On November 12th, 1717, clockmaker and mechanic Johann Bessler placed a 12-foot diameter, strange-looking wheel into a room. With a tender push, he started the contraption rotating, then confidently ...

At the turn of the 20th century, the quest for a perpetual motion machine took hold of public imagination. A number of Hoosiers were among those captivated by the idea of creating a perpetual motion ...

Are these machines possible without violating the laws of physics? No. A wheel that spins forever; a bird that never quenches its thirst; a clock that never stops ticking, an endless source of free ...

Perhaps the most persistent nonsense in physics: the perpetual motion machine. Bad ideas come and go in physics. But there’s one bit of nonsense that is perhaps more persistent than all others: the ...