That is a good thought Harry. It would be true if gravity behaved the same way as magnetism. In the case of gravity additional matter that is allowed to become attached to the initial body behaves in exactly the same way as the original matter. The larger net body generates a larger gravity field. The incoming steel that is attracted to the magnet does not have any magnetism to bring to the table. Instead, it absorbs some of the original field.
I guess one way to see a difference between these two forces is to observe what happens when a lot of heat is applied to each system. The gravity gets a tiny bit stronger due to the mass associated with the heat energy while the magnet looses its magnetism. The natural state of magnetic materials is to be demagnetized so that is what happens when it gets a chance. I think of it as I would a large collection of small bar magnets in a pile. There is a very strong tendency for each one to join with another that faces in the opposite direction where the north pole of one is attached to the south pole of the other and vice versa. This would result in the lowest energy configuration. Also, gravity does not have poles that can cancel each other with careful alignment. It is interesting to construct a larger magnet by placing the north pole of one against the south pole of the next in a single line. You would easily be able to make many others the same way as long as they are built in a one unit thick linear form. If you now try to make a more powerful magnet by placing two equal length ones in parallel, they will repel each other and attempt to flip over so that the north pole of one is against south pole of the other. Again, this is a lower energy configuration that the system will attempt to achieve. When the steel is allowed to contact our magnet, some of the magnetic flux is allowed to follow a shorter path through the added steel and the external field becomes weaker. Each additional piece of steel that we add absorbs more of the available flux until all of it contained within the net structure and no more escapes to attract additional steel masses. This represents the lowest energy state for the system. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Harry Veeder <hveeder...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Mon, Apr 15, 2013 2:58 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Yildiz motor in Geneva -- ran 5.5 hours then broke down On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 2:01 AM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote: >If that is true, then it follows that the Earth is doing work on I think that the remainder of your sentence was cut off here Harry. By analogy with your steel/magnet analysis the Earth is doing work on a falling apple and during that process the Earth's gravity is getting a little weaker. Harry
