🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sep 20, 11:00 pm, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> If a constant-charge parallel-plate capacitor is totally immersed in
> water, the force of attraction between the plates is 80 times weaker
> than the force of attraction in vacuum. However, if we thrust some
> solid dielectric between the plates (not necessarily occupying the
> whole distance between them - it could be rather thin), the force of
> attraction becomes even greater than in vacuum. Accordingly, the
> following four-step cycle (carried out very slowly) violates the
> second law of thermodynamics:
>
> 1. Plates are immersed and fixed. We thrust the solid dielectric.
> 2. Plates get closer. We GAIN work.
> 3. We withdraw the solid dielectric.
> 4. Plates get apart; initial state restored. We SPEND work.

  A variant on this was written up by George O. Smith in his SF novel
_Venus Equilateral_ more than fifty years ago.

> When the plates are immersed in a liquid dielectric (water), some
> additional pressure between them emerges, pushes them apart and so
> counteracts their electrostatic attraction (W. Panofsky, M. Phillips,
> Classical Electricity and Magnetism, Addison-Wesley, Reading,
> Massachusetts (1962), pp. 111-116). If the plates are vertical and
> only partially immersed, the same pressure forces the liquid between
> the plates to rise above the surface of the water pool (see fig. 6-7
> on p. 112 in Panofsky's book). What if one punches a small hole in one
> of the plates, just above the surface of the pool? Will the lifted
> water leak through the hole and fall? If lifting is due to an
> additional pressure generated within the bulk, as assumed by Panofsky
> and Phillips, then water WILL leak through the hole and the second law
> will be violated. No matter how weak the waterfall is, theoretically
> it can rotate a waterwheel…
>
> The perpetuum mobile of the second kind described above (as well as
> the one described below) will never become a money-spinner and will
> not solve the energy problems of humankind. However Nature may
> occasionally have used such (inefficient from an anthropocentric point
> of view) mecanisms and the knowledge of them could make us
> unexpectedly rich in some unconventional sense.

  The electric field is not confined to the space between the plates.


  Mark L. Fergerson