I don't know if we are still continuing this prepetual motion thread,but it
occurred to me that one doesn't need a micro-machined piezo box to
"extract" energy from the thermal motion of atoms. What about a simple
resistor? Every resistor has a Johnson noise voltage present across it,and
if you had a perfect rectifier (or could place MANY resistors in series to
add up all the rms amplitudes of the noise),you should be able to rectify
this and charge capacitors with it.

That is, if you can violate thermodynamics. It DOES seem to me that both
this AND the piezo box would violate the requirement that, on average,
objects don't spontaneously cool,giving up energy the the ambient
environment. In fact,I thought that maxwell's demon did this as well.
Maxwell's demon was supposed to select out molecules based on their energy
WITHOUT itself using up any energy,right? Sure, one can make a heat pump
which requires energy (which the vortex tube is,right?) but AFAIK, no one
has ever made a device to extract useful energy from thermal motion without
using a cold sink, cooler than the source of heat.

Sean

|
| Sean Breheny
| Amateur Radio Callsign: KA3YXM
| Electrical Engineering Student
\--------------=----------------
Save lives, please look at http://www.all.org
Personal page: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/shb7
mailto:shb7@cornell.edu ICQ #: 3329174