Tom Farmer is a restless man. The 54-year-old ex-Kodak process operator has built stereo speakers, kitchens and parts of his own house. He plays, collects and builds guitars. He is, by his own account, “insanely crazy” about his Harley Davidson motorcycle.
An avid gardener, he considers his house near Braddocks Bay an acre and a half of garden with a little bit of lawn in it. He grows grapes, hops, and blueberries and makes his own wine.
Now he’s invented a machine that he hopes will prove once and for all that gravity can join wind, solar and hydroelectric power as an alternative energy source.
“I've literally just invented a new category of energy,” Farmer said. “The cool thing is, it's all free. All of it.”
How it works
In Farmer’s gravity generator, a hollow weight is attached to a line that sinks in a liquid-filled pipe. The descending line spins a gear that generates electricity. When the weight hits the bottom, a small tube lets just enough air into the weight to float it back to the top, where it can sink again and generate more electricity.
The issue in the past has been that it would take some sort of fuel or energy cost to lift the weight again. Farmer’s breakthrough is his idea that the compressed air used to fuel his gravity generator can be collected using everyday weight.
His example was that you can put a hollow, speed bump-type rail at the entrance of a parking garage. Every car that drives over it depresses the bump, pushing air into a chamber, where it will later be used to fill the weight. The bump is reset by springs which, it is important to note, do not need to be fueled.
“Everything weighs something, and if it's going to move at some point or another, why not take advantage of the weight of that item,” Farmer said. “You can light your parking garage with just the cars going in and out. It's kind of cool once you wrap your head around it.”
Skepticism
Farmer said many people have been skeptical about his machine’s plausibility.
“When people hear my idea, they for some reason automatically think perpetual motion,” he said. “This is not perpetual motion. I need to point that out.”
SUNY Geneseo Physics Professor Jon Hager, who commented briefly via email, said that in principle, he could see nothing wrong with Farmer’s concept as described except a lack of efficiency.
Tom Farmer is a restless man. The 54-year-old ex-Kodak process operator has built stereo speakers, kitchens and parts of his own house. He plays, collects and builds guitars. He is, by his own account, “insanely crazy” about his Harley Davidson motorcycle.
An avid gardener, he considers his house near Braddocks Bay an acre and a half of garden with a little bit of lawn in it. He grows grapes, hops, and blueberries and makes his own wine.
Now he’s invented a machine that he hopes will prove once and for all that gravity can join wind, solar and hydroelectric power as an alternative energy source.
“I've literally just invented a new category of energy,” Farmer said. “The cool thing is, it's all free. All of it.”
How it works
In Farmer’s gravity generator, a hollow weight is attached to a line that sinks in a liquid-filled pipe. The descending line spins a gear that generates electricity. When the weight hits the bottom, a small tube lets just enough air into the weight to float it back to the top, where it can sink again and generate more electricity.
The issue in the past has been that it would take some sort of fuel or energy cost to lift the weight again. Farmer’s breakthrough is his idea that the compressed air used to fuel his gravity generator can be collected using everyday weight.
His example was that you can put a hollow, speed bump-type rail at the entrance of a parking garage. Every car that drives over it depresses the bump, pushing air into a chamber, where it will later be used to fill the weight. The bump is reset by springs which, it is important to note, do not need to be fueled.
“Everything weighs something, and if it's going to move at some point or another, why not take advantage of the weight of that item,” Farmer said. “You can light your parking garage with just the cars going in and out. It's kind of cool once you wrap your head around it.”
Skepticism
Farmer said many people have been skeptical about his machine’s plausibility.
“When people hear my idea, they for some reason automatically think perpetual motion,” he said. “This is not perpetual motion. I need to point that out.”
SUNY Geneseo Physics Professor Jon Hager, who commented briefly via email, said that in principle, he could see nothing wrong with Farmer’s concept as described except a lack of efficiency.
“The only energy into the system is whatever is driving the air flow that allows the mass to raise back up to the surface,” said Hager. “All of the other mechanisms are just ways to convert that input energy into something that spins so it can create an electrical current by driving a generator. In a perfect world, 100 percent of the energy used to create the air flow would all end up spinning the gear. In reality, every step along the way will result in energy losses, and from what I'm seeing, there are a lot of steps here ... That said, there's nothing obvious to me that would indicate that this invention is not capable of creating electrical energy, I just don't think it would be very good at it.”
Farmer, however, said the gravity generator is in the very early stages of development, and efficiency and output isn’t his main focus yet. He said he sees the machine eventually powering house lights, not city blocks.
“The machine is designed to prove that gravity can indeed be used as a source of energy,” Farmer said. “It’s just a proof of concept. Efficiency is not the primary concern right now.”
What’s next
Farmer’s machine has already gone through a number of revisions. The most current working prototype stands about 7 feet tall and uses compressed air as fuel. As the weight sinks, a small flashlight shines from the top. An inner tube inside the weight inflates when it hits the bottom, and when it reaches the top again, it hits a lever that releases the air, allowing it to sink once more.
Farmer said many people tell him that, if it were that easy to use gravity for energy, someone would have done it already.
“I'm not out to prove physics wrong or anything,” he said. “There's no magic to it. It's stuff that always existed, I just put it together in an order that it will work with itself instead of against itself.”
Farmer’s next goal is to make a version of his gravity generator that people can step on and see for themselves how their weight can be used to power a light bulb.
“The first time you come in my shop and step on that thing and the lights go on, the light bulb will go on in your head,” he said.
Farmer said he has been talking to colleges that might be interested in exploring the possibilities offered by his machine. He said researchers and engineers will best able to experiment with the most efficient sizes and forms the gravity generator can take and what its most practical applications for the future may be.
In hopes of hurrying others’ progress, Farmer said he will not seek to patent his gravity generator.
“I'm giving this to the world because it's something that has to be explored,” he said. “It's too cool to hang on to.”
