On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 11:07 AM, David Roberson <[email protected]> wrote:
The reason that the flywheel is slowing down in rotation is due to > frictional loss at the bearing. Also, the stored angular momentum is > slowly dissipating. Here I have in mind a transfer of the kinetic energy of the flywheel to the potential energy of the thing that's being held up (a weight, say): [image: Inline image 1] We can allow the bearings of the flywheel to be frictionless, and nonetheless the flywheel will slow down as its kinetic energy is transferred into the gravitational potential energy of the weight. This principle does not seem to apply to the domains in the permanent magnet holding up a weight of similar mass. (Just to be clear, I'm not arguing against conservation of energy, only that there's something strange going on.) Eric
