Ferrofluid - A Magnetic Liquid |
This picture caught my eye and was so cool I just couldn’t resist posting about it. This is a liquid called FerroFluid. What you are looking at is a 3-D representation of a magnetic field revealed by this magnetic fluid. To get a really good look at this, check out this Google Video of Sculptures with Ferrofluid.
The fluid is basically made up of very small (nano-small) particles of ferromagnetic material. Ferromagnetic items are the same type of magnets you would find on your refrigerator, except these are obviously much smaller. They are usually suspended in water, and something interesting is that although they are a common type of magnet, they do not retain their magnatism on their own, only when an external magnatism is applied. That is what gives them the ability to display the external magnetic field so well.
Ferrofluids are not uncommon in different industries as they become less magnetic as they heat up. This makes them great for use as a heat sink, where the cooler parts of the fluid move toward the hotter part of the magnetic force.
There is a good wiki page that has more information and applications for ferrofluid.
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that if frekin sweet man.. itd be awesome to buy and play with.
One step closer to T-1000
I saw this when i went to the museum of science in boston realy cool you got to play with it while it was in a sealed clear box with attached gloves you could feel it and put a magnet over it and deffi gravity it was awsome.
http://www.unitednuclar.com has bottles of it for sale. I’ve had some for about 4 months now, its pretty cool stuff.
fooking ay!! I want one!
ha ha … ‘nano’ is the “it” term for 2006. Like ’smurf’ it means anything you want it to mean. There is nothing nano about ferrofluid, though it was more popular in the 70s so maybe resurrecting it now with the ‘nano’ buzzword will help sell it. My Genesis V6 speakers were ferrofluid cooled back then, so you can bet if speaker companies in the ’70s used it, it ain’t nano.
Not to be say the speakers were bad. Man, if you had no distortion you could probably have sent a lightning bolt through them okay …
Cash
Cash, nano is a term of measurement. This article doesn’t mention anything about nanomachines, it simply says the magnets are “nano-small”. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, so that’s pretty damn small, and perfectly accurate.
Cash, Nano means very small… Nano also refers to the very small ferromagnetic particles in the ferrofluid (description). And I don’t see this stuff being marketed as nanotech anyway. The reason nano is ‘it’ is because people have realized what you can do with it. Stop whining and watch the clip.
BTW… your blog sucks.
SWS and Escobar, yes, I know what nano means. Every product on planet earth is nano in some way or another - so you made my case that putting nano in front of a word is nothing except marketing hoopie. It’s not dissimilar from laundry detergents in the 1960s making claims like “NOW with Turbo X!” It was still proteins, but people felt better with a cool name.
Escobar, I am sorry you feel that way about my site. Would you like me to dumb it down so sub-literate sock monkeys like you can enjoy it more easily?
Cash
Just to clarify.. Ferrofluid itself is not magnetic.. but it’s simply an oil base with suspended particles of a magnetically vulnerable substance, such as the toner from a common printer. Since the particles are very fine (not ‘nano’.. persay, but small, like the ink from a toner cartridge if you’ve ever dealt with one) and suspended in oil, the created effect is an oil substance that can be affected by magnets. It’s no different than certain types of sand are affected by magnets, except the oil that holds it in place gives an awesome visual representation of what magnetic fields are affecting it.
search hackaday.com they have 2 differeny DIY’s for how to make your own ferrofluid… ones very very home based and super simple, but kinda messy… and the others a little harder but creates really high quality ferrofluid
Hi! I couldn`t help replying you all… I`m in a proyect were I`m investigating the properties of ferrofluids, so I know a thing or two about this matter. This liquid is a coloideal suspention with nanomagnetic particuls, why nanomagnetic? Well, because if you make ferrofluids the medial(o promedio, sorry Ì don`t remember how this word is translated) size is 9.5 nm, could be more could be less. Depending on the size of the particules the ferrofluid would be of good quality or not. The smaller the particuls are more stable your fluid would be. nanometer is equal to 10exp-9 meters. So 9.5 nm would be 0,0000000095 meters, quite small. This nanomagnetic particuls responde to the variations of magnetic field.
Sorry for my english!!!!
Gabriela
Just to clarify magnetite is the most magnetic of all naturally occuring materials on earth, so yes, it is magnetic and it is definitely different than sand. A properly made ferrofluid solution contains particles no larger than a few nanometers so yes they may be legitimately referred to as nanoparticles. You’re right its ‘just suspended in oil’; however, the exact nature of the interaction between the magnetite particles and the carrier fluid allows intermolecular forces to be overcome, which lets magnetic fields dominate and produce the beautiful spikes and other forms.