Will perpetual motion notion be revealed?
FOR more than three decades, Dr David Jones’s bicycle wheel hasn’t stopped spinning – and it hasn’t stopped baffling scientists either.
But the secret of the university professor’s ‘fake’ perpetual-motion machine could soon be revealed.
Shortly before his death from prostate cancer last month, the Newcastle University scientist was persuaded by his brother Peter to write down how he made the wheel spin endlessly with no apparent source of power.
The answer lies in a secret envelope that, on 79-year-old Dr Jones’s instructions, is to be delivered to his former colleague Sir Martyn Poliakoff, a chemist based at Nottingham University.
In 1981 Dr Jones, who wrote for the New Scientist under the pen name ‘Daedalus’, invented the first of four perpetual-motion machines from bicycle wheels, sewing machine parts and bits of plumbing.
They were exhibited at trade shows and museums around the world.
However, he made it clear from the start that his machines were fake, calling himself a ‘court jester in the palace of science’. Dr Jones, who lived in Jesmond, Newcastle, said that he had included ‘conjuring tricks’ and ‘cunning distractions’, and scientists had been ‘remarkably gullible’ in failing to solve the riddle.
Sir Martin is now expected to find a new home for the machine – possibly in a museum. But it is not yet clear whether he will decide to open Dr Jones’s letter and discover the wheel’s secret.
He said: ‘Part of me is keen to know but I might then realise how silly we were in not guessing how it works.’