11 May
2012
11 May
'12
5:29 p.m.
On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 07:43:45PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
[I must admit that when I was quite young, I read that a DC motor and
geenrator were eessetianlly the same thing. Spinnign a small motor of the
ype used in toys did, indeed generate a voltage that I could read on my
mete. I spnt some time playing with different typs of motor,s gearing
them together in various ways, trying to make a thing that could generate
the power needed to run the motor that turned the gears and generator...
Of coruse it never worked. Some years later I found out _why_ it never
worked. But I am not sure I was totally foolish for trying. Was I?]
You weren't foolish at all. You had an idea and you experimented to see
if/how it could work. You didn't tell the world "I know how to build a
perpetual motion machine!", you experimented and, when the experiment
disagreed with the theory, accepted that. And later learned why it
didn't - in fact couldn't - work.
Nothing wrong with that, quite the opposite.
If only more people would actually _test_ their theories with proper
experiments before trusting them.
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison