chemicalparadigms

I have recently talked to a teacher about the benefits of IB and AP for college preparedness and general growth as a student.  The first difference in the two mentioned was that of lab hours.  The teacher specifically remembers the drastic difference between senior year of high school and freshmen year of university.  From her personal experience, high school classes were more closely resemblant to  AP classes, in that a bulk of the test material is from memorizing facts, whereas university classes were primarily labs and research.  After explaining this, she informed me that IB classes are in fact similar to university courses, much more so than AP classes.  Whether or not this similarity between them makes for a better high school class, I am still unsure.

Having taken both AP and IB courses, I feel that I have a good context to comment on their merits.  I am inclined to agree with the teacher in that IB seems to be more in depth with lab and practical work, while AP focuses on memorizing content.  A clear indication of this is the data booklet provided by IB Chem versus the formula pack in AP Chem.  In IB, there is a push towards application rather than memorization, as the questions tend to be more intertwined with different topics in a single question.  AP does have its benefits though.  It covers all the basics in a short year, and tends to provide as much if not more college credits than IB does, though not always in a fair manner.  In my case, I got just as much credit for a score of 4 on AP Calc AB as a score of 7 on IB HL math, which is far from representative to their respective work loads.

Looking back, IB HL chem was one the most influential classes that I have ever taken.  It provided me with a realistic and hands on experience, balanced with a steady stream of book work.  In one class, we did everything from blog, create wikis, watch movies, make movies, conduct labs, and take pop quizzes (which ironically were easier than the homework).  By the end, it’s amazing to see how much you’ve actually learned in the class, and the specificity of your knowledge.  I now can clearly see the difference between the words “move” and “transition”, or “sub shell” and “energy level”, which so eluded me in the past.  And once we learned organic chemistry, all the knowledge from before seemed to just click in place; everything made sense!

Lastly, here’s a dedication to Mrs. Jordan!  Cheers!  You know you have a great teacher when her name is in the author section of your text book, and her picture appears when you search “ib chem” in google images.

“Take a spoon, and stare at it. Make sure to focus: concentrate on the neck of the metal, the thinnest part, and send all your mental energies towards it. Honestly BELIEVE…and then watch as it begins to sizzle, to crack, to melt, and HUZZAH, to the great awe of your audience, the spoon has been bent 90 degrees outwards.”

Sound familiar?

The possibility for the human mind to manipulate physical matter has commonly been rejected by the scientific community as mere superstition: a magician’s trick. However, today some scientists are suggesting otherwise.

As an avid fan of Dan Brown, I have always adored how he draws different areas of knowledge, from the sciences, mathematics, or the arts, and apply them to his literature. I had previously written a post on isotopes, as inspired by his book Digital Fortress. In his most recent work, The Lost Symbol, Dr. Katherine Solomon explored an area called “noetic science” in order to uncover the untapped potentials of the human mind. This brought light to a previously obscure area, and inspired me, once again, to research further.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

So what is noetic science? The word “noetic” originates from the Greek word “nous”, which represents the concepts of mind, intelligence, and the ways of knowing. The study of noetics is an “exploration…into the nature and potentials of consciousness using multiple ways of knowing…and how it relates to the ‘outer cosmos’ of the physical world.”

I was very surprised, because this concept seems to relate closely to the concept of our IB ToK course. Researchers of noetic science engage in various areas of knowledge, not only base their investigations in the natural sciences, but also in psychology and philosophy. In fact, according to the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), their research even includes different ways of knowing. Their exploration of the human consciousness is based on three different perspectives, which each relates to a way of knowing:

First-person: the senses, specifically “inner knowing and personal transformation”

Second-person: intuition, specifically “transformative learning and collective wisdom”

Third-person: reason, specifically “scientific understanding”

What is particularly astonishing, however, was how noetic science sort of took the concepts of ToK, and took it into real life. ToK is an abbreviation for the THEORY of Knowledge. Noetic Science, on the other hand, seeks to apply these theories, and actually derive a tangible effect they have in real life. In other words, they inspect whether a thought of the mind would actually have some physical consequences. For example, when we really want something, does it increase the likelihood that it could happen? Does the concept of thought have some physical mass and interact with the real world? According to the hypothesis Katherine Solomon brought up in Brown’s book, this would successfully explain why people can levitate in midair, or use their minds and spirit to heal others.

According to noetic scientist and former IONS President, Willis Harman, key developments in noetic science could provide a quantum leap for humanity, and these research are essentially “dealing…with [the] rediscovery of truths that in some sense have been discovered over and over again,” but will be looked at through new perspectives. The possible implications of this research are huge. If each single thought has a physical impact, can we gather the power of the masses, and actually MOVE physical objects through united thought? Can we apply this to more notable causes, to fly, to shift land, to create water, matters that humanity had never thought it could achieve? Matters that could save us?

Could we, in the future, actually bend a spoon with just our minds?

Recently in Chemistry, we learned about nutrients in foods how each nutrient causes each effect.  Also we learned other aspects of food such as color, taste and texture.  However, one aspect that I was most curious about was how different foods cause different tastes.  Each food has a different chemical structure, but which part of the food actually causes the taste? And at a chemical level, how does each food induce each taste, and how does our body detect these tastes?

Taste is one of the five sensory functions of the central nervous system.  Although most of the sensory inputs are received from the tongue, parts of the throat can detect taste as well.  The tongue detect taste signals with the taste buds, which interact with proteins in the membranes of taste receptor cells.  These interactions lead to signals to the brain where the taste is recognized.  Humans have 2,000 to 5,000 taste buds and each taste bud has 50 to 150 taste receptors, each unique to a taste.  The tongues respond chemically to foods when the foods bind to membrane receptors or by changing the number of ions flowing across the membranes.

There are four basic tastes detected by the tongue: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter.  The tastes of sour and salty are triggered by ionic taste stimuli.  Saltiness is usually caused by sodium or other alkali metal ions.  The epithelial sodium channels allow the sodium ions to enter the cells and release neurotransmitters for the salty taste.  Sourness is a taste that detects acidity, or the amount of hydrogen ions in the food.  Sour foods interact with the tongue by entering the sodium channels or blocking the potassium channels, leading to a response.

Sweetness and bitterness are triggered by stimuli in the membrane receptors.  The sweet taste usually comes from aldehydes and ketones.  The sweet chemicals bind to sites in the membrane receptors.  Once the chemical is bound, the membrane receptors creates chemical reactions in the cell, leading to a change in the flows of ions into the membrane and towards the neurotransmitters.  Bitterness signals are caused by similar chemical reactions.  Ligands of the bitter food also bind to membrane receptors, initiating a response.  The bitter amino acids by to a specific site on chemical-gated ion channels, or channels that open when a chemical is bound to the membrane receptors.

Although these are the main tastes detected by the tongue, there are many other tastes the tongue can taste, such as savoriness, fattiness, dryness, hotness, or coolness.  Less foods create these tastes but these tastes are still important to the flavors we experience.

Foods nowadays can be engineered in many ways with different chemicals to create a desired effect.  Candy are engineered to be sweet or crunchy.  Foods are altered to create spicy flavors or cool flavors.  However, there many other ways foods can be altered to benefit not only the food industry but the nutrition of the citizens.  Many times, foods which taste well to the consumer are not healthy, such as fatty foods.  Other foods which are healthy, such as vegetables do not have as strong of a taste, losing its appeal.  An idea which should be researched would be to engineer more healthy foods with these chemicals to make them more appealing to the consumer.  Although some people may disagree with genetically modifying foods, this is an idea which could potentially stop many eating problems.

The meaning of our dreams has been wondered about for just about as long as humans have existed.  The Native Americans believed that dreams were visions that told them about actions such as hunting, growing crops and where they should travel.  Even now, the exact use of dreams is not clear.  However, there are many branches of psychology that examine the effects of dreams on ourselves, and what the dreams we have tell each individual person about their lives.

One of the many mysterious properties is that its role cannot be examined biologically.  It must be studied implicitly.  After the dream occurs, the dream reports of the dreamer become unreliable. However, recent observations have noticed that during dreaming, there are spikes during a sleeper’s brain waves.  Also, the sleeper’s eyes fluttered under their eyelids.  Each person usually dreams for 2 hours each night and the dreams last 5 to 20 minutes. It is unknown from what section of the brain dreams originate from, or what function the dreaming makes.

So what do these dreams do?  Although none of them are certain, there are multiple theories regarding the role of dreams on our psychology.  J. Allan Hobson proposed a theory called “activation synthesis theory”, which explains that during dreaming the cortex of the brain interprets chaotic signals from pons.  During REM sleep, or dream sleep, brain waves stimulate the higher midbrain and forebrain.  The forebrain then synthesizes dreams out of generated information.  Some scientists theorize that the dreams originate from the brain stem and noticed that patients with damage to the parietal lobe stopped dreaming.  Researchers further theorized that during dream, the unconscious part of the brain is processing memory while the conscious part of the brain stops functioning rapidly.  Dreams both continue with each other and other change suddenly because of the pulses of memory and information between different parts of the brain.

Psychologists also have many suppositions on what dreams can tell us about an individual.  Some psychologists believe that clinically, dreams can be related to mental illness, and some dreams can represent anxiety.  Repetitive traumatic dreams can hint at mental disorders.  According to psychologists, dreams can useful in learning, especially as a cognitive role for children.  Children have more dreams in general than adults, and it is possible that the dreams could help learning physical skills.  Dreams could possibly give ideas towards discoveries, inventions and solutions to everyday life problems.  Dreams can help us adapt to surroundings and maintain mental and physical balance.  Lastly, dreams can provide a protection for the body, enabling the body to function without harm.  Biologically, during dreams the body releases glycine, an amino acid, which is a defensive mechanism in the body.  These dreams can eventually reduce stress.

However, many of these conjectures are not widely accepted at a scientific level.  Biologists believe that dreams have no evolutionary advantages, but psychologists believe that deeper examination can relay the significance of dreams in explaining not only mental life, but physical life as well.

Ironically, dreams is a phenomenon that occurs almost every day to almost every person, but it is a phenomenon that is the most difficult to understand.  Even to just remember or visualize a person’s dreams, we need much more advanced technology.  One final question I have is the science regarding dream interpretation.  Because it is not widely accepted by the scientific community, is dream interpretation a pseudoscience?  How is it possible to accumulate enough observations and data to the create theories on the function and meanings of each dream?  Is the study of dreams a “science” like astrology, or a science like evolution?

The earthquake in Haiti is perhaps the most frequently discussed issue in recent days. And it has every right and need to be so. Everywhere I go, I’d hear about the disaster, devastation, deaths and such immediate impacts. Jessie’s earlier post had covered the scientific explanation of earthquakes, and here we will discuss some of its immediate implications, and relevant solutions.

Haiti

I had volunteered during the relief effort for the Sichuan Earthquake over a year ago (an earthquake in China of a similar devastating caliber), so I have some personal perspective into what this sort of disaster entails. Often, beyond the direct damages caused by the earthquake, there is also a second level of harm, caused from infections from wounds, malnutrition, or the subsequent diseases and epidemics caused by the lack of adequate medical care or sufficient aid in food or water.

However, I have also heard frustrating news about the aid being delayed, due to bureaucracy and other issues. As a result, I decided to look into some solutions that science may provide us.

A volunteer injects chlorinated chlorine into drinking water in Zimbabwe

Chlorine chemistry is an effective application of science to clean water, and is currently employed by many donors as a form of aid for Haiti.  Arch Chemicals, an American chlorine and biocides manufacturer, is providing their relief in the form of tablet chlorinators.

After some research, I found out that Chlorine and many of its compounds are “highly toxic,” (Derry, 202) and could have direct effects on humans. Furthermore, “chlorine compounds such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) are potent greenhouse gases. In the stratosphere, chlorine radicals break off and catalyse the destruction of ozone.” (Derry, 202)

So why would we add such a dangerous substance to drinking water?

This is a process called “chlorination”, invented by a US Army Major, who realized that adding chlorine to water was “the most effective way of killing the micro-organisms which cause disease was by chlorination”

Lewis-structure diagram of chlorine

Chlorine, with seven valence electrons on its outer shell, will readily accept an electron, and is thus highly reactive. When added to water, chlorine reacts and forms hypochlorous acid and hydrochloric acid.

Cl2(g) + H2O(l) –> HOCl(aq) + HCl(aq)

The HOCL then dissociates in water to form H+ and OCL- ions. These chemicals “penetrate the…protective membrane…[of] pathogens (agents that cause disease).”

The addition of chlorine serves two main functions to cleaning water:

1. killing bacteria and micro-organisms
2. remains as a residue to prevent new bacteria from contaminating the water

Donated clean water to be distributed in Haiti

At the end of my research, I am pleasantly surprised that what began as a personal musing about a current issue had turned into a scientific investigation. This is an example of how science can be practically applied to take an active role in solving a social and political issue. Indeed, Haiti is not simply a issue for social science classes. We can apply statistics to analyse the damage, make a dramatic rendition, music, or painting of the catastrophe, or write about it in a creative piece. It comes to show how the different subjects (areas of knowledge) we learn in school, whether science, math, history, or English, are all so relevant and essentially interrelated.

Works Cited

Derry, Lanna, Fiona Clark, Janette Ellis, Faye Jeffery, and Carol Jordan. Chemistry for use with the IB Diploma Programme Options Standard and Higher Level. 1st ed. Pearson, 2009. Print.

I watched TV today for the first time in a while and saw a show on the Discovery Channel. This particular show was about the way things are made, explaining how things we use everyday and don’t even think about may actually require a long manufacturing process.

So today’s episode was apparently about cutting steel, which was then linked back to the lasers that cut it, and from there to the mirrors used to make the lasers themselves. The show did an excellent job of explaining lasers to the average person who knows nothing about them. But I was still left really curious about mirrors. In fact, according to this show, lasers are very precisely defined, powerful beams of light, which are reflected millions of times using mirrors, making the light powerful enough to cut through things like steel. What I didn’t get was how such a powerful beam of light could cut through steel but not a mirror, which leads me to the topic of this post- what are mirrors made out of?

I started off by looking at this website, which provides a very detailed account of mirrors, from their history to the way they actually work.  It’s actually taken from an internet version of the show I was watching. According to the physics part of the site, mirrors work by reflecting light, which makes sense according to the “law of reflection.” Basically, we can’t see light unless it is reflected by something and then scattered. Mirrors, as opposed to non-flat surfaces, reflect light “without disturbing the incoming image”.

Understanding mirrors a bit more, and with help from this video, How Mirrors Are Made, I was just left to figure out the last part of my question- how is it that light can be bounced off mirrors without cutting a mirror but still be capable of cutting steel?

According to the Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology,

The resonator mirrors of a laser are almost always dielectric mirrors, because such devices routinely achieve a very high reflectivity of > 99.9%, and their limited reflection bandwidth can be convenient because it allows the transmission of pump light (at a shorter wavelength) through a folding mirror of the resonator (→ dichroic mirrors). Because of this use, dielectric mirrors are often called laser mirrors.

While much of what I found on that encyplopedia was too advanced for my understanding, I was able to pick up what I was looking for- one big difference between a laser mirror and the thing people check their makeup with- laser mirrors are much more reflective, so they’ll reflect light more precisely and hence produce a more powerful beam of light.

This website gave me a much simpler explanation about how lasers cut. After trying to find information on this, I’ve found that it won’t be easy to find a direct answer to my question. But this site explains that

Lasers cut by melting the material in the beam path,

and that they work best on metals that don’t reflect light easily and don’t absorb or conduct heat easily. Piecing this together with the video I watched, this information makes sense. In the video, mirrors are sometimes plated with copper so that the silver they are made out of doesn’t oxidise as readily. According to this site on laser cutting, copper and aluminum alloys “are more difficult to cut”, relative to steel. So while a laser can be very powerful, it depends on what it is being reflected, it just has to be powerful enough to cut the desired substance, not the mirror.

Tags: lasers, light, mirrors

I’m a shell collector. I love walking along beaches and rummaging around for  pretty shells and shiny round rocks. My magpie-like tendencies have caused me to lunge for the shine of half buried beer bottle caps and worthless shards of cheap deep blue glass. One rare find on the beach, is a sand dollar. I recently was given a sand dollar by a friend of mine and looking closely at it, I realized I have no idea what a sand dollar actually is! When I was young  my mother told me it was mermaid money, and as I got older I assumed that it housed a small sea creature, but that creature would have to be really small! So I decided to investigate the nature of these strange beach treasures. Here is what I found…

Sand Dollars belong to the phyla Echinodermata which means “spiny skins”, and when alive are round and flat,  growing to about 8 centimeters  in diameter. Ranging in color from gray to blackish-red, but usually a dark purple, the texture of its case/shell gives the Sand Dollar a velvety look. Thus they retain a soft and distinctively non shell-like appearance. White Sand Dollars found on the beach are actually the dried shells of the dead animals. Enjoying clean sand and shallow water, the Sand Dollar feeds on diatoms (photosynthetic algae) and detritus (organic waste material from decomposing dead plants or animals). Food is moved by tiny cilia (movable hair-like projections) to the mouth, which is located near the middle of the underside of the shell.

Sand Dollars come in many colours.

The closest phylogenetic relative to the Sand Dollar is the Sea Urchin, despite their decidedly differing appearances. The Sand Dollar is flat with tiny spines on the top of its soft shell. Those tiny spines and its tube feet contribute to the above described velvety look.  Sea Urchins are prickly-looking marine animals, spherical in shape and covered with long movable spines. Sand Dollars, along with Sea Urchins, are consumed by  sea stars, snails, and skates.

Sand Dollar in detail.

Because Sand Dollars prefer warm shallow areas with clear sand, the same area preferred by human resort developers, their populations are somewhat threatened as more and more humans desire a visit to the beach. As of yet they are not officially endangered. It seems that this is the life of marine animals. Oceans are big and people seem to think that if its in the ocean, its no longer a concern. For example, the garbage islands floating in the Pacific mires of discarded toothbrushes, old plastic shreds and tires, are the result of an endless dumping of human made trash into the oceans. Just think: if Sand Dollars were killed by the pollution of our only world’s oceans, I would never have recieved a pretty shell as a gift, (Sand Dollars have an off-center flower with five petals on their top). I also would never have explored a little biological anatomy and learned about an animal that has been around for millions of years.

On January 12^th 2010, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 hit the island of Haiti and devastated the capital along with the city’s people. Due to the earthquake, 200,000 people have died with another 2 million people left homeless. From the aftershocks, there have been many landslides, causing further damage, and burying people along with their homes. The situation in Haiti is dire, but 16,000 troops have already been sent by the United States to help with relief efforts.

Haiti post earthquake

Although I did not physically feel the earthquake, I definitely felt the waves of awareness and concern that shook my student body. We’ve talked about it in French and decided to use the profit from the Hunger Banquet to help relief in NHS. But being me, I always have to find out more through the scientific perspective – what is exactly causing this deadly earthquake?

In short, an earthquake is caused when two blocks of earth, tectonic plates, abruptly shift past one another. The place under the earth’s surface where the earthquake starts is called the hypocenter and the position above on the surface is called the epicenter.

Hypocenter and Epicenter

Haiti sits above two tectonic plates, the North American and the Caribbean. Each year, these two tectonic plates slide past each other one inch, but the Haiti earthquake was due a section of the plates, which were stuck together in 1751, breaking apart. The friction that had been built up by the original 1751 epicenter was released, destroying the city of Port-au-Prince. But it’s not the end. Not all of the tension has been released; the shift of the plates has caused more friction in the port village of Miragoâne and near the Dominican border. But earthquakes are hard to predict.

“We know that both spots will rupture at some point,” says Jian Lin, a Woods Hole geophysicist and the report’s lead author. “But it could be in 10 months, or 10 years—or even 100 years.”

Earthquakes in the Caribbean in particular are harder for scientists to predict since many of the tectonic plates are below sea level. Normally, the location of earthquakes can be tentatively predicted by seismograms that can see the P wave and S wave.

Location of P and S waves

P waves are faster than S waves. Thus, by measuring the time difference between the waves reaching a point, the distance from that point to the hypocenter can be determined with a seismograph. But as stated earlier by Jian Lin, it is not possible to predict the time in which and earthquake will take place.

In the world that we live in today, technology has been changing and improving tremendously. Simultaneously, technology that would ensure better predictions of natural disasters should also be made. During my Habitat for Humanity trip to Sichuan to help rebuild after the earthquake, I saw first hand the aftermath of a deadly earthquake. These third world countries have great difficulties after a natural disaster. But in Haiti in particular, due to the poverty, fewer scientists have paid attention to the movement of the tectonic plates. A mixture of technology that is not up to par and lack of earthquake monitoring worsened the effects of the earthquake in Haiti. Will we ever find a way to use our scientific knowledge to predict the time and location of a earthquake?

We see colour all day: in the sky (when the sky in Shanghai is blue), in all the scrumptious sushi, candy and raspberry muffins we eat, in the clothes we wear and miss it when it is bleached out of the paper we write on.

How important is colour? To me, as an artist, its very important. But how important is colour to you? More specifically, how important is  food colour?

Colourful fruits and vegetables.

As we know from class, food colour is divided into two general substances: dyes which are synthetically made and water soluble, and pigments which are naturally occuring and suspensions inside the cells of plants and animals.

One particular pigment has an interesting story…

Briefly the history of cochineal can be summarized as thus:

Used as a as a dye by the Aztec and Maya peoples of Central and North America, the pigment cochineal had comparable valuable to gold. Spanish conquerors of Central America saw the value of cochineal, and it became very popular in Europe. Roman Catholic Cardinals robes were coloured with cochineal, as were the jackets of the British military. Nowadays cochineal is marketed as a “natural” colorant, due to its originating from the cactus insect Dactylopius coccus who produces the pigment as a deterrent for predators.

Here societal perception of scientific words conflicts with the chemically accepted definition. Chemically, this pigment is as natural as they come. However, due to it’s originating from a living organism (albeit a tiny fungus like one), it is not “natural” in the sense implied by the vegetarians and religious leaders.

Carminic acid (C₂₂H₂₀O₁₃) is the actual pigment in cochineal. It is an exception to the definition of pigment as it is one of the few natural water-soluble colorants that ismaking it both a natural pigment and a dye. Also, unlike other natural colorants, cochineal is heat and light stable and oxidation resistant. It is not known to have any harmful health effects.

Carminic acid (C22H20O13)

This versatile dye is currently produced as a folk custom in Mexico. However as indicated above, cochineal is now being reconsidered as a practical food dye. To extract cochineal one first extracts the female insects drying them in the sun. Also collected are the leaves of a special tree of Oaxaca. Water is heated and into it goes the oaxaca leaves (oxalic acid-mordant), the crushed cochineal bugs, and fresh lime juice.  The wet skeins of wool are placed into the pot and boiled, left to dry, then rinsed.The concentration of the red colour is due to the length of the soaking, and the chemicals added.

Recently I was reading a science fiction novel called Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. There were many wild and improbable theories in the book, but one significant central concept: animals are the source of all solutions to biological solutions. If there is a problem with which you are struggling, an animal has the solution and you only need to look to find it.

In the cochineal insect, this theory appears to hold very true. There is probably much to be learned in the continued exploration of the diversity of animals on our planet.

Bibliography:

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Great Britain: Virago Press, 2004.

Derry, Lanna. Chemistry for use with the IB Diploma Program Higher Level. Victoria: Pearson Australia, 2008.

Imagine this: an energy supply that replenishes itself!  Using a rotating coil of wires and a magnet can create a current, and thus provide an energy supply.  How is this done?  Well Joseph Newman, a scientist, proposed a design (not the first of its kind) to do so. First, we must understand induced electromagnetic force (EMF).  Imagine a coil of solid copper wire- pure metal solids have a sea of electrons.  Suppose there is a magnetic force, with distinct positive and negative poles.  If we rotate this coil of wire between the two poles, the electrons in the copper wire would flow together towards the positive pole.  Every half circle would cause the electrons to switch sides.  This flow of electrons thus creates an electrical current, by definition.

Now this is where Newman’s idea comes into play.  Imagine if the resulting power from this setup were connected to a machine, which spins the very coil that supplies the electricity.  What if this spinning motion applied to two, or even three other coils.  With the power of one coil, multiple ones could be powered, whose energy can be utilized for other purposes.  This is Newman’s idea in layman’s terms.  For further reading: Perpetual Motion Machine. There are limitations that prevent this from coming into reality: namely the laws of thermodynamics.  According to the first law of thermodynamics, no energy can be created of destroyed; this is blatantly defied by such a machines.  The second law states that it is impossible for a process to have as its sole result the transfer of heat from a cooler body to a hotter one.  This is perhaps the most debilitating to this idea since this situation assumes a perfectly efficient machine, which is impossible due to friction, even in theory.  But, the idea is still a curious one, despite it’s impossibility.  Maybe in the future, our understanding for the laws of thermodynamics will change, but for now, this will remain the stuff for dreams.

And yet, there are still practical uses for this idea.  Certain hybrid cars are now utilizing a technology known as regenerative braking.  Regenerative braking allows an electric motor to be operated in reverse during braking or coasting.  In other words, by using the lost energy due to friction during braking, the motor instead acts as a generator that charges the car batteries with electrical energy using the coil and magnet method.  The accompanying friction (electrical resistance) assists the normal brake pads in overcoming inertia to create the effect as if it were a simple brake.

Such a simple application of an otherwise intangible idea: these are what make science so adaptive and applicable. Although the perpetual motion machine is still out of our reach, according to the very physical laws that dictate the world as we know it, we still have the capacity to understand and respond with alternatives. There is never one way to solve a problem, as exemplified in this case. With such a global push to reduce, reuse, and recycle, we will, undoubtedly, see many changes in our energy use in the following years. Perhaps this machine will not be so imaginary in the future. We can only wish.