More Fun with Magnets

Once again you find me playing with magnets.  Today, I added a heavy "rattlesnake egg" to the stack of magnets that I used in a post just a few weeks ago. Just scroll down to see the original post.  

You may notice in the picture below, that the overhead magnet looks slightly different from the last time I took such a picture. When this heavy arrangement of magnets jumps up to the overhead, it hits with such force that I was afraid it might chip the overhead magnet. I therefore taped a plastic washer to it's south pole with a little masking tape. That will have no effect on its field strength. 

As I did last time, I weighed the stack (chain) on my kitchen scale.  

I must give you a little background before we go further. I experimented a little with the rattlesnake egg addition before putting it on the scale tonight.  Last night, I set up the chain of magnets before I went to bed.  I did not have them on the scale.  Sometime later, from bed, I heard the chain of them contact the over head magnet.  They had jumped up.  

What that told me was that the chain of magnets was very slowly but surely being drawn up into the field of the overhead magnet. The buckyball chain was slightly curved when I positioned the chain and it grew slightly taller as the field above it straightened it. Apparently, it straightened enough that the rattlesnake egg was pulled far enough into the overhead magnets field that it lifted it. Therefore, the weight I would have recorded, had they been on the scale, should have been diminishing and gone to zero.

Tonight therefore, I took a number of photos, after I set the magnet chain in place on the scale, spaced a couple of minutes apart, and did in fact find that the scale showed a steadily falling weight. Check it out.    

  

I'm sorry this one is hard to read. It was taken immediately after setting the chain on the scale.  It reads 4.532 grams.  

This one, taken a couple of minutes later, is 4.332

This one reads 4.227

This last one is 4.178.  Unfortunately, shortly after this reading, my scale shut down.  I think it has about a 10 minute auto shut off feature.  

I immediately got out the user's manual, and hoped to find a way to adjust this feature, but it is apparently set, and that's that.  

I would have liked to continue to watch the change in the weight and even seen it go to zero, as the chain of magnets jumped up into contact with the overhead magnet.  

Ideally, I would have one video camera focused on the scale, with a clock visible next to it, and another focused on the chain of magnets from the front.  I'd run both until the chain was pulled up. I think it would be interesting to see how the weight change varied with time.  

But, all that is way more than I want to put into this project.  I guess I'll just call it a day.  An interesting, instructive day.  I hope you enjoyed it too.    -djf