extract ambient energy (specifically, transient voltages within the air) and transform it into ordered energy.  If N-machines were possible, then the second law of thermodynamics is wrong and the universe would not exist as it does today.

See: Maxwell's demon, Entropy, etc...

Answer 4

I went off to look at Google references to 'Faraday N-Machine' and I have to say that the first 4 or 5 articles are filled with the kind of language that raises every warning flag I possess - obfustication, ancient reference, anti-Einstein, and all.   The chances are nil that this will produce a reasonable quantity of electricity while certainly producing a severe drain on the billfold.

Answer 5

Nope, no one has built one that powered anything. No one has violated the second law of thermodynamics at any useful scale with any sort of machine. Things can get a confusing to the layman at the quantum mechanics level, but even so, no perpetual motion machines have been built.

As far as advice, i would suggest studying basic physics. But if you just want to fiddle around it your spare time, it is fine with me, just don't count on powering your cabin (or anything else)