Frog floating by Diamagnetic Levitation – Wikimedia
While magicians, for centuries, have done levitation illusions by trickery; scientists for many years have developed real levitation in their laboratories and scientific research centers.
Pyrolytic carbon, a specialized type of carbon that is manmade, will float above, stably, in a strong magnetic field from a permanent magnet.
In 1997, the Soviet born Dutch-British physicist, Andre Geim, levitated a living frog by powerful magnetism. The frog floated in the air inside a 32mm diameter vertical bore of a Bitter Solenoid, a specialized electromagnet used to create an extremely powerful and continuous magnetic field.
There is a YouTube video showing Dutch scientists levitating a frog via powerful magnetism:
Since Andre Geim’s frog levitation, other small creatures such as a grasshopper and a mouse have been levitated by tremendous magnetism. A very intense magnetic field of 16 telsas (a telsa is a unit of measurement of the strength of a magnetic field named after the scientist Nicholas Telsa) typically can create the levitation of a very small creature.
There are also floating magnets. Here, a superconductor is used, like superconductor yHrium-based (yBa2Cu307). The superconductor is cooled with liquid nitrogen and the magnet floats over the superconductor.
Live small creatures being levitated through powerful magnetism is based on the fact that everyone and everything is magnetic, but with some things and with living creatures there is much more diamagnetism – that is repulsion of magnetic fields of force. In other cases, certain things have a very strong sense of attraction to magnetic fields of force, as iron or steel. A superconductor will greatly repel magnetism but when there liquid nitrogen it greatly impairs the repel power of the superconductor and thus produces a floating effect of the magnet because, even though magnetic lines of forces penetrate the superconductor here; the repel power is so weak that all it can do produce a “hold back” effect of repulsion, creating a levitation of the magnet; a “hold in place” over the magnetic lines of force.
In this video simple levitation is accomplished by no more than proper positioning of neobendium magnets. Powerful, but easily obtained a pair of magnets made of this rare earth material can support a surprising amount of weight for their size.
