Perpetual Motion

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of the idea of perpetual motion and its decline, in the 19th Century, with the Laws of Thermodynamics. For hundreds of years, some of the greatest names in science thought there might be machines that could power themselves endlessly. Leonardo Da Vinci tested the idea of a constantly-spinning wheel and Robert Boyle tried to recirculate water from a draining flask. Gottfried Leibniz supported a friend, Orffyreus, who claimed he had built an ever-rotating wheel. An increasing number of scientists voiced their doubts about perpetual motion, from the time of Galileo, but none could prove it was impossible. For scientists, the designs were a way of exploring the laws of nature. Others claimed their inventions actually worked, and promised a limitless supply of energy. It was not until the 19th Century that the picture became clearer, with the experiments of James Joule and Robert Mayer on the links between heat and work, and the establishment of the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Ruth Gregory 4 episodes
  Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Durham University
• Frank Close 16 episodes
  Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Oxford
• Steven Bramwell 3 episodes
  Professor of Physics and former Professor of Chemistry at University College London

Reading list

• James Joule: A Biography
  Donald S. L. Cardwell (Manchester University Press, 1991) Google Books →
• Neutrino
  Frank Close (Oxford University Press, 2012) Google Books →
• Physics, the Human Adventure: From Copernicus to Einstein and Beyond
  Gerald Holton and Stephen G. Brush (Rutgers University Press, 2006) Google Books →
• Julius Robert Mayer: Prophet of Energy
  Robert Bruce Lindsay (Pergamon Press, 1973) Google Books →
• Perpetual Motion: The History of an Obsession
  Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2005) Google Books →

Related episodes

• The Second Law of Thermodynamics
  
  16 Dec, 2004 530 Physics
• Automata
  
  20 Sep, 2018 600 Technology
• Michael Faraday
  
  24 Dec, 2015 530 Physics
• Kinetic Theory
  
  23 May, 2019 530 Physics
• Laws of Nature
  
  19 Oct, 2000 500 Science
• Electrickery
  
  4 Nov, 2004 500 Science
• The Laws of Motion
  
  3 Apr, 2008 530 Physics
• Heat
  
  4 Dec, 2008 530 Physics
• Pierre-Simon Laplace
  
  8 Apr, 2021 510 Mathematics
• Magnetism
  
  29 Sep, 2005 530 Physics

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: b06c06nd

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06c06nd

Auto-category: 530 (Physics)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. Perpetual Motion has intrigued some of the greatest names in science as they try to invent machines that could power themselves endlessly.