Grimer seems to think it work: http://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=112238#112238
Grimer: Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2013 3:52 pm Post subject: Another Claim to a Working Device *Grimer wrote:* *I think I am beginning to grasp one of the essential requirements for a gravity mill. * *One must have a closed path for the weights on one side of the main axle but no * *closed path on the other. * *In other words we must have at least two centres of motion for the weights. * *We probably need three but preventing structure as a whole moving relative * *to the earth will possibly give us the third.* LOL. It's all to do with the conservation of energy. Each energy derivative is conserved. The two familiar ones are of course the first and second derivatives, Momentum and Force x distance. We can think off these as velocity "energy" and acceleration energy. We could add conservation of heat within an insulated space as a third familiar conservation. But all derivatives must be conserved since we are talking in all cases of more and more complicated examples of the basic conservation, the conservation of momentum. So jerk is conserved, snap is conserved, crackle is conserved, pop is conserved and all higher as yet unnamed derivatives are also conserved. Heat covers a range of derivatives depending on the number of independent particle motions involved. To return to the subject in hand, if we have a simple closed path which weaves in and out towards a single axle centre then though we have plenty of change in acceleration towards the centre (jerk), the positive jerk on the one side is necessarily balanced by the negative jerk on the other and so there is no net gain in energy. However, if we have a major and a minor centre and we loop around the minor centre on one side but not on the other then we have more jerk energy on one side than the other. So we can use the jerk vector to unbalance the wheel - which is basically what Trevor is trying to do - and the Boys from Brazil as well for that matter. <end quote> Extensive discussion in this thread.
