Magnetic motors don’t work. Those that do “work” only work for a short amount of time and the results are not independently reproducible. Unless of course you believe the “inventor” and skip all that useless math and physics stuff.

I am skeptical of any unverifiable claim, especially of free power, net increases in power or alternative energy. That doesn’t mean that someone may find a new way to create alternative power. If they do and it can be scientifically proven then I’m 100 percent behind it and it will change the world. If they can invent a method of energy conversion that’s more efficient then what’s currently available then that’s terrific. All they need to do is prove it to the scientific community.

If someone can do this in their garage then I’m pretty sure that big business will also be able to do it, and they will find a way of making money off it. That’s called capitalism, and it’s not yet gone out of style.

What I have seen so far is lots of claims with no empirical evidence to support those claims. No practical devices, just lots of claims and people looking for money to “develop” or sell their ideas or kits. If the idea works why do you need more money? There are people and large organizations throwing billions at any real alternative energy devices. Do you really think they would skip an idea that would revolutionize the whole concept of energy? I don’t think so. As an inventor if I was approached and offered untold amounts of money for my idea I would tend to take the money. Only a fool would turn it down because if they did and decided to give it away, whoever wanted it would get it anyway and find a way to make money off it.

Linux is a free operating system for the PC but most people who use it buy a commercially packaged version because it’s simple and easy to get running and they don’t have the skills to do it themselves. The rest of us buy Windows or Apple operating systems. There are many things that are available for free but we prefer to pay for packaged convenience. Do you really think energy is so much different? You could create free power by hooking up your bike to a generator but I don’t see too many people doing that. Much easier to flick a switch.

It seems that those people who want to believe in this kind of stuff are willing to put aside all practical thinking and trust someone they know nothing about and something they can’t truly comprehend based on information they have read on a web page or saw on a video. Well if you believe it, good for you, the hoaxers and scammers of the world need people who are willing to blindly accept anything they hear or see based on no real information.

Science is all about explaining how things are possible. What’s going on and how it’s going on. Any real practical alternative energy process will have to be verified scientifically in order to be accepted by society. That basic concept will never change.

I am not against any claim, I just want them to prove it.

I’d just add to your closing line (for the sake of the free-energy enthusiasts out there):

Let’s wait until it can be demonstrated in a lab, with real scientists and engineers watching, rather than just text and video on the internet.

Everyone needs a briefcase containing Carl Sagan’s baloney detection kit…

There have been many attempts at a perpetual motion machine over hundreds of years but no one has yet been able to build a verifiable machine.

You don’t get something for nothing in this world and that includes free power. Even solar power costs money and energy to build and install solar cells. Wind and water based generators also convert mechanical energy to electrical energy but ther is always losses involved.

I think it’s great that people are researching these things but I think at best we will only be able to convert excess energy, like collecting solar power and storing it in batteries or using that power to convert water to Hydrogen for later use. That’s what makes sense. Trying to find loopholes in the laws of the physics is best left to those people who actually understand these things.

The real test of any free energy scheme is this, would you invest your money in any of these “technologies”? If so perhaps you’d also be interested in some lovely oceanfront property available I have available in Arizona.

Here’s another thought. If you had just invented real free energy would you be telling everyone about it and risk losing everything to big business, or would you protect it with your life, show only those people who could prove it and make them sign a Non Disclosure Agreement before seeing it, patent the idea worldwide, which would cost millions, and then approach big business once you know that they would not be able to steal your idea. Hmmnnn

I’m all for the next breakthrough in the science of energy but let’s wait ’til it can be proven.

The real problem is that you, by your own admission, are not qualified to evaluate technical claims. You say that you’ve “seen their claims put to the test,” but you actually haven’t. You’ve seen videos on youtube, which are not credible, and even if you’d seen it first hand, you don’t have the background to understand whether they have actually been “put to the test.” As you said, you “don’t begin to understand” the science behind these explanations, so how can you say that you really are seeing saltwater used to produce hydrogen with a net gain in energy? Thermodynamics isn’t rocket science, but it does take a few years of college-level study to understand it well enough to be able to use it, or to be able to evaluate the devices of people who claim to do the impossible.

You say that you can also find Tesla free energy project videos on youtube… Let me tell you that you can find videos of flying saucers, bigfoot and ghosts on youtube as well. These people are not necessarily all frauds. Some of them genuinely believe in what they are saying, but they are ignorant of what they’ve really got. I suspect most are frauds, however. The net result is the same: the internet is full of incorrect information, and it gets repeated by hopeful people who are unqualified to tell whether they are seeing something real. You are doing yourself a disservice if you take “getting a education in science/engineering and then critically evaluating technical claims so that you are able to understand how a device actually works” to be equivalent to “watching videos on youtube.”

I stand by what I said. If you are a bright, technically skilled person, don’t waste your time chasing perpetual motion machines and free energy devices. You will waste your life and your talent, when you could be working on something that would actually make people’s lives better, and make the world a better place. Dream about Tesla’s free energy all you want, but when you have time in your life to do something, do something that makes a difference.

You have a good idea there. There are a lot of researchers working on developing a catalyst that can use sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. In this case of course the energy source is the sun, not the water. But it’s a perfectly rational approach!

Paul,

In your example people are not using saltwater as a fuel. Saltwater is not the energy source in those cars.

When you say that the water reacts with the type of metal container, which separates the hydrogen and oxygen, there the METAL CONTAINER is the fuel, and it is being used up for every drop of water you turn into hydrogen.

Most “cars running on saltwater” stuff on youtube refers to electrolysis, where the fuel is your car battery. I think a lot of it is just fraud, too.