Thank you! This gave me an excuse to use the online OED to look up something. And I found this handy factiod: The strength of the interplanetary magnetic field near the Earth is on average 5 nanoteslas.
Every so often in the science news one reads about some lab that's built a gigantor magnet with a field that's, like, 8 Tesla, which is just terrifyingly strong.
Well, the primary cause for this effect is high magnetism scientists with wayyy too much free time. The secondary cause is magnetisation of just enough blood cells.
Stick anything in a magnetic field and diamagnetism (which is the opposite polarity from ferromagnetism) generates a repulsive force. If your magnetic field is big enough (and pointing upward), you can levitate the object.
I'm pretty sure that's how it works, anyway. IIRC, liquid oxygen has a higher diamagnetic, um, thingy (moment?) than most stuff, so you can make a blob of LOX float in between big-but-not-ludicrous magnets pretty easily.
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dr_tectonic
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 03:42 pm (UTC)Every so often in the science news one reads about some lab that's built a gigantor magnet with a field that's, like, 8 Tesla, which is just terrifyingly strong.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-09 07:47 pm (UTC)How does that work? I don't get it. Of course, I don't even remember how the levitating superconductor works.
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Date: 2004-10-10 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-11 10:06 am (UTC)Stick anything in a magnetic field and diamagnetism (which is the opposite polarity from ferromagnetism) generates a repulsive force. If your magnetic field is big enough (and pointing upward), you can levitate the object.
I'm pretty sure that's how it works, anyway. IIRC, liquid oxygen has a higher diamagnetic, um, thingy (moment?) than most stuff, so you can make a blob of LOX float in between big-but-not-ludicrous magnets pretty easily.