Stephen, If your initial and impressive stab at calculating the amount of torque generated in the Newman flywheel appears to be tremendous, (and I gather you seriously dispute your conclusions), I would agree with you. And, of course, Newman ain't telling us how much torque is being generated. He just sez it's a lot. Well. Wooopee Do!
My suspicion is that the actual amount of torque is probably at best capable of spinning a large utility fan up to a reasonable level of RPMs, before wind friction stabilized the top speed. IOW, could it perform useful work such as pumping water up a an incline - and how far up before the weight of gravity would stop the flow. Those are the questions that ought to be asked and demonstrated. Newman sez it will pump lots of water, be we have no way of knowing to what degree or effectiveness based on his demonstration. I agree, this "SPEED IS POWER" analogy Newman displays in horrid big letters at that web site reveals, IMO, a fundamental level of ignorance of what's really going on. It's one of the reasons I wanted to know if someone could take a good stab at calculating what the actual Newton Meters values are likely being generated. If we knew that figure I would think it might to be a lot easier to figure out if something interesting or useful is actually going on. PS: I'm still tempted to place a dollar in an envelope addressed to Newman with the following note attached: - "I'll buy that for a dollar!" ;-) The amount of amusement I'd get might be worth the unrecoverable cost. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com
