Magnetic Bearings Might Keep this Motor Spinning for Millennia

We see our share of pitches for perpetual motion machines in the Hackaday tips line, and we generally ignore them and move along. And while this magnetic levitation motor does not break the laws of thermodynamics, it can be considered a perpetual motion machine, at least for certain values of …read more

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Be a Fire Bender With The Power of Magnets

More often than you think, scientific progress starts with a simple statement: “Huh, that’s funny…” That’s the sign that someone has noticed something peculiar, and that’s the raw fuel of science because it often takes the scientist down interesting rabbit holes that sometimes lead to insights into the way the world works.

[Ben Krasnow] ended up falling down one of those rabbit holes recently with his experiments with magnets and flames. It started with his look at the Zeeman effect, which is the observation that magnetic fields can influence the spectral lines of light emitted by certain sources. In a …read more

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