Talk:Water fuel cell

Infobox

If you are not happy with a personal infobox, can anyone show me a neutral infobox? I cannot find one. Thank you. --Big wheels keeps on turning (talk) 15:38, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The article is about a device, not a person, so a bio-infobox is not the right kind of thing to have. DMacks (talk) 15:40, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

What is non-neutral? Oli Filth^{(talk|contribs)} 15:42, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The article forwards from a topic for the person. Where are the alternative infoboxes? --Big wheels keeps on turning (talk) 15:49, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Category:Infobox templates. Oli Filth^{(talk|contribs)} 15:53, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Wholesale changes

@User:Big wheels keeps on turning,

You have not discussed a single one of your extensive changes. I've started this thread as an opportunity for you to do so before I report you for violating the 3-revert rule. Could you please provide an explanation for each of the non-trivial changes that you have made. Note that it would also be worth perusing the talk archives for this page (see links above), to ensure that you're not making changes that have been discussed and rejected in the past. Oli Filth^{(talk|contribs)} 16:01, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I have read through them. You obviously have some kind of axe to grind but your modus operandi is clear and it is not honest.

To establish your credibility, show me one proper reference where it states Laughton was to appear at the Ohio court case.

Or perhaps you would care to contact him via the University of London? --Big wheels keeps on turning (talk) 16:07, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I do not need to establish my credibility nor my "modus operandi" (see WP:AGF); it is not necessary. Again, please could you list justifications for each of your changes.

With regard to your specific question, my assumption (which is possibly unjustified, given no free copy; however see [1]), is that this is backed up by the referenced article. Oli Filth^{(talk|contribs)} 16:11, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Big wheels keeps on turning, some of your proposed changes may well be reasonable, some of them are clear violations of WP:NPOV. When your block expires, I strongly suggest that you get consensus for your desired changes one at a time- start by choosing one factual error, explain the change you want to make on this talk page, with confirming reliable source, and make the change when you have consensus- then move on to the next. It will take longer, but you will be more likely to improve the article. You can see WP:DISPUTE for more advice on dealing with content disagreements. Thanks -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 16:14, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The cited reference says that "The car was a wonderful, if unlikely, dream while it lasted, offering a pollution-free future powered by a limitless source of energy. But the dream was shattered when Meyer was found guilty of fraud after his Water Fuel Cell was tested before an Ohio judge ... One of the experts due to examine the car was Michael Laughton, professor of electrical engineering at Queen Mary and Westfield University, London, but he was not allowed to see it. 'Although Meyer had known about our visit weeks in advance, when we arrived he made some lame excuse about why the car wasn't working, so it was impossible to evaluate it,' said Laughton." This seems to confirm that "His car was due to be examined by the expert witness Michael Laughton... " Yilloslime ^T_C 16:40, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Michael Laughton's visit happened in 1990 and was with Admiral Anthony Griffin's group, as documented elsewhere (Electronics World & Wireless World, January 1991).

He had nothing to do with the court case in 1996 as the topic implies. He was not a witness to the court case which were according to the court papers; Michael Leverich, Rick Schneider and Ron Dockweiler.

Please contact him here to confirm for yourself: M.A.Laughton@elec.qmul.ac.uk

http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/department/staff/academic/mal.htm

Please confirm if this is true. --Big wheels keeps on turning (talk) 07:16, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Is that you Gaby? Guyonthesubway (talk) 15:58, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

OK ... so, quite rightly, no objections? I'll give it another day and correctly remove it then.

Thank you. --Big wheels keeps on turning (talk) 16:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

No, that isn't quite how it works, Big wheels keeps on turning. Yilloslime has already confirmed that the fact you object to is indeed in the published source; no one is likely to contact Laughton, since the information is already available in the source, and since Wikipedia doesn't permit original research. Is it your claim that this information is not in the published source, and that Yilloslime lied? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 16:30, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

FWIW I can confirm that Yilloslime quoted the source accurately, which verifies the statements in our article. Guess we can move on now. Abecedare (talk) 16:42, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

The Sunday Times article does not actual state that Laughton was an expert at the court case. He was not. He was not involved in it.

The Sunday Times article does state that Laughton was allegdly to inspect the car and this is correct. That inspection was as part of the Admiral Sir Anthony Griffin visit in 1991 as refered to in a 1991 edition of Electronics World.

You are miss reading the article adding 2+2 to make 5 according to your POV.

FYI, Tony Edwards was part of the "Infinite Energy" Cold Fusion proponent associated with Jed Rothwell (banned of the Wikipedia Cold Fusion topics) and Eugene F. Mallove. His credibility is not great. He did not have sufficient qualifications to judge such work.

The Times article was part of their stitch up of Meyer. --Big wheels keeps on turning (talk) 03:38, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

You are removing sourced information and adding unsourced information. The fact that some of the unsourced information (that the device worked) is totally bogus is not fully relevant. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:06, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

• I am not removing any sources. I am not disputing the controversy around his work.

• Simple fact checking is not "original research".

• The deliberately vague Times article does not state Laughton was a witness to the court case. He was not. You are making a false assumption.

When he claims he was to have inspected the car is during the Griffin Committee's visit. This is accurate and his comments are fair.

Friends, you are also mistaking my intentions. I am not making claims that the device worked. I am merely balancing from its current extremely NPOV state to one that reflects all available sources, including those relating to Admiral Sir Anthony Griffin.

I should point out that Admiral Sir Anthony Griffin was the Third Sea Lord, Controller of the Royal Navy. That is the rank in charge for procurement and matériel in the British Royal Navy (research and commission of new technological developments and weaponry). Further more, was in charge of the British Navy's research into the state of art hydrogen technologies and its potential adoption during the 1970s following the Oil Crisis.

This would make him a reliable source. --Big wheels keeps on turning (talk) 13:39, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

That might - maybe - make him a reliable source for the operations of the Royal Navy and naval warfare in general - but it gives him no qualifications whatever for understanding how the laws of thermodynamics should be applied - or how electrolysis works - which are the principle matters at issue here. However, that's not the issue here.

We need you to cease removing sourced, referenced material and replacing it with unsourced material. Any changes of that nature are controversial in the extreme and should be discussed here first - without a strong consensus, this stuff should NOT go into the article. When something is clearly non-controversial, by all means go ahead and edit it - but when your changes are reverted over and over again - the answer isn't to simply shove it back into the article again and hope that it 'sticks' this time. Trust me - it won't. That's why we have the "three revert rule" - when something has been reverted a couple of times, you MUST NOT put it back in a third time...that's not allowed. When this kind of revert-replace-revert-replace thing happens, you're supposed to back off, come to this talk page and start explaining why your version is better than the original version. We discuss - and hopefully some kind of consensus view emerges. At that point, we all agree to abide by the consensus - whether we personally agree with it or not.

That's how Wikipedia works - and you don't have some special dispensation to ignore that time-honored process. SteveBaker (talk) 01:33, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Rereading the Times article at the digg link posted above (and other archived copies, that are the same content...see /Archive 1 for previous discussions), I'm not 100% sure the Laughton (non-)analysis was specifically done as part of the Ohio court case, or whether it was much earlier (and if the latter, whether it was relied on in the court case). The article definitely mentions it in connection with the case, and intersperses the topics which suggests it's related (vs other discussions clearly outside the scope of the trial), but I guess it could just be "here's more evidence from a different analysis that it's crap" rather than "here is some play-by-play from this specific legal action". If the dispute is really just whether this was part of the case or done at an earlier time, I don't object to moving the statement to one of the other analytical sections rather than the lawsuit section (the actual timing of this analysis with respect to the course case does not have much impact in my mind). However, the only WP:RS we do have at this time about the Laughton analysis does appear to make the connection to the trial, so we need at least some other WP:RS with some other timeframe specified if we want to go against it. DMacks (talk) 07:09, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

The whole issue with Laughton is really rather irrelevent to the article (which is about this "invention" that proved to be fraudulant). If we're not 100% sure what happened and when then I'd be more than happy to simply delete the two sentences that refer to Laughton and leave it at that:

"In 1996, inventor Stanley Meyer was sued by two investors to whom he had sold dealerships, offering the right to do business in Water Fuel Cell technology. His car was due to be examined by the expert witness Michael Laughton, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Queen Mary, University of London and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. However, Meyer made what Professor Laughton considered a "lame excuse" on the days of examination and did not allow the test to proceed.[3] According to Meyer the technology was patent pending and under investigation by the patent office, the Department of Energy and the military.[14] His "water fuel cell" was later examined by three expert witnesses in court who found that there "was nothing revolutionary about the cell at all and that it was simply using conventional electrolysis". The court found Meyer guilty of "gross and egregious fraud" and ordered him to repay the two investors their $25,000.[3]"

We can always come back and fill out the detail if we find more solid references.

Bottom line - the device was found to be nothing special and Meyer proved to be an outright fraud. We don't need to dilute those two facts and give the conspiracy nuts more fodder by adding debatable details about who did or didn't examine the machine and why and when. The conclusion of the court case (and our references to it) are plenty good enough to tell our readers that this machine was fraudulent.

SteveBaker (talk) 12:54, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Fine with me to remove them. DMacks (talk) 17:08, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the statement about Laughton is well supported by the cited reference. The Sunday Times article says:

One of the experts due to examine the car was Michael Laughton, professor of electrical engineering at Queen Mary and Westfield University, London, but he was not allowed to see it. "Although Meyer had known about our visit weeks in advance, when we arrived he made some lame excuse about why the car wasn't working, so it was impossible to evaluate it," said Laughton.

My reading of the article (which can be accessed here) is that the proposed inspection was in context of the lawsuit, but I can understand that out of abundance of caution, if there is any doubt we should not claim that explicitly. If so, we can move the statements from Lawsuit section or attribute it explicitly to Sunday Times ("A Sunday Times article reported that ..."). However, I don't understand the reason for the proposing deletion simply because the latest true-believer on this page disputes (without evidence) a solidly cited and accurately paraphrased statement. Abecedare (talk) 18:15, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I would agree with you - except that User:DMacks is an experienced and well-respected editor who has credible reasons to believe that the Sunday Times article may have misstated the facts (or perhaps we are mis-reading them). So we aren't just dealing with a disruptive editor here. These two sentences simply aren't important to our article and it's better to simplify it and say nothing than to say something we aren't 100% sure about. That doesn't make User:Big wheels keeps on turning right. All of the other edits (s)he made were entirely incorrect and the edit-warring we saw was unacceptable behavior. Having a debate about these editing matters is the right way to approach this kind of thing - and that's the debate we're having right now. SteveBaker (talk) 02:37, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:31, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell → Water fuel cell — Per WP:COMMONNAME. Water fuel cell was a redirect to the current title for over two years; it's currently a dab for only two pages, which could be easily handled by a hatnote. The current title appears to be due to a misunderstanding of our naming guidelines, which do not require names to be accurate (so the device not actually working is irrelevant) but simply widely-used and succinct. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:07, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I have reverted water fuel cell from a dab and put it back to a redirect. The term "water fuel cell" is NEVER used to describe any kind of fuel cell so the first meaning in the dab was incorrect. Only the second meaning has a reference - and that is to link it here. Since there is only one use of the term (and even that is incorrect), there is no longer anything to disambiguate. QED. SteveBaker (talk) 13:53, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Best I can discern the history here, the article itself was originally at Water fuel cell. It was later moved to the Meyer's-named form with the explanation that there was other meaning to the term, and a disambig page was created. It was later converted into a redirect with no explanation/discussion (but also no vocal objection) that I see. There may have even been a page about Meyer himself that got merge/redirected at some point. DMacks (talk) 12:40, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Strong oppose:

1. "Water fuel cell" is a meaningless term. A fuel cell extracts energy from combining some fuels without burning to produce electricity. Water has no free energy - therefore none can be extracted from it - and you cannot make a fuel cell using water as the fuel. Contrast with hydrogen fuel cell. Writing an article about something which patent nonsense is not allowed in Wikipedia - and misusing scientific terms is also unacceptable.
2. This is not a real device - it's a fraud - and we must not give it undue emphasis by making it seem like it is. People trying to discover if there is such a thing as a 'water fuel cell' should not properly be directed here - they should find a red-link just as they should if they were to search for 'purple aardvark'. I'd actually argue for removing the water fuel cell redirect for that reason.
3. If it was a real device, it would be called an 'electrolytic cell' not a 'water fuel cell' - so even if you believe Meyer's crazy claims of violating the laws of thermodynamics, 'water fuel cell' would be the incorrect article title and we would be advocating that this become merely a section of the 'electrolytic cell' article. Meyer's was not a scientifically trained man and didn't know the correct term for what he was claiming to have invented - which would be properly called an "Electrolytic cell" because it is claimed to be a new way to split hydrogen from oxygen using electricity - which is what an electrolytic cell does. Meyer's claim is to have invented a way to split water electrolytically using less electrical energy than he got out. That's impossible - but even if it were possible, it would still be an electrolytic cell...albeit an amazingly efficient one!
4. This device isn't mentioned in electrolytic cell because it's:
   1. Fringe theory -- in that no reliable scientific sources accept that it's possible - and mainstream science proves that it's impossible due to Thermodynamics/Perpetual-motion, etc)
   2. Fraudulent -- in at least the legal sense of having been proved to be fraudulent in a court of law

   ...so it's not even a 'real' electrolytic cell and shouldn't be given undue weight per WP:FRINGE.

5. In previous discussions here, the consensus compromise was to call it "Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell" because that's what Stanley Meyer's called it and putting his name in front of the term makes it clear that only he said that!
6. Through various previous merge and deletion debates, we agreed merge a previous article about Stanley Meyer's himself into this article (because this is all that he's notable for) and the consensus to do that rested on retaining his name in the title so that people looking for information about the man would still be able to find it and recognise that they'd reached the correct page.

So...strong oppose...this is a very bad idea indeed and needs to go down in flames! SteveBaker (talk) 13:35, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Playing devil's advocate for a moment... "Water fuel cell" is no more meaningless as an article title than (for instance) "Perpetual motion machine". Both are impossible! Equally, calling it "Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell" wouldn't fix the title-feasibility mapping that you object to. I don't believe the article title should hinge on whether such a thing exists, merely on whether the term is used. Oli Filth^{(talk|contribs)} 13:38, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Not really. Perpetual motion machines are impossible only because they don't work - many people have designed them, only to find that they failed. Water fuel cell is actually a meaningless thing - even in principle - and nobody (not even Stanley Meyer) has even attempted to do so. Meyer's attempted to build an over-unity electrolytic cell - and was too dumb to know the correct name for it. We shouldn't perpetuate his error by inflating the term to more than something he dreamed up - hence the title of this article. SteveBaker (talk) 13:45, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Oppose per above. Yilloslime ^T_C 14:32, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Oppose Ditto. Guyonthesubway (talk) 17:55, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

So, just to clarify, all three of you are opposing based on precisely the misunderstanding of our naming guidelines which I mentioned in the proposal? Are you aware that the arguments used would apply equally to every other fraud / quack science subject on Wikipedia, none of which have an absurd constructed title? (Cold fusion, for instance.) Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:41, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you read my arguments. Cold fusion is indeed a great example. It is the correct term for a hypothetical fusion cell that operates at low temperatures - which is what it would have been had it ever worked. The fact that it didn't work doesn't matter so much - the name is still correct. However, in the case of the Meyers cell, even if it had worked, it wouldn't be called a 'water fuel cell' by anyone other than Meyers himself because he simply didn't understand the terminology. It would have been called something like "The Meyers electrolytic cell" (or possibly "The Meyers electrolytic process"). It's wouldn't be a 'fuel cell' even if it ever worked because a fuel cell generates electricity from chemical processes - which is the precise OPPOSITE of what the Meyer's device claimed to do (use electricity to create a chemical change - vis the splitting of water). If Meyers had invented a flying car but had mistakenly called it "The Meyers "submarine" - would we be suggesting redirecting or dabbing "submarine" to point at the article? No! We'd either call it "flying car" or we'd say "The Meyers 'submarine'". That's what's going on here. I understand perfectly what you suggested in the proposal - I simply don't agree with your premise. SteveBaker (talk) 15:01, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I did indeed read your arguments. #1 is irrelevant, as articles are not titled according to "correctness" but according to common use. #2 violates WP:NPOV as it implies that the purpose of Wikipedia is to debunk junk science rather than describe it neutrally. #3 is original research, as we are supposed to use the names that others use for subjects rather than inventing our own based on our knowledge of the underlying science. #4 is irrelevant, because having the words "fuel cell" in the title is not intended to imply that the device is a functional electrochemical cell. #5 falls under #3, because it is unlikely that the term in most common use for the subject has the author's name attached in that format. #6 is not the correct way to disambiguate readers, and the logic behind inserting someone's name into an article title because he isn't notable enough to be independently described is false. So your arguments don't really have any appeal to our naming conventions, but instead are primarily weighted towards the fringe view that Wikipedia should go out of its way to emphasis the scepticism of junk science at the expense of neutrality and style. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:37, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Support per Chris' response above. Oli Filth^{(talk|contribs)} 19:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose There is no such thing as a "water fuel cell", and it is claimed not to be a Electrolytic cell but something completely different. There is a person called Stanley Meyer who says that he has made one. All designs seem to be based from the design of this person and claim to do the same thing. None of the copies actually to work like an actual water "fuel cell" would work. This is not a "fuel cell". --Enric Naval (talk) 21:46, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

  Again, filed under "arguments against the common name which have absolutely nothing to do with our naming guidelines". Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:29, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm misinterpreting, but your argument for renaming seems to be that "Water fuel cell" is "common usage", therefore per WP:COMMONNAME that's what we should call this article, right? The problem with that argument is that "Water fuel cell" is not in common usage. Some crackpot may have built an electrolytic cell in his garage and decided to call his contraption a "water fuel cell," but that doesn't make it common usage. Furthermore, this page isn't about electrolytic cell or hydrogen fuel cells in general, it's about one specific contraption--Stan Meyer's contraption--so the present name makes much more sense. Yilloslime ^T_C 22:56, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Chris, please find sources that talk about "water fuel cell" without prefixing it with "Stanley Meyer's", or that aren't a specific reference to Meyer's "Water Fuel Cell technology (note the caps, it's a noun) "Meyer holds some 25 patents on various devices involved in what he calls Water Fuel Cell technology"Smothsonian. Note how books specialized in fuel cells don't list any "water fuel cell" anywhere because such a thing doesn't exist [2][3]. And, of course, in free energy circles it's not known as just as any random "water fuel cell", it is always known as Meyer's water fuel cell (or Stan Meyer's or Stanley Meyer's), so that would be its common name. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:49, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

If the common name uses capitals as a proper noun then great, let's move it there. Every argument in opposition to that is tinged with a heavy tone of "we must not let our users be deceived!!!", as if we have to treat our readers as so stupid as to require disclaimers in article titles. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 07:03, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

You mean moving it to Water Fuel Cell? (it already redirects here). Wouldn't that be confusing with the non-capitalized name? Seriously, I don't see the problem here, the free energy websites have no problem calling it "Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell" and similar names, it's not like we are using a made up name that nobody has heard of before.

Also, we are not talking about a generic fuel cell that happens to work with water, we are talking about a perpetual motion machine that consumes no fuel (all input water is outputted as water vapour, an actual fuel cell has fuel as input and it has energy and waste as output). Meyer named the technology "Water Fuel Cell", but it's not actually that, it's no wonder that free energy websites feel the need to specify Meyer's.

Also, sources that don't use "Meyer's". --Enric Naval (talk) 21:51, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Given that no device which would most accurately be called a "water fuel cell" actually exists, there is no ambiguity here. That is why both water fuel cell and Water Fuel Cell are uncontroversial redirects to this article. The point is that for the term "water fuel cell", the primary topic is this junk science subject. Therefore, there is no need to insert random pieces of additional disambiguation, such as the main proponent's name, into the article title. This is all covered by our naming conventions. Insisting that the article not be at water fuel cell because it isn't actually a fuel cell is absurd, and the "precedent" that SteveBaker imagined above is in fact already set in both the naming guidelines and broadly across the naming of practically all of our articles. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:16, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

looking at the history of the first redirect, it's not an uncontroversial redirect. It's a long-time disambiguation page that has been recently made into a redirect, provoking a revert, a speedy deletion tag and a message on the talk page. The "Stanley Meyer's" part is not a random disambiguation since it's used in the sources. You need to show sources for the common usage that you are claiming, and are trying to use a succint name that the sources don't use. No sources -> no name change --Enric Naval (talk) 14:11, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

So far as I can see, none of the article's present sources use "Meyer's water fuel cell" in preference to "water fuel cell" (the only one which uses "Stan Meyer's Water Fuel Cell", title case, is the "waterpoweredcar.com" link, hardly a reliable independent source). It seems absurd to request that sources be found which never juxtapose "Meyer's" with "water fuel cell", as putting the two together is as much a matter of indicating possession as coining a name. And the construction "Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell", the present title, is not used at all. I'm not given to believing that anecdotal "free energy circles" use a term which isn't used in any of the current sources. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, there are four sources on the article that are not US patents (self-published) or free-energy websites (not reliable?) or the PESwiki (wiki):

• focuses on his "water fuel cell" invention. Columbus Dispatch
• it involved a fuel cell that was able to split water using less energy than was released by recombination of the elements. and on the sidebar Meyer's 'water fuel cell'Nature
• Water Fuel Cell (note the caps) Sunday Times
• Meyer's invention Action 6 News (wmv video)

The linked free-energy websites do use the term:

• Water Fuel Cell (...) Stan Meyer Cell Builder in India (...) Stan Meyer’s Water Fuel Cell waterpoweredcar.com
• Stanley Meyers water fuel cell. but also water fuel cell in the same paragraph waterfuelcell.org
• Water Fuel Cell New Energy News

--Enric Naval (talk) 12:52, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Exactly; the sources use a variety of different titles, but the common part is "water fuel cell". Whether to capitalise it or not is certainly a good question (I'm trending towards believing that this is the case, as it's the self-coined name for the device), but there doesn't appear to be a strong argument that the current title is the most common name for the subject. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:12, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose, but for a different reason. The term "Water fuel cell" is commonly used by many of the redacted people who claim to have an engine that runs on water. Just because Wikipedia doesn't have anything on any of the other redacted people, doesn't make this the most common name for this concept. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:27, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

  If there are no other notable uses for the term, then there is no ambiguity. Unspecified anecdotal concepts unlikely to ever have articles here are not notable other uses. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:35, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Laws of thermodynamics

Meyer's system did not violate any laws they just took energy from an open system called the universe. It just shows there is excess energy present that not everyone is aware of. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.239.168 (talk) 00:01, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

No - that's not true. If it worked the way he claimed, it would have violated the laws of thermodynamics. This has been discussed here a million times and the answer is always the same. Furthermore, if I may direct your attention to the banner at the very top of this page, this is not an appropriate place to have this kind of discussion. You could ask whether this is possible on: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science where there are a number of competent physicist who can explain to you why what you suggest is impossible. But here is not the place. Please let it end at that. SteveBaker (talk) 01:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Theoretical explanation

I have added a part about my own theoretic explaination. It was removed within 4 minutes because it was "fringe science". Come on, guys, you're awfully good if you can conclude that this fast. Now I don't mean wikipedia to say my theory is correct, so I added it as an "alleged theory". Seems fair enough to me. This is an encyclopedia and IMHO that means it cannot conclude itself which theory is correct and which not. IMHO the fact that someone claims to have formulated a theoritical explanation, based on the work of a professor and that someone holds a Masters Degree on the subject at hand, is relevant to be mentioned in this article, regardless of wether or not you want to label it as "off", "fringe" or whatever. This is an article about Stans WFC and a published theory about this should be mentioned, IMHO. So, please at least have the decency to leave the references to the relevant articles in there. Thanks in advance. Arend Lammertink, MSc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.69.42.253 (talk) 14:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

"my own theoretic explaination"? Seems like that says all we really need to know here (see WP:RS vs WP:NOT). If the fundamentals of physics as they are generally understood (and as clearly cited in this article in specific relation/application to the topic at hand) say one thing and someone says "no no, it's not that way at all", that's pretty much the definition of WP:FRINGE--don't even need to read a single detail of it or its support. Rather, the burden is on the proposer to get the idea published in a reliable/reputable third-party source (again, WP:RS/WP:V policy). DMacks (talk) 15:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Basically, we've got bogus articles from unreliable sources supporting this "theory". As is the norm for con artists, these authors/inventors/theorists (criminals), point to an academic source as their "evidence" and hope that the reader isn't able to understand that the academic source doesn't support their conclusions in the least. That's why we use reliable sources throughout. Now, as far as working inventions go, there aren't any. None, zero, zilch, nada. As for your own expertise (masters degree) - great. Use it. Get your ideas published in a peer reviewed journal and we'll cite them here. Until then, they're out - and that's not negotiable. We've been doing it this way since the start, and we're now the world's #1 information source. In fact, the main criticism against Wikipedia is that it isn't reliable enough - and we're not going to overcome this problem by publishing poorly sourced crap. I hope you understand. Rklawton (talk) 15:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

To put a finer point on it "either all three inventors were incredible frauds, or my theory explains how they did it." is a false dichotomy...they could have just been mistaken or your theory could be mistaken. But...didn't a court even rule that for the Meyer's case is was fraud? DMacks (talk) 15:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

OTOH: One can put a question mark next to how reliable reliable must be. Of course, when you publish factual information about science, then that should be covered by reliable scientific sources. But, if you only publish "proven science" then you can't publish for example the opinion of an opera singer about wether or not he likes Picasso. If he/she said somewhere "I like Picasso", then that's a fact, regardless whatever someone else may think of Picasso. So, there are two kinds of "facts". Proven science can be considered "fact" if backed by scientific journals. But someone claiming something else is a fact in itself, which has nothing to do with what he claimed. So, then a "self published" journal is a proper reference for establishing the fact wether or not someone claimed something, not for establishing wether or not his claims make any sense or not. L4m4re (talk) 15:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

In such a case, we would also consider notability. In short, we don't care what cranks have to say via unreliable sources about Stanley Meyer's fraud. Rklawton (talk) 16:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

notability "On Wikipedia, notability determines whether a topic merits its own article. [...] The notability guidelines are only used to determine whether a topic can have its own separate article on Wikipedia and do not govern article content. The question of content coverage within a given page is governed by the principle of due weight and other content policies." - So I guess I'll have to read those other policies, too... L4m4re (talk) 18:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Due and undue weight : "In articles specifically about a minority viewpoint, the views may receive more attention and space. However, such pages should make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint wherever relevant, and must not reflect an attempt to rewrite content strictly from the perspective of the minority view. Specifically, it should always be clear which parts of the text describe the minority view, and that it is in fact a minority view. The majority view should be explained in sufficient detail that the reader may understand how the minority view differs from it, and controversies regarding parts of the minority view should be clearly identified and explained." L4m4re (talk) 18:03, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

All right, we'll see what comes out. This is not fringe science. It is basically straight forward electrical engineering, wether you like it or not. And Turtur is a reliable source. He's a professor, for crying out loud! And this is not a perpetuum mobile, to. You got that wrong, it's using an energy source you can't see. Everyone agrees you can put a solar cell into the sunlight and tapp of energy, so why oh why is using a different kind of energy source to tap the electric field suddenly impossible? But, enough for now. We'll meet again later once this stuff is really out in the open. Cause that's what's going to happen no matter what. —Preceding unsigned comment added by L4m4re (talk • contribs)

OK, we can wait. It's been over a decade so far, but we can wait. Note: Professor's can be cranks, too - that's why their papers are peer reviewed before respectable journals will publish them. In Turtur's case, his "paper" was "published" in a "journal" that specifically eschews peer review. In short, we have no means to determine its reliability as there is no group of peers out there that says it is. Rklawton (talk) 15:30, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The sources were:

• [4], from Before it's news, some sort of magazine that takes submissions from people
• [5] from the peswiki
• [6], from the The Journal of General Science

These don't look like reliable sources in general.

Also, the text claims an important flaw that could invalidate all investigation in electromagnetic fields/AC-DC circuits/induction/etc. You know the tune: "extraodinary claims require extraordinary evidence", etc. There is some comment at WP:REDFLAG. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I understand, too much, too early. See you in a couple of weeks/months. L4m4re (talk) 15:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

What flaw are you referring to? As far as I am aware, I don't claim any flaws. It's just that in Electrical Engineering we don't consider the electric field in detail when designing our circuits. When we do, we can exploit the fact that the electric field contains energy. It is not static, it is radiating with the speed of light. So, it is an energy source. L4m4re (talk) 15:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Turtur is definitely not a reliable source for something as profound as this. He's a professor of Electrical Engineering at a small college ("Hochschule"; calling it a "university" is inaccurate, in that it does not award advanced degrees). He is not a physicist and indeed the school has no physics department. Although he's an electrical engineer, he seems to spend all his time hawking free energy ideas. He's written a book and (of course) produced a YouTube video. None of his stuff appears in refereed journals. We can safely discount it.Prebys (talk) 16:58, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

This is about electrical engineering. All I used from him is his derivation that the electric field is an energy source, because it travels at the speed of light. And that is not fringe science, that is well established in science: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations "Heaviside worked to eliminate the potentials (electrostatic potential and vector potential) that Maxwell had used as the central concepts in his equations;[6] this effort was somewhat controversial,[9] though it was understood by 1884 that the potentials must propagate at the speed of light like the fields, unlike the concept of instantaneous action-at-a-distance like the then conception of gravitational potential." —Preceding unsigned comment added by L4m4re (talk • contribs) 18:53, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I should add this: what Meyer was doing, without realising it himself, was to tap power from the electric field, which is an energy source and available everywhere. So, there is nothing unusual about his electrolysis. He was using the same principle as Edwin Gray, who had a "fuelless engine": http://fuel-efficient-vehicles.org/energy-news/?page_id=955 This made several headlines in the 1970's. Numerous people have broken their head about how this could work, including Gray himself. The real inventor of his stuff was Marvin Cole, who disappeared after he produced the first prototype for Gray and was the only one who knew how it worked. After Cole left, they weren't even able to turn their own prototypes into production types. When you compare Grays patents with Meyers and Puharichs, who also had a water powered motor cycle, and you look really careful at the dirty details of the electric field, then you come to the conclusion they all used the same principle to use the power from the electric field. You see, every atom in the universe emits an electric field, which is spreading with the speed of light and contains energy. So, it is not a question of if, but of how to use that energy. And that is not straightforward, but also not that complicated. It's about as complicated as how they built radio's in the 1930's. So, it may be a bit controversial, but it's really not that far fetched at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.75.56.191 (talk) 19:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

To me, from a WP point of view there is only one established fact: somebody claimed to have published a theory about how Meyers WFC works. All the references put up here about WP:REDFLAG and the like are guidelines on how to establish the reliability of the content of what is claimed. And it is clear that that is not reliable according to the guidelines, so you can't write "Meyers WFC works such and such". All you can say is "somebody claimed that Meyers WFC works such and such". And then the question is: is that relevant information that should be in this "minority view" article. Of course, as the author of the claims, I say "Yes", but as a wikipedian I also think there are good arguments to also say "Yes", but that is for you guys to judge. L4m4re (talk) 18:08, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Even an open encyclopedia has standards. This article only marginally notable as it is, in that engines that claim to run on water have been appearing at a steady rate since at least the 19th century. The only reason the article hasn't been deleted is the somewhat inexplicable amount of press coverage he has gotten over the years. If we also included every fringe theory that claimed to "explain" it, the article would quickly grow to an unwieldy length.Prebys (talk) 18:33, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and it even has a fundamental standard: WP:NPOV. "Neutral point of view (NPOV) is a fundamental Wikimedia principle and a cornerstone of Wikipedia. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles and all editors." So, you may not intend to do so, but by labeling someones point of view as "fringe" and therefore unfit for Wikipedia you are violating WP's fundamental principles. Please do realise that. L4m4re (talk) 18:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

The WP:NPOV is often incorrectly interpreted to mean that all views, no matter how absurd, must be equally represented. However, it clearly says "all views that have been published in reliable sources". The "theory" in question has been self-published on the web and in un-reviewed journals, so it doesn't even come close to qualifying. The label "fringe" did originate with me;it's an evaluation based on the WP:FRINGE guidelines, which are crystal clear in this area. In particular, I suggest you review "Unwarranted promotion of fringe theories". Prebys (talk) 19:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

From that page: "Pseudoscience generally proposes changes in basic scientific laws or reality in order to allow some phenomenon which the supporters want to believe occurs, but lack the strong scientific evidence that would justify such major changes. Pseudoscience usually relies on attacking mainstream scientific theories and methodology". From my article: "So, all things considered, the Newtionian analogy we use in electrical engineering is perfectly valid and applicable. Except for one tiny little detail." And once again, these rules talk about wether or not an article can be written about a subject: "A Wikipedia article about a fringe theory...". What it does say about *mentioning* is this: "Ideas that are of borderline or minimal notability may be mentioned in Wikipedia, but should not be given undue weight. ... However, ideas should not be excluded from the encyclopedia simply because they are widely held to be wrong." 82.75.56.191 (talk) 19:30, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

So, I don't ask to be equally represented. I understand that that is not what Wikipedia is for, and I agree with that. All I ask is to be mentioned as a minority view according to the guidelines. L4m4re (talk) 19:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You proposed a whole section devoted to your theory, effectively making this an article "about" a WP:FRINGE theory. That's only allowed if it meets the WP:NOTABILITY guidelines, which it doesn't. As support for Meyer's claims, it would have to qualify as a WP:RS, which it clearly doesn't. Any way you look at it, it fails.Prebys (talk) 19:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, a whole section was probably a bit too enthousiastic from my side. Sorry for that. Will look into what RS means. L4m4re (talk) 20:17, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:RS does say this: Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves, without the requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

1. the material is not unduly self-serving;

2. it does not involve claims about third parties (such as people, organizations, or other entities);

3. it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject;

4. there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity;

5. the article is not based primarily on such sources.

So, IMHO, my article over at peswiki is in accordance with this. I mean, if you really want to base an article about Stan Meyer on stuff that has been trough the whole peer-review established science mill, you won't find any source. I read this part as saying: you can use a "questionable source" up to some degree, but certainly not to base a whole article on. Note that WP:RS explicitly refers to WP:V and says that one is more important: "In the event of a contradiction between this page and our policies regarding sourcing and attribution, the policy takes priority and this guideline should be updated to reflect it." And WP:V begins with this: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." It also says: "All self-published sources, whether experts or not, are considered reliable as sources on themselves, especially in articles about themselves, subject to certain criteria, though no article should be based primarily on such sources."

And then we're basically back to the beginning: you can write "person X claimed this is such and so" if you think it is relevant within the context of an article based on a self-published source, but you can't write an article saying "this is such and so", because the source can be considered to be reliable to be able to verify what is basically a quote, a "source on themselves" but cannot be considered to be reliable to back a whole article with. L4m4re (talk) 20:40, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Our basic triad is this: Reliability, Verifiability, and Notability. In the case at hand, we have a virtually unknown theory published by entirely unreliable sources. The fact that we can verify that this theory exists isn't sufficient, so there's absolutely no need to publish it here. Rklawton (talk) 21:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Of course there is no need. There is no need for publishing anything on WP. IT's there because people want to share their knowledge with one another. Noone needs to do this. This is not a question of need or no need, nor of can or cannot. This is a question of wanting to or not wanting to. There is nothing in the quidelines that forbids anyone from posting a reference to a self-published article he/she thinks is relevant in the article at hand, provided it is not WP:UNDUE That is the only hard criterium, the rest is a matter of wanting to or not wanting to. L4m4re (talk) 21:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Let me finish this discussion for now with a quote: http://thinkexist.com/quotation/even_if_you_are_a_minority_of_one-the_truth_is/216587.html

“Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.” Mahatma Gandhi L4m4re (talk) 21:27, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is WP:NOT the place to publish personal opinions. That's what blogs are for. You are a novice editor - please trust us and learn from this. Rklawton (talk) 22:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yep - I have to back up what others here have said. When you said "I have added a part about my own theoretic explaination." you confirmed that this is "original research", when your references were blogs and wiki's (neither of which are allowed as references for Wikipedia articles), you showed that you do not have "reliable sources" for these claims. That this "theory" is unpublished in mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific literature shows that it is "fringe science" or possibly even "pseudo-science". That the theory is (to say the least) highly controversial means that utterly impeccable references would be required for it - and you don't have that. The "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence" idea is most applicable to what we do here. The idea that there is 'free' energy of any kind whatever would totally overturn the laws of thermodynamics - which are truly solidly tried and tested - that is perhaps one of the most extraordinary scientific claim one could possibly make! It is (remotely) possible that something could come along that would do that - but to claim it without a small mountain of rock-solid, peer-reviewed, widely discussed evidence - without armies of researchers having repeating the experiments and getting the same results and getting their confirmations printed in peer-reviewed mainstream journals - nobody is going to take this kind of thing seriously - and therefore we simply can't publish it here. We quite literally aren't allowed to do that!

It was easy to see that this was a wildly inappropriate edit for such a solidly, dead-center-mainstream encyclopedia such as Wikipedia. As I read your edit, it didn't take 4 minutes for me to realize that. I could tell that it was appropriately deleted after reading the first three sentences!

Since you are a beginner at editing Wikipedia, it's quite understandable that you don't understand the complex set of rules under which the most controversial edits are judged. To avoid an unfortunate recurrence, I strongly recommend that you discuss any future 'dramatic' additions to articles on their respective talk pages. Wikipedia doesn't require you to do that (we even encourage people to "Be Bold" and to "Break All Rules") but if there isn't some kind of agreement that the information passes the various validity tests then you shouldn't be surprised when other editors are equally bold and simply delete all of your hard work without further discussion. It goes both ways.

Another thing to consider is that Wikipedia isn't a news outlet. It's an encyclopedia which we expect people to still be reading 50 or 100 years from now. We have the luxury of time. If a major new breakthrough in energy research comes along, we can happily ignore it for months or even years while we wait to see whether it gains mainstream acceptance. It is much better that we omit to discuss something new - than to imply that something novel is true when it turns out that it's not. In this case, the odds of this (frankly, crazy) theory gaining mainstream acceptance is approximately zero. But if it ever makes it into the pages of "Nature" - we'll be here eating humble pie and the theory will demand several articles of it's own!

SteveBaker (talk) 01:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if it will make "Nature" some day, but I do know this is not about violating thermodynamics. That is a misunderstanding, because the whole idea is to tap an energy source that is available everywhere. And it is a known energy source that has been overlooked, because everyone yells "law of conservation of energy" and looks no further then the end of his nose. But you are right, WP has the luxury of time. Time will tell wether or not we can finally have clean and cheap energy, wether mainstream science likes it or not at this moment. Looking forward to those several articles of it's own. There is no doubt in my mind these will be there some day. L4m4re (talk) 06:17, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, that is a good attitude! I disagree about your energy source though. You are making the absolutely CLASSIC mistake of confusing a 'force' with 'energy'. Nearly every free energy proponent makes the exact same fundamental error. These fields that you're talking about are forces - and conflating force with energy is a "physics 101" kind of a boo-boo. So I'm very confident that you're wrong. However, that's my personal view (and is likely to be that of mainstream physics) - it doesn't alter the situation with Wikipedia in general and this article in particular. SteveBaker (talk) 15:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

The point is that this field is propagating with the speed of light, otherwise you would have instantaneous action-reaction. So, the force is not a static force, it flows. That makes that the Newtonian analogy, considering the force being static, is only valid up to a certain degree. It works fine in any normal engineering exercise, but it does not describe the whole situation for the full 100%. But let's not go to deep in that discussion here, this is not the place for that. L4m4re (talk) 09:45, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Let me add that if you're interested in this, IMHO Turtur did a very good job describing this. And while he may be labeled as an unreliable source because of where he published his stuff, in my opinion as an Electrical Engineer, he did describe the energy ciculation between the electric field and the vacuum correctly. I did not study the whole paper, so I can't say wether or not the rest of it is correct, though. Still, it is an interesting question why this was published the way it was and why it did not make "Nature", so to speak. L4m4re (talk) 10:46, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah - now I see your next error. So if some new 'thing' were to spontaneously appear in the universe - the field it induces (be it electric, gravitation or whatever) would indeed propagate outwards at the speed of light just as you describe. An electric field, propagating outwards is...what?...Electromagnetic radiation: Light, radio waves, etc. A varying electromagnetic field is precisely what light is. That's an entirely mundane thing that we know all about and can certainly obtain energy from. But once the field is established at some point in space, it's not moving - it's a simple static force - from which no energy can be extracted. It's kinda like if this spontaneously arriving object were a rock dropped into a pond. The ripples caused by its sudden arrival spread outwards - gradually dispersing - but once that ripple is gone, the pond is again still - even though the rock is still there. The level of water in the pond is a little bit higher - and that's analogous to the field making the force exerted at some point in space a little greater - but Force is not Energy - so that's not very interesting.

So, you're STILL utterly wrong - which should come as no surprise because an awful lot of very clever people have thought long and hard about this and concluded that mainstream science is correct. The people (like Meyer) who claim to have done something incredible are ill-educated scam artists. There is a reason for that! Have you never wondered why not ONE of the hundreds of free energy devices ever comes to market? Why aren't we all driving Meyer's water cell powered cars? The reason is because the guy was a fraud...just like every single one of the other people who claim to have invented these kinds of devices. SteveBaker (talk) 15:06, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid we will just have to agree to disagree for this moment, cause this is not the place to discuss this out to the bottom. I am with Turtur, and Tesla too for that matter, you're not. And that is totally fine, because at some point either you or me will be proven right and so sciences progresses as it should. And even though you do have main stream science at your side at the moment, that does not mean this is settled in stone forever. After all, Gray, Meyer and Puharich did make some very bold claims which can IMHO be explained if the field indeed is not static. So, IMHO either all three were incredible frauds, or the field indeed is not static. And if it is not static indeed, as Tesla claimed, then my point of view does promise us the luxury of free energy, and that is what drives me to research this out to the bottom. Bur let me thank you for your seriousness in this discussion for now and time will tell who is right. If you want to discuss this further, you are welcome to mail me at lamare over at the gmail dot com domain. But let me warn you: there is only one thing in between you and the crackpots now and that is the question wether or not the electric field is static or dynamic.... L4m4re (talk) 18:35, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Let me add one more thing to the discussion about what this is all about, cause in the end this is not so much a scientific or technical issue. It's really the same thing as what we are doing for ages. At some point, somebody thought "hey, the wind is blowing and delivers energy. Can't we use that to get power?" Good idea, let's make a windmill. Next thing, hey, water is flowing in a river and delivers energy. Good idea, so we got the watermill. Hey, the sun is shining light to the earth, which delivers energy. So we got solar panels. Hey, there is heat in the earth, can't we use that? Good idea, so we got heat pumps. And now someone comes along and says: "Hey, the electric field spreads with the spead of light from every charge carrier in the universe and delivers energy. Can't we use that to get power?". And all of a sudden that is "fringe" science, "impossible" and the like, while it's really the same thing. The difference is not a so much technical issue, but a political issue, because this energy source is so cheap and readily available that it will put a whole lot of companies out of business and frees the people of the earth of the burden associated with the need for energy. And that is why the whole scientific community acts like a bunch of religious zealots, as if it were written "Thy shalt not use an energy source that is cheaper than oil". And that is also why this technology will not be introduced to the people of this planet trough the scientific community, but it will be introduced bottom up, it will be a grass roots movement which is unstoppable now the knowledge how to do it is out in the public. L4m4re (talk) 09:21, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Again - you are talking about an "electric field" - and in the same breath start talking about energy. That, right there, is the single error that all of the crazy nut jobs like Meyer ALWAYS make! Every single freaking time! One good equation to remember is that E=F.d - energy is force times distance moved. It's not "E=F" OK? If you have a fridge magnet stuck to your fridge door - the magnet produces a magnetic field which exerts a force against the door...but no ENERGY is involved. The magnet doesn't "run down" like a battery. It'll stay stuck to that door, exerting a force, until doomesday. If you pull the magnet a half inch off of the door, you have to expend energy to move that force through a distance (E=F.d). When you release the magnet, it snaps back against the door, using the potential energy you just put into it. When it hits the door, that energy turns into sound and heat. But the force...the field...generated by the magnet has nothing whatever to do with energy. Another example is gravitation. Gravity is a field - and it exerts a force. If you place a book on a table, the molecular forces in the table will work against the gravitational forces to keep the book stationary. No energy is created or destroyed and again, the book stays where it is until hell freezes over. If you drop the book from the height of the table onto the floor, the force of gravity acts on the book to move it - the book loses potential energy and gains kinetic energy as it falls - the more height it loses, the faster it moves (because potential energy is turning into kinetic energy) - then the book hits the floor and again that kinetic energy is dissipated into heat and sound. But the force is not involved in the energy exchanges. Forces can act forever - so long as they don't do any actual work by moving something. The same thing is true of your electric fields - you can't extract energy from them! So, I think you need some remedial physics training before you go any further with your theory because right now, you're definitely out there with the crazy guys. SteveBaker (talk) 15:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

And one final issue to finish my point: in the Maxwell equations the scientific community says that it is the matter that creates the electric and the magnetic fields, while in Quantum Mechanics they say it's the fields that create the matter. It is so obvious that one of the two is incomplete, that this issue should have been solved 50 years ago. The fact that it is not says enough about how independent the scientific community really is these days. L4m4re (talk) 11:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Nobody says that "it's the fields that create the matter" - you are making the exact same "physics 101" error again. Einstein said: E=m.c²...nobody said: F=m.c². Matter may cause a field to be present (a magnetic field or a gravitational one or whatever)...but the matter isn't consumed by so doing. A field isn't energy. Period. SteveBaker (talk) 15:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

There is no evidence that your explanation is Meyer's. If it were, we could use it in this article, regardless of whether it has any scientific justification.

There is no evidence, other than your word, that your explanation has been used in regard Meyer's "invention". If it had been noted in a WP:RS source, then we could use it, whether or not it has any scientific justification.

If your explanation had been referred to, even in the notable fringe press, we could use it in perpetual motion article. (If your theory had merit, that article would be misnamed, but that's a matter for another day and another talk page.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 12:50, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I know, I don't dispute that anymore. You took the right decision at this moment. The evidence will come over time, there is too little at this moment for it to be included in the article. With the above statements I just wanted to give my opinion about what this is about, because the discussion also went into a direction that my work as such was being labeled "questionable". So, as far as I am concerned, the discussion is closed for the moment until the evidence shows up. L4m4re (talk) 14:32, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

On a related note, he's posted this same carp(!) on the Dutch wiki for water engines[7]. Anyone know a Dutch admin who'd be interested? Rklawton (talk) 14:39, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

May I make the note that it is not very polite to call the work of someone that should IMHO be considered to be an expert in the field, given he owns a Masters degree in the field at hand, carp? I mean, that is a bold claim, too. L4m4re (talk) 16:30, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Dutch Wikipedia operates under the same rules as the English one - they won't (or at least SHOULDN'T) accept your contribution - and it would be very wrong of you to try to make that happen. Now that you know you aren't allowed to do this - to willfully violate our community rules could invite big trouble from the Wikipedia admins. SteveBaker (talk) 15:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I see it has been removed there, too. I would have done so myself, given the discussion here. WP has the luxury of time and indeed, if I'm right, I can look forward to seeing a whole lot of complete articles on this in time to come. And that's more than fair enough to me. L4m4re (talk) 09:52, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I propose we declare this issue resolved. I think we have established beyond any reasonable doubt that references to this "theory" are not appropriate for the article, and that's pretty much as far as the discussion page should go. As entertaining as it is to beat a dead horse, it should probably move to an appropriate blog or newsgroup.Prebys (talk) 16:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree. This is not Talk:Free energy suppression. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:33, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

It ain't no dead horse, my friend. It's a Phoenix rising from the ashes, and believe me, it is awesome to be a part of that. It is an honour and a privilege to finally be able to give Nikola Tesla the credit he deserves. There simply is no physicist neither alive nor dead that can come even close to standing in his shadow, but we have allowed him to be almost forgotten and allowed the oil companies to strip us naked. Now their days are numbered, so let me leave a message to whom it may concern:

Sehr geehrte Herr Wissenschaftfuehrer,

You can fool all of the people some of the time,

You can fool some of the people all of the time,

But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

- Abraham Lincoln -

L4m4re (talk) 05:26, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Tesla was never a proponent of free energy. Tesla believed in the wireless transmission of energy (among other things), and we're using that technology today. It's no mystery. Given you already admitted you didn't understand the non-peer reviewed article you cited, you're far too sure of yourself. Rklawton (talk) 12:53, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Of course I'm sure of myself. You don't make claims like this until you are absolutely sure you are right and know that you are ready to stand the heat. As for the non-peer reviewed article, I said I only studied part of it, the part about the energy circulation of the electric field, and I can stand for that part being correct. However, I cannot stand for the rest of it, because I didn't study that to a degree necessary to be able to say that it is correct, even though I have no reason to assume it is not. And as for Tesla's wireless transmission, that appears to be widely misunderstood too. Eric Dollard wrote an excellent article on that, already in 1986: http://www.tuks.nl/pdf/Eric_Dollard_Document_Collection/Theory%20of%20Wireless%20Power%20by%20Eric%20Dollard.pdf Once again, not peer reviewed, so not useable for an article in WP, but an interesting read nontheless. 82.75.56.191 (talk) 07:06, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Interesting article. There's not a bit of truth to it, but it is interesting, and probably should be in Tesla's article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 11:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm... it looks like someone caught him breaking into an office to use the IBM Selectric typewriter after page 33 and he had to finish the rest by hand. Besides the fact that all free energy claims eventually eventually reference Tesla, would someone please tell me what the hell this paper has to do with the Stanley Meyer article? This thread seems to have gone wildly off topic.Prebys (talk) 15:12, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Just a heads up. After a week of silence, an anonymous IP (from the Netherlands, surprisingly enough) tried to quietly put this nonsense back in. Must have assumed no one was watching.Prebys (talk) 15:20, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Brutal inaccuracy

How is it a "perpetual motion" engine about this when you use both initial electricity from a pre-charged battery and one that is continually recharged from both the energy of the momentum of a rolling car (kinetic energy)(through it's dynamo). A momentum that is getting fed by a known external power source/fuel: the burning of hydrogen, getting more than the electricity needed to perform electrolysis from the burning of a external energy source: the water containing the hydrogen that is being burned, as well as the momentum and kinetic energy of the car once it is in motion??? This is the most in(s)ane and asinine screamingly obvious attempt at diverting humanitys attention away from doing new research I've ever seen.Nunamiut (talk) 22:44, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

And considering:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyhydrogen
• http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/science-technology/diy-convert-your-car-to-use-hydrogen-today/
• http://www.drycellkits.com/

And probably several thousand pages on working versions of the invention.

Learn some science. Oli Filth^{(talk|contribs)} 23:00, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm curious about the working versions of this invention that you mention; what reliable sources verify that a working version has been built? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 23:04, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Hydrogen is not an external fuel source because the energy to make it isn't coming from the water, it's coming from the car's electrical system. You do not get more energy from the electrolysis than you put into it. And the car's momentum is not free energy either. You need to burn fuel to build that momentum. — TheHerbalGerbil^(TALK), 01:30, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

As HerbalGerbil says, the car used water as fuel, as its waste product is also water. It has to spend energy to split the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. When it burns the hydrogen to make water it will produce the same amount of energy as the amount needed to create it in the first place (because of the first law, you can't create or destroy energy, you can only transform it) and you won't be able to recover all the energy spent (because of thermal losses due to the second law). And the car can't recharge its battery indefinitely via solenoids and magnets because of the same reason (the first law says the energy recovered from the movement can't be greater than the energy spent to move it, and the second law says that you won't be able to recover 100% of that energy). Meyer never kept the car running long enough to show that he was really violating those laws. The energy necessary to move the car along that period of time was consistent with the amount of energy stored in a big battery inside the car.

(comment: any process that violates the laws of thermodynamics can potentially be exploited to build a perpetual motion machine. Any machine that actually violates those laws is a perpetual motion machine in the sense that you can feed its output to its input so its keep running forever with no external input of energy. If Meyer's car worked as advertised then you could connect the exhaust tube to a condensator, and recover most of the water to keep it running without re-fueling. And the energy spent moving the car could be used instead to cool the exhaust and recover 100% of water. And anyways, any process that consummes a matter and then outputs the exact same matter and still manages to produce energy is violating the first law in the first place.....) --Enric Naval (talk) 10:48, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

There are working versions (in vehicles) displayed all over the net, there are a hundred videos on youtube, I have friends who are auto engineers and auto engine repair people who install the hydrogen producing fuel units in their cars all over the place. I'm sorry, but the cat is out of the box on this one. Government cant stop it. It's all over the place.
Here is one example:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCnSQA37Zs

Nunamiut (talk) 23:10, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

There are no working versions of a water fuel cell that produce more energy than consumed. There are, however, numerous con artists willing to scam people out of their money, and that's probably what you are seeing on the internet. Rklawton (talk) 23:37, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

How do you know that your "friends" are actually improving fuel efficiency on the cars they work on? Furthermore, if there is an improvement, how do you know it's because of the hydrogen, and not because of other things like changing the burn ratio? Sure, you can tweak gas mileage on a car easily enough, but it tends to come at the cost of performance, engine lifespan, pollution, or all of the above. — TheHerbalGerbil^(TALK), 01:30, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I didn't mean youtube videos when I said reliable sources, I mean... you know... reliable sources. As you can see from the discussion above, a working model would be an amazing scientific breakthrough- I'm sure at least several serious science journals would have published the details. Youtube videos, though... I don't think I would have too much trouble creating a YouTube video showing that I can power my television by plugging it into the cat, but that wouldn't make it true- videos are unfortunately easy to fake. Your confidence that there are working models, to me, indicates that you must have a better source of information than YouTube, since you have been on the internet long enough to know how unreliable unsourced information is. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 05:47, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree - YouTube "science" videos not only could be faked - they ARE faked...regularly. Take (for example) the "Water balls" thing - these people claim that by adding a few simple household chemicals to water, you can get it to turn into these perfectly round 1/2" beads...for example. There are dozens of movies submitted by people claiming to do this - every single one of them is utterly bogus. Not one of the many 'recipies' for doing this actually works.

Given that track record, the probability of any convincing 'new breakthrough' being reported solely on YouTube is zero. When there is a peer-reviewed article in 'Nature' - I'll believe it...not before. Fortunately, that's also the standard for Wikipedia. For controversial statements of a scientific nature, especially those that go against mainstream science and violate fundamental principles (such as the way that Meyer's contraption violates the laws of thermodynamics) - we require the strongest sources. So - when there is a paper in 'Nature', we'll write about it. YouTube videos are laughable - they count for nothing - actually, less than nothing. If something is claimed by some crackpot inventor, I'm skeptical. When half a dozen YouTube videos show up - and nothing else is reported about it - then I'm convinced it's crap because the people who make those fake science videos love nothing more than to convince gullible people that untrue things are true.

Meyer's machine (if it had worked) would indeed have been perpetual motion. The car (it is claimed) does the following:

1. Uses electricity from a battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
2. Burns that hydrogen in an internal combustion engine to produce four kinds of energy:
   1. Heat (the car still needs a radiator to dissipate that heat).
   2. Sound (we can hear it making a noise as it runs).
   3. Kinetic energy (the car rolls along the road).
   4. Sufficient electrical energy to keep the battery charged.
3. The combustion of hydrogen (either in air taken into the car's air intake - or in the oxygen produced by electrolysis) produces water - which comes out of the exhaust pipe.

Now - if we take the additional step of connecting the output of the exhaust pipe back into the water "fuel" tank then every molecule of water that was split by electrolysis is converted back into water in the engine. Hence, the water tank would never run dry.

The claim is that enough electricity is produced by the engine to keep the battery charged.

Hence, the car would run forever without running out of either electricity or water. So this is a perpetual motion machine "of the first kind" - one that produces energy (kinetic, acoustic and heat) from nothing.

Since the laws of thermodynamics preclude this as a possibility - and those laws are probably the most solid piece of science we have - it is much MUCH more likely that Meyers was a lying, cheating, fraudulant bastard than it is that every scientist since Rudolf Clausius has been wrong!

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you are claiming to produce a car that runs on water - you'd better have a lot of very serious scientists (a) examining the car in great detail and (b) reproducing that experiment and writing up the results in "Nature". Meyers didn't do that - he produced a couple of easily faked videos and showed the car to a couple of gullible journalists on a slow news day - then parlayed that into a means of convincing gullible investors to part with tens of thousands of dollars. The man was a thief.

SteveBaker (talk) 11:38, 14 June 2010 (UTC)