Odds and ends

[Mark]

I came across this video today by accident, it having some pertinent subject matter starting here. If you turn up the volume you can hear the brass ball chatter or vibrate a bit.
PIEZOELEMENT THE SIMPLEST ELECTRICITY GENERATOR Piezoelectric Generator IGOR BELETSKY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwyt618tbv0&t=115s

And from the above I read a comment which led me to search his videos.
THE SAMOBELY BALL ONLY IN THE WORLD AS AN ETERNAL ENGINE THE GREAT PHYSICS IGOR BELETSKY
And comments from the video below.
"Special thanks for indicating the source. Interesting book.I saw a video half a year ago where it didn’t work, now it’s working, well done, I thought you’d give up this experiment, it was very hard"

"How much work was invested to achieve the desired result... I would have given up much earlier. After all, all these alterations/remelting/refinishing of the same thing, without positive results, take a lot of energy, not so much physical as mental. + to you for bringing our plans to the end."

"A million likes to you, a person with incredible willpower who finally made a working sample! I can’t even imagine how much effort and time it took. Definitely exclusive!"

"If lead rails melt and form a small bump, this is no longer a perpetual motion machine, they will eventually, after some time, become unusable, if I’m not mistaken"

"Include a link to a video of your first attempts in the description! Otherwise, not everyone knows how much work it took!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlKfJNKj-5M

One thought though is he has to be careful not to heat the ball too much or the lead will melt or deform instead of recovering.
Here's a video of him struggling to get it to run, a year before the above videos. I think the problem was he was sticking to the book when there're other materials to get it to run or choices that would have worked. Interesting though to see some of the trial and errors to learn from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvjbV8yM4F0

Viewer comment
"1965 Physics lesson in 8th grade. Successful demonstration of this device. The ball is homemade, made of copper. Heating was carried out in an induction furnace. (from the security officer from KVN-49-4). The horizontal position is set in the same way as wheel balancing. I did it under the guidance of a physics teacher. The main difficulty is the ball. It takes a long time to do. With a good ball it rolls for about 5 minutes. This time it’s not GEE-GEE. Everything is fine, but sad. Previously, there was grass... and snow... and sugar... Good luck to the author of the video."

(The 5 minute comment above about a brass ball rolling that long brought to mind mine.)
A Single Brass Ball Bearing Motor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se1hlK7twzc

[Mark]

I kind of like this twirling effect, like something you would spin on the tip of your finger with motion.
Compound Rocking Motion Using Two Cones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk9-ocp1Nx4

[Mike Everman]

I don’t know what they might be used for, but McMaster had them and i bought some just because. I think you can relate!

What sorts of things are the hollow bearing balls used for or what do you use them for? They sound like something nice to have for special projects.

[Mark]

Yes. I've bought several shapes myself because they just seemed like something potentially useful later on somehow.
Here's yet another variation of the wheel motor. A center needle point stays fixed in one spot and the wheel tilts on the pivot point going in circles. I was thinking of trying a swash plate movement of some sort but couldn't find anything to attempt that vague notion.
When the motor stopped I lifted it off the pan and touched the spot where it was rotating. It was rather hot still, enough to burn you so it must be that both the wheel motor and metal pan locally are staying pretty hot as it runs, whatever the heat gradient is that works its magic.
Gimbaling Trevelyan Rocker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQNL2h0gFiM
Happened to be listening to this song while studying the wheel spin. Maybe I could mount one of those hypnotic spinning spiral patterns on the wheel. The song has kind of surreal aspect to it, like the curious nature of the wheel motor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0-7fg8oAO4

One thing I want to try is to see if a disk will spin/rock like a Euler's Disk but stay up for a longer than typical Euler's Disk, running on the energy from a hot disk, with no pivot point to support it like in the above clip. Also it might be visually interesting if I had another wheel motor circling the pivoting one in the middle.

[Mark]

My little rolling wheel motor towel bar posts are made of chrome-plated brass. So I wonder how a nitinol wheel would perform.

From Wikipedia
"The discovery of the shape-memory effect in general dates back to 1932, when Swedish chemist Arne Ölander[6] first observed the property in gold–cadmium alloys. The same effect was observed in Cu-Zn (brass) in the early 1950s."

"Nitinol alloys exhibit two closely related and unique properties: the shape memory effect and superelasticity (also called pseudoelasticity). Shape memory is the ability of nitinol to undergo deformation at one temperature, stay in its deformed shape when the external force is removed, then recover its original, undeformed shape upon heating above its "transformation temperature." Superelasticity is the ability for the metal to undergo large deformations and immediately return to its undeformed shape upon removal of the external load. Nitinol can deform 10 to 30 times as much as ordinary metals and return to its original shape. Whether nitinol behaves with the shape memory effect or superelasticity depends on whether it is above its transformation temperature. Below the transformation temperature it exhibits the shape memory effect, and above that temperature it behaves superelastically."

"The reversible strain in TiNi alloys is approximately 11% and that in copper-based shape-memory alloys is approximately 20%. Shape-memory alloys have been used in a wide range of applications such as temperature sensors, actuators, eyeglass frames, and orthodontic wires [8]. The increasing prominence of shape-memory alloys has popularized the shape-memory effect."
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.10 ... %20Au,6.1b).

[Mark]

Some out of focus perspective showing the angle and movement of the rolling with a fixed point. The other day it ran for almost 9 minutes and could do better if it had a flat even surface for it to roll over.
Wheel Motor Pivoting on a Point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DG4FdhXGJw