Mach effect questions

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kunkmiester
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Mach effect questions

Post by kunkmiester »

I have a few questions, having been rereading Woodward's book. I'll have to get notes for a few about equations, but I'll start with a thought for a different thruster design.

Put a plain cap stack on a carriage with a a magnet or coil. Acceleration is provided by an electromagnet, much like in a speaker. The three problems I see are frequency limitations, induction and such during experiments, and the fact it's a very different design than what has been tested so far. I think it would be easier for lower level experimenters to build though.
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Diogenes
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by Diogenes »

kunkmiester wrote:I have a few questions, having been rereading Woodward's book. I'll have to get notes for a few about equations, but I'll start with a thought for a different thruster design.

Put a plain cap stack on a carriage with a a magnet or coil. Acceleration is provided by an electromagnet, much like in a speaker. The three problems I see are frequency limitations, induction and such during experiments, and the fact it's a very different design than what has been tested so far. I think it would be easier for lower level experimenters to build though.

The mass fluctuation would be way too small. With his equipment operating up in the tens of kiloherts (if I remember correctly), it is barely detectable (if it is in fact a signal) with extremely sensitive apparatus.

There is no way you are going to get a large mass like you suggest to do any rapid accel/deccel with a speaker coil like design. I would expect such a thing to be barely able to oscillate in the tens of hertz, let alone in the kilohertz range.


I think the answer is to go smaller, lighter and higher frequency, and perhaps massively parallel them.

Even better would be if we could contemplate a method that didn't require so much physical mass to move. I think some of the other designs I saw which appeared to be coil wrapped capacitors were an effort to do this.
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hanelyp
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by hanelyp »

On the theme of high frequency, a brainstorm:
A flywheel with dielectric on the edge, energized and de-energized by sector(s) of the surrounding case charged to high voltage. Control cases can include no charge, and different combinations of sectors charged, and different spin rates. If I understand the predictions of the Woodward effect correctly, the dielectric would have the transient mass fluctuation as it enters and leaves the electric field, which would unbalance the flywheel. A Woodward-spindizzy, if you will.

I'm not immediately seeing an issue that could produce a false positive that the described controls would not expose. I remain skeptical, but interested if high quality results (beyond reasonable margin of error) are observed.
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Diogenes
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by Diogenes »

hanelyp wrote:On the theme of high frequency, a brainstorm:
A flywheel with dielectric on the edge, energized and de-energized by sector(s) of the surrounding case charged to high voltage. Control cases can include no charge, and different combinations of sectors charged, and different spin rates. If I understand the predictions of the Woodward effect correctly, the dielectric would have the transient mass fluctuation as it enters and leaves the electric field, which would unbalance the flywheel. A Woodward-spindizzy, if you will.

I'm not immediately seeing an issue that could produce a false positive that the described controls would not expose. I remain skeptical, but interested if high quality results (beyond reasonable margin of error) are observed.
The problem of measuring such a thing with a rotating component would greatly multiply the difficulty.

Perhaps a series of flywheels in parallel? (All made to spin as fast as possible.) I believe Turbochargers can reach 200,000 RPM, so perhaps something could be engineered to spin at double that or better? 400 Kilohertz is starting to get interesting.

Massively paralleled flywheels all spinning at this speed or better with the associated drive signals might be a viable idea. If nothing else, it would make a pretty good plot idea for a reactionless drive system in a science fiction story.

I've actually been thinking along similar lines to this for years as an idea for a Sci-Fi story i've long thought about writing.
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kunkmiester
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by kunkmiester »

Diogenes wrote:
kunkmiester wrote:I have a few questions, having been rereading Woodward's book. I'll have to get notes for a few about equations, but I'll start with a thought for a different thruster design.

Put a plain cap stack on a carriage with a a magnet or coil. Acceleration is provided by an electromagnet, much like in a speaker. The three problems I see are frequency limitations, induction and such during experiments, and the fact it's a very different design than what has been tested so far. I think it would be easier for lower level experimenters to build though.

The mass fluctuation would be way too small. With his equipment operating up in the tens of kiloherts (if I remember correctly), it is barely detectable (if it is in fact a signal) with extremely sensitive apparatus.

There is no way you are going to get a large mass like you suggest to do any rapid accel/deccel with a speaker coil like design. I would expect such a thing to be barely able to oscillate in the tens of hertz, let alone in the kilohertz range.


I think the answer is to go smaller, lighter and higher frequency, and perhaps massively parallel them.

Even better would be if we could contemplate a method that didn't require so much physical mass to move. I think some of the other designs I saw which appeared to be coil wrapped capacitors were an effort to do this.
Speakers can get well into the kilohertz area, and while I've not been able to find a limit, I believe a magnetic driver could get much higher, though not into the higher megahertz range Woodward works at, or the giga range he wants.

A magnetic system would probably be easier for the garage experimenter to make, and would probably be running much higher voltages, capacitance, and acceleration. Not quite what's recommended but I'm still working on getting the math figured out to establish what it would actually be capable of.
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hanelyp
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by hanelyp »

Diogenes wrote:
hanelyp wrote:On the theme of high frequency, a brainstorm:
A flywheel with dielectric on the edge, energized and de-energized by sector(s) of the surrounding case charged to high voltage. Control cases can include no charge, and different combinations of sectors charged, and different spin rates. If I understand the predictions of the Woodward effect correctly, the dielectric would have the transient mass fluctuation as it enters and leaves the electric field, which would unbalance the flywheel. A Woodward-spindizzy, if you will.

I'm not immediately seeing an issue that could produce a false positive that the described controls would not expose. I remain skeptical, but interested if high quality results (beyond reasonable margin of error) are observed.
The problem of measuring such a thing with a rotating component would greatly multiply the difficulty.

Perhaps a series of flywheels in parallel? (All made to spin as fast as possible.) I believe Turbochargers can reach 200,000 RPM, so perhaps something could be engineered to spin at double that or better? 400 Kilohertz is starting to get interesting.

Massively paralleled flywheels all spinning at this speed or better with the associated drive signals might be a viable idea. If nothing else, it would make a pretty good plot idea for a reactionless drive system in a science fiction story.

I've actually been thinking along similar lines to this for years as an idea for a Sci-Fi story i've long thought about writing.
High frequency favors a small diameter, which in turn favors an array of small units over a single large unit. At spin rates limited by mechanical limits, the acceleration at the rim could be huge, and again I'm thinking small is better for this. https://gizmodo.com/5087710/matchbook-s ... rpm-record seems interesting for how fast you might get with electric drive.

And I'm thinking that a a well balanced gyroscope (absent woodward effect) operating in a DC electric field is going to be a lot easier to get a clean signal from than a vibrator and AC electric feed.
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kunkmiester
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by kunkmiester »

So, found my notes, here's the fun parts, I'm wanting to work to being able to go from knowable quantities such as capacitance(in farads), voltage, acceleration etc. into physical needs and predictions.

On page 73 of his book, he has the main equation. Is "G" gravities?

I need to look up more on electrostriction, not understanding it is probably part of why I'm not getting where it comes in on how it effect a thruster, someone have a good explanation for me? It's the big mystery right now.
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hanelyp
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by hanelyp »

kunkmiester wrote:So, found my notes, here's the fun parts, I'm wanting to work to being able to go from knowable quantities such as capacitance(in farads), voltage, acceleration etc. into physical needs and predictions.
My understanding of Woodward's hypothesis is dE/dT is a major factor. Energy(capacitor) = (1/2)C*V^2, if memory serves.
On page 73 of his book, he has the main equation. Is "G" gravities?
I don't have the book, but if he's following convention in physics G is the universal gravitational constant from Newtonian mechanics, which is also used in General Relativity.
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kunkmiester
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by kunkmiester »

So "G" should be a constant to look up? That helps a lot. I'd imagine that's what it is, in not seeing any reason he wouldn't be using standard stuff.

Now to re-read things again So I can start again trying to parse out where which variables are. Right now it's mechanical drive frequency and electrical drive frequency and capacitance and capacitor mass and charge percentage and phase angle between mechanical and electrical drive and a bunch of physics constants and I don't know where to put stuff yet.

But I have something to do tomorrow while the lathe runs. And stuff to look up when I get home.
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kunkmiester
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by kunkmiester »

Today's update, worked on a spreadsheet so I can plug stuff in and tweak things, like max mechanical drive with whatever system I work out, capacitor sizes, etc. Greek is the trouble right now.

Some of the letters Woodward uses don't seem to be Greek, or are different forms of the letters than the tables I've found on the internet. It's fine looking things up elsewhere in his book, but if I'm going to be looking at other sources to identify stuff, I'll need to figure out what those symbols are. Any thoughts?

Second, his function of power over a function of time. I'm sure the Greek or whatever would help in knowing what to do with these, but how exactly do I get frequency in? I'm assuming I'm gonna have another equation in there.

I'm also wondering about imperial versus SI units. Woodward worked in "Gaussian" units, I'm gonna be finding a lot of stuff in SI, will the math work in metric, or should I go through the trouble in finding a d measuring stuff in other units?
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hanelyp
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by hanelyp »

Looking up the equations, found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodward_effect

Question, kunkmiester, do you know any calculus? I got through differential equations, but that was over 20 tears ago, and haven't used them much since. I'll have to refresh myself on some notation.
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kunkmiester
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by kunkmiester »

The big problem I had with calculus was remembering enough algebra to do the tests. The concept made sense, though even before calc I was having trouble with some of the notation.

I know the P/t thing is doing something with rate of change, I just don't know what the symbol means, which would probably help figure it out. The Wikipedia article unfortunately doesn't explain it either. I found a odd last night where someone was talking about engineering, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
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hanelyp
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Re: Mach effect questions

Post by hanelyp »

The symbols you're not recognizing are calculus operators. dropping the less significant (for experiment we're like;y to do near term) second term inside the square brackets, roughly translates to (If I'm remembering the notation correctly):

change in rest mass (relative to base mass?) = (1/4pi*G) * ( (1/p0c^2) * (change in power with respect to time) )

Assuming E = sin(w*t),
P = dE/dt = w*cos(w*t)
dP/dt = w^2 * sin(w*t)

Another waveform may be better, but is almost certainly harder to generate and feed into a reactive element with good efficiency at high frequencies. Of course where you have high frequency AC high voltage running around, it's really easy to get stray fields messing with your measurements, which is one reason I'm skeptical of the experimental work done so far.

Looking at the density term, I'm wondering how a resonant air chamber as the motion element would perform according to the theory. Or going back to my spinning dielectric concept, a vortex of air in a tube.
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