posted
July 17th 2009 a press conference was called in San Diego California. A man by the name Jason McAllister unleashed a phenomenal invention upon the world. He gave them a device that could be easily manufactured that provided every household with a source of renewable energy. He called it the Mag-motor. He showed them a recipe of common enough items that could be baked in a household oven to create ceramic magnets. Using these magnets in place of pistons, in rotary design they could be hooked to a generator or transmission. This replaced the need for consumable fossil fuels. He knew this would be a difficult item to control, and an easy thing for those interested to discount. So he placed his motor design in a car, and left it for the reporters to look over.
[This message has been edited by Hookt_Un_Fonix (edited January 21, 2007).]
posted
Summary, so far. Unless the summary is fascinating (and often even then), we usually give just enough info to explain whatever scene we're in (or about to be in). You're giving a lot more, I think, and delaying the time we get into a scene and see action.
I don't know the first scene so I'm not sure, but I imagine all we need to know is: Jason McAllister, whose qualifications as an inventor are such-and-such, invented a power source too cheap to meter, and gave it away.
posted
that is the first scene, I guess. What the introduction to the novel is the MC telling his story as he sees it. Jason McAllister is not the MC, but his invention plays a huge part in his life, as well as later on in the story he plays a solid role. This novel is based in a time after this machine causing some fiscal trouble and aids in the collapse of the world economy. Then the governments collapse or change, most to theocracies. Then their is open hostility for a few years. Then a few nut jobs get some nukes, and a few other people thinks it is a good idea to use them to. The MC is growing up in the nuclear winter in the aftermath, in the second dark age. Through the actions of McAllister, a new city is formed where the minds of old America are safe. The MC works with them to expand the borders of this city for the good of ALL mankind. He uses what they make to raise armies, and eventually conquer a large portion of the world. So this first scene is important to explain how things happened, and it sets the stage for much much more.
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posted
This is all common knowledge to the presumed audience, you don't provide any reason for having it in the narrative. Of course, there also isn't the faintest hint that this is a first person narrative, is there?
Try to think of how you would preface a story that begins with your personal perspective of an historic event that all of us already know about.
posted
Also...frontloading the fact that this is essentially a story about a perpetual motion machine will hurt you. I'd find some way to avoid that, like claiming that it was a zero-point engine or perhaps even a thermo-kinetic converter. Both of which are practically perpetual motion but have a little more respectability in current theory.
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posted
This first section (not exactly a scene) may well contain info we need to understand the first scene; got it. However, there is a lot of extraneous detail. For example, "MC fights to expand the technocrat city" may well require us to know that Jason McAllister invented the mag-motor; but it doesn't require us to know that the press conference was in San Diego, that it took place on July 17th, or that there were ceramic magnets involved, etc.
Based on what you say, this is all background. OK. See if you can strip it to the bare minimum.
If McAllister were the MC, and you want this to be a scene, we'd want a POV, and we'd want dialog and action, soomething like
quote: "Here it is," McAllister said. He took the cover off the device.
"Blah blah," Joe Reporter said.
"Not at all." Such-and-such, McAllister thought. "Blah blah."
as opposed to
quote:A man by Jason McAllister unleashed a phenomenal invention upon the world.
But since McAllister is off-screen in your story, I don't think you want a scene; you just want him as background.
posted
He will later emerge as supporting character. Towards the end of the book he will have a huge roll in how the MC's life turns out. So it is important that his back story is reflected to develop the line. He will become the Ard Reigh, or high king, later in the story, and in essence become the MC's commander in chief. They will also find their paths crossing more and more often towards the end of the MS, and issues concerning the invention, the fall and eventual rise of humanity will become pivotal issues in character development. The guilt of McAllister, or at least his perceived guilt will be a focal for the end of the novel. The trouble I am encountering here, would be how to convey the information needed in the intro, with out over writing it. I am trying to think of how a war college educated man would write his memoirs. With no training as a writer, what would be his style and angle? How do you achieve a fluid writing style in first person, that has the look and feel of someone that never took up a pen, except to write a combat action or status report? He has emotions to convey with out have the solid skills of English or creative writing course to back him.
As for the perceived perpetual motion device, I know the laws of physics concerning the existence of such a device, and I know they are improbable. The machine itself to me is not perpetual, but renewable. The magnets can lose charge, and friction will eventually wear down the moving parts. It does however have longevity, and does not consume non renewable resources. Magnetism is a renewable supply of energy being force created from gravity and polarity, and it has rules that govern the flow of the energy. I am trying to find a way to work this into to a story with out boring readers with techno babble, or at the cost of the story itself. The canvas needs to be laid to paint the picture, but the canvas is not as important to the viewer if you get my drift?
posted
If it's not a perpetual motion device, where does the energy come from originally?
In a fusion reaction, the energy comes from the strong force bond of an atomic nucleus (generally helium fused from a deuterium-tritium mixture). In a thermo-piezoic or thermo-electric material the energy comes from heat (usually from heat transfer, but at the molecular level certain laws of thermodynamics break down enough to allow direct conversion, given the right materials). With a zero-point generator you're mining the energy present in any given patch of space/time. Even that requires that the energy come from somewhere.
If you aren't getting energy from somewhere, then you have to put all the energy that will be released from the device over its lifetime in at the start, like with a battery.
posted
perpetual motion can not exist by the laws of physics. Hence why the patent office will not let a person get a patent for such a device without a working viable model. I looked that up. Now I am not a physicist or a mechanical engineer, I was a medic, and now I am a coffee shop owner. Most of my education in these fields would come from friends that are in them, or from self education i.e. reading. I try to stay to laymen's terms because those are what I know. The device I envisioned would be a circular piston design, similar to world war two aircraft. Replace the pistons though with magnets. Also replace the caps of the piston shafts with magnets with inverse polarity. The inner ring would be positive charged, the outer ring would be negative. The pistons would be positive out, and negative in, this would cause them to try to stay in the center of the shaft to be between the fields. Since there would be multiple pistons in opposition of each other, fighting for that centered role it would turn the crank shaft as if combustion was still taking place. Now the magnets would loss charge over time, and friction and heat would aid to that loss as well. Solutions I came up with in my mind to prevent this with out still using fossil fuels would be to use a water based lubricant with antifreeze mixed in to cool the piston shafts, and refrigerator coils around the outside to cool the motor. That would be as far as I got with that part of the science, the rest I borrowed what I saw in pop sci. The fiction part would be the magnets, right now the only magnets that would be close to the size and magnetic field to produce enough torque to power a car, or the electrical needs of a house are neodymium magnets, and they lose charge in high temps, hence the need to keep it cool. As of right now I have not seen a method to reproduce these that has been effective, but I read a lot stories about scientist working with more powerful ceramic magnets each day. So with that motor design, and the fiction of having come up with the proper ceramic components the engine would work. It would not be a perpetual motion device though, because friction would still effect it, and eventually wear it down or break it, as it fought against its own resistance. Does this explanation help?
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Take a couple of magnets, and push them together north-north or south south. They repel each other. You have to put energy in to push them closer together. The repulsive force is determined by the distance separating them, an inverse square function. When you let go of them and they push each other apart, once again the force is given by the same function. The distance covered is the same. Thus the amount of energy that you get out of the reaction is only the amount you put in by pushing them together, minus friction loss.
It's like getting energy from a weight tied to a pully. You have to put energy in by lifting the weight to the top before you can get energy out by letting it pull down on the pully, and you can never get more energy out than it takes to lift the weight from the bottom back up to the top. The fact that you're using magnets doesn't bypass this fundamental principle of conservation. It isn't a matter of making more powerful/resiliant magnets, it's a fundamental princple of physical law that energy is conserved. If you're getting energy, something has to lose that energy.
posted
I beg to differ. I got the idea of this motor when playing with a magnet set I bought for my daughter. I love the Discovery store by the way. I am sure if there was enough charge and force to the field presented by the magnets you could make this work.
We were able to make a magnetic pin wheel that moved rather fast, and we did apply it to a rough generator of shorts. It was from an old electronics discovery kit that I got as a boy from radio shack. It took some doing and it was not very stable, but we did get a small light bulb to light up.
I am sure with the proper knowledge of mechanics and chemistry a person could apply themselves to making something like this work. It would not be easy, but I think it could be done, and account for the laws of physics and magnetism.
Hell I might work on this myself in my limited free time so I can have a working model to satisfy my own need to prove it lol. I mean if a person that is mechanically inclined as I am can get a light bulb to go, I am sure someone with more knowledge and dedication can get several light bulbs to go, and stay on.
posted
Well, you had to put the energy in yourself, right? The energy came from you muscles (which got it from sugar, which got it from photosynthesis, etc.). You turned that energy into angular momentum which spun the magnet so that the moving field induced a current in some wires, which then went through the lightbulb to light it.
You might be under the impression that the induction represents free energy, but in fact the induced current generates a slight back-lash magnetic field which is slowing down the magnets on each pass (in addition to friction loss), so unless you keep putting energy in the system has to run down, even if you managed to keep it frictionless.
Thinking about this, I'm tempted to go with a thermo-electric material...perhaps an organic semi-conductor that incorporates something similar to a simple form of chlorophyl. You can mix it up in a kitchen out of the right chemicals...then you cure it by exposing it to a mild reagent while forcing current (DC, naturally) through it. After that, it becomes a sort of permanent battery, it continuosly absorbs heat energy and turns it into electrical potential.
Or you could go with a ceramic conductor that "catalyzes" fusion, anyone here remember the Fleischmann and Pons thing with the pallidium reactor? The theory looked plausible, even though nobody was able to get it to work (there are still people trying, because the theory still looks attractive). Just use a new ceramic instead of pallidium and say that fixes the problem (apparently, the process only worked in "bursts" when the pallidium became "saturated" with deuterium, but these bursts would inflict some kind of damage on the microstructure of the pallidium either due to heat or neutron radiation causing the pallidium to decay into some other element, so that any given cell stopped working fairly quickly). The pallidium cathodes used in those reactors couldn't be made without special manufacturing capabilities because they required a very precise microstructure...besides which, pallidium is rather expensive. Say that your ceramic is relatively cheap and can be baked in an oven, like your magnets.
The zero-point angle...I'm not really coming up with anything for that one. A zero-point energy extractor would require certain critical components to be manufactured with extraordinary perfection, you just can't get away from that. And, thinking about it, ZPE is pretty exotic compared to thermo-electric organic semi-conductors and cold fusion electro-cells. I think that the cold fusion idea has the best legs, even if it is generally believed to be discredited. You just specify that the pallidium cathodes were the failure point, that a novel yet inexpensive microporous ceramic cathode actually gets the process to work well enough to be a reliable source of energy...um, the downside is that you still need deuterium for fuel.
Okay, I'm for the thermo-electric organic semi-conductor then. that seems the most plausible to me, at least. I mean...it really isn't something anyone could seriously cook up in a kitchen out of readily available chemicals, but you can gloss over the exact composition, throw in a comparison to explosives recipies as a story justification for attempts to suppress it and to kind of create the impression that it would be possible. To bad, because there are actually web sites that describe how to make a Fleischmann and Pons type CF reactor, but none on making thermo-electric organic semi-conductors that I know about.
posted
hmmm,.. I like the plant battery too. I just don't want to steal your idea. I am looking into alternative energy speculation and seeing what is out there as well. I want to get something that can effectively generate power on its own,in limited sunlight.
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posted
It's not my idea...hmmm, yep. Not mine. It's my uncle's idea
Kidding, though not so much, since I do happen to be related to the writer who first brought "flubber" into the national consciousness. Of course "flubber" is quite fanciful, it doesn't quite qualify as science fiction. But there were stories in which a thermopeizic material related to rubber are posited. The material absorbs heat, but compresses or tenses up in response. A shock or impact can cause the tension to be released, so that when you make a ball of the stuff and bounce it, it goes higher on each subsequent bounce...at least until the temperature drops to the point where it lacks the elasticity/energy to keep up the trick. As long as there is enough heat to keep the material pliable, it will provide "free" kinetic energy.
The problem with such a material is that it would be hidiously dangerous, and not at all as funny as it is in movies like Men in Black.
Recent science has confirmed that, at the nano-scale of molecular interaction where "heat" becomes discretely vectored kinetic energy, some of the laws of thermodynamics break down a bit, which is how complex organic molecules are able to perform a lot of the tricks that make us associate "organic" with "life". I don't own the science, and I didn't invent the idea. I did come up with generating an electrical potential as a safer mechanism than bouncing insanely at ever increasing velocities, though
But that's easy enough that other people have probably thought it up independently.
posted
You know what, I think that you could do the fusion thing if you posited that the extra neutrons were provided by lithium rather than heavy water. That's...a little dubious, but it should pass. You just put lithium chloride in the water, the electrolysis at the (handwavium) ceramic cathode allows unstable fusion to occur between lithium and hydrogen, releasing deuterium, tritium, and various heliums along with some neutrons. Since the composition of the (handwavium) ceramic allows it to "condense" both lithium and hydrogen isotopes, this "kickstarts" fusion at an intensity sufficient to provide a significant energy return.
This idea is good because it potentially doubles as a mechanism for catastrophe, if it turns out that you can force a reaction to go "critical" by applying really high voltages to the ceramic cathode once high-intensity fusion is underway. In short, it's not just a cheap fusion reactor, it's also potentially a nuclear bomb that almost anyone can make at home. That gives governments a realistic motive to try and suppress the technology and also gives you a realistic mechanism for release of the technology to directly contribute to widespread (and very messy) social collapse. It also better necessitates the emergence of a radical new philosophy to deal with the implications of nuclear bombs that even a bright (well, perhaps not so bright) ten year old can make in the garage.
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To clarify I am not one to discuss the mechanics of said device, but I think it would play well into the establishment of the story giving that it would be a nuclear device capable of small scale destruction. It would feed the post apocalyptic feel for the beginning of the novel. The start seems to be the hardest part and this offers the best solution. Now I need to figure out how the device works myself, so I can write about it more throughly. I also need to be able to break it down in simple terms so the regular joe can understand it, with out going to far into the world of jargon.
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posted
You can find a lot about the basic idea and simple schematics of the device (it really is a simple device) by Googling "palladium cathode cold fusion".
The "SF" change is simply that you replace the expensive and failure prone palladium cathode with a fictional ceramic (of unknown composition) which is (somehow) able to use lithium-7 (the most common isotope) instead of deuterium as a source of neutrons. Of course, it wouldn't really be possible for just anyone to cook up such a ceramic in their kitchen, the real deal would probably require a bunch of different rare metals measured with ultra precision and baked using special processes...but we're just going to say otherwise. That's why it's science fiction. Using fusion makes it plenty sciencey (as long as we don't do something kooky like having a nuclear reaction that can derive energy from iron).
http://jlnlabs.online.fr/cfr/html/cfrpd.htm has a number of pictures of few very homemade looking rigs, some in action. It also has some graphs that illustrate just how far the palladium cathode is from being a viable "catalyst". http://www.lenr-canr.org/Experiments.htm has a lot of pictures of more...less French looking devices. You know, things that look like part of an actual laboratory. There are plenty of other articles, but the basics are very simple.
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I just don't want to steal your idea. I am looking into alternative energy speculation and seeing what is out there as well. I want to get something that can effectively generate power on its own,in limited sunlight.
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