Why was such a seemingly complex setup chosen for this design? Good question. We think it might have something to do with making a wider area where the floating magnet can be almost stable, set in the "bowl" of the magnetic field going from the north poles in the middle, up over and down into the south poles at the outside. In order to control the electromagnets properly, the device needs a way of accurately sensing the position of the floating magnet.
It needs to notice the tiniest change in position so that it can react quickly. In this device, three ratiometric Hall effect sensors are used. The ratiometric sensors used here are different. Instead of a sensor that flips on or off at a certain field strength, the tiny chips supply a voltage that varies with the strength of the magnetic field it sees.
If the magnetic field gets stronger, the voltage goes up. They're great for sensing tiny changes in magnetic field strength. There are three of these sensors located at the center of the device. They are oriented to sense the magnetic field in each direction: up and down, left and right, fore and aft.
Armed with a bit of magnetic knowledge, the readings from these three sensors provide enough information about the height and position of the floating magnet. When the floating magnet tips off to the side, the system can sense it from these inputs and turn on the right electromagnet to give it an correcting push.
This device has three sensors and four separately controlled electromagnets. We hooked up an oscilloscope to two interesting points:. The sensor signal, shown in yellow, is very noisy.
Ignore the noise, though, and just look at the overall voltage level. We saw that it gets higher or lower depending on the position of the magnet. It sits around 1. The blue signal shows the voltage to one of the electromagnet coils. It goes up to about 2. When we touch the floating magnet, it goes on longer. You can see this in the width of the up-time signal. This control of the electromagnet flips on and off at kHz.
We had hoped to hook this signal into a speaker to allow us to hear it as sound. It would be neat to hear that interactive audio feedback. Sadly, kHz is far above the highest frequency humans can hear.
We would have to either downsample the signal, or ask some dolphins what they think about it. The other three are working in similar ways to counteract tilts in the other directions. In addition to using the four electromagnets individually to prevent the floating magnet from tipping away in any direction, the whole system must also control the overall signal level to all four electromagnets. For example:. We have a levitation kit we acquired years ago that has a much simpler setup.
This setup flips the system upside down, making things a lot easier. It has a single electromagnet positioned above the floating magnet. The electromagnet flips on and off to control the vertical position of the magnet.
Like a long pole hanging down, you get natural stability in this configuration. Don't have an account? Sign up for free! Why is it that i can't levitate? Top Voted Answer. Levitate is an Alteration spell.
If you're skill in Alteration is low, you will probably fail the spell most of the time. You could either: -Find someone in the Mage's Guild who trains Alteration, but this will cost a lot of money to get your skill up to a level that alteration spells cast successfully. If you've found some place that you just can't get to, mark it on your map by double clicking your map and writing the appropriate note and come back to it later.
But how can we float a magnet above the cooled superconductor? Or vice versa: in our video with Richard Garriott , he floated a cooled superconductor above a bed of rare earth magnets. Quantum magnetic levitation boils down to something called the Meissner effect, which only occurs when a material is cold enough to behave like a superconductor.
At normal temperatures, magnetic fields can pass through the material normally. Once it is cold enough to exhibit superconductivity, however, those magnetic fields get expelled. Any magnetic fields that were passing through must instead move around it.
Follow Jennifer Hackett on Twitter. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue.
0コメント