Kelvin’s Thunderstorm

This is a device is a simple method for generating a high voltage charge or static electricity. It works by dripping water through an arrangement of metal containers and loops of wire.

Water, like many molecules is in the form of a dipole. This means that it has a difference in electric charge from one end to the other. The chemical formula for water is H₂O, meaning there are two Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom in each molecule.

You can see from the image on the right the way that the H2+ is more on one side therefore making an uneven distribution of charge i.e. a dipole. This is what gives water all its interesting properties such as its powerful solvent abilities and its ability to stick to other materials.

This experiment works best with pure or deionised water as it is a very good electrical insulator. Tap water contains dissolved ions which become mobile allowing the water to conduct electricity. 

As the streams of water droplets pass through the rings, charges are induced making the drips and ring oppositely charged. If a water droplet is made more negative it will help to make the drops on the other side more positive because of the cross connection between the collector cans and the metal loops. This process continues to cause the voltage to rise until the water drops start being deflected by the strong fields or a spark is produced.

The top containers can be made from plastic but it may work better if they are made from metal and connected to ground.

Static Electricity Motor

A CD with one side covered in foil can be made to spin at high speed by using static electricity, or high voltage DC. With the CD on a spindle with the foil side up, areas under the CD can be charged by nearby electrodes. If the electrodes are placed either side of the CD and just underneath it, charge will be deposited on the plastic surface of the disk.

The plastic disc is non conductive, so in order for the charge to get to the other electrode (of opposite polarity), the disk its self must turn. This physical transportation of charge still constitutes a current flow, even though the current does not flow within the material itself. The flowing current is directly proportional to the speed of the rotating disc.

Franklin’s Bells

In 1752 Benjamin Franklin was experimenting with one of his inventions, the lightning rod. Using the setup shown on the left Franklin was able collect electrostatic charges from the wind above his house. No known images exist of the original setup used, but this is the most common method used to reproduce the effects he describes.

This electrostatic device was actually invented in 1742 by a German professor named Andrew Gordon. Gordon’s Bells were the first device that converted electrical energy into mechanical energy in the form of a repeating mechanical motion, opening the doors for a variety of modern technology, from security alarms to school bells.

Two metal bells are suspended on insulating (dielectric) supports. One bell is electrically connected to the earth and the other is connected to a lightning rod. A metallic ball is suspended between the bells by a dielectric thread. The lightning rod would allow charge to build up on the bell which would then attract the metallic ball. When the ball hits the first bell it will become charged to the same potential and therefore will be repelled again. Since the opposite bell is charged oppositely this will also attract the ball towards it. When the ball touches the second bell the charge is transferred and the process repeats.

Franklin himself wrote that sometimes the bells would ring when there was only a dark cloud above and no obvious thunder and lightning. A nearby lightning flash could cause the bells so stop ringing immediately. At other times the bells would be silent until a nearby flash of lightning started them ringing.

This setup was used by Franklin to collect electric charge for use in other experiments. The amount of charge collected was sometimes so faint that after a spark between the bells it would take considerable time to charge up again. At other times a continuous stream of sparks could be obtained even at lengths of around 20cm.

These sparks could very dangerous and a direct strike to the lightning rod could cause explosions and fire. A safer version of this experiment is easy to setup by using a simulated lightning rod in the form of a high voltage DC power supply such as a Van De Graff generator or Voltage Multiplier.

If you don’t have some bells available then they can be replaced by any metal object such as a drinks can. This experiment works best if all the conductors are smooth, but a foil coated plastic ball will be ok if another type of lightweight metal ball is not available.

Diamagnetic Levitation

Diamagnetic materials are those that will repel magnetic fields. Many common materials such as water are diamagnetic, but the effect is usually so weak that only super strong magnetic fields will cause any noticeable effect.

The famous experiment where scientists were able to levitate small animals such as frogs used an incredibly powerful electromagnet to create a magnetic field strong enough to cause the water in the animals to be repelled. Electromagnets like this one draw huge amounts of electric current and therefore need extensive cooling. The structure its self must be very strong to prevent it from crushing its self. This makes it virtually impossible for such an experiment to be done at home or in the school science class.

The experiment shown here does not cause a diamagnetic material to levitate, but it is used to help levitate a small magnet. The diamagnetic material used is Bismuth as it is one of the best diamagnetic materials available.

Bismuth can be obtained from most ‘Lead Free’ fishing weights or gun shot. It is very similar to lead, and can be melted easily. For this experiment it is necessary to create two blocks of bismuth. When a small magnet is placed between these blocks it will experience a small force from above and below. These forces alone are too weak to lift the magnet so some larger magnets can be placed above to help counteract gravity.

The large magnets are placed on a screw mechanism so that hey can be finely adjusted in height. It will need to be carefully adjusted until the magnet begins to levitate. The space between the two pieces of Bismuth should only be a tiny bit larger then the magnet in between.

Curie Effect Demonstration

The curie effect usually refers to a magnetic phenomenon discovered by Pierre Curie. He discovered that ferromagnetic substances exhibited a critical temperature transition, above which the substances lost their ferromagnetic behaviour. This is now known as the Curie point.

A simple experiment, often named ‘the curie effect heat engine’ is a great way do practically demonstrate this important scientific principle.

A ferrous metal object such as a screw is suspended by a length of stiff wire so that it can swing freely from left to right.

To one side of the pendulums swing, a magnet is fixed into a position where it attracts the mass on the pendulum, and holds it up preventing it from swinging. The magnet must be far enough away so that it holds the mass up, but without actually touching it.

When a heat source such as a candle is place under the ferrous mass, the temperature of the material will increase until it reaches the curie point. When this occurs the thermal noise in the material prevents it from being held by the magnet and it will swing away. This will quickly allow the mass to cool and on its return swing (or before) the magnet will pull the mass back over the heat source, causing the whole process to start again.

Magnetic Linear Accelerator

This experiment is a simple way of demonstrating the distribution of the field inside a solenoid and how it effects ferrous metal objects.

This experiment simply consists of a plastic or cardboard tube with a coil of wire wrapped around one end. The coil can be powered by a set of standard batteries. the more batteries used the more powerful the magnetic field will be.

The tube used to for the coil around should be quite narrow. The case of a pen such as a biro is ideal. You can try using different sized batteries and different numbers of turns on the coil to produce different strength fields.

When a metal object is placed part way into the coil it is ready for firing. The metal should be ferrous (sticks to a magnet) and quite small. A metal rod of about 2 – 3mm wide and 10 – 20mm long is best. Something like a small nail or a screw with the head cut off should work fine. If a small rod magnet is used, it will work much better but make sure it’s inserted the right way around, or it could backfire.

To fire the coil gun you simply tap the switch. If you press it for too long, the projectile will either stop in the middle or come back out the wrong end. You can practice different methods and different coil and battery sizes to see what results you get. An alternative firing method would be to use a circuit such as the PWM-OCX which can give repeated pulses or a time you can set yourself.

For higher speed projectiles, it is possible to  use multiple coils and fire them in sequence so that each one will further accelerate the projectile. Each successive pulse must be shorter than the previous one due to the projectile spending less time in the acceleration region. If the pulses were too long, they would drag the projectile back, slowing it down. Our 3 channel time delay generator could be used for controlling the pulse timing to a transistor on each coil.

Thermal Effects on Resistance

The temperature affects the dimensions of the conductor; a higher temperature causes an expansion in a material while a colder temperature causes a contraction. And with this expansion/contraction a change in resistance occurs as a thicker wire has less resistance to current flow than a thinner one. Materials used as conductors typically tend to increase their resistance with a temperature increase while insulators have the adverse effect. Materials used as insulators often only exhibit a drop in resistance at very high temperatures meaning they usually don’t encounter temperatures high enough though typical use. Because of this these changes cannot all be attributed to the change in dimensions. In fact the resistance change is mainly due to the temperature affecting the atomic structure of the material, causing a change in the resistivity of the material.

The flow of current through a material is the movement of electrons. Electrons move under the influence of a magnetic field, they are negatively charged particles making them attracted by a positive electric charge. Therefore an electric potential can be applied to the conductor to move the electrons atom to atom towards the positive terminal. Not all electrons can migrate however, current is the movement of free electrons and the effectivity of an insulator or a conductor depends on the number of free electrons (a good conductor should have many free electrons while a good insulator should have few).

The effect heat has on an atomic scale is causing the atoms to vibrate, the higher the temperature, the more violent the vibration.

In a conductor the vibrations cause the many free electrons to collide with the captive electrons and other free electrons. These collisions use up some of the energy stored in the free electrons which in turn increases the resistance to current flow. Therefore increasing temperature of a conductor increases the resistance.

An insulator is different; the low number of free electrons means very little current can flow. Most of the electrons are tightly bound to their respective atom. Heating will still cause vibration; these vibrations however will cause significantly less collisions. If heated enough the vibrations may actually become violent enough to shake some electrons free, creating free electrons to carry a current. Therefore increasing the temperature of an insulator decreases the resistance.

This graph shows the measured resistance of a solenoid under varying temperatures.

Any normal conductor will see a drop in resistance with a drop in temperature. With a small range of temperatures like shown here the effect is almost linear. The wiggles in the graph are due to inaccurate data generated by the measurement process.

To demonstrate this you need a solenoid of at least several hundred turns, an ohm meter or multi meter, and some freezer spray.

The resistance of the solenoid used for this test was 6.3 Ohms at room temperature. To increase the temperature of the coil it can simply be connected to a battery and allowed to heat up. The temperature was measured using an infrared thermometer.

You could cool the solenoid in a standard freezer to about -20, but it would take a while so we used some freezer spray to get quicker results. The lowest resistance from our coil was just 4.8 Ohms whereas the highest was 8.2 Ohms.

Reducing the resistance of a coil means that a higher current can be drawn from the same source of EMF (volts). This means that the magnetic field it produces can be much stronger. When the temperature of a conductor drops below a certain level its resistance will suddenly drop to near zero. Under these conditions this is known as a superconductor. Superconducting electromagnets are used in MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machines so that ultra-strong magnetic fields can be produced. These usually have to be cooled with liquid nitrogen and require a lot of power.

FerroFluids

Ferrofluids are made from a suspension of tiny magnetic particles in a liquid such as water or oil. Such a mixture creates a liquid that can be attracted by a magnetic field. NASA discovered Ferrofluids at one of their research centers in the 1960’s while they were looking for different methods of controlling liquids in space.

The magnetic materials used are often made from iron or cobalt particles, but compounds such as manganese zinc ferrite are also used. The most common form of ferrofluid is made using particles of a type of iron oxide known as magnetite (Fe₃3₄). Making a stable Ferrofluid is not quite as simple as mixing tiny particles into a liquid. First of all the particles must be very small. The average size is around 10nm (0.00000001 meters). These particles can not be made by crushing or grinding a material, but are precipitated out of a solution during a chemical reaction.

During the precipitation the particles would naturally amalgamate (come together) due to magnetic and Van der Waals forces. To prevent this the mixture is heated so that thermal motion of the magnetite particles prevents them from sticking together. In order to prevent the particles from amalgamating after the reaction they must be kept apart from each other. This can be archived by coating each particle with another material known as a surfactant (surface active agent) to produce electrostatic or steric repulsive forces between the particles.

In an oil based ferrofluid, cis-oleic acid can be used as a suffricant. This is a long-chain hydrocarbon with a polar head that sticks to the surface of the magnetite particles. The long molecules stick out in all directions around each magnetite particle preventing them from getting close enough to stick together.

Water based (aqueous) ferrofluids often use ionic sufficants such as tetramethylammonium hydroxide. The negative hydroxide ions stick to the surface of the magnetite, and the tetramethylammonium cations form a positively charged layer around the outside. This means that the magnetite particles are held apart by the electrostatic repulsive force of the surrounding molecules.

Ferrofluids have several uses due to their magnetic properties. They can be used inside a magnetized bearing like an o-ring seal so that rotating shafts can pass from high to low pressure zones and vise versa. This is a much more efficient method than using solid seals as there is significantly less friction. This makes them ideal for use in submarines, rotating anode x-ray machines, disk drives, and vacuum chambers with external manipulators.

A more every day use of ferrofluid is in high quality loudspeakers. The fluid is pored into the magnetic cavity so that it surrounds the coil. This acts as a thermal conductor allowing more heat to be dissipated so that the speaker can be used at higher power. The fluid also helps to damp unwanted resonant vibrations giving an better overall sound quality.

These images show some ferro fluid in a container with a strong magnet placed underneath. The leftmost image shows a few large spikes that are formed as the magnet approaches the container. The other images show a large number of tiny spikes produced by the intense field of a magnet up close.

The spikes form in a manner as if they are following the field lines. In a stronger magnetic field there are more filed lines hence more spikes in the ferrofluid.

If you try this yourself make sure you don’t need the container again as the ferrofluid is very staining.

Video Clips

This Video Clip shows how the spikes of fluid change as a magnet is brought closer and then taken away again. This force is so strong that a normal heavy object such as a penny would appear to float on the fluid because displaced by the liquid moving underneath.

This Video Clip shows how the spikes of ferrofluid over a magnet change as a the magnetic field is oscillated using a coil surrounding the container. Its is possible to tune the vibrating fluid to resonance causing a fine jet to be ejected upwards from the centre. The electromagnetic coil is being powered by a PWM-OCX

Magnetorheological Fluid

A Magneto-rheological fluid is similar to a ferrofluid in the way that there are magnetic particles suspended in a fluid medium. This type of fluid does not use nano sized particles, but they must be small enough to remain suspended in the liquid. They are typically 2 or 3 times larger than the particles in Ferrofluids and are on the micrometer scale.

The particles in a magnetorheological fluid are magnetically polarisable. This means that when an external field is applied the micron sized particles will line up and form chain like structures. the alignment of the particles will increase the viscosity of the fluid.

A simple magnetorheological fluid can be made at home. Micron sized ferrous particles can be collect from sand or lake beds. By placing a magnet in a plastic bag and dragging it through sandy sediment many particles will be separated out. Turning the bag inside out and removing it from the magnet prevents the particle from becoming permanently stuck to its surface.

These particles can be mixed with a small amount of oil such as vegetable oil. By holding a magnet to the outside of t he container and poring off excess oil you will be left with a basic magnetorheological fluid. This fluid will not remaining stable for long periods due to the lack of a suffricant, but it serves well to demonstrate the scientific principles involved.

Magnetorheological fluids are being used mostly for controlled damping of oscillations. They are ideal for use in the suspension in large vehicles. In its liquid state it will provide limited damping, but when a magnetic field is brought near to the fluid it will greatly dampen any oscillations. This means that a large mechanical force can be controlled with a much smaller mechanical force.