mechanical engineering student
Did not pay much attention in high school
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
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Look out for v2.0 which also features a sail on the front which you blow to go faster.
Okay, but blowing on a sail to go faster is actually a thing. Mythbusters even stated that they did their experiment in the worst method (i.e., not using modern designs and methods), and still found that a fan on a sail could make it move. It's not free energy, but let's not ignore how cool sails are.
This sounded very wrong to me, so I googled and apparently they had a setup where the reflected air from the sail caused a net flow in the opposite direction allowing them to move forwards. But that is less effective than just blowing the air straight backwards without a sail.
Look for the sail car video from Veritasium. With a chain drive you can out run the wind using the principles of sail propulsion.
When the battery runs out, you pull over and "pedal" to recharge the battery, then you're good to go again!
now that is genius!
I don't own one of these, but that sounds actually useful if for example I'm about to climb a big hill and want to pedal at a less strenuous pace (but for more time) than would be needed to overcome the slope.
Assisted modes already exist, and regenerative braking already exist
But this joke is more funny :)
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The traditional method of pedaling uphill less strenuously is to drop to a lower gear. You might go slower, but I'd bet even on existing e-bikes with pedal assist, this is something that's already pretty reasonable now days.
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Nice to get a moment to pull out a classic
As someone who sucks at physics, I'm convinced that Trollface has proposed so many solutions around the internet to provide free energy, but the capitalists are conspiring to sabotage him, just as they did to N.Tesla.
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This is satire… right? I hope it is
Yet another "engineering student" who hasn't learned his Newtonian physics yet. Which I'm pretty sure is covered in grade school, but you never know.
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I have never seen the Arabic language translation of this meme but I immediately understood it from having seen the English version.
I had this exact idea... when I was 7. That was before I was introduced to newtonian physics.
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Looks like it could even be AI style with all the emojis.
Either way, thanks I hate it.
This guy apparently doesn’t understand the first and second laws of thermodynamics. However, in his defense, this is sorta how regenerative braking works, but with less complexity.
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Mechanical engineering student huh? Good to know he didn't attend class on day 1 of dynamics
Mechanical engineering student huh?
1 week
This is a normal trajectory for college freshmen. Get introduced to a bunch of basic ideas. Spitball and try to see how you can apply them. Start running into all kinds of caveats and engineering hurdles. Go back to class. Bother the RA. Maybe actually learn more about what you're trying to accomplish. Become a better engineer.
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Either he's lying about being a mechanical engineer or the barrier to entry to become a mechanical engineer is embarrassingly low.
It this guy seriously proposing a perpetual motion machine for the purposes of EV charging? Also not that it really matters but who the hell has range anxiety on an electric bicycle. You get 30 miles out of those things easily, what sort of bike rides is he doing where you have to recharge that more than once a month?
He should try recharging a solar panel with a light powered by the solar panel. Just achieving infinite power.
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Why not cut out the middle man and directly charge battery 2 with battery 1? Switch and repeat.
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Newton? Never heard of him.
With this many emojis and em dashes, he's probably engagement farming using llm content, regardless of the thermodynamics gaps in logic
This is dumb as shit ofc, but it gave me an idea that's probably nearly equally dumb as shit:
Regular bicycle, but with an extra gear that can selectively connect to the chain or wheel or w/e, that's connected to a coil torsion spring on a kind of ratchet release.
Basically you flip the switch when it's a good time to rob some energy like when you're on level ground or going down hill. That energy makes you a tad less efficient (but you don't care cuz it's level or downhill), and uses that energy to wind up the coil torsion spring up until a max amount of torque is stored.
Fast forward a bit: now you're approaching an incline, so you flip the switch the other direction and that torsion spring regurgitates that energy back into forward motion, giving you a nice forward burst when going up a hill.
Not free energy by any stretch, but a strategic use of what you're already spending.
Feel free to explain why this is a horrible idea - I'm about as far from a physicist as it gets.
Essentially regenerative braking. Should work, though the question is how coat effective.
Wrong question.
Right question: When the fully torqued spring inevitably fails, who is liable for the deaths of the rider and nearby pedestrians?
Wrong question. That one is answered with a EULA.
Right question: how often can we make that torque spring break, forcing the buyer to buy another one, without them realizing it's failure by design?
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F1 has been using this principle for years
That's just regenerative braking on a bike. Without batteries.
In theory that idea isn't actually bad although I suspect in practise the mechanism would be extremely complicated and would be liable to jamming it in opportune moments. That said doing this electronically is already a thing, although not really in e-bikes.
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Seems like satire to me. Pretty funny too.
The Law of LinkedIn:
If you think it's satire, it's probably actually just a really stupid individual.
It's almost as if one object perpetually moves something that creates a form of motion perpetually to continuously move that first item. Like a continuous motion machine or perpetual movement apparatus. Something like that. I feel like my naming is close, though.
Techbros rediscovering old principles, a tale as old as....well, since the tech industry.
This guy is only telling us part of the truth. You actually need three batteries. The third battery is hooked up to a solar and wind generator. Only then can you achieve true energy independence.
So you're on your ebike, going 15mph. Using 140w or so. You're spending 15-20w on the drivetrain, and the remainder is entirely aerodynamic drag. You're putting 120-125w into making wind move. You're also losing 5-10 watts to the drive electronics and dashboard. So your total power use is 150w.
If you're going to recharge a battery. In the same time it takes to ride, you need to get at least 150w of power into another battery. Sadly, batteries don't actually "just cleanly charge" there are some losses, but since we're going to take an hour to charge it, lets call it 5%. So to fill up that battery we need 157watts of input power.
Your bike, moving at a steady speed, is absorbing 150w of power. If we want another 155w of power, where is that going to come from? If we take it from.. say.. the front wheel, we are now absorbing another 155w of power. So to maintain the same speed, we now need to push the bike along with 305w of power. And.. now we need a bike that makes 305w of power, to go the same speed we were going with 150w. .... And we're only generating 155w.
There is no free lunch. If you're doing work, you need to get that power from somewhere.
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