swansont

It's not 0.001% P/A, it's ~0.00002% P/A. It's power, not speed, that you want (v2), so it has ~98% of the energy left, and assuming the process is constant the energy loss is exponential (i.e. you compound it)

That's included in "energy loss in collisions"

Ah, of course.

There are lots of effects where an electrical interaction causes sound. Lightning is one example, where you heat the surrounding air and get thunder. Any spark will give a similar effect. AC in a transformer causes the domains in the core to continually change direction, and the iron actually expands and contracts slightly as this occurs, so you get a humming. A rapid shutoff of current that creates a magnetic field will often give a large back-emf from Faraday's/Lenz's laws. This, I think, can also cause noises.

Your animation shows this happening once. If the last ball leaves with more energy than you gave the first ball, that energy was stored in the system from the work you did in setting the demonstration up. Try it in reverse from the ending configuration, and report back what happens.

Without looking I can tell you "no, it won't work." Perpetual motion requires that the laws of physics change with time. This time symmetry has been demonstrated - it's one of Noether's theorems. (conservation laws all have a corresponding symmetry in nature) The ball is attracted to the magnet as it moves away, too. It will have no more energy than the first ball. It will have less, actually, because there is energy loss in the collisions and as the ball moves along the track.

How about I do what? Write a book? I choose not to write a piece of scientific crap, just to prove the point, as I have some professional credibility to protect. I have a non-technical book registered with the US copyright office, so I know exactly how high that hurdle is.

You can't achieve 0 K. Any question that asks what happens after you are there is ill-formed.

No, it's just action-reaction. The ions are accelerated downward, so the lifter is accelerated upward.

Basically, things don't transform the way we expect - speeds don't add linearly. We don't notice this at low speeds because the difference is so small. But the speed of light is the same for all inertial (non-accelerating) observers. This has some peculiar consequences, including the effect that speeds don't just add together, that time runs slower for someone who is moving, and distances are shortened in the direction of motion. It's not grammar-school material. Physics (and relativity or QM) isn't a simple subject. (BTW I don't think that people who don't "get" this stuff are stupid. But don't expect it to be easy)

If Gore had won the election...rather, if Gore had been recognized as winning the election, my number would be 2 to get to the president. He toured our lab a couple of times (though when I wasn't around) so several of my colleagues met him. While I never actually met him, we've been within 20 feet or so on a number of occasions as he jogged by.

Have you seen it outdoors without an artificial source of light?

I know a secret service agent who has driven for Cheney. It's quite possible the agent knows Bush. I've also met a few higher-ups associated with the Secretary of the Navy, and it's possible they know the president without intermediate steps.

Here is one page. The mention of ferromagnetism is near the bottom. Here is another, which lists the Curie point as 16 C. This stretches the claims that it's ferromagnetic "above room temperature." That's a chilly room. But better than Dysprosium, whose Curie point is -188 C.

Several of the rare earths are ferromagnetic but AFAIK gadolinium is the only one at room temperature. Aluminum, copper and titanium are nonmagnetic. And they'd better be, as I'm using all three as such. Our "nonmagnetic" stainless steel turned out to be magnetic.

LOL. What "everybody" knows can be really dangerous. I agree with Josh Billings - "It's not what you don't know that's the problem. It's what you know that just ain't so." (paraphrased)

No, I meant ferromagnetic, which means you could magnetize them. There are also paramagnetic materials, which are attracted to magnetic materials, and diamagnetism, which is a repulsion by magnetic fields. There are only four ferromagnetic materials at toom temperature. Cobalt and gadolinium are the other two.