Talk:Minto wheel

responses to criticism

the mother earth test failed to cool the top.

Thermal transmittance

Thermal_conductivity#Transmittance is the limiting factor, at the cooling top as well as the warming bottom. Adding finned heat sinks might make it faster? Minto suggested if you're using your wheel to pump water, direct a drip to the top for cooling effect.

Symmetric design vs asymmetric design with preferred direction of rotation?

The animation Minto_wheel_animated.gif illustrating the Minto wheel ‎is symmetric---the spherical reservoirs are centered on the ends of the diametric pipes, which pass through the axis of rotation. Because of this symmetry, a Minto wheel with this design would not know which way to rotate. If started with no velocity, it would wait a while then perhaps pick a rotation direction randomly by spontaneous symmetry breaking. On the other hand, Minto's original design, [1], was asymmetric---the reservoirs are displaced counterclockwise from the pipe ends, and the arrows indicate that a wheel of this design would rotate counterclockwise. Such designs would always rotate in the same direction, determined by the wheel's asymmetry. Since most photographs of Minto Wheels I find online have asymmetrically located reservoirs, I believe that is the correct design, and would operate more efficiently than a symmetric wheel. Does anyone know whether a symmetric Minto wheel has ever been built or tested? If so, a discussion of the theoretical and practical differences between symmetric and asymmetric Minto wheels is in order. If not, someone with the necessary skills should edit the otherwise nice animation, displacing the reservoirs (say counterclockwise) from the tube ends, and indicating the resulting rotation direction.CharlesHBennett (talk) 04:45, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

earliest patent?

The patent officer cited https://www.google.com/patents/US4202178 in the Iske brothers patents (but oddly not Israel L. Landis patent). -- MichaelFrey (talk) 13:49, 14 October 2016 (UTC)