Metropol

Hi,

someone I know has received a phone call encouraging him to invest in "Lutec". Website here http://www.lutec.com.au/index.htm . Worringly he seems very convinced - convinced enough to buy a ticket to Australia.

It sounds like a typical boiler room scam but I can't find any evidence on the internet about the company. Is it genuine? I'm pretty certain it isn't, and would appreciate any evidence any of you have come across.

Thanks very much

Chris

I think anyone who receives what I assume was a cold call about investing in a company gets everything they deserve if they give away anything.

Something is fishy here. Accordingly to the laws of thermo-dynamics, you cannot get out more than you put in, in terms of energy.

Lutec Website wrote:There are a couple of other major factors that we won’t go into here, suffice it to say that our current prototype demonstrates 1500% more “out” than “in”...

Doesn't make sense.

Note that we have achieved two effects from one cause, thus inducing an electric current per Mr Faraday’s theory, and so generating electricity as an output or product of the motors motion. The only electricity consumed has been that required to temporarily charge the coils and so creating a temporary magnet of like polarity to cause the permanent magnet to be repulsed rather than attracted.

Hmmm.

Certainly wouldn't be buying a ticket before I had spoken to someone about the mechanics of this.

A secondary school physics teacher would probably manage to point out the flaw in this.

I've found loads of articles stating this but they're all annoyingly ambivelant, and you can't present something like that to someone who's already certain it's for them. I only wish there was something that reads in black and white, "this is a scam".

Note that we have achieved two effects from one cause.

Is that like when one idiot posts rubbish, then two people post trains?

cdd wrote:I've found loads of articles stating this but they're all annoyingly ambivelant, and you can't present something like that to someone who's already certain it's for them. I only wish there was something that reads in black and white, "this is a scam".

Well, a fool and his money are soon parted. That's something I suppose he might have to learn the hard way.

There's an actor's adage that goes, "Never say a line you don't understand". I would have thought that might translate well enough to, "Never invest money in a product you don't understand".

There is a catch somewhere, and I suspect it lies with these "permanent magnets".

I'm ashamed to say I didn't take physics when given the chance in school. How is metal magnetised? I know there is a natural occurence, but can you treat metal to magnestise it? The point I'm driving at it that the process that creates these components may be energy intensive, and as such very expensive. There must be energy stored/converted somewhere else in the chain meaning you DON'T get something for nothing.

Just as mother taught me.

Perhaps you should tell your friend that you are happy to support his choice, if he can explain to you how this works. If he can't (and I'm pretty sure he won't be able to), it may be enough for him to reconsider.

Gavin Scott wrote:

cdd wrote:I've found loads of articles stating this but they're all annoyingly ambivelant, and you can't present something like that to someone who's already certain it's for them. I only wish there was something that reads in black and white, "this is a scam".

Well, a fool and his money are soon parted. That's something I suppose he might have to learn the hard way.

There's an actor's adage that goes, "Never say a line you don't understand". I would have thought that might translate well enough to, "Never invest money in a product you don't understand".

There is a catch somewhere, and I suspect it lies with these "permanent magnets".

I'm ashamed to say I didn't take physics when given the chance in school. How is metal magnetised? I know there is a natural occurence, but can you treat metal to magnestise it?

it's when all the bits inside face the same way in a magnetic metal. hence you hit it at the top with a hammer or stroke it with a magnet to line the bits up.

I did standard grade and got a 2 for physics.

The Waybacktime machine provides evidence of the Lutec machine being sold to investors as far back as 2001.

http://web.archive.org/web/200112160954 ... tent13.htm

At the very least you could print off these pages and let him see for himself. It's nestled in amongst "water as fuel" and "free energy" articles.

Another document I read indicates that bogus websites were set up to claim these are "miracle inventions", possibly used in marketing literature as a reference of "legitimacy".

Wouldn't touch this with a ten foot magnet.

I am so cynical ( i swear i get more cynical as i get older) about things like this. I kind of agree with Ison they deserve everything they get if they get involved. Unfortunately there are some very naive people out there. It's those people i genuinely feel sorry for because they are normally elderly.

I hope you can convince him but if you can't, don't lose any sleep over it. At the end of the day it's his decision to make. Some people need to learn the hard way. That's what mistakes in life are for ( to learn by ). As a friend you can only do your best to talk him out of it. If he goes for it and it all goes tits up, be there for him as a friend and help him pick up the pieces.

If i had a £1 for evertime i'd been offered something similar to this i'd have £2 by know
Seriously, i would be a very wealthy woman. It's because i am in close contact with alot of people that these morons approach me. My clients like and trust me and the majority of them are not stupid.

I tried to convince a friend not to join the Mormons. She did and i've never seen her since. They took her ( oh! ok.. She went, after considerable brainwashing imo) to Canada to join a branch of their clan. They are a strange bunch and don't even get me started on the Jobos ( Jehovas).

This is where we need Sput to explain the physics of this contraption. He's a rocket scientist you know

miss hellfire wrote:This is where we need Sput to explain the physics of this contraption. He's a rocket scientist you know

LOL! Don't believe it...it's just his chat up line.

Isonstine wrote:

miss hellfire wrote:This is where we need Sput to explain the physics of this contraption. He's a rocket scientist you know

LOL! Don't believe it...it's just his chat up line.

No, no! When I'm chatting people up I use my rocket scientist pic!


YAY @ FRED

OK, I'm looking at their "how it works" section. First up, they've been either very clever or very stupid in how they define work (that is to say, how energy is expended) when it comes to holding things in the air with a magnet:

they sorta wrote: if you suspend an object in the air using an electromagnet, it takes power but if you suspend it using a normal magnet it requires none.

That's true, but when you consider that work is the force to put it there TIMES the distance it moves (that'll be zero) - it quickly becomes clear that no energy is being output by the normal magnet anyway.

The crucial rule is that magnetic fields NEVER do work. Trust me too when I tell you that although it's true that a normal magnet can raise an object and APPEAR to release energy (do work), the total amount of energy involved cancels out to zero because of the work your hand has done by moving the object closer to the magnet, against the field, beforehand.



This is a great arbitrary equation because nothing whatsoever is defined. All it says is the energy output is the current multiplied by the voltage. That's GCSE, but displayed in a slightly more advanced way because they're just taking the idea that both values might vary with time, that's reasonable.

The problem comes about because they've told us NOTHING about how they vary with time, just that they do!

The second part is especially fab. It says that there is a resistance within this thing of 1 ohm. A resistance in a thing that with an efficiency of 1500%, when the laws of thermodynamics tells us that you can never even reach 100% efficiency. In essence, this part is at best arbitrary and at worst contradicts what's discussed previously on the same page!

Finally, they talk about electromagnetic induction (same things as dynamos) which is Faraday's Law. Unfortunately they forget Lenz's law, which is that the current in the wire moves in the opposite direction to the motion that creates it. For example if a dynamo spins clockwise, the current moves anticlockwise and sets up an opposing force to the motion, making it harder to turn the dynamo. That means then you'll need even more energy to make it turn, not to mention to overcome friction in the mechanism. And unless they've invented room temperature superconductors, you can forget about energy not being lost as heat from the wires.

In short, it is truly not possible. It MUST be a scam. This probably is one of the most dire explanations of physics in the world, and their site isn't too hot either!