On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 12:19, Charles Bennett <[email protected]> wrote: > This is so cool I had to check snopes first. (It doesn't seem to be > on snopes..) > > I'm still not convinced that it's real.
Cool, but I doubt it's an actual demonstration. "Scientists invent a machine that control tiny ball bearings in a powerful magnetic field precisely to draw 3D images." Scientists eh? Where might I read their research? A powerful magnetic field? Have you ever seen how iron filings react in a magnetic field? They follow the field lines. All the "images" looked like the balls were sitting on an invisible object. You might be able to manipulate a field such that a single layer has the appearance of the video, but I find it hard to believe that they'd be able to keep the bearings from rolling around within the field. All the other magnetic levitation stuff I've seen involves positioning a single object by using multiple field sources. In order to do something like in this video, you'd need an incredible number of sources targeting each bearing and without interfering with the other fields. It's that interference that kills it for me. I think an easier way to show something like this would be to suspend the bearings from fishing line or wire. Or render it. -- -- -- arno s hautala /-\ [email protected] -- -- _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
