Word: waterwheel
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Physicists didn't figure this out until the 1800s, so at least the early advocates of perpetual motion had the excuse of ignorance. In 1618, for example, a London doctor named Robert Fludd invented a waterwheel that needed no river to drive it. Water poured into his system would, in theory, turn a wheel that would power a pump that would cause the water to flow back over the wheel that would power the pump, and so on. But the second law means that any friction created by wheel and pump would turn into heat and noise; reconverting that into...
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