There was a kid at the summer camp I went to who had this idea. I knew it wouldn't work, but I wasn't able to explain why.

I think the reason is that the magnet is also attracted to the metal so the attraction force directions add to be net neutral

This metal arm compression device would work just fine, that metal arm would experience various stresses. Mission Accomplished. Good design.

The magnet attracts the car, but the arm it's connected to pushes back on the car, balancing the forces.

The real reason is because the magnet is trying to pull the car. Have you ever tried to pull a car? You'll find it impossible even in neutral. But you'll find out pushing it is much easier.

You should instead magnetise the shell of the car, then hook to its back a magnet with the same pole as the car's back.

Yeah exactly

Mumble, something. Magnets do no work. Mumble, mumble.

ICP is still looking into this.

It's because of those damn nonmagnetic aluminum chassis

And the plastic body, give me iron or give me death!

As soon as ya figure out pulling yourself up by your boot straps you'll have all the free energy hacks.

Just need to add a hill.

Stand the truck up on end. It's trying to pick itself up.

Try to pick yourself up. Good luck.

Blocking you too

There’s no such thing as sideways gravity though, so your point is irrelevant.

You gotta get up pretty early to pull one over on me.

The magnet also gets pulled backwards with equal force as the plate on the front of the truck gets pulled towards the magnet.

Since the magnet is attached to the back of the truck, the base of the magnet crane is pushing back on the truck with the same amount of force it’s being pulled forward by by the plate, thus cancelling out the forces and resulting in a net of zero.

Switch the magnet for a carrot and the truck for a donkey, it’s way simpler than you tech bros are making it out to be.

Clearly the magnet would be attracted to the metal block, pushing the truck backwards.

you need a stronger magnent

Neither carrots or donkeys are magnetic 🙄

But it's on wheels! Wheels make the truck go.

Which is why you use an electro-magnet.

You energize it, allow it to snap to the car pulling it forward slightly, then disengage it and use a motor in the arm to reset it to it's original position.

Have you met every single donkey? No? Didn't think so.

Got it. Step one of free energy is to be born rich and raised disconnected

Replace the metal arm with a drone, and were getting somewhere. Like, literally.

That’s way too much of a complicated system prone to wear and failure. A spring loaded pull mechanism is far more mechanically reliable and works at a wide range of scales.

I think it's newtons first law. The force attracting the metal to the magnet is equal but opposite to the magnet on the metal.

Magnet would pull the car backwards and the metal forwards

And yet... there is attraction. I propose, until we've studied it enough to come up with a better name, the "donkey carrot attraction force"

Can this attraction be improved upon? Like if the carrot wears some lipstick or some such?

But how would you stop the car? If you lifted the magnet up, the car goes along with, and then you'd be going through the atmosphere.

Brakes

Everything is magnetic if you try hard enough.

I don't care whom you're attracted to, but you might want to keep this one to yourself... Unless you're in the FBI!

I know you joking bu, isn'tt this how those fancy asian bullet trains work?

How do to get mangnent

That's magnetic levitation, and it's magnetic repulsion not attraction. The push the train away from the tracks and that balances against the gravity pushing it down onto the tracks, so it levitates. Then you just oscillate the polarity of the electromagnet to move forward.

It allows for extremely high speed travels since there is no friction with the tracks, but in terms of efficiency it's not much better than a normal electric train. It's just faster, which in commuter trains it is what you want. But it wouldn't be much good for personal vehicle transit, even if we did magnetize all of the roads.

I'm more of an EDM guy, myself

Mangngnent store?

"...magNANanent?!"

"...magnart."

Yep it holds up

Revolutionary thinking.

Don't worry it's an AI generated carrot and an AI donkey (somehow). Where's my funding?

Silence brand

I don't think the carrot is attracted to the donkey the way the donkey is attracted to the carrot...

I love that apparently additional metal has to be added because the truck itself is made out of so much plastic and other nonsense that it wouldn't work with a magnet on its own.

take magnet, bash over head, success

you will get a blindspot, so accidents will happen quite often.

It's the right idea. The trick is to also use an electromagnet. A few of them. Put them in a circle. Switch on one of them at a time so the magnet moves to the electro magnet. Then switch of the one electromagnet and switch on the next. Now you have a magnet spinning. Use that to mine the wheels.

Alternatively have a road full of electromagnetic in a linear fashion. That works too.

Instructions unclear.

Magnetized car is now riddled with all sort of metallic debris.

That's clearly an Acme design. It's meant to break.

Then you tie a big chunk of metal to the front, just like they did with the car