Donald Noble's Website

According to the BBC, a ramp has been designed that “_creates_” power as cars drive over it. BBC News story

On first reading it seems that the inventor has conveniently circumvented the laws of thermodynamics, and is creating power from nothing.

I assumed the ramp is to be used as a speed hump, to slow down traffic, and at the same time generate some useful power. Otherwise it is just a way for the council’s electricity bill to be subsidised by the motorist, a very-stealth-tax!

A promotional video on the inventor’s website mentions that “unlike a speed hump there is no discomfort for the car occupants … and that no additional fuel is used”.

Both of these statements cannot be true is power is being generated. There must be some additional fuel used by the car, the energy must be coming from somewhere. If this is the case, then due to the losses involved in the system (it cannot be 100% efficient) surely it would be better to generate the power directly, rather than indirectly with this ramp. Unless you don’t want to pay for the electricity, instead passing the cost on to the motorist.

Or maybe I’m just being cynical.

This entry was posted on Sunday 18th December 2005 in Engineering and tagged energy, Engineering, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.