Levitate a Magnet with Bismuth Crystals - No Energy Cost, Indefinite Levitation - NightHawkInLight

[Music] the more I play with bismuth the more it becomes one of my favorite elements previously I created a video about how it can be used to make beautiful metallic crystalline formations thanks to its low melting temperature and colourful oxidation states for this video I'll be taking advantage of one of bismuth other properties which is being exceedingly diamagnetic materials that are diamagnetic produce their own magnetic field in opposition of any field that's applied externally it sounds pretty technical and it is but for practical purposes you can think of bismuth as reacting to a magnet in the opposite way that iron does rather than being attracted to magnets bismuth pushes them away by taking advantage of this diamagnetic property we can use bismuth to create a stable pocket of opposing magnetic forces where a small magnet will be perfectly suspended in midair indefinitely levitating with no energy consumption if you've ever tried you know it's impossible to find the precise point where one magnet will float in midair below another no matter how careful you are it will always either fall to the ground or fly upwards and smash into the other magnet a diamagnetic levitator like the one I'll be building in this video uses the repulsive diamagnetic forces produced by this myth to counteract the exponential nature of the magnetic field from the magnet above rather than getting much stronger as we get closer and much weaker as we get further away the bismuth intervenes on both sides of the balance point preventing our levitating magnet from moving too far off center all right that's enough theory let's get started I had a prototype design in my head as I began this project and it started with melting down some of my old bismuth scraps from my last video to cast into ingots in a small ceramic dish I preheated the ceramic so it wouldn't crack when the high-temperature metal was poured in this is dangerous I don't recommend casting metals in this way for yourself with the ingots made I moved on to building the frame for my prototype constructed from wood planks and threaded rod which will allow it to be adjustable as I figure out the proper spacing for all the components the center mark was made on each of the planks just so I could visualize it for the moment and marks were also made to indicate where to drill the corner holes for the supports I taped all three planks together before drilling so the holes were sure to be aligned one of the three planks also gets a hole drilled through the center this will be the top of the device and the center hole will be for an adjustment bolt that holds the lifter magnet my ingots are now attached to the two other boards that don't have a hole through the center I got the job done with some epoxy the threaded rod spring the assembly together with nuts and washers holding each level in place the two bismuth ingots face each other in the center with the top plank made to hold the lifter magnet placed above a bolt goes through the center hole with a nut that can be tightened to raise the head or loosened to lower it when a magnet is placed on the underside this should allow me to get really fine adjustments for the lift the levitator is fully assembled now I just have to get it dialed in I have a variety of magnets to try as I wasn't sure what would work best all very strong neodymium magnets of various sizes the combination I found to work best was my largest one-inch magnet paired with a smaller 1/8 inch cube magnet from here what took the most time was to determine the best spacing for the bismuth plates to obtain stable levitation if they're too far apart it almost looks like it's going to work but the magnet eventually collapses to one side or the other it took some trial and error but eventually I did figure out the proper adjustments and it works really well left undisturbed the magnet would float for more than a hundred years before it would need readjustment to compensate for magnetic losses not bad so now that I know how to make this work I'd really like to turn it into a more attractive design I started by remelt my Inga's this time outside since they still have some epoxy on them and I wasn't sure how bad the vapors would be it didn't end up being a big deal as the epoxy just floated to the surface once the bismuth had melted and I just skimmed it off with the rest of the slag I'm pouring the bismuth into an aluminum tin that seemed like it would have approximately the right shape to form plates for the design I'm imagining after allowing this to cool for a while and pouring out the center the crystal formation was not as good as I hoped I think it cooled too quickly and from the bottom up I'll try this again this time slowing the cooling process with some fiberglass rope below the mold the formation was better this time and I almost decided to use it but last minute I decided to try using the melting pot itself as a mold putting it on a bit of an angle to cool insulate it from the sides with my fiberglass now this looks like it produced some nice crystals but we'll have to cut it open to find out [Music] [Music] with some sanding I was able to create flat surfaces to act as plates in the levitator while retaining really nice crystals this should work so here are the components for my final model I have a wood base to which I've attached the lower diamagnetic plate I realized with my prototype that the lower plate doesn't have to be adjustable all the fine-tuning can be done by moving the top plate and the lifter magnet a one-inch diameter copper pipe goes into the base as a pillar the top plate I've glued to a piece of wood with a hole made for the pillar on the far end the weight of the bismuth causes the board to bind so it won't fall if I don't touch it but it can easily adjust when needed the lifter magnet is held with a similar board but to this one I've glued a piece of sheet metal so the magnet can be repositioned anywhere along the surface and potentially exchanged for any other combination of magnets I'd like to try that's the entire design extremely simple and it works perfectly in researching this project I gained inspiration from a lot of other people's work so there will be some links in the video description to some of my sources that you should definitely check out if you find the subject interesting as always you can check out all of my own projects on my youtube channel light Hawking light be sure to leave me a comment reading them is my favorite part of releasing a new video thanks for watching everyone I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did consider supporting my channel on patreon there'll be links in the video description for that and it would be greatly appreciated I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: NightHawkInLight

Views: 1,125,519

Rating: 4.9553137 out of 5

Keywords: Free Energy, Overunity, Diamagnetism, Bismuth (Chemical Element), Global, Power, Change, Solar, NightHawkInLight

Id: A5pZZJ23rDM

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/YoungScholar89]

I wonder how the cube could spin before stopping due to air friction I imagine you could get a nice RPM by blasting the edges with compressed air.

Also could any physics guy tell me what (if any) energy losses there would be other than air friction. The loss of magnetic energy seems like it wouldn't matter if it could suspend the cube for years before levitation was lost. Though I do wonder if there would be some "magnetic friction".

[u/Kaesetorte]

Cool stuff, but seeing a spinning magnet for the first minute of the video and the catchy "NO Energy cost" title almost made me dismiss the video as some sort of perpetual motion nonsense...

[u/stfucupcake]

In the more info section, he cites another video as 'inspiration' for this vid.

Inspiration = copying the dude's exact project design. The only original content was his voice over.

Not artisan, not impressed.

[u/nvaus]

Thanks for the post!

[u/DyslexicHobo]

Pretty awesome, but I wish he finished the cut sides of the bismuth a little more. I think it would have looked nicer with a polished surface. I also wonder how this scales. Would the sizes of the magnets scale linearly for a larger model?

[u/kula_shakur]

Definitely could see this mounted in some small tree-root clusters or something more ornate. The stained 2x4s and improvised cut off shape of the metal feels very junior high shop class. Excellent science project but there is potential for a whole visual aspect it's missing.