The Ball-Bearing Electric Motor (2003)

Sadly the premise that it operates on a thermal principle has been pretty much debunked - it operates on electromagnetism, due to the induced EMF when the ball bearing rotates through a magnetic field caused by the current through it. Here’s a paper describing the effect (which has been experimentally verified)... <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.physics.princeton.edu&#x2F;~mcdonald&#x2F;examples&#x2F;motor.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.physics.princeton.edu&#x2F;~mcdonald&#x2F;examples&#x2F;motor.pd...</a><p>I built one of these at university as a research project and it works well (albeit drawing a huge amount of current!). Interestingly enough it works just as well in either direction, depending which way you give it an initial push - the polarity of the DC terminals doesn’t matter at all!

Sadly the premise that it operates on a thermal principle has been pretty much debunked - it operates instead on electromagnetism, due to the induced EMF when the ball bearing rotates through a magnetic field caused by the current through it. Here’s a paper describing the effect (which has been experimentally verified)... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20415755" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20415755</a><p>I built one of these at university as a research project and it works well (albeit drawing a huge amount of current!). Interestingly enough it works just as well in either direction, depending which way you give it an initial push - the polarity of the DC terminals doesn’t matter at all!

Roobert33 on YouTube demonstrates this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=f1xnQ9gWy1o" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=f1xnQ9gWy1o</a>

I sort-of feel that anything which uses electricity purely for a thermal effect, is actually in the carnot engine space and not actually &quot;electric&quot; in any meaningful sense of the word. They could have modified a stanley steamer to boil water electrically, and made similar claims (ball bearings aside)<p>But undenyably very .. cool?

I wonder if you could put a current regulator on it that would provide the minimum current needed to achieve a certain RPM. Seems like the heat issue could just be that after it reaches its maximum speed, the excess current is just wastedin ohmic heating.