Part 1: Maglev toy: diamagnetic pyrolytic carbon lifts magnets

[diegoricepogo]

why doesnt the magnet get shot out the side due to the repuksion from from the graphite?

[wbeaty]

@diegoricepogo graphite repulsion is a plane, with little side force. Attraction to upper magnet is roughly a sphere = bowl-shape, with large inward side force. Also notice floating graphite square, levitated just above sixteen magnet cubes.

[TheRealVerbz2]

Blow on it through a straw to get it spinning faster rather than touching with the pen.

:o)

Awesome stuff!

[laxwolf]

Is there any way to repel common gases in the air? That would be awesome if you could and created an unlimited energy generator by spinning a magnet in a space-like environment.

[dochsierra]

For the whole video i observed the downright corner supernatural floating plate.

[wbeaty]

@dochsierra A thin plate of the special graphite. It wiggled. At 0:34 it moved around. And again at 1:22

[killerbeenl]

His toy thingy :P interesting

[rvernet2016]

where can this be bought?

[wbeaty]

@rvernet2016 read the text caption? You have to click the little downarrows button that's below the video.

[codegix]

U can make UFO with magnet. if you can bring magnet to the air by using magnetic itself, you can have flying saucer

[proximxr]

My grandfather had the exact same drill in the background...and btw, If I had two neodynium magnets the size of quarters and attracted them together with the palm of my hand inbetween, would it hurt? (sorry I've never owned any before)

[BrendanTheBass99]

o cool i have a globe one but its biger

[bloodz4lyfniggas]

thanks for the videos, you're awesome

[DoNotuseEbid]

ive been looking for a simple explanation on how this works cheers!

[simhopp]

levitron globes are so much more amazing, and they are very affordable too.

[tallmanBrendan]

whatta creep

[MrSwineFLU]

this guy must be a gay

[darksideofthebrick13]

no, you must be gay for calling him gay, gay guy

[bassyboy189]

get it for a kid and pretend to make it float

[Simplemindedgenius]

Does the weight of the magnets generally outweigh the object being levitated?

[wbeaty]

> magnets generally outweigh the object

Not for rare-earth magnets. Two several-pound supermagnets can lift a few hundred pounds.

The graphite gives a feeble stablization itself. Flakes of graphite can be floated over a supermagnet array. Look to the lower right and you can see a black graphite square floating about 1mm over magnets. Look at 1:17 and it wiggles side to side.

[Simplemindedgenius]

OK thankyou. So in theory an engine block could be levitated using a similar process, Reducing the overall weight of the vehicle? That would be cool.

[MakersClub]

No, the magnet is supported by the attraction of the magnet above it and the graphite.

So if you weigh the whole thing together, it weighs exactly as much as the sum of all the parts.

[fuduzan5562]

@Simplemindedgenius No, you'd add to the weight of the vehicle by adding parts. This doesn't take away from anything's weight. That would be antigravity, not diamagnetism.

[Simplemindedgenius]

@fuduzan5562 ha ok, it was a nice thought at least.

[Dirtboy101]

You know, if you put some electricity in that, you could make a very efficient homopolor motor.

[GetMeThere1]

very cool !

[Saristas711]

Imagine if you made this a lot bigger wear a magnet suit and float in the middle.

[toregan2004]

That would be so cool! You could make some superman movies is genuine effects! :)

[CrazyMonkey124]

super awesome XD

[TehNu0b]

Won't work. The amount of graphite you'd need is immense.

[joslouis160695]

Yeah that would be cool but dont you have any idea of the cost of that toy !!!??

[Saristas711]

yes material boy

[proximxr]

@Saristas711 Hehe that would be awesome

[social3ngin33rin]

awesome!!!!

How much was that?

[onthecuttingedge2005]

Hey Beaty, could you see if the pyrolytic carbon acts as a good magnetic shield? sandwich a piece of the carbon between two small magnets to see if the carbon blocks the main magnetic field.

[wbeaty]

Nope, the effect isn't significant. Maybe an expensive magnetometer could detect the shielding effect.

[oisiaa]

With nothing but air friction affecting the rotation of the magnet how long will it spin? Or does the interaction between the magnets create a small amount heat that dissipates the energy?

[wbeaty]

Sweeping a magnetic field will cause drag against conductors

[megaverse]

Is there any stuff even more diamagnetic than pyrolytic carbon ?

[wbeaty]

Well, superconductor.

I don't know, there might be some exotic stuff.

[megaverse]

ok thanks it's the exotic stuff i wanted to know about...super conductors are completly out of my reach that's for sure lol. i could make the liquid azote but the material for the super conductor is not simple copper disk that's for sure ! must be a special alignment of the grain again !

[jcshybee]

Let's say you had the Maglev toy on a scale. Would the introduction of a hovering magnet affect the mass and/or weight of the toy?

[wbeaty]

Yep. Anything different would violate Newton's 3rd.

Maglev is just an enormous example of the bonding between atoms. After all, none of the atoms in the scale or in the objects being weighed are ever touching: it's all done by attractive & repulsive fields extending through space.

[jcshybee]

When I pondered this question I didn't think on the fact that atoms are mostly empty space. Seems the Maglev exaggerates this in a way you can see. My simple human mind sees this and wonders hows it is. I'm always looking to see if there is a way around all these theories we take for fact; however, looking smaller, atoms don't care what is next to them.

[TheNilvarg]

How durable is this stuff? I've never known graphite to be a very strong material, especially at such a small thickness. I'm afraid that if I bought some, it would just crack in half in a few minutes of handling.

[wbeaty]

It's quite a bit stronger than a potato chip. But not as strong as a microscope slide.

[TheNilvarg]

Damn, that's disappointing. How do you store it to make sure it isn't damaged?

[wbeaty]

How would you store Wheat Thins?  Put them in a cardboard box. Then don't step on the box. (Hmm, actually the box is visible in the background here.)

[TheNilvarg]

I wouldn't mind the brittleness if the stuff weren't so FREAKING EXPENSIVE. $55 for a 2"x2" square? It's insanity.

[wbeaty]

Pretty good price for something that's grown from plasma in a vacuum chamber. I think they started mass-producing it because it's being used in CPU heatsinks. Big blocks of the stuff feel ice cold, and the thermal conductivity is almost as good as copper.

[TheNilvarg]

Wow, what do you do for a living that allows you to afford "big blocks"? At $55 for a tiny 2"x2" flat square, a big block would have to be thousands of dollars. Teach me the secrets to immense wealth! Haha.

[wbeaty]

Chem department. There was a 2lb puck in the old lab across the hall. Not obvious what they'd used it for. I think they'd been funded by military back in 1980s to build fantasitcally sensitive EPR pot-smoke detectors. Serious.

But buy a couple 3cm chunks from scitoys website, then use a razor blade to cleave them into many. It's not hard to make a 2" piece. But it won't be 0.1" thick!

[jedus1]

Teach me your Devil Magic so i can take over the World!!!!!!!

[explosieve]

Awesome squared.

[jjvilm]

what if you sealed that, and took all the air out to be left w/ a vacum so that no forces....nvm earth's gravity. well anyways. i saw how you spin the square magnet. so i thought, if there was no force acting on that magnet (except for the magnets making it levitate) then maybe we could like _______ (forgot word)...harness! there we go just remembered, the energy. harness the energy given off, even if little to have unlitited energy since the magnet will keep spining producing energy, right?

[TheNilvarg]

Like most people on YouTube, you have no scientific education. "Free" or "Unlimited" energy is impossible unless you manage to become God and somehow change the very physical laws that govern our universe.

[jjvilm]

im pretty sure in a near future we will have close to free energy, if we harness it from something, like a star or something like that

[TheNilvarg]

The resources that will go into harvesting and converting it into usable energy will not be worth the result. It will be nowhere near efficient.

[jjvilm]

we dont know yet, not w/ our current technology...and with our knowledge

[TheNilvarg]

Of course we do. Stars are not theoretical astrophysics, and energy loss/gain is simple mathematics.

[starshock01]

isnt bismuth more diamagnetic than carbon?

[wbeaty]

> isnt bismuth more diamagnetic than carbon?

Yes, but pyrolysis-grown graphite is more diamagnetic than bismuth by about a factor of three. You can even float thin wafers of pyro graphite above magnet arrays, AND LOOK TO THE LOWER RIGHT. In the video there's a floating square of 1mm graphite levitated above a 4x4 array of 8mm cube magnets.

[iamwolfspawn]

Next step, sew together magnetic suit, build larger dieletic chamber, get Big magnet for the top.... WEEEEE :)

[moh2o]

Very Cool, thanks, the camera work leaves much to be desired though. Shoot, use a tripod.

[6elfauno9]

thats pretty kick ass!

[how1f33l]

where did you buy that contraption that u used to raise and lower the magnet? i need to know I'm doing this for a science fair project

[wbeaty]

> where did you buy that contraption

All Youtube videos have text caption over to the right. You have to click on "MORE INFO" to see the whole thing.

[CuebicSquare]

lol u politely owned him. nice!

[CuebicSquare]

just bc ur face is probably as smooth as a baby's bottom don't mean u hav 2 insult someone else's goatee

[kaner333]

Does graphite contain benzene rings or is it just an allotrope of carbon without the hydrogen?

[wbeaty]

> Does graphite contain benzene rings

Yep, it's a stack of thin sheets, the sheets made of benzene rings, with dangling bonds sticking out of the sheets. Dense 3D carbon crystals are diamond, while dense non-crystal carbon is "glassy carbon."

When atom-thin "graphene" was invented a couple of years ago, the great discovery was actually simple: stick scotch tape against graphite and peel it off. It pulls off single-atom sheets!

[Chimaeray]

Why don't we see this kind of stuff in fancy buildings. Way cooler than indoor waterfalls xD

Or is this actually... very...very expensive?

[brutalme19]

The magnets would screw with people with hearing aids and stuff similar to that. It wouldn't cost much, but the magnetic power required for an upscaling of this project would mess with peoples health.

[wbeaty]

> mess with peoples health.

Generations of lab mice have been raised in intense magnetic fields with no detectable health problems.

But many humans carry mag-stripe credit cards. And some humans have older pacemakers with a "reset" switch that's a mag reed switch. And if you have inoperable shrapnel in your body, a strong magnetic field can't be a good thing.

[brutalme19]

Yeah, I know I probably could have worded that better. What I was talking about was mainly people with pacemakers, the word just seemed to escape me at the time so I did the best I could.

Also, it is nice to see someone who actually responds to comments =D

[elSitt]

How did you get a room temperature supermagnet ?

I thought the "hottest" supermagnets yet discovered still need to be bathed in liquid nitrogen.

[wbeaty]

> room temperature supermagnet

It's superconductors which need the low temp. Supermagnets are just magnets with exotic materials, about 10x stronger than ceramic ferrite magnets.

But also, the alpha currents in graphite (benzene rings) are diagmagnets, room temperature superconductors. But they're inaccessable molecular currents.

[wbeaty]

> spin forever?

Spin for hours? Or instead, drive it with a coil up to many hundred kRPM until it fails catastrophically. Got a vacuum pump? Dr. Al Michaelson found that spun objects explode into hypervelocity dust. Death by sandblasting!

Wobbling b-fields near the conductive graphite give Lenz drag. Perhaps it could be improved by using a disk or ball, and mixing graphite with epoxy. If that stops the repulsion, then pound the pyro graphite into micro-flakes, not powder grains.

[mousetrap128]

I like your thinking.

[TheXTrapezeXSwinger]

OMG SO INTERESTING

[S0ADaP0P]

i want the magnets lol..... alot of them though

[redeyesthe20th]

no because the magnets field will radiate out of the vacuum and slow it down still =(

[pablitorebora]

Muy buenoo!

Yo tambien quiero uno!

[ochami]

interesting!

I really want one.

[Jenfucius]

Me too!

I think its totally amazing!

[cribcat1]

that just looks like fun!

[Voodude666B]

wow even though i know at 0:58 that its real, it still doesnt look it.

[Timbo17932]

where can i get pyrolytic graphite?!!!

[wbeaty]

> where can i get pyrolytic graphite?!!!

Click on "more". It gives info in "About This Video"

[hydrogenman15]

Hey, try use one of those cheap fan motors to make the magnet spin very fast.

[picobyte]

I've posted you another diamagnetic experiment, it's very easy yust hold a magnet near a small stream of water and you will see it bend :)

[sanddragon99]

very interesting!

[theburford]

Haha, check out dude's goatee, that rocks! Physics nerd with a graying goatee, my role model!

[locouk]

Passing a current through a magnet makes it spin, (Basic motor)so if you had a 'C' cell and passed a current through the magnet using fine wire would the magnet spin?

[RainMan002]

the polarity of the magnet is up/down.

basic motors make it flip over the polarity.

basically a motor would try to spin in a different plane.

[locouk]

Errr... good point, I was thinking like a bearingless homopolar motor. That has the poles verticaly so I was thinking if you passed the current via copper wire verticly through the magnet, would it rotate?

[RainMan002]

I had never heard of a homopolar moter before and had to look it up in google. Ithink you would still get drag from the wires touching the magnet. If you saw what wBeaty posted at the bottom, he referes to using light to make a motor out of it. I have seen this before. They put black on the left half of each face and white on the right and shine bright light on it and it spins.

[suezannec]

Could you incorporate a voice coil into the process, hook the voice coil to a stereo, and make a suitably shaped supermagnet serve as a speaker diaphragm?

[wbeaty]

Tear the coil out of an old loudspeaker, plug it into a headphone signal. Bite a supermagnet between your teeth, and hold the coil near the magnet. Music plays inside your head!

[ppcgnamda]

im trying this and if i get hurt i sue...

[blahdob]

thats like telling somebody who said "shoot yourself" that.

[adrianTNT]

This is nice ...

[NorbPwn]

<- Is that possible, and also, some website see N45 magnets at considerably different prices, is it just the sight, or are some N45's made differently?

[wbeaty]

Spin forever? It would probably stop within days. The small wiggles of the field will cause drag upon the conductive carbon. If the magnet had an incredibly smooth magnetic pattern, and was suspended very far from the carbon, the slowing process would take a very long time. (Put some black mica paddles on the magnet, then speed it up with a laser!)

[NorbPwn]

Interesting, so theres a "magnetic drag" from the carbon, what if you used a spherical magnet in a vacuum, would it spin longer. One thing I was wondering about these magnets is their field of power, or range that is, i read that some are strong but have small range, are there magnets that work from a distance, for example i walk 10 feet from a monitor and the screen gets disrupted by the magnet?Cont.->

[NorbPwn]

if you created a vacuum where the super magnet is, it would technically spin forever no? since there is no wind resistance. Also what the life of a super magnet, does it lose power over time?

[wbeaty]

It would probably stop within days. The small wiggles of the field will cause drag upon the conductive carbon. If the magnet had an incredibly smooth magnetic pattern, and was suspended very far from the carbon, the slowing process would take a very long time. (Put some black mica paddles on the magnet, then speed it up with a laser!)

[virusthe1st]

hey im doing a maglev train for a science fair...do you have any tips for me? please respond!!!

[pheaktor]

this is very interesting

[69furball69]

forcefieldmagnets dot com has big chunks of diamagnetic carbon-graphite really cheap.

[wbeaty]

Nahhhh, that's the "carbon brush" grade. It's diamagnetic, but fairly weak. This toy uses aligned-crystal graphite grown in a plasma flame. "Pyrolytic" graphite. You can split it into layers. It's so strong that it will float by itself above an array of small neo magnets.

[wbeaty]

Oh, and also be aware that you can get pyro graphite from scitoys com.  VERY cheap. Chem catalogs have it also, but for about 10x the cost of scitoys. Scitoys also has other weird materials, such as liquid gallium metal, and Galinstan metal that's fluid down below 0deg C.

[Anstel]

I though they would never be able to make devices of the sort afordable or available for public use! Thank you for citing the Educational Innovations website, I've had a hard time trying to find an antigravity toy besides the old levitron.

[wbeaty]

Note that in the background are magnet arrays with graphite chips floating above them. They hover about one mm high. Paul at Exploratorium figured that one out: frictionless magnet table with pyrolytic graphite chips whizzing around.

[wbeaty]

The original source dried up for this toy, but Educational Innovations website has a different (much larger) version.

[foolycooly124]

can you tell me where you get your neodymium magnet beads and neodymium magnets?