Thursday, May 06, 2010

Alright, what's all this then?

It's SCIENCE!

I placed a few neodymium magnets on one of the downspouts from my roof. We're going to get some rain soon, and I'm curious to see if anything interesting washes off...


2 comments:

  1. My God, man, they're Nd-magnets! You could put them on the opposite (dry) side of the downspout and probably have about the same effect. That's an awful lot of magnetic power there - don't be surprised if you find a couple of homing pigeons with their foreheads stuck to it. ;-)

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  2. Ron,
    The strength of the magnetic field drops off pretty quickly for these thin disk magnets. At 1/16", the pull force is about half a pound or so. Impressive, but the shear stress of flowing water is enough to wash away much of the magnetic dust.

    The sites that I've read with regards to magnetic separation use a single large magnet. I'm thinking I can "process" more material with lots of smaller ones. My first run did manage to trap a couple of spiders. Don't know if it was the magnets, or just the protection from the rain...

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