Is Perpetuation Nonsense?

On November 12, 1717, Johann Bessler, a German watchmaker, placed a strange wheel of a 4-meter-diameter in a closed room.

With a slight pushing motion, the bizarre machine began spinning. Johann confidently walked out of the room. After that, he got the guards to seal and lock it for the following two weeks. No interference was allowed.

Two weeks had eventually passed, and the room got unsealed, revealing the still-motioning machine. The room was again resealed. For the next 40 days, the device still evidenced no sign of halting.

Such a peculiar machine was named "Orffyreus wheel", after Johann's nickname. The watchmaker proclaimed it as "the perpetual motion machine", demanding £ 20,000 to divulge the secret behind its operating mechanism. Tsar Peter the Great was sucked in the "invention", thus, turned to scholars' advice before deciding to buy the "cutting-edge" machine.

"Oh ye seekers after perpetual motion, how many vain chimaeras have you pursued? Go and take your place with the alchemists", concluded Leonardo da Vinci in his notebook.

The saying was found next to design drawings of "spinning water wheel" or "perpetual wheel". After all, the man with a mighty brain was as much immersed in such "vain chimaeras" that he could only bitterly mock himself off.

On the whole, a "perpetual eternal motion machine" is an imaginary mechanical device presumed to "eternally operate" to produce an independent inexhaustible source of energy. By the book, such an engine is, to any extent, "null", since it violates the most fundamental physics principles.

The most severely violated of which is the First Law of Thermodynamics.

It states that the change in internal energy of a system is equivalent to the total energy and thermodynamic work it receives (ΔU = A + Q). In other words, you can't get any more of the energy amount you have provided.

We're yet to reach the level of receiving an equal of energy equal to what we've spent. Given that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it does disappear to transform into other forms futile to our purposes.

By the book, there does exist the possibility of coming up with a perpetual motion machine should we ever be capable of balancing the amount of energy input and output. Nevertheless, we're still so far away from this.

A wheel would perpetually spin there no friction. Dismally enough, there's ALWAYS friction in it, which wears away energy, little by little, cycle by cycle, and eventually halts the wheel. The less friction, the longer the wheel spins. But this isn't lasting forever.

This principle, thus, turned down the perpetual motion machine's operation mechanism, for it's incapable of generating more thermodynamic work than the input energy. By small doses, friction takes away the work it produces every complete cycle.

In this manner, friction halts every motion. To put into perspective, a wheel stops as abrasion resists its axle, let alone that of every single part and the atmosphere. Albeit insignificant and time-consuming, such a force eventually eliminates all the energy on the wheel's rotation, thus, halting every motion.

A closer look onto the Second Law of Thermodynamics evidences that friction generates heat. Since it's transferred in one and only one direction, from the system to the environment (from high to low-temperature objects), the system little by little loses the energy that maintains its stable state.

It's not to mention the emanated creaking noise - another "loss-proof", for sound is as much an energy form. After all, a perpetual motion machine is, to any extent, futile, let alone the generation of any actual thermodynamic work.

(Were we even to create an ideal friction-isolated environment, the wheel could, at best, turn out a decoration instead of any fruitful outcome).