Blake,
There may be something to that oscillating idea, but it's too late here for me to be able to think it through. I think the cable would have to be moving in more or less a single plane to make it straighten and contract to move the counterweight, instead of a creating a jump-rope un-bent banana shape which wouldn't necessarily change the distance between the ends (unless you all jump rope differently down there). Wouldn't it take a lot of energy to keep moving the counterweight back and forth, or is there some magic restoring force I'm not thinking of. I can see how the jump-rope motion might not take much energy to maintain, but as I said before, I don't think it does the job. Reeling in the weight and letting it out again could do the trick if the natural forces would do the work in one direction and the energy could be stored and if it didn't have to be moved so much each day that something would wear out and break before long.
There may be something to that oscillating idea, but it's too late here for me to be able to think it through. I think the cable would have to be moving in more or less a single plane to make it straighten and contract to move the counterweight, instead of a creating a jump-rope un-bent banana shape which wouldn't necessarily change the distance between the ends (unless you all jump rope differently down there). Wouldn't it take a lot of energy to keep moving the counterweight back and forth, or is there some magic restoring force I'm not thinking of. I can see how the jump-rope motion might not take much energy to maintain, but as I said before, I don't think it does the job. Reeling in the weight and letting it out again could do the trick if the natural forces would do the work in one direction and the energy could be stored and if it didn't have to be moved so much each day that something would wear out and break before long.
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