Viral Outbreak: What Happens When You Drop Magnets Down a Copper Pipe?
In one hand, you have a stack of extremely powerful magnets. In the other hand, you have a length of copper pipe that’s just big enough to toss those magnets through. So what do you do?
Naturally, you chuck those magnets in and see what happens. Do you know what happens? This…
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“Viral Outbreak: What Happens When You Drop Magnets Down a Copper Pipe?”
12:27 pm on August 8th, 2011
Question for scientists (scientsts read TSJ, right?) :
Why doesn’t the magnet slam against the side of the pipe?
2:01 pm on August 8th, 2011
DARTH, LIKE HE SAID, IT’S AN ANTI-GRAVITY MACHINE!
3:08 pm on August 8th, 2011
Darth! From the Youtube description…”The neodymium magnets are super powerful and even though they are not attracted to the copper, they still produce eddy currents that buffer the fall as seen in the video. Lenz’s Law.” Fun fact: I just used neodymium magnets to make my iPad 1 compatible with the iPad 2 Smart Cover. And super glue. I used that too. It was a mess.
3:57 pm on September 5th, 2012
D.V. Avder,
Of course scientist read TSJ.
The force on the magnet from the currents generated is always exactly opposite the direction of the magnet’s motion. The magnet is constrained to move parallel to the length of the pipe (by the walls of the pipe) so the force is also always parallel with the walls of the pipe. This means there is no component of the force to push it outward and make it “slam into the walls”.