/ 9 May 2003

Klerksdorp inventor defies the laws of physics

A Klerksdorp inventor demonstrated to the media on Thursday a propulsion system which he claims defies the laws of physics and is set to change the world.

Hannes du Preez, an aerospace technician, showed reporters what he called ”model no. 47” of his invention, an ”oscillating force generator”.

It is comprised of a base made of perspex and rolling on four loose wheels.

On top of the base sits a big and a small cylinder and a number of valves. When Du Preez fed compressed air to the unit via a long tube, the cylinders oscillated and propelled the base forward by the main cylinder bumping into a strip of plastic attached to the base.

The device defied Newton’s third law of motion [if an object exerts a force on a body, the body exerts an equal and opposite force back, every action deserves an opposite, and equal reaction], said Du Preez, because it generated a directional force without generating a counter-force.

It could, in other words, move itself without pushing against a road surface through its wheels, or pushing against the air through a propeller or a jet nozzle.

The concept could potentially be used to propel boats, cars, aircraft and spacecraft, he said, and would be 10 to 20 times more fuel-efficient than, for instance, the current type of car engine.

Du Preez was unfazed by observations by an engineer that the air cylinder that powered the unit stood separately and was connected to it by a tube.

This could mean that the unit was actually pushing against the air in the supply tube to obtain motion in the usual way.

Du Preez said he did construct a unit that had a small scuba diving cylinder mounted on the base next to the cylinders and the performance was exactly the same.

His unit, which he nicknamed the ”Dup Drive”, had in any event been extensively tested by engineering departments at universities and large development companies, said Du Preez, and they all conceded that it worked.

A professor of engineering had also done a mathematical analysis of the system, he said, and the analysis showed that the mechanism would indeed work as devised — generating a force that pushed it forward, without it pushing against air, a road surface or anything else. – Sapa