Eternal Engine: What are The Concepts and The Difficulties? (Admission Essay Sample)

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Eternal Engine: What are The Concepts and The Difficulties?
This paper briefly discusses the concepts of ‘Eternal Engines’ and some of the challenges of the system. The concept of eternal engines and the debate surrounding their viability dates back to the 5th century shortly before the Renaissance in Europe. This period in history is considered the cornerstone of modern science primarily owing to technological and scholarly discoveries, in theory or otherwise, that were introduced. According to Ord-Hume, one such theory that was considered revolutionary was the notion of perpetual motion which would later be known as eternal engines (2).
Eternal engines are ideally a set of intricate machine systems that produce work without requiring output outside their closed environment. During the middle ages when the concept was conceived, eternal engines were envisaged as a set of screws, wheels, and cogs designed in such a way that their combined rotary motion would enable the machine to ultimately produce useful work (grinding or drilling) without needing constant energy from an outside source (Ord-Hume 2). A Good example that epitomizes the eternal engine as envisaged during the middle ages was Robert FLudd’s water screw invention. The water screw was theoretically able to grind grain by utilizing the potential energy in water while at the same time recirculating the water propelling the screw system. Over time, there have been numerous other inventions created using the principle of eternal engines (Lienhard). However, although some of the inventions look viable in theory, none of the inventions ever created using the eternal engine concept have proven to be functional (Collins 3).
During the medieval times, failure of eternal engine machines was barely understood with inventors devising more intricate and bigger systems to achieve perpetual motion. However, with the development of modern physics and thermodynamics, the reasons behind the impossibilities of perpetual motion have become more evident (Ord-Hume 34). The first and arguably biggest impediment to eternal engines is the first law of thermodynamics. Eternal engines are theoretically able to create energy as they do not require input or energy outside their environment which is in contradiction to the first law of thermodynamics which states that the total energy of a system is constant. Energy can, therefore, be converted from one form to the other but can neither be created nor destroyed. Consequently, perpetual motion becomes an impossibility because, without external energy to propel the system, energy conserved in the system is bound to be converted to heat through friction and lost resulting in the eventual collapse of the system. For instance, Robert Fludd’s water screw would fail to recirculate the water because the potential energy stored in the water would eventually be converted to heat and lost through friction in the sys...