Dear fellow supporters,
During a recent lecture I was shown a fascinatingly strange and exquisitely beautiful phenomenon and as a gentleman of science I feel compelled to tell you about it. This is not strictly to do with fundraising or conservation but I assure you it is truly wonderful.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you ferrofluid.
The two towers are electromagnets and the liquid is simply a mixture of water and nanoparticles of magnetite (An oxide of iron- Fe3O4 the first material known to be magnetic). Whilst that may sound complex imagine it as a lot of very small iron filings suspended in water. We’ve all played with iron filings and a magnet at school and seen how the iron filings line up in spiky patterns at the ends of the magnet where the magnetic flux is at its densest. The magnetite nanoparticles behave in a similar fashion. However they are suspended in the liquid and we all know liquids do not form patterns when exposed to a magnet. The result is that when exposed to a magnetic field there are two competing forces if you will. The liquid, which would like to be sitting happily in the pool, and the magnetite particles, which want to line up to the magnetic field. The result is the formation of the tiny cones you can see around the electromagnets. As the electromagnets alter the strength of their magnetic field the fluid behaves differently, with strong fields the cones are completely covered, and as the field is turned off the fluid falls back into the pool like water.
I have to say that this is a truly beautiful phenomenon and as well as looking pretty it has some applications too. Ferrofluids can be used to form seals in machinery, such as motors or hard drives, and can be used as dampeners to dissipate unwanted energy from vibrations or oscillations.
Yours Truly,
(Liked this entry? Please do sponsor me! http://www.justgiving.com/Alistair-Linse
No comments:
Post a Comment