Hele Shaw Cell with Ferrofluid

The Hele Shaw Cell, two horizontal parallel glass plates with 1mm gap, carries two drops of ferrofluid inside. A magnet with vertical field orientation is under the cell. The magnet ends in two tips over each of which the ferrofluid forms a dot like at 0:29. When the cell is lifted and the field holding the drops ferrofluid together gets weaker the drops are spreading out.

When the ends of the two drops meet in 0:32 they do not join, showing that they have the same orientation (north pole up). When the field gets much weaker the two drops join at 0:56 and they stay together until 1:04 when the separate by snapping back from each other leaving a tiny chain of microdots.

An interesting detail is that of the 3 links between the main dots at 1:02 only the one in the middle is actually connected to the main dots. The upper one is connected to the left but it just reaches into the area of the right dot. The lower is just a "spare rib" of the left dot and it retreats rather slowly. The other two are snapping back more rapidly in the continuously lowering magnetic filed.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Ferrofluid
• snapping
• Magnetic
• field
• HeleShaw

[AVAMagneticlev]

Please add to the discription so we can try to understand more about this brilliance.

very interesting work !

[rockerchic3012]

weirdest thing evar

[MrCalhoun]

You are triggering my Trypophobia. ^^

[icovada]

It's kind of disgusting