• Has college dropout done the impossible and created a perpetual motion machine?
• "Lenz's law is essentially magnetic friction, which is a form of resistance not unlike the wind resistance your car experiences when driving down the highway"
• "What I can say with full confidence is that our system violates the law of conservation of energy"

3. 2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous. (4 pts)

• The steel rotor and driveshaft had conducted the magnetic resistance away from the coil and back into the heart of the electric motor.
• Since such motors work on the principle of converting electrical energy into motion by creating rotating magnetic fields, he figured the Back EMF was boosting those fields, causing acceleration.

10. 10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this were evidence of sanity. (0 pts)

• Heins has an even greater uphill battle. He isn't an engineer. He doesn't have a graduate degrees in physics. He never even finished his electronics program at Heritage College in Gatineau, Quebec. "I have mild dyslexia and don't do well in math, so I didn't do very well in school," he says. What he does have is a chef's diploma.

11. 10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it. (10 more for emphasizing that you worked on your own.) (10 pts)

• It all began back in 1985, when Thane Heins, having studied electronics at Heritage College in Gatineau, Quebec, started thinking about how magnets could be used to improve power generators.

12. 10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don't know personally and asking them not to tell anyone else about it, for fear that your ideas will be stolen. (3 out of 10 pts * 5 = 15 pts)

• Heins has been on a letter-writing campaign...Al Gore, ... Richard Branson, ... Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,... Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, and ... Google's philanthropic arm.

15. 10 points for each statement along the lines of "I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations". (20 pts)

• What's preventing the engineer from grasping it right away, he says, is his education, his scientific training.
• "I have mild dyslexia and don't do well in math, so I didn't do very well in school," he says.

17. 10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn't explain "why" they occur, or fails to provide a "mechanism". (0 pts)

• Habash, a backer: "It accelerates, but when it comes to an explanation, there is no backing theory for it."

19. 10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a "paradigm shift". (10 pts)

• Heins torques up the definition to mean "a sudden reversal of fortune that's a windfall for humanity."

27. 20 points for each use of the phrase "hidebound reactionary". (10 of 20pts)

• Such an unbelievable invention would challenge the laws of physics, a no-no in the rigid world of serious science.

32. 30 points for allusions to a delay in your work while you spent time in an asylum, or references to the psychiatrist who tried to talk you out of your theory. (0 of 30pts)

• His wife has kicked him out. He doesn't earn an income. He can't pay child support. The certainty would be welcome. "I've tried to quit many times, and thought if I could just be a normal guy I would have a normal life ... But I had this idea and I believe it works."
• In 1999, he ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Green Party of Ontario, deciding a year later to run as an independent in the federal election.