Repulsive Magnetic Hammering Experiment

Question

I have been thinking about something thing...

I want to attach four or any number of magnets with arms to an axle..

Blue dots be magnets.

Its is not a wheel configuration, all arms can move independently, lets say i move first arm and it rotates and approaches the magnet on second arm with some momentum, and repels the other magnetic, and then the second arm swings in motion, and son on an so forth, creating a chain reaction which is simulating rotation of magnets around axis..

Now this is an impossibility because what i have stated above is an ideal system, there is always friction at work which will highly damp this process... wheel-axle-friction, air resistance, weight of magnets & arm etc etc..

I was thinking about how close can we push this to being an ideal system.

I am going to provide some torque by electric motors to arms to compensate for damping...

lets say if there is no magnetic repulsion then the whole rotation is powered by electric motors but after introducing method of magnetic repulsive hammering to What Percentage the electric power required could be dropped..

Answer 1

It's a circular version of Newton's Cradle, where the energy, momentum, and angular momentum are conserved, and it will keep running until it dissipates its energy through air drag, etc. If it doesn't dissipate energy, it will just keep going, like a wheel turning in space.

Planetary moons can work like this in pairs. Moons A and B are in circular orbits and have the same mass. Moon A is slightly lower than moon B, so its orbital period is slightly faster. As A approaches B, gravity pulls them together, lifting A into the same orbit as B, while simultaneously B is pulled down into A's prior orbit. Then B moves on ahead, and the whole process repeats. It's a special case of orbital resonance.