Magnetic Floatation

Floating ring magnets are among the experiments and demonstrations you may perform with the ring magnets included in your kit. In this project you use the vertical wood dowel or pencil to stack a group of ring magnets and tray to predict their distances.

Question/ Problem:

How does the distance between ring magnets change as you stack them so that they repel each other?

Materials included in your kit:
  • 6 ceramic ring magnets
  • A wood dowel (may be replaced by a pencil)
Preparation: 

Mount the wooden dowel or a pencil on a flat wooden board using wood glue or by making a same size hole on the board. Sand the wood dowel if needed.

Is the distance of floating magnet rings affected by their position in the stack?

Your prediction is your hypothesis. For example you may predict that stacked magnets will stay equidistance from each other. In other words all magnets will have the same distance to the magnets below or above them. Or you may predict that the distance between magnets will increase (or decrease) as we move up in the stack. 

Write down your hypothesis and your reason for that before you do your experiment. Your experiment will be stacking the ring magnets in an arrangement that they repel each other.

Your observation include measurement and recording the distances between stacked magnets.
How does the distance between magnets change if at the base of the stack you place 2 or 3 attracting magnets?

Sanding may be required:

The wood dowel or pencil must easily slide trough the hole in the center of ring magnet. If this does not happen, please use a sand paper to sand the wood dowel. Sanding will reduce the diameter and smoothen the surface.  

 

The above instructions are based on the materials included in the magnet levitation science set of MiniScience.com. If you don't have these materials yet, you may use the following link to order them.

Magnet Levitation Part#KITML
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