It’s not really an unprecedented product — magnetic levitation works for high-speed trains and other future toys, so why not your audio gear? Personally I might be a little nervous that the whole thing would just slide off at some point if the fields weren’t aligned right, but they’ve probably addressed that. → Read More
I like how the artist who makes these Half-Life magnets gets from start to finish. First, imagine Half-Life if it were an 8-bit NES game, then make magnets based on what the characters would look like. Or maybe it was: make Half-Life magnets, realize they look like 8-bit NES sprites, then say they’re from the imaginary 8-bit version of the game. Either way, finding cooler fridge magnets would be… → Read More
Refrigerators are generally adorned with random nicknacks or crappy kids crafts. Not any more my fellow nerds. From here on out, our fridges will sport a pixel-made superhero thanks to Magnetic Pixels. → Read More
With admonitions like “If you like your fingers and hands … you will always wear something like … thick gloves when you’re handling large magnets” and “these are in the body part crushing category”, you know Super Magnet Man is dealing with really powerful magnets. Neodymium magnets are the strongest rare-earth magnets around, and Super Magnet Man sells them to you in a variety of shapes and… → Read More
German and American scientists at the Max Plank Institute have discovered a way to use a magnetic field to assemble parts on lab-on-a-chip devices. This system uses coils that induce magnetic fields on little ferrous particles causing them to arrange themselves into tiny cogs and diamond shapes. The researchers then use the little shapes to move liquids around the chip, a technique they describe… → Read More
Warning: Do not swallow or eat magnets. Magnets could interfere with brain structure and bodily growth. Magnets are not toys, except when you use them in amazingly powerful catapults and rail guns. → Read More
Remember the word “spintronics” as you may be hearing more and more about it over the coming months. It’s basically a phenomenon that creates magnetic currents that behave much in the same way that electric currents work, except with out all the heat that electric currents generate. In the computer world, advancements have already been made toward magnetic RAM, which is said to be much… → Read More
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico are in the process of creating a pulsed electromagnet that will reach 100 tesla. Greg Boebinger, director of the project, says that these forces are “equivalent to the explosive force of 200 sticks of dynamite packed into a volume of space the size of a marble.” Boebinger goes on to say that power of this magnitude is essential for… → Read More
Force feedback plus six dimensions of movement — I like what I’m hearing so far. This yet-to-be-named device has been in the workings for 11+ years by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and uses a bowl-shaped apparatus connected to a joystick, all of which sits inside a larger bowl-shaped apparatus that magnetically levitates the smaller bowl. There are only ten such devices in… → Read More
I’ll be saving up for the office chair version whenever it comes out but for those of you looking to really kick back after a long day of widget transconfiguration (or whatever it is you do), here’s the “The Lounger” by British company Hoverit Ltd. Defying gravity with the use of repelling magnetic forces in both the bed and base this contemporary lounger is comfortable… → Read More
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