Centrifugal Force and Propulsion When an External Force Moves the Pendulum

         Centrifugal Force and Propulsion When an External Force Moves the Pendulum          

     Inertial propulsion systems in various forms such as with gyroscopes or pendulums that swing in smaller arcs at one end of a circle than at the other don't work. At least none has ever been demonstrated to work.

     That being said there is still a way they can be used as long as the force driving the pendulum is external to the pendulum system.

     In this case I used the Earth's magnetic field.

     To understand this we will imagine a pendulum and 4 rocket thrusters floating in micro gravity. Imagine there are two thrusters close together on each side of the arm of our pendulum near the end opposite the weight. Those thrusters would then be imagined to go on and off in such a way that they would swing the pendulum back and forth. While the pivot point of the pendulum where the thrusters were would not stay still there would be a sort of overall cycling swing of the pendulum in our micro gravity. The thrusters observe Newtons law of action and reaction.

    The swinging of the pendulum would create centrifugal force in only one direction and cause the model to accelerate in that direction.

     Now let's apply this to Earths magnetic field and electromagnets acting similar to a compass.
The electromagnets make the pendulum swing side to side but also observe Newtons law. The force of Earth's magnetic field interacting with the electromagnets makes the pendulum swing in a way that we would not consider unusual.
 
     As the pendulum swings the centrifugal force pulls it in one direction just as with the thrusters.
There is no magic here.

    So in the below video my model is floating in water to simulate low gravity and friction. The electromagnets are at right angles to each other and swing the model side to side.

   
     My model may look like a bunch of wires and stuff on some styrofoam discs but actually is pretty simple. It consists of some homemade electromagnets, batteries and an Arduino. There is an IR TV remote control circuit to turn the power on so that the model can settle still before starting when the button is pressed. The Arduino is programmed to turn the electromagnets on alternating so that the model generally swings side to side as the electromagnets at right angles to each other each align north and south with Earth's magnetic poles like a compass.

Magnetic Propulsion (by interaction with Earth's magnetic field) with Floating Stator Less Motor with Extra Power on the North Half Cycle Version

Magnetic Propulsion (by interaction with Earth's magnetic field) with Floating Stator Less Motor with Extra Power on the North Half Cycle

     Tonight I tried out my latest version of the magnetic propulsion device. It consists of a 12 inch aluminum cake pan with 6 off the shelf electromagnets. The main battery of electromagnets consists of 4 electromagnets with a 3/8 inch bolt through them. An Arduino and relay shield control the polarity of these electromagnets. The Arduino switches their polarity via a TV IR remote control and receiver circuit on a breadboard. When the north end of this battery of electromagnets turns the aluminum pan so that the magnets are as far north as they will turn we reverse the polarity and the aluminum pan rotates in a circle.

     It is a motor with the Earth as it's stator or permanent magnet. But it has 2 more electromagnets next to each end of the main battery of electromagnets. These magnets alternate on and off in such a way that they match the polarity of the main battery of the magnet when it is north at their respective ends of it.
   
     They increase the power of the rotation on one half of the circle but do so constantly. I believe it transfers some of the momentum of the rotating device in such a way that it moves in a line.

     This is one of the best versions I have come up with so far. As can be seen in the below video it moves the device about an inch in the first minute and about 4 inches in the second minute.
 
     In an earlier experiment I measured the force to move the device through the water at a similar rate of acceleration by taping a piece of string to the side of the tank and to the side of the aluminum pan and then weighing the piece of string. That is the weight of the string hanging between the side of the water tank and the device was enough to drag the device through the water ever so slowly. It weighed about 0.1 gram.

    The electricity from the batteries is in the order of 40 watts. By comparison a Hall Effect thruster uses about 20,000 watts and produces about 3 units of gram force.

     Were it not for the water resistance the device would spin much faster. Still we would not claim that the increase in speed would necessarily increase the force. (But it might)

                                                     See the video on my Youtube channel

     The left side of the tank is pointing NNW approximately.

     In theory this is all working but to really prove it works would require what is called a pendulum test. In such a test the device is attached to a long string and it is observed if the string swings to one side which would prove the presence of thrust.
 
     Now to do such a test might require that the device be mounted on an axle with delicate bearings and very nicely balanced.

Earliest occurance of this concept in my mind.

     At least 10 or 20 years ago I believed it would be possible for a combination of an electromagnet and a gyroscope to affect navigational changes on a spacecraft in low Earth orbit.
     My concept of the forces was that the overall force of such a device would be limited and of course not be anywhere near as powerful as a chemical rocket motor.

     About in 2015 when Neodymium magnets were getting to be very popular I decided to give it a try. I had some limited results and didn't really understand why it worked.

    The original model was made of Lego's with a simple rotor that had some magnets on one side and some solder on the other side to balance it. Since then I learned that most of what appeared to be working was from "Slip Stick Effect". That is how those little HexBug Nano things work. Basically if you have oscillation and friction it will make something move. It would work in water or on a surface but not in space at all. Since my experiments were on water it was obvious more study was needed.
 
    Also it was necessary to simplify things so I put a little HexBug Spider robot with an IR Remote on a Styrofoam disc of about 8 inch diameter. I taped the magnets to the robot's head, which rotated side to side and I attached a fin to the Styrofoam disc.

 
    Sure enough that simple demonstration worked. As I turned the robot's head from side to side the Styrofoam disc on which it was floating in a container of water rotated so that the magnets would align north and south. That pushed the fin in the water from side to side and the little contraption made its way from one end of the water container to the other.
 
    Now I had my arms around the concept that the rotation created by a magnet in Earth's magnetic field could be strong enough to move a small "boat".

     I stayed with the notion of the rotation or torque of the magnet in Earth's field and sought to understand how it could be translated into linear motion without actually pushing in the water.

    Here is the video of one of those early experiments using a weight instead of a fin:

    https://youtu.be/LFlmEjj2jmo

 
    It can also be found on my Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyGGu_mvODGRjCdhbGc0Y9g?view_as=subscriber