Text: "Minor point: There are indeed other COP>1.0 and even COP = infinity electrical systems and processes, well-established. The Bohren experiment (an example of what is called "negative resonance absorption of the medium") produces COP = 18, or 18 times as much energy output as the operator/researcher inputs. Those type experiments are routinely done in nonlinear optics departments. The well-known anti-Stokes emission also always emits more energy than the operator/researcher inputs, but takes the excess from the molecules and atoms of the material. The common solar cell takes all its input energy from its active environment, and the operator inputs nothing. So it has a COP = infinity. So does a windmill and waterwheel. Sadly, most of the researchers do not know the precise difference between efficiency and COP. No machine can produce an efficiency greater than 100% -- simply put, efficiency only deals with the energy not wasted by the device, regardless of what or who is inputting the energy. The COP is a ratio expressed in decimal form, that is used as a sort of "cost/benefit analysis" or statement. It's the energy out or work out, divided by only that energy input made by the operator. So an efficient windmill, e.g., may waste only 45% of its input energy, and in that case will have an efficiency of 55%. However, the operator does not have to input anything, so its COP = (output) divided by (zero) = infinity. A common solar cell may only have some 17% efficiency, which means it wastes 83% of all its environmentally input energy. But again, the operator does not have to input anything at all, so its COP = infinity. You can more easily understand this when one uses a RIGOROUS definition of work (even most of the thermodynamics books are still deficient in this respect). Work rigorously is defined as the change of form of some energy. So obviously, if a device is to perform work (change the form of some energy), it has to be fed the energy in order to have it in order to be able to change its form! That's why a perpetual working machine with no energy input at all is impossible; it would have to create the energy out of nothing, to provide the energy whose form is being continuously changed. On the other hand, perpetual motion alone is perfectly permissible, because it is simply Newton's first law, and is a common characteristic of the universe. Any object placed in a state of motion will perpetually remain in that state of motion unless and until an external force intervenes and changes it. The word "perpetual" actually just means "continuously". An object in its motion (perpetual motion) state by Newton's first law does not have to have any energy input, and it does not do any work. Usually the professional skeptics erroneously assert that a "perpetual motion device" implies a 'continuous working machine with no energy input". This is an old saw easily demolished with simple logic, although it has largely come to be a "knee-jerk reaction" in much of the scientific community, for more than a hundred years (since even before Heaviside and Poynting originated the notion of the flow of energy in space, in the 1880s after Maxwell was already dead). To show the total violation of logic, let us use Max Planck's statement of it, which is typical of the ubiquitous error. Planck stated: "It is in no way possible, either by mechanical, thermal, chemical, or other devices, to obtain perpetual motion, i.e., it is impossible to construct an engine which will work in a cycle and produce continuous work, or kinetic energy, from nothing." [Max Planck, Treatise on Thermodynamics, 3rd ed., Dover, New York, 1945.] Let us now analyze Planck's statement. It contains two major clauses, therefore two major statements, and with the "i.e." connector it asserts that these two statements are equivalent. The first statement, that perpetual motion is impossible, is refuted by Newton's first law. Hence it is a false premise, as written. An object in simple continuous motion with no interruption, does not have to have any energy input nor does it do any work. Any rotary device, once set in motion, would turn forever if it had no external force that acted on it to change its state of motion (such as friction, air drag, resistance of a load via Newton's third law, etc.). It would do no work, and need no input energy. Planck's second statement says that no machine can do continuous work without the necessary energy input, which is a true statement. Else the machine would be creating energy from nothing at all, and that violates the conservation of energy law (that energy can neither be created nor destroyed). [Eerily, the standard Maxwell-Heaviside theory and electrical engineering assume that every EM field, EM potential, and joule of EM energy in the universe is and has been created from nothing at all, by the associated source charges. So the greatest unwitting advocates of perpetual working machines with no energy input, are in fact the present electrical engineering departments, professors, and textbooks]. Work rigorously is the change of form of energy; no machine can continuously change the form of energy unless the energy to be changed is fed into it and is therefore continuously available for continuous changing! So Planck's second statement is perfectly true. But what has Planck's second statement got to do with his first statement? Nothing at all! They are totally different statements. In the first statement, for perpetual motion under Newton's first law, no work is done and no energy need be input. In the second statement, work is done (the form of energy is changed), which requires energy input so that the input energy can be changed!). The second statement merely admonishes that, without inputting the energy, work (change of form of energy) cannot be done. Thus the assertion in Planck's connector "i.e.", that the two statements are equivalent or identical, is a logical non sequitur. One cannot equate a false premise to a true statement, and then claim that the equating constitutes a proof of the first (false) statement! Hence Planck's statement (and the usual variations in the statement of the prohibition of perpetual motion machines as if such were perpetual working machines performing work without any energy input at all) is false. Technically it is false because it contains a false premise and a logical non sequitur." Best wishes, Tom Bearden [Sunday, May 25, 2003]

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