Conservation of energy isn’t just a good idea: It is the law. In particular, it is the first law of thermodynamics. But, apparently, a lot of people don’t really get that because history is replete ...

Perhaps the most persistent nonsense in physics: the perpetual motion machine. Bad ideas come and go in physics. But there’s one bit of nonsense that is perhaps more persistent than all others: the ...

So here is the thing with "perpetual motion"... Any physicist will believe you can make a device arbitrarily close to lossless... that is, you put X energy in, and the object stays spinning (or ...

Remember that zany Irish company Steorn, who claimed to have built a working perpetual motion machine that could produce clean, free energy out of a few magnets and some plastic discs? Well, they're ...

Perpetual motion is motion which continues indefinitely without any external source of energy and in this experiment, the aim is to determine whether energy could be created out of nothing using a ...

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in ...

We recently published an article on the Power Electronics with the headline, “Unique Motor Uses Only Permanent Magnets – No Electric Power Required.” We received a firestorm of criticism that this ...