A simple experiment

I've shown pictures of magnets several times to those of you who have been following my blog. I've told you how much I loved them as a kid, and how my interest in them as an adult goes a little deeper.  Studying them in my retirement has lead me to watch a series of physics lectures from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), on YouTube and lots of other videos, covering the types of magnetism, crystalline atomic structure, unpaired electrons, electron shells, and quantum fields, to name a few.  Do I understand everything?  Of course not.  My math skills peaked in a Calculus class at NMU in 1971, and they've been declining ever since.  

Nevertheless. I have discovered in my old age that I can still be wowed by what I learn.  As humans, with our limited senses, we are unable to directly appreciate much of the wondrous world we live in. Magnets allow us to perceive what's happening at the atomic level and that simply astounds me. I have some magnets set up in our living room here in New Zealand and I never get tired of visualizing the fields that they create. The fields may not be visible, but their effects certainly are when I place other magnets close to, or within the fields and watch them interact.   

This is a shot of my magnet display as it is today, 9/30/25. As I sat and looked at it about half an hour ago, I got to thinking about that chain of magnets standing straight up on the lower shelf. How much do you suppose they weigh, standing like that? I should find out.   

So, in this post, we are going to be looking at just that part of the display. The upper portion doesn't affect what we're going to investigate to a measurable degree.  

We all know that magnets have magnetic fields, which attract or repel other magnets.  If a magnet is attracting another magnet, then it will be exerting a force on that magnet or, in this case, magnets.  In this experiment, I'm going to measure just how much attraction might be occurring in my display. 

There is a cylindrical, 20 mm wide by 24 mm, N42 neodymium magnet in the porcelain box. It is supported from above by the magnets in the stainless steel container on the top shelf. (first picture)   

Below the cylindrical magnet, there are 41, five mm, N35 neodymium magnets, which are called buckyballs, in contact with each other and forming a 'chain.'  

This is a kitchen scale, set to read in lbs.  I chose to use pounds since the scale shows thousands of a pound. More accurate than using grams. 

I intend to weigh the buckyballs first on the scale with no outside magnetic field interaction, and then on the scale with the straight chain of balls inserted into the magnetic field of the cylindrical magnets above them. (As in my display) I should see a difference in the weight before and after placing the balls in the field.  My question is, how much of the weight of the buckyball chain is the cylindrical magnet supporting?  

The thickness of the scale is about 20 mm, or four of the Buckyballs, so I removed four of the 41 shown in the picture above, to keep the separation between the cylindrical magnet and the top of the buckyball chain consistent with my display.  

The weight of 37 with no outside magnetic field acting on them is .024 lbs. (Because they're all magnets, they just happened to form a ring when I dropped them on the scale.)

The weight of the buckyball chain with the upper end inserted into the magnetic field of the cylindrical magnet reads zero.  It would appear that the entire weight is being supported, however, 

The kitchen scale I used is not accurate for very low weights.  As you see here, two buckyballs show no weight at all.  Using my finger, and then later trying three buckyballs, the lowest number I could generate on the scale was .004 lbs.  

Despite the inaccuracy of some measurements, it is obvious that a large percentage of the weight of the buckyball chain is being supported by the field from the cylindrical magnet.  

Since it required three buckyballs to show a weight of .004 lbs., and the weight of the buckyball chain in the photo reads 0.0 lbs., I can assume that the true weight of the buckyball chain must be less than three buckyballs.  At least 95% of the weight of the chain, and probably a little more, is being supported by the other field.

I experimented a little further. I found that if I added one more buckyball to the chain for a total of 38, the chain would be pulled up into contact with the cylindrical magnet. Obviously then, over 100% of the weight was overcome.     

I would love to be able to suspend a chain of buckyballs in midair.  It would make a great display, but I don't think I could get the tolerances to work out.  I'd need some much smaller buckyballs for one thing for 'fine-tuning' and much steadier hands to pull it off.  It might be so touchy that air currents could affect it.  

I had fun today.  I don't want to invest in a really accurate scale, but I'm going to continue to think about lifting my chain of buckyballs.   

Do you have any ideas?   -djf

In case you're wondering, here's the story with the upper magnetic display.  

Inside the stainless steel container are three cylindrical 24mm outside diameter, by 15 mm, N42 neodymium magnets with a central hole of 5 mm.  A bronze rod (Non-magnetic) of 4 mm diameter extends through them, resting in a dent in the floor of the container.  Above the container, three more magnets of the same size, repelled by the three inside the container and by each other, float along the rod.  They are not attached to it of course but are held in place by the repelling forces that their like-poles generate.  (North to north or south to south)  

Did you know?  

I've read that neodymium magnets last a very long time, losing only about 5% of their 'strength' per 100 years.  Imagine my top display magnets resisting gravity, and each other, for century after century. 

A cold magnet is generally 'stronger' than a warm one.  

When we think of magnets, we're thinking of ferromagnetism, but did you know that there are also diamagnetic, paramagnetic, antiferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic materials?  

Magnetic 'bottles' can be formed and used to contain high temperature plasma? 

Are you becoming even a little more interested in magnets?  

Here is a video, one of many I've watched, that is interesting.  I generally get bogged down part way through, but try to stick it out until the end, when the presenter summarizes. I understood that pretty well. ''

One side note.  The presenter talks in this video about 'virtual photons.'  When Allie and I were talking about this video not long ago, she commented that the virtual photons should really have been called 'faux-tons.'  I agreed.  Science jokes, gotta love 'em.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb9pdRjbQRo&t=338s

Just Pictures

Today's post has no theme other than that of showing you what I consider to be interesting photos. All taken recently by me from around our home in the retirement village called, Waitakere Gardens, here in Henderson, a western suburb of Auckland, NZ.  

I hope you enjoy them.  

From our balcony in the morning.

From Earth, at night.  Admire the edge and craters of the Moon. 

This photo is unusually sharp. We live at sea level and since our climate is classed as, "temperate rainforest," our humidity levels are general high, which makes getting closeup shots like this difficult.  I often have focusing problems due to the water vapor in the atmosphere. 

But every now and then....

I haven't seen this product before.  I found them in St. John's Butchery in Glen Ennis. These are apparently lamb-filled pockets of dough, that you bake for dinner.  

An explosion of color, halted at .0001 second.  

An early-bird

A moment in time. 

Flowers in a planter along our roundabout

Life and death in a planter on our balcony.  Jeanne and I sat and watched the drama play out.  

A close-up of the preceding photo. As this honey bee, no doubt from our hives, passed by, a spider reared up and grabbed it, probably instantly injecting some venom into it. It buzzed madly for only seconds before dying.  The spider then slowly dragged its succulent meal down into the darkness beneath the growing succulents.  

This was taken today, 9/24/25.  We've had over an inch of rain already.  This was taken from outside the cafe, at the end of the Atrium, looking across some of the rose gardens to the apartment building called, Millbrook.  

Again, from our balcony in the morning.  I hope you enjoyed them all.  -djf

Moon

Those of you who have been reading my blog since 2014 have learned that I love photographing the Moon. 

As it happens, we recently had a lunar eclipse occur, so I'll start today's post with some shots taken during that event, which I watched for about an hour or so.  Here, in New Zealand, the Moon was setting, just before dawn, as the eclipse unfolded.  Remember that it started as a full moon.

It disappeared below the horizon shortly after this. 

Although the Moon is tiny in this next eclipse view photo from earlier this year, I like the shot. It was taken from Heather's apartment on the 5th floor of the Vines. She happened upon Jeanne and I taking shots from a lounge on the 5th, and suggested her balcony would be much better. 

This is a shot I took during another eclipse a few years ago.

A friend of ours, Margaret, suggested that this picture deserves to be in a caption-writing contest. Do any of you have a caption? Leave it (them) in a comment if you like. Here are some mine.

'Little Johnny's homemade warhead far exceeded his family's expectations.' 

'Well, we can quit tracking Asteroid Bennu, I guess.'

For these next captions, I'm pretending the Moon is Mars.  Looks kind of like it after all.  

'That had to be Phobos. Deimos wouldn't have made that big a splash.'

'Well, if there is life on Mars, it's extinct now.'  

This is a shot I took about a week ago. I zoomed in for the second and third pictures.  

I'll leave you with this last one, a favorite of mine.  That's at Moonrise, of course.  -djf

The frond-artists have gathered. Spathe surgeons, strop your scalpels. Begin.

When I was a kid, I spent a great deal of time each summer watching the activities down the hill from our house at the Castile-Location Mine.  My brother, Wayne, and friend, Bill, and I would coast our bikes to the bottom and watch the ore cars come out of the hoist and move along the tracks to the end where they dumped, the steam shovel loading dump trucks from the constantly replenished pile, and the bulldozers cleaning up the area when the overspill from the trucks became a hazard.

Now I'm nearly 74, living in a retirement village in New Zealand, and I find I still like to watch other people work. 

Today, the Bark tree trimmers arrived. I don't know if you'll be fascinated with the following, but I plan to show you pictures, with a bit of commentary added, that I took during their efforts here today.   

The trees really look nice now.  I'll show you how they turned out later.  Almost makes me feel as though I too had just had a nice haircut and no longer feel shaggy.  (Well, as a matter of fact, I did, and do) 

Here they are, just getting started. I caught a frond in mid-fall.  

Bark is the company that also provides three full-time gardeners for our village. It's a huge job keeping this place looking so good all the time.  

Here's a shot of some action from our balcony.

And another, even closer to us. 

It wasn't long before they had a pile of tree parts ready for chipping. 

This guy is holding some spathes, which are the sheathing bracts that hold the flower cluster of the palms. They are woody, and about 1/2 inch thick.  Quite heavy. You wouldn't want to get hit by one falling from the tree. 

These are the seed clusters that split the spathe to emerge.   

When they first break free, they are covered in flowers, and the bees go absolutely nuts for them. I think that is one of the reasons the honey made by the bees hived in our gardens have such a wonderful, unique flavor. It has a high percentage of palm flower nectar added to that of an assortment of other flowers and banana blossoms as well.  

I have to put in an action shot for you of the grinding process because I think I would have wanted to feed some fronds into the chipper when I was ten.  I think Wayne, Bill and I would have all wanted to be the chipper-guy, after of course, we were the bucket-guy.  

The before and after view.  Bark did a great job. 

August 8, 2025 above and August 25, 2025 below.  

Next time they come I'm going to bribe them to give me a ride in the bucket. I'm thinking a dozen Krispy Kremes. Think it'll work?    -djf

My favorite tree

When I was a kid, our rural home was ringed by the hills of Northern Michigan.  On one of those hills, the one visible from my place at our kitchen table, was a gigantic lone spruce. It towered above the lesser trees that made up the forest surrounding it. I admired it each and every mealtime.

When we moved into our apartment here at Waitakere Gardens, in Henderson, New Zealand, I immediately spotted this lone tree against the horizon as I stood on our balcony.  It's a Norfolk Island Pine, rather than a spruce, but, in my opinion, it dominates its surroundings almost as well as my boyhood favorite did.  It became my new, old-age favorite. 

I have come to rely on it to provide photographic opportunities.  Today's post will highlight this tree, with pictures which have been taken for the most part during sunrises, many times with birds decorating the space around it, and sometimes in the fog.  

I'll start with my most recent photo. When I saw my tree in the fog that morning, I hoped that a bird or birds would fly by. I held my camera on it for several minutes before this gull graced us with its presence.  

I often share my sunrise pictures with a friend, Trevor, who also loves photography, and I generally claim that I employ bird-handlers who release birds at just the right moment for me to catch them in my pictures.  Here are two that were released perfectly. (The real trick, and the reason my bird-handler charges so much, is to get the birds to flap their wings in unison.) These two have clearly been working together for years and are in high demand, among photographers around Auckland.  

This is one of my all-time favorite shots.  I wish my handler could have released the bird a little closer though.  I've tried zooming in, to make the bird appear larger, but then the framing of the scene by the palm fronds disappears, and they add depth to the picture.  

In most of these, I wish the birds were just a little closer.  Oh, well, I'm lucky to have them at all. 

Not long after I started using this tree as a subject of many pictures, I went walking in search of it. I found it in the back yard of a home less than a mile, as the crow flies, from our apartment. We're seeing just it's tip.  It really is quite a massive tree. My boyhood spruce surpassed it, I'm sure, but when I found it, I saw that this one's trunk, at ground level, was approaching a meter across, so it's definitely an impressive specimen and a suitable substitute for my long-lost Castile giant.     -djf

Let's make some Damper

I just made some oven damper and I am pleased with it.  I called it oven damper because I have watched a number of videos about making it, and in most of them, the loaf is made in a Dutch oven, over and under campfire coals, or even just tossed directly on the coals. It is the simplest of breads and takes very little to prepare.  

Damper is what they call it in Australia.  I imagine that this sort of bread has been made all over the world by all sorts of people and it must have all sorts of names.  

I don't have any pictures of my efforts yesterday, when I made it to accompany a pot of lamb stew. Instead, I'm going to attach one of the videos I watched about making it so that you can get some visual reinforcement, and possibly, motivation. 

This was my recipe:

2 cups of flour + a little bit to put on my hands and dust the loaf with and baking pan with. 

2 teaspoons of baking power

3/4 teaspoon of salt

water

Bake at 375 F for about 30 minutes. Your oven might vary.  Check it now and then. 

I didn't measure the water. I just poured it in a little at a time and tried to approximate the consistency of the dough in the video. I did well.  

Further, you obviously don't have to bake it in a camp oven over coals.  I put mine on some baking paper in a cast iron skillet, but it would have worked just a well I'm sure on a cookie sheet.  It's the kind of recipe that doesn't call for perfect conditions.  

The consistency of the finished bread is a bit coarse, so don't expect light and fluffy. But it's surprisingly tasty in its simplicity and wonderful with jam or honey or something of your choice.  Mine worked perfectly with the stew.  And, it's not the sort of bread that will stay fresh for long. I used two cups of flour and Jeanne and I finished the loaf between us at dinner.  She toasted the last of it and we had it for a sort of dessert a little later with jam.   

So, there you have it. It is inexpensive to make and doesn't take much work. Why not give it a try sometime?  

I know that I'm going to make it again. Here is one of many videos that are available. I'm showing it to you so you can see how he treats the dough. Several of the other videos added butter to the recipe, one used milk instead of water, and others added everything from grated cheese to bacon bits, turning this very plain bread into something like fancy scones.  I'm sure they are all tasty, but I wanted the simplest possible bread, period. And I was satisfied with what I got.    -djf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0DjWOb099k&ab_channel=RangerNick

Comfort zones

I got on a bus this morning and made my way into downtown Auckland.  It's been far too long since I last spent time there.  I used to explore much more than I've done lately but I guess, with age, I've slowed down a bit.    

I didn't try to find new places today.  Instead, I decided to revisit some of my favorite areas and just stroll around. That urge felt a little like wanting comfort food.  The pictures I'll show you today are like Jeanne's fried chicken and mashed potatoes, or her side pork and stew fries to me, but these are comfort places, not food, that I enjoyed today. 

I used my phone for these shots, so they're not as good as they might have been, had I used my big camera, but they'll have to do.  

I took bus 13 from the stop by the Court House to the Motorway Interchange and then hopped on WX1 with a whole bunch of student-types as it came by.  Since it was just after 9 a.m., the Motorway was still fairly busy and we had a couple of slow-downs near the on- and off-ramps that we passed.  

I got off the bus at the 2nd-to-last stop on Queen Street, crossed it, and headed for the  Metropolis Apartment Building.  There it stands in the distance.

This is the front view.

Next to the Metropolis is the first home in Auckland of Krispy Kream Doughnuts.

Then, I moved down hill slightly and passed by this view. I love this juxtaposition of narrow street and skyscrapers. 

Here's a place I've always liked.  This is where I bought my first two P. G. Wodehouse first-editions.  The bookstore is actually up on the fifth floor if I remember correctly.  I can't check it out today because I'm too early. This is not a bookstore that keeps regular hours.  When Jeanne and I visited it the first time, a sign on the door gave us the owner's phone number. She arrived a few minutes later and opened her store just for us.  I think she lives just above it.  

Here's another narrow little street. The breakfast crowd is just starting. It's rather chilly this morning, I'd guess about 45 F. right now.  I think I'd prefer to eat inside, if I were in the mood to eat.  

When I got the idea this morning to come into the city and retrace my steps through favorite places, I thought of this next place.  I showed it to you years ago, but with the passage of time, I had forgotten exactly where it was.  But I found it again!  Turns out it is on Vulcan Lane, between High Street and Queen Street.   

The thing that tickles me about this building is that as you step through the front door, you have to climb a long flight of stairs to get to...get this....an elevator.  I've never heard of such a thing, and yet, here it is.  Sorry the photography is not very good. The zooms will help a bit. 

An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which contradictory terms appear in conjunction; they are used together. This arrangement seems like a physical oxymoron. Stairs and elevators are conflicting. 

If there's anyone out there who knows how to describe this in terms of language, other than an oxymoron, I'd love to hear it from you in a comment.    

Finally, here is a little lane off Queen Street that boasts a circular staircase at the end of it that takes you up to Mills Lane. 

Let's have a zoom here too.

Now, it's time to go home.  Let's get on WX1 again.

We're getting close to the Te Atatu off-ramp and the Motorway Interchange. 

After a short wait, here comes bus 13 for the trip to Henderson. 

From the Court House bus stop, it's about a seven minute walk to our village and apartment.  I've got to do this more often.   -djf