The Mendocino Solar Motor explained
The first time I saw this motor I coulnd't help being fascinated. It looks like a perpetuum mobile or some kind of sorcery.
The reality is much less complicated. The Mendocino Motor is solar powered magnetically levitated motor. It was invented by Larry Spring who lives (or lived ?) in Mendocino County in California. Hence the name.
Magnetically levitated
The following image shows a cross-sectional view of the motor. As we all know magnets can either attract or repel each other. The trick to this pseudo levitation is to slightly misalign the magnets on the rotor and the magnets on the base plate. This causes the rotor wanting to fall of the magnetic field of the base plate magnets. This is prevented by some mechanism. In this case a glass plate, in other cases a bearing. The important thing is that this is as frictionless as possible because the solar cells aren’t producing a lot of energy. That’s why often the axis ends in a sharp point. Perpendicular to this cross-section the axis cannot fall because there are four magnets and the axis floats between two pairs as can be seen in the top image.
The rotor
The rotor has an even number of small solar panels. They are arranged in pairs in such a way that there is always one cell facing the light source while the other one is in the complete opposite direction being in the shade. The two cells are wired in series with a coil connected between them. The cell facing the light source will produce a voltage while the cell in the shade will act as a high impedance. Current will flow through the coil as a result. Current flowing through a coil generates a magnetic field. This field will be repelled by the base field magnet. As a result the rotor will turn slightly. This will cause the next solar cell to come into the light source and the whole process repeats resulting in a turning motor.
This is a nice video of the motor in action:
A kit can be bought in the Elector webshop.
Image sources: www.elektor.com and www.mendocinomotor.eu
Great invention.
Indeed. Brilliantly simple and yet very fascinating, that's why I shared this short intro.
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I guess more research work is needed before this option could get powerful enough for practical applications (if I am not wrong). It is however something nice, I agree.
I don't think it ever will. This is more a novelty, a fun geek gadget. The yield is never optimal. To have an optimal yield one is better of directing all cells towards the light source instead of having most of them not being oriented optimal. That would yield more energy that can be use for a separate motor.
Okay I see. Thanks for specifying this :)