Mind-Bending Effect of Ferrofluid on a Superconductor

[Music] hey everyone today i'm going to be showing you what happens when you bring a superconductor next to ferrofluid and since i bought so much ferrofluid for this experiment i'm also going to be testing what happens when you pour a liter of ferrofluid on a giant neodymium monster magnet i have a magnet under my white plate here let's put some ferrofluid on the plate ferrofluid is made of nanoparticles of iron and when you apply a magnetic field to them they follow the magnetic field lines in this spiky pattern here the stronger the magnetic field is the closer together the spikes form so first let me show you what happens when i move a regular magnet near the ferrofluid you can see it just sucks it up to the magnet okay now let's bring the superconductor up to it okay watch it push the spikes out of the way as i bring it close that's because it's opposing the magnetic field at first now if i were able to get it closer then it would lock in place and it wouldn't push the spikes out of the way but if i push it any closer it's going to go into the ferrofluid another cool thing i observed is that when you bring it near the ferrofluid the spikes actually start to flow towards it now this seemed odd to me because there wasn't a reason magnetically why it should do that so i tested it with just plastic that was cold not a superconductor and it did the same thing so that means it's due completely due to the coldness of the superconductor and not the properties of the superconductor itself that could be because the denser fluid sinks down and the hotter fluid rises up so first let me lock the magnets in place on the superconductor by pressing it through the magnetic field and once it's locked there it will just stay there so it can spin in one axis but it's locked in the other axis now let's pour some ferrofluid on it well that is amazing [Music] [Music] okay that was pretty amazing but now let's see what happens when i pour a liter of ferrofluid on my giant monster neodymium magnet so i got my monster magnet right here i'm gonna put this plexiglass over the top of it now let's pour on the ferrule fluid whoa this magnet has a thousand pound pull force it's extremely strong [Music] well this is weird the fluid spikes up before it even pours out so this is a liquid that's not viscous at all it's almost like water whoa [Music] when it gets around the magnet it's like the density increases past the density of mercury it makes my hand just float in it in fact i have to push as hard as i can to get my hand to even go inside of it this is so weird [Music] okay this is so weird it feels like this is solid like i have to put pressure on it but it's a liquid [Music] this is the weirdest thing i've ever [Music] felt [Music] okay it's completely sideways now look at this and it's hanging on there still let me show you how this coin normally sinks to the bottom now if i pick it up out of here here's the coin watch it pop up when i let it go so so so this [Music] okay now i have quite the mess to clean up ferrofluid is extremely messy look at this stuff and it dyes everything that it touches thanks for watching another episode of the action lab today i hope you enjoyed it if you did don't forget to subscribe if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet and you can also hit the bell so that you can be notified when i release my latest video and thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: The Action Lab

Views: 14,052,141

Keywords: magnetic fluid, magnetic levitation, quantum levitation, liquid nitrogen, quantum locking, flux pinning, levitating ferrofluid, superconductor, type II superconductor, the action lab, action lab

Id: aQPh6paW_js

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021