Anyone overcoming gas prices by hypermiling?

I once had the opportunity to meet one of these "free energy" shysters. A friend who was thinking of investing in

Welcome to Magnetic Power Inc. - Home of breakthrough energy technology and Genie © 2006-08

brought me in to meet the founder of the company and see what I would think of it, as I'm an "Engineer"

It was absolutely fascinating to see how convincing this guy was. He was down to earth in a sort of folksy way, not the slick-haired used car salesman that I would have imagined. His office is in Sebastopol, CA, a little rural hippie suburb at the fringes of the Bay Area. He very much has the "lets save the world together" message that I'm sure plays well with the other hippie folks in town. He had a big office filled with binders of data, a few desks, and an administrative assistant who dropped in on our meeting to express how she was just an ordinary person who got so excited by this that she had to be a part of it.

He was a very smart guy, who did seem to have a decent grasp of physics and a great grasp of business, along with a very friendly soft sell.

I wondered if this guy believed his own BS. He was so unlike the stereotypical salesperson that I just couldn't imagine him lying. One thing that seemed to make him sound reasonable was his getting impatient with everyone not believing him, and deciding that he was going to build toy versions of his "free energy" device, making them cheaply and widely available so everyone could see this was for real. Most of the free energy shysters are so secrecy-oriented that they would never suggest such a thing.

Of course the conversation took the expected tack: I asked him how does it work, he gave an evasive but genuine sounding answer, I tried to narrow down the specifics, but without having any idea what he was talking about it went nowhere, and I still have really no idea how his thing is even supposed to work. He promised to email me a white paper after the meeting, which basically ended the discussion. He did email me the white paper but it was so impenetrable and convoluted I didn't even bother reading it.

I see from his website that years later he's still trying to produce those demonstration devices :) homestead if you want a place to invest your nest egg I'm sure I could hook you up for a very modest finder's fee.
 
Homestead, I am sorry that you invested with this shyster. I understand how badly that can feel when you realize that you have been lied to and lost your money.
Hopefully it wasn't too much and you will be more careful with people that tell you they can break the laws of physics.
(That is why you are holding on to this con job so tightly, right??)
 
EDIT: Oh wow, I opened the pdf just for fun, and the crux of his argument is that he is the hand of God here to change the rules of physics with his holy power. Gotcha - have fun with that.

I tried last night to find some info about this, even though the wiki article was pretty cut and dried.

After a half hour of reading content that generally tried hard to squeeze in Jesus, patriotism, allegations that "The Arabs" tried to pay him a billion dollars for his idea but he wouldnt take it, allegations that he was killed by the Big Oil Companies or The Government or The Arabs (he died of a brain aneurysm), that The Government stole all his prototypes, and generally cultish materials, I gave up.

Everything seemed to start with cult stuff and ended trying to sell me a $500 hydrogen tube to attach to my carburetor.
 
Everything seemed to start with cult stuff and ended trying to sell me a $500 hydrogen tube to attach to my carburetor.

Yep. And here are two more pieces of the puzzle:

Puzzle piece #1) That pdf ( http://www.aero2012.com/en/documents/Stan_Meyer_Full_Data.pdf ) on page 7, says that 'Biblical prophesy foretells this event', referring to using water as a fuel to 'power our cars, heat our homes, fly our planes or propel spaceships beyond our galaxy'. :eek:

Puzzle piece #2) from the thread "The five greatest moments of your life..."

2. Being born again.

So, we need no evidence that this device works, we simply need to believe that it works!


-ERD50
 
Well, I dont think that criticizing someones faith is appropriate.

But science is science.

Not meant as a criticism, just an observation.

I think there is a connection between the religious zeal in that pdf, and the willingness of some to accept the faith in a belief over the scientific understanding surrounding a belief.

-ERD50
 
OK - on a more positive note.... ;)

Here is a high mileage idea that seems to make very good sense. It does not violate any laws of physics, as far as I can see, and it seems like it could be implemented. I wonder if/when we might see this technique used:

Six stroke engine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The first one of these I heard of ( the Crower version) was the one where they inject a small amount of water after the normal combustion/exhaust strokes. The water turns to steam from the heat, the expanding steam powers the piston down (the fifth stroke), and then another exhaust (the sixth) stroke occurs.

So, you get more power, and since you absorb the heat, it reduces/eliminates the need for a cooling system. OK, not sure how much water you need to carry with you, what problems you would have with minerals, freezing, etc, and steam being pushed past the rings into the oil, but....

The other one (Velozeta), relies only on hot air. It supposedly does not require any new technology, it sounds like it would just be a different set of valve timings. I guess you still need a cooling system, but maybe smaller?

I think there is a small amount of hype in saying you get 'an extra power stroke!'. What you get is, instead of one power stroke in four cycles, is two power strokes in six cycles. So, for the same power out, that extra stroke would need to be at least half as powerful as the main power stroke. I wouldn't think there would be that much residual energy left, but maybe they factor in a smaller cooling system?

Anyhow, it seems to make a lot of sense. Be interesting to see if this gets adopted.

-ERD50
 
Homestead, I am sorry that you invested with this shyster. I understand how badly that can feel when you realize that you have been lied to and lost your money.
Hopefully it wasn't too much and you will be more careful with people that tell you they can break the laws of physics.
(That is why you are holding on to this con job so tightly, right??)

Thanks ,but I haven't invested a dime in it yet. I am just researching it now.
There are 2 forums on this subject, hydroxy in yahoo and water fuel cell forum.
Here is an account of someone who said they replicated the experiment.
The Water Fuel Cell :: View topic - One person that has replicated Stan's design!!
 
Here is an account of someone who said they replicated the experiment.

I dearly wish I could let this go but...

"I have found a letter from a man named Ted Zettergren,who someone has mentioned as being the first person to succesfully replicate Stan's work.From everything I have read and learned,it all adds up to me."

and

"I believe Ted Zettergren was laid to rest in 2003 but there were more than him that have duplicated the technology.
I read a post from Tad Johnson who made personal contact with Stan through an un-named intermediary. Tad claims to have duplicated the tech as well and even told the reader how to do it to. Tad mentions Ted and another person that has duplicated the tech."

So....I'm afraid these are still not exactly ringing endorsements. If this is the best proof source that was available after 24 hours of research, I'd give this up.
 
Yep. And here are two more pieces of the puzzle:

Puzzle piece #1) That pdf ( http://www.aero2012.com/en/documents/Stan_Meyer_Full_Data.pdf ) on page 7, says that 'Biblical prophesy foretells this event', referring to using water as a fuel to 'power our cars, heat our homes, fly our planes or propel spaceships beyond our galaxy'. :eek:

Puzzle piece #2) from the thread "The five greatest moments of your life..."

So, we need no evidence that this device works, we simply need to believe that it works!

-ERD50

i am in good company with Isaac Newton
but I think he was smarter than me. :)
 
Mr. Newton had the benefit of believing in things that fit within the laws of science and physics.

There are no perpetual motion machines, nor are there setups that produce more energy than their potential.

And so far, absolutely nothing in this space that has been produced and reproduced independently or by anyone at all except people who may have written letters before their demise 4 years ago who "really seem to fit what I know"...
 
Now wait a minute CFB, we're getting somewhere. Do I have this right?

We have evidence that somebody on the internet, claims to have a letter from somebody (now deceased, RIP) that someone else says has duplicated Stan's work.

I mean, if that weren't enough, 'Tad' has duplicated it too! He said so! Umm, well, at least someone read a post from someone claiming to be 'Tad'. Heck, this is so easy that even 'another person' can duplicate it!

What more do we need!!!! 'Four Pillars', index funds and diversification be damned - WHERE DO I SEND MY MONEY!!!!

What more do we need!!!! Well, what else - a youtube link! And angels!!! :angel::angel::angel:

YouTube - I'm A Believer !!!!!

-ERD50
 
There are no perpetual motion machines, nor are there setups that produce more energy than their potential.


Let's just say.... that there is no KNOWN way to have a perpetual motion machine....

If we took almost anything that we have in electronics today back a couple of hundred years they would have said something similar...

Take a 8GB USB drive... or even the TV... 200 years ago someone would have said... it is not possible!!! Why would anybody think that they could send a view of something from one place to another through thin air.... it is impossible...


NOW, are the guys who are doing these things now able to do it:confused: NOT... but I would never say never....
 
Not really a whole argument. A water powered perpetual motion machine requires changes to the established laws of nature. The development of the television or computer memory device doesn't.

The energy required to separate water into hydrogen and water is well established. The energy produced from the results is less than that.

This means you have to add more energy to the process than it produces.

If water had instability issues like some of the more interesting nuclear bomb component elements, then it might be possible to disrupt it with a low energy cost item and get more energy out of the process than you put in.

This alleged process supposedly uses a "resonance frequency" to disrupt the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen. There is no scientific basis for that principal, it has never been demonstrated to work, and nobody has ever reproduced the alleged experiment.

What actual scientists have determined is that this process used simple electrolysis to separate the hydrogen and oxygen. That means his "water car" had a big huge battery in it somewhere that had to be charged up before "demonstrations".
 
Not really a whole argument. A water powered perpetual motion machine requires changes to the established laws of nature. The development of the television or computer memory device doesn't.

The energy required to separate water into hydrogen and water is well established. The energy produced from the results is less than that.

This means you have to add more energy to the process than it produces.

If water had instability issues like some of the more interesting nuclear bomb component elements, then it might be possible to disrupt it with a low energy cost item and get more energy out of the process than you put in.

This alleged process supposedly uses a "resonance frequency" to disrupt the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen. There is no scientific basis for that principal, it has never been demonstrated to work, and nobody has ever reproduced the alleged experiment.

What actual scientists have determined is that this process used simple electrolysis to separate the hydrogen and oxygen. That means his "water car" had a big huge battery in it somewhere that had to be charged up before "demonstrations".

I reject your reality and substitute my own! :D
 
It is amazing. An amalgam of theology, pop ecology, sentence fragments, and random equations. Many of the paragraphs are indecipherable, and other paragraphs are true, but irrelevant. He also could have used an editor to get the grammar right, but that's a small point.

Still, I have no doubt this stuff convinced many investors.

I kept looking for the links to Time Cube
 
Would you call that "bump" drafting Nords?
For a limited time only!

Bogus. He lost a court case brought by the investors he hoodwinked:
I suppose nuclear bombs also violate that same law since the energy going in is just a few pounds of tnt.
Hey, Homestead, here's a question:
When Gumby and I were on submarines we ran nuclear reactors to generate propulsion & electricity. We also ran (at least one) oxygen generator that hydrolized pure water (distilled from seawater). Both functions are horribly expensive, time-consuming, and manpower-intensive. Kinda dangerous, too.

If Stanley Meyers was on to something, would the Navy buy it?

Hint: the Navy still makes oxygen the old-fashioned way (by splitting oxygen & hydrogen) and propulsion still comes from splitting atoms. I don't think Mr. Meyers has any military contracts.

Personally I'm holding out for cold fusion...
 
CFB.... you missed my point....

I am not saying that THIS thing can work in our normal way of thinking... like you say.. the 'laws' we work under...

Back then the 'science laws' they knew were cast in stone would not allow for what we have today...

And we have science seem to say that they are missing 90% or so of matter (percent might be wrong... but 'dark matter')...

So if we can not even find the vast majority of the universe that we think is out there... how do we know that the 'laws' we are using are the actual final laws of science:confused: They work today... but who knows what will be discovered in the future...

Under the laws we know are 'true', we can not go faster than the speed of light... but then we now have some theories that we actual can... and there might be some energy source that would be like cold fusion (which would not break the energy in vs out issue)... E=MC^2 has a lot of energy in a small amount of M....


Don't get me wrong... the guy is nuts...


PS... just throwing out a random thought.... but wasn't it our thinking awhile back that from the science that we 'knew' that a bumble bee could not fly? but it did...


I know... I know... bad arguments.... so what :D
 
Back
Top Bottom