Tool Demagnetizers And The Magnetic Stray Field

February 23, 2024 by Maya Posch 9 Comments

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering how those tool magnetizer/demagnetizer gadgets worked, [Electromagnetic Videos] has produced a pretty succinct and informative video on the subject.

The magnetizer/demagnetizer gadget after meeting its demise at a cutting disc. (Credit: Electromagnetic Videos, YouTube)

While the magnetizing step is quite straightforward and can be demonstrated even by just putting any old magnet against the screwdriver’s metal, it is the demagnetization step that doesn’t make intuitively sense, as the field lines of the magnets are supposed to align the (usually ferromagnetic) material’s magnetic dipole moments and thus create an ordered magnetic field within the screwdriver.

This is only part of the story, however, as the magnetic field outside of a magnet is termed the demagnetizing field (also ‘stray field’). A property of this field is that it acts upon the magnetization of e.g. ferromagnetic material in a way that reduces its magnetic moment, effectively ‘scrambling’ any existing magnetization.

By repeatedly moving a metal tool through this stray field, each time further and further away from the magnet, the magnetic moment reduces until any magnetization has effectively vanished. It is the kind of simple demonstration of magnetism that really should be part of any physics class thanks to its myriad of real-world uses, as this one toolbox gadget shows.

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Electrical Steel: The Material At The Heart Of The Grid

February 15, 2024 by Dan Maloney 32 Comments

When thoughts turn to the modernization and decarbonization of our transportation infrastructure, one imagines it to be dominated by exotic materials. EV motors and wind turbine generators need magnets made with rare earth metals (which turn out to be not all that rare), batteries for cars and grid storage need lithium and cobalt, and of course an abundance of extremely pure silicon is needed to provide the computational power that makes everything work. Throw in healthy pinches of graphene, carbon fiber composites and ceramics, and minerals like molybdenum, and the recipe starts looking pretty exotic.

As necessary as they are, all these exotic materials are worthless without a foundation of more familiar materials, ones that humans have been extracting and exploiting for eons. Mine all the neodymium you want, but without materials like copper for motor and generator windings, your EV is going nowhere and wind turbines are just big lawn ornaments. But just as important is iron, specifically as the alloy steel, which not only forms the structural elements of nearly everything mechanical but also appears in the stators and rotors of motors and generators, as well as the cores of the giant transformers that the electrical grid is built from.

Not just any steel will do for electrical use, though; special formulations, collectively known as electrical steel, are needed to build these electromagnetic devices. Electrical steel is simple in concept but complex in detail, and has become absolutely vital to the functioning of modern society. So it pays to take a look at what electrical steel is and how it works, and why we’re going nowhere without it.

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Moving Iron-Coated Polymer Particles Uphill Using External Magnetic Field

December 28, 2023 by Maya Posch 1 Comment

Microscopy of PMMA ferromagnetic Janus particle as used in the study (Credit: Wilson-Whitford et al., 2023)

Granular media such as sand have a range of interesting properties that make it extremely useful, but they still will obey gravity and make their way downhill. That is, until you coat such particles with a ferromagnetic material like iron, make them spin using an external magnetic field and watch them make their way against gravity. This recent study by researchers has an accompanying video (also embedded below) that is probably best watched first before reading the study by Samuel R. Wilson-Whitford and colleagues in Nature Communications.

In the supplemental material the experimental setup is shown (see top image), which is designed to make the individual iron-coated polymer particles rotate. The particles are called Janus particles because only one hemisphere is coated using physical vapor deposition, leaving the other as uncovered PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate).

While one might expect that the rotating magnetic field would just make these particles spin in place, instead the researchers observed them forming temporary chains of particles, which were able to gradually churn their way upwards. Not only did this motion look like the inverse of granular media flowing downhill, the researchers also made a staircase obstacle that the Janus particles managed to traverse. Although no immediate practical application is apparent, these so-called ‘microrollers’ display an interesting method of locomotion in what’d otherwise be rather passive granular media.

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Close-up of a magnetic tentacle robot next to a phantom bronchiole (Credit: University of Leeds)

The Healing Touch Of Magnetic Tentacles In Photothermal Lung Cancer Therapy

August 28, 2023 by Maya Posch 11 Comments

Of the body’s organs, the lungs are among the trickiest to take a biopsy and treat cancer in, both due to how important they are, as well as due to their inaccessibility. The total respiratory surface within the average human lungs is about 50 to 75 square meters. Maneuvering any kind of instrument down the endless passages to reach a suspicious area, or a cancerous region to treat is nearly impossible. This has so far left much of the lungs inaccessible.

The standard of care for lung cancer is generally surgical: remove parts of the lung tissue. However, a proposed new method using magnetic tentacles may soon provide a more gentle approach, as described in Nature Engineering Communications by Giovanni Pittiglio and colleagues (press release).

The tentacles are made out of a silicone substrate with embedded magnets that allow for it to be steered using external magnetic sources. With an embedded laser fiber, the head of the tentacle can be guided to the target area, and the cancerous tissue sublimated using an external laser source. In experiments on cadavers with this system, the researchers found that they could enter 37% deeper into the lungs than with standard equipment. The procedure was also completed with less tissue displacement.

Considering the high fatality rate of lung cancers, the researchers hope that this approach could soon be turned into a viable therapy, as well as for other medical conditions where a gentle tentacle slithering into the patient’s body could effect treatments previously considered to be impossible.

Heading image: Close-up of a magnetic tentacle robot next to a phantom bronchiole (Credit: University of Leeds)

Hoverboard Rides On Eddy Currents

May 22, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 32 Comments

The famous hoverboards of Back to the Future haven’t quite gotten here yet, but that hasn’t stopped anyone with a unique personal vehicle from using the name any time they need some quick marketing. The self-balancing scooter trend of the mid-2010s was the best example of this in recent memory, but there are also water-propelled platforms that use the popular name as well as a myriad of other more skateboard-like devices that never got off the ground at all. This project from [Damien Dolata], on the other hand, might be the most authentic prototype we’ve seen compared against the fictional version presented in the movie.

The hoverboard uses a set of rotating magnets, referred to in this build as magneto-rotational repulsors, which spin up to an extremely high rotational speed underneath the board. When above a metal surface, the spinning magnets generate eddy currents in the metal beneath them which create the strong magnetic field needed to levitate the board. Unlike the Lexus hoverboard system which used supercooling magnets, this is a much more affordable way of producing magnetic fields but is a little bit more complicated due to the extra moving parts.

As this is still in the prototyping stages, it has only been able to lift around 30 kg and hasn’t been tested in motion yet, but there are two small turbines built into the hoverboard to generate thrust whenever [Damien] gets to that point. It would require a larger metal surface to move across as well, which might be the main reason why it hasn’t been tested this way yet. For any native French speakers taking a look at this project, be sure to fill in any of our gaps in the comments below, and for other ways that eddy currents have been used in transportation take a look at this bicycle that uses them in its drivetrain.

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Several people at a museum exhibit about magnetism

Hands-On Museum Exhibit Brings Electromagnetism To Life

January 17, 2023 by Robin Kearey 5 Comments

Magnets, how do they work? Although the quantum mechanics behind ferromagnetism are by no means easy, a few simple experiments can give you a good grasp of how magnets attract and repel each other, and show how they interact with electric phenomena. [Niklas Roy] built an exhibit for the Technorama science museum in Switzerland that packs a bunch of such electromagnetic experiments in a single package, appropriately called the Visitors Magnet.

The exhibit consists of a big magnet-shaped enclosure that contains a variety of demonstrators that are all powered by magnets. They range from simple compasses to clever magnetic devices we find in the world around us: flip-dot displays for instance, on which you can toggle the pixels by passing a magnet over them. You can even visualize magnetic field lines by using magnetic viewing film, or turn varying fields into audio through a modified telephone receiver.

Another classic demonstrator of electromagnetism is a color CRT monitor, which here displays a video feed coming from a camera hanging directly overhead. Passing a magnet along the screen makes all kind of hypnotizing patterns and colors, amplified even more by the video feedback loop. [Niklas] also modified the picture tube with an additional coil, connected to a hand-cranked generator: this allows visitors to rotate the image on the screen by generating an AC current, neatly demonstrating the interaction between electricity and magnetism.

The Visitors Magnet is a treasure trove of big and small experiments, which might not all withstand years of use by museum guests. But that’s fine — [Niklas] designed the exhibit to be easy to maintain and repair, and expects the museum to replace worn-out experiments now and then to keep the experience fresh. He knows a thing or two about designing engaging museum exhibits, with a portfolio that includes vector image generators, graffiti robots and a huge mechanical contraption that plays musical instruments.

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Racing Cars On A PCB

November 24, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

Carl Friedrich Gauss was, to put it mildly, a polymath responsible for a large percentage of the things we take for granted in the modern world. As a physicist and mathematician he pioneered several fields of study including within the field of magnetism. But since he died decades before the first car was built, it’s unlikely he could have imagined this creation, a magnetic slot-car race track called the Gauss Speedway by [Jeff McBride], which bears the name of the famous scientist.

The Gauss Speedway takes its inspiration from a recent development in robotics, where many small robots can travel around a large area with the help of circuit traces integrated into their operating area. With the right current applied to these traces, magnetic fields are generated which propel the robots. [Jeff] wanted to build something similar, integrated into a printed circuit board directly, and came up with the slot car idea. The small cars have tiny magnets in them which interact with the traces in the PCB, allowing the cars to move with high precision around the track. He did abandon the traditional slot car controller in favor of a push-button style one directly on the PCB too, which means everything is completely integrated.

While this was more of a demonstration or proof-of-concept, some of the features of this style of robot can be seen in this video, which shows them moving extremely rapidly with high precision, on uneven surfaces, or even up walls. Magnetic robots like these are seeing quite a renaissance, and we’ve even seen some that use magnetism to shape-shift.

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