Let it be known that Rapport has finally hit absolute rock bottom with regards to voodoo science reporting on Sunday 20 April 2008. Yes, you guessed it: Free energy / perpetual motion. If you can read Afrikaans, the article is here.
Under the heading of “End in sight for power crisis – and it’s free!”, one Marthinus Koekemoer writes about a Mr André de Beer and his free energy machine. The first part of the article describes how de Beer, an ‘irrigation engineer’ came up with the idea of building a hydro-electric generator that uses water from a reservoir to generate electricity, using some of it to pump the water back into the reservoir. According to the article, about 5kW is ‘left over’ after the water has been pumped back, allowing the machine to be self-sustaining. It is essentially a modern version of Rober Fludd’s 1618 idea for a waterwheel that pumps its own water in addition to running a mill.
For those of you who don’t know the laws of thermodynamics, I can spell them out very bluntly: You can’t survive by eating your own sh…, er, excrement. Nor can an energy machine keep going by connecting the output to the input. Any movement, sound or heat produced means energy losses that can never be regained. It’s one of the most fundamental laws of the universe – total entropy increases, heat does not flow spontaneously from colder to warmer bodies, rubber balls don’t bounce as high or higher than where they were dropped from. It is, in some sense, the law that points the arrow of time forward: There is more entropy now than then. Why is it that everyone knows this, except journalists?
Now, I won’t jump to the conclusion that de Beer is a fraud right away, but only that he came under the spell of free energy, like thousands before him. What is a little worrisome is the last part of the article, which hints at de Beer’s next project, aimed at generating electricity from running water directly out of household taps. This would of course work (in theory), but result in a massive waste of water, not to mention a water bill to make up for the electricity bill. As with all self-deluded inventors of this nature, de Beer estimates his machine will be ready for sale in about a month, for between R15,000 and R20,000, with another R5,000 for the reservoir. The month is probably there because he has so far got the machine to generate electricity, but not enough to pump all the water back up (as per the well-established laws of thermodynamics). He is probably convinced that about another month of tweaking and fine-tuning will bring the efficiency up to the point where it will actually be self-sustaining, with a leftover 5kW.
Apparently neither ‘irrigation engineering’ nor science journalism requires knowledge of any of the laws of thermodynamics, or of the long and colourful history of the failure of perpetual motion machines. Or of the use of the internet or libraries, for that matter. Or common sense. Or the ability to question the feeling that your idea is so simple that thousands must have had it before, and then wondering why they failed where you will surely succeed. Ignorance 1, fundamental physical laws of the universe, 0.
My main problem with all this is Rapport’s blatant foolishness and plain science stupidity. In a country where science and math education leaves much to be desired and where people are desperate for solutions to a looming energy crisis, running an article like this borders on criminally irresponsible. Rapport is of course mostly a rugby tabloid with a little Afrikaans entertainment gossip and some political bitching and moaning thrown in, so I suppose it can only be expected. They’ve proven their poor level of scientific understanding before, by reporting on Danie Krugel, but this really is a new low.
Stay tuned for next week, when Marthinus will no doubt tell us about a local astronomer who discovered that the Sun orbits the Earth. The truly sad thing is that the journalists and editors at Rapport seem genuinely unable and/or unwilling to go to even the slightest trouble to separate science truth from science fiction.
Update: I have just spoken to Mr de Beer (Rapport provided a phone number), and I must admit that he sounds sincere. He seems to have never heard of the laws of thermodynamics, or of the English term ‘perpetual motion’. He is, however, very friendly and obviously passionate about what he sees as a device that can help millions. I tried to explain that he should not spend any of his money or more time on a project that is doomed to failure from the start, and he listened patiently. I inquired about the current state of the project, and my initial suspicions were confirmed: The current design is not efficient enough to run a small pump for long enough to pump all the water back to the reservoir. Mr de Beer seems genuinely convinced that some small design changes in the diameter of the pipes and the axle of the turbine will make all the difference.
He guarantees me that he will never dream of selling the machine without a final, fully working prototype, so hopefully no danger of fraud. What does worry me is his mention of ‘two other mechanical engineers’ working with him on the project. I ended the conversation by spelling out ‘perpetual motion’ and telling him to Google it. We can only hope.
Mr de Beer seems to have a different story according to this article: http://www.fin24.com/articles/default/display_article.aspx?ArticleId=1518-25_2310197
Hopefully it was before your informative phone call.
We are also discussing the topic here: http://forum.skeptic.za.org/junk-science-and-alternative-medicine/rapport-newspaper-article-on-perpetual-motion-free-energy/
Mmmmm, the plot thickens. When I spoke to De Beer, he told me the turbine works (generates power), but that the the mechanism to pump all the water back still needed refinement. Perhaps there is some confusion between “the generator works”, and “the perpetual motion machine works.” Our discussion in Afrikaans was riddled with terminology confusion – he kept referring to fluid dynamics whenever I mentioned thermodynamics, so perhaps it is just a bit of fuzzy reporting.
Do you have any update on this? It has almost been two months since you spoke to him and I was wondering if his expected time of completion has changed yet. Perhaps he needs a third additional month? Perhaps he ran out of funds and now he wants to do a bit of pre-emptive fundraising to get this off the ground (only a little though, no need to profit from the incomplete machine yet)?
Or perhaps, as is usual for pan narrans, he would rather tell his grandchildren how he had an idea which would save the world (hero) and he was unable to realise it, because of some-or-other human folly (”reverse” racism, persecution, closed-mindedness, pride, whatever), and thus the idea to save the world would die with him. This is a story that his grandkids can really sink their teeth into, I have a friend who has regailed me many times with stories of his deceased grandffather’s high intelligence and low-level of education, how he “broke the rules” and had brilliant ideas (with no specifics). De Beer’s grandkids are welcome to their little dillusions but let’s hope his grandkids don’t get too caught-up in it and embark on the impossible quest to get a posthumous Nobel prize.
Okay, that’s REAAALLY jumping the gun. How many predictions did I throw out there? Wow, and that last one is a real stretch. Almost on the scale od “psychic” prediction, the last one is almost unverifyable because we would either forget this story or be dead by that stage. That’s it – I’m off to teach a “master class” in “psychic ability”. Hey look at that, I broke the ’sarcastic air quotes’ key!
No, no update. Perpetual motion is impossible, and I hope Mr De Beer has realized this without wasting too much time and money. And I am not naive enough to think that Rapport will ever have enough integrity to do a follow-up on one of their biggest failures. ‘Just keep quiet and pretend it didn’t happen’ seems to be their approach to this type of blunder.