Young Australian Skeptics

In exciting news for people who have done any introductory electromagnetism course, I’ll be spending the next few weeks playing with ferrofluids in the second year physics labs at Melbourne Uni. The practical component of the course is compulsory, however the last two ‘set’ labs can be swapped out for a longer self devised project, and Belinda (who occasionally pops up on my Twitter as “girlfriend of Rich”) came up with the idea of examining the behaviour of ferrofluids in magnetic fields. So far, we’ve starting building a ‘tree’ model, and have stolen some Helmholtz coils from the first year labs.

For those who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, check out these videos for an idea of what we could do with a little more time and a lot more money…

If anyone knows where I can get a meatgrinder, this one is well within the realms of possibility…

Tags: ferrofluids, Physics, Richard Hughes, Science

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