Hi Frank, (had to give your post a title) Interesting thoughts about energy from magnetism. Among other things you said:
"... investigate ways in which the magnetic thrust can be amplified. What about a ring of magnets like Kekule's snake eating its own tail? " I'm not sure this is what you had in mind - but it struck a chord with me this morning. If we assume that to derive any usable energy from magnetism, we must alter the magnetic field polarity relative to a fixed conductor (or vice-versa) and accomplish that alteration using *less energy* than the inductance generated in the conductor, then the options are few. It always seems to take a little more energy to alter the field. But what configuration provides the most leverage? Here is one possibility that I have never heard of, based on your Kekule-like "ring of magnets". We know that a magnetic toroid will express little or no external field, even if there is a very high internal field - but as soon as any tiny air gap appears, then a large external field will be expressed. That is major leverage. On the surface at least, this setup seems to provide the maximum increase in external field using the minimum amount of volume dispalcement. You could try to make the toroid flexible enough (or hinged somehow) in order to mechanically accomplish this recurring gap in a efficient fashion but there may be a solid-state correlary that would be more efficient. I wonder what would happen if one were to construct a toroid of many thin independent "slices" so when arranged in a tube there was no real air gap but each slice was plated with a few microns of a material that exibits either magnetoresistence "variable magnetic permeability" or some correleate. The generator would then employ some kind of modulation of the "magnetic conductivity" (i.e. permeability) of the toroid, so that field vascillated in and out of the toroid. Each segment would look like a disc but slightly thicker on the external side. These are placed in a tube and wound with an external coil. There could even be two coils - one to power the load(by inductance) and one for applying a low energy RF field - as many permalloy-type materials and ferrites have RF-triggered variable magnetic permeability. ...ah, if only there was the time and resources to pursue many of these wild ideas. Sometimes I envision the 'ideal technocracy' as consisting of hundreds of publicly financed Edisonian-type labs where wild-eyed inventors could come in and have the ideas put into prototypes. I don't think Edison himself was anything special - most of his initiating ideas were borrowed or stolen, but what he "should have" taught us, but didn't, is that if you try enough random variations on a theme, then payoff could be huge... and society is the ultimate beneficiary. Jones
