NETHERLANDS: BRITISH & DUTCH SCIENTISTS MAKE FROG FLOAT IN MID-AIR
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters post it as the classic demonstration of diamagnetic levitation, especially during LK-99 superconductor levitation debates and in discussions of how strong a magnetic field has to be to affect the body.
Recommended by 1 people across 1 different months, 2021 to 2026.
What it is
A 1997 AP news report on Dutch and British scientists, led by Andre Geim at Nijmegen, using a very strong magnetic field to levitate a frog about two metres in the air. The team also levitated plants, grasshoppers and fish, and Geim says a human could be levitated the same way.
What people said
Recommends michael_nielsen · 2023-08 · Hacker News · on “LK-99 is an online sensation but replication efforts fall short”
There's a great video of a frog (and several other items) floating in a strong magnetic field, from 1997: [this video] Lots of objects are diamagnetic, including human beings, and can potentially be made to float in a strong magnetic field.
Cites dheera · 2021-09 · Hacker News · on “How strong would a magnetic field have to be to kill you?”
At 16 T you can levitate a frog purely through diamagnetism. I imagine you could do the same for a human as well if you could create a chamber that large with a uniform field of that magnitude. [this video] That said, assuming 16 T cancels gravity, I imagine being imaged in a MRI machine at 7 T horizontal magnetic field would probably feel like a net gravity vector at an angle, i.e. lying on a steep slope of arcsin(7/16) = 0.452 radians, which is pretty steep.
Cites an1sotropy · 2023-08 · Hacker News · on “Huazhong University demonstrates LK-99 diamagnetism”
Seeing that crummy video of a mystery speck maybe floating reminded me of the floating frog video (thanks, diamagnetism) [this video]