Rocket Man

and another plate of lead sulfate... why deconstruct the car battery in the first place?

adding salt to the snow further chills the water, so you could potentially extract energy from the the increased heat differential. low temperature propellants and condensers packed in ice. i dont think you'd get much power from 4-5 degrees C though.

my appologies however, chains are quite a bit cheaper, easier to put on and give better performance up steep slopes.

i'm not much involved with magnetocaloric effects nor existential crises... it would pay you to leave a thread finalised or on topic. OPs generally don't appreciate hijacked threads.

you don't get tyres for ice, you get chains on your tyres for ice. dead slow max speed.

it draws energy from the magnetic properties of the material to create the heat. so if you keep upping the field strength, the material will keep producing heat up to a point. iirc, it changes the specific heat of the material. if you release the field, the energy returns to the material with a cooling effect. you can extract a few joules per unit mass of compund per tesla. there are a few refrigeration systems that use chains of the stuff going past a magnet.

depending on how many magnets you have, you could get one to stay above three others provided it were spining. novelty shops sell such things and i assume they also have a rotating field in the base to maintain angular momentum in the floating armature. there is no static equilibrium to simply have magnets hover. there're a couple of electric methods about that use hall effect sensors either side of a solenoid (augment the solenoid with neodymium?). basic principle is, the hall effect sensors are set up with a bias to match the deformed field due to ferrous metal underneath, op amps amplify the error and the solenoid counters it. result is, ferrous metal stays at a predefined distance from the solenoid. there's an existing patent on this so you can't buy one. you may also be able to set your silver levitating above a speaker coil from a sub given enough cooling and ac power.

too true.

note the innefficient accelerator mechanism, inductive acceleration will not achieve fusion. few accererators do. you'd be better off strapping a plasma drive to a tokamac.

it only works in pulses, induction form a changing magnetic field the instant you connect the power. also, the charge will be repelled from the wire as it accelerates. lenz's law. i personally am a fan of KV range accelerators. they have far higher exit velocities, far less beam dispersion and continuous load capacity.

could carbonic acid to hydrogen carbonate play a role? i can imagine hydrogen carbonate would draw hydrogen gas into solution via the cathode but i'm drawing a blank as to where the other hydrogen ions go. (residual oxygen with CO2 catalyst?)

i can't think of any one thing. pretty much, if i could suitably abuse it to observe various principles at work, it became scientific. lego was one of those versatile things that could be used repeatedly. aquarium equipment gave me fairly high vacuums to toy around with. i really don't know if there's any "best" science ed toys. an inquisitive mind will appropriate anything for it's purposes but lego was definately the most versatile until they put stories to the kits

a continuously variable transmission is going to be a little bulky for all but the biggest quadrotors. it wouldn't take much to tilt each rotor set around it's drive shaft to achieve lateral motion, it would also simplify gearing and directional control. collective pitch adjustments would work, they'd also make the control similar to a variable speed quadrotor.

i met someone who used a drink bottle to house a bundle of NiCad rechargables. he went mountain biking with it so he had a good intensity on the front. he claimed 3 hours continuous light which was feasable considering the kilo of batteries. reed switches on the brake cables would be a simple mechanical problem. run the tail and head lights constantly with additional (brake) lights via the reed switches. if you can get a regulated dynamo and a matching voltage rating on the battery, you wouldn't need to worry about over charging. did you want to wind the dyno yourself? that's a lot of work.

stabilising ought to be straight forward, simply place the centre of mass substantially below the centre of the rotor assembly. the more the craft tilts off vertical the more correcting torque is applied by the mass. are you thinking about tilting the four rotors, modifying angle of attack on the blades, or varying the speed of the rotors? either would give you directional control. tilting each rotor set would give you simpler rotational control and gearing but you'd lose the omnidirectional ability. edit: you only need one thread

i think it depends on the rate of release, if the air pressure is too high, you'll make a path of least resistance, a small patch of air stone functions and the bubbles would tunnel. lower pressures and fairly large, uniform air stones would make a decent amount of foam.

taste of course! i've seen a few of straight IC cars that simply don't make noise at the front, the loudest noise you can get from some cars is from the tyres. i do agree that cars should have minimum noise standards, humans have primitive echo location that seems to work best with white noise, it would also help the blind simply get around the pavement

does the acceleration of the particles over the arbirtarily large distance create any important magnetic effects? the infinity at zero dissapears because a positron and an electron can only be so close together before they interact in some way violating the inverse square. at infinite distance you have finite PE by the integration of the inverse square from the anihilation point to infinity. if you define that as zero as swansont has done, the potential energy goes negative as the particles apporach eachother. that's accounted for by the kinetic energy on impact

that bike has a higher centre of gravity. no wonder the stability has dropped out. if you've ever ridden a bike with a heavy pack above the seat post, it's almost impossible to ride without hands. panniers take the same load and keep the mass low to the ground so the bike is easier to ride. i'd still say the front acts as a tilt controlled castor and the gyro effect aids resonse time.

earnshaws theorem applies to any force with an inverse square taper to the field. so that's gravity, electrostatics and magnetism. there's more but these are the ones that apply. earnshaws theorem only works because the "dip" in the feild strength i mentioned isn't perfect. it's what's called a saddle point. the levitating magnet will slip off to one side if it's rotationally stable. earnshaws theorem also helps explain the "ice pale effect" if you have a charged sphere, any charge within in the sphere experiences zero net force.

you ought to look at marine engines for the powerhouse. you can get sizable steam engines built for decent revs, a couple of automotive alternators linked to a solar power inverter would allow you to hook back into the grid and make a bit of profit on the excess power (you'd also appreciate the power during down time). as for generating steam, look at pre-volatilising kerosene stoves to get some inspiration for the burner. and research old locomotives for boiler types. (you'll want a superheater)

then perhaps tied down is the term you're searching for? needless to say, dynamic systems are always cooler.

surprising. thanks for that. a voliation of earnshaws theorem would be a string to the base of the magnet. but then why not use a dynamic system.

i'm having a bit of trouble finding time to finalise the design in light of exams. if you send an email address i can send you what i have so far.

a non ferro magnetic weight hung from one magnet will suffice as a static balance.