You might wonder, if it really possible to lift things up without any visible support and that too in real world? The answer is yes but to a certain extent limited only due to current technological limitation. Before further explaining the answer, let’s first see how magnets work. If you observe a permanent magnetic in your hand, you may notice that it has two poles namely a North pole and a South Pole. This is the case with every magnet; no matter how big or small; that it has two poles.
Now if you take two permanent magnets in your hand, you will observe that if you take opposite poles (either North-South or South-North) of each magnet closer to each other, then both magnets will experience a Force of Attraction. Similarly if you take similar poles (either North-North or South-South) of each magnet closer to each other, then they will experience a Force of Repulsion and will repel each other. It is actually this repulsive force that we can exploit to lift things up. All you have to do is to perform this experiment in a vertical direction; that is to put one magnetic at the ground and take the other one on top of it (or attach it beneath the object to be lifted). The polarities of both magnets must be the same and directly facing each other. This phenomenon of lifting thing up with the help of magnets is called as Magnetic Levitation and is also known as maglev. That’s how the fast moving electric train work that is they hover just above the railroad track and since there is small air gap between railroad and the train, there is hardly any friction between thereby allowing the trains to move at much fast speeds.
Usually stronger the magnets, the stronger will be the magnetic force which we will enable you to lift heavier objects. Permanent magnets are usually not strong enough to lift heavy objects hence you need electromagnets which are a kind of magnets that can be produced with the help of electricity.
How could magnets cause objects to Levitate? This is because every magnet produces a magnetic field around it. It is the interaction of these magnetic fields which causes the magnetic force (which can be attractive or repulsive depending upon how the poles of magnets are interacting). In order to levitate anything, this force has to be repulsive.
The concept of magnetic levitation can be understood with the help of the following experiment.
- All you need is this simple kit that you can buy from here.
- It consist of six ring magnets. The North pole is represented by Red color and South pole by Blue color on each ring magnet.
- Place the rod vertically as shown in below picture.
- Take three ring magnets and place it such that the opposite poles are facing each other. This way they will attract each other causing it become on large chunk of cylindrical ring (as shown below)
- Take the other three magnets and repeat the same process with them as explained in above point.
- Now you will have two pieces of cylindrical magnets.
- Insert one chunk of cylindrical magnet in the rod.
- Check the face of this cylindrical magnet. If its face is South (as viewed from the top) then insert the other cylindrical magnet in rod with its bottom facing as South.
- All you need is to make sure that upper facing of the magnet below must have same pole as the bottom facing of the magnet above.
- In this way, we you will observe that a repulsive force is being acted between the two magnets thereby causing the above magnet to stay above a certain distance apart from the bottom magnetic (refer to below picture).
You can play around with this kit to make several different patterns of levitation such as shown in below pictures.
Place each ring such that the top side of bottom ring have same pole as the lower side of the upper ring so that repulsive forces act between them.
The shaft containing two magnetic rings is levitated due to net magnetic field of four magnet rings which are placed in such a way that they cause a repulsive force on the shaft.
Magnetic Levitation turns out to be a remarkable technology that harnesses the power of magnets to lift things up in air.