December Days: Day 7: For SCIENCE!

[nanila]

Photo of a grubby optical table with a piece of chipboard on top of which are two dipole magnets stuck together under a sheet of white paper with iron filings sprinkled on top to show the magnetic field lines. Also on the optical table: a magnetometer, a multimeter, two small magnets, a forming machine and a bean bag. You know, the stuff you usually find on an optical table. Or not.

Anyway, I did this demo for a TV programme today. It's going to be about the end of the Cassini mission, and the segment features my Big Boss, who does all of the talking. I had originally envisioned a sophisticated demonstration involving a magnetometer and an oscilloscope, and instead I ended up sprinkling iron filings on different permutations of magnets for three hours. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ C'est la vie!

Comments

[silveradept]

SCIENCE! All the same. And seeing magnetic fields work with iron filings is always fascinating.

[nanila]

Yes! Concrete visualisations FTW.

[silveradept]

And pretty designs that you can make, too. Although it's probably not quite as controllable as the Etch-A-Sketch.

[wohali]

Yay science! Is Big Boss your grandboss, your greatgrandboss or other?

[nanila]

Big Boss is grandboss. :)

[alatefeline]

But it's cool. And I wanna play with it.

[nanila]

Yes, there's no way I would have had the chance to spend three hours playing around with iron filings otherwise! :)

[alatefeline]

I need to figure out how to do this demo with kids of various ages...as they would gain so much in their understanding of magnets from it...

[cmcmck]

I used to love magnetic pictures as a kid. I had a toy that let you do this stuff which I adored.

If my maths had been up to it (I'm dysnumeric) I'd probably have fetched up as a vulcanologist or seismologist!

Ah well, their loss was history's gain! :o)

[nanila]

Magnetics-based toys are great. You can get ferrofluid toys these days!