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High-Density Magnets Created
Judebert writes: "University of California, Riverside scientists have created diradical magnets: magnetic particles that have two unbonded electrons instead of just one. The problem with diradical substances is that they have always been extremely chemically active, so they never stayed around longer than a few microseconds at room temperature. The new substance is stable at room temperature, even when it's in solution. And it's not even metallic. This paves the way for newer, higher-density magnetic and magneto-optical media and devices. You can help distribute the load if you visit the text mirror instead."
This is just what I needed to fix that old High Density disk drive in my XT
W00t!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The article said that a car uses 300 parts that use magnetism. I can't think of anything more than the cassette tape player, and that's optional. Maybe in the dashboard there's some?
Wait, the solenoids that are on the starter. But what others?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
what exactly? Is there something fundamentally different about these diradicals that make them better for some uses? All that the article says is that it's more magnetically active.
My understanding of electronics is pretty basic, but is the amount of charge really important for electronics? You can make stronger magnets to generate electricity and other applications that use strong magnets, but my understanding was that most electronics were independant of the strength of the magnet.
Why am I wrong about this? (I assume that there is some important advantage here?)
I'm a concientious
Fairly revolutionary if they can make them the same physical size of regular houshold magnets. Just a guess, I'd say one of these would be maybe 50 times, maybe 100 times stronger than a rare earth magnet.
That's one helluva magnet. Walk into a computer center with one in your pocket and watch all the screens go askew around you. Think of the new generation of electric motors that will come from this. Faster compasses, oh yeah!
So can I get even louder headphones for my Mp3 player? Imagine how much quicker I can loose my hearing listening to my pirated CD's.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
RIAA/MPAA just announced the second free electron will be used for DRM.
Veramocor
Veramocor
As we move toward using more fuel cells and electric motors, this may be one of the more important scientific discoveries of the decade.
Ouch! The truth hurts!
For any application that uses magnets, higher magnetic strength is always an asset. Whether it allows you to reduce the weight of an assembly, or increase the amount of force for a given volume/weight, it's a good thing. Stronger magnets also allow you to store more data in a smaller area in a magnetic storage device, as someone else already mentioned.
Also, these "diradical" magnets are a fundamentally different kind of material than other magnets, which means that they may have other properties that allow the use of magnets where they couldn't be used before.
-Mark
"The problem with diradical substances is that they have always been extremely chemically active, so they never stayed around longer than a few microseconds at room temperature."
Erm, if I remember my basic LCAO/MO theory from first year chemistry atmospheric oxygen, yes O2, is a diradical as is Fremy's salt, which I made in second-year labs and they hang around for longer than a couple of microseconds.
Talk sense boyo.
Elgon
Oxygen has 6 valence electrons. lets draw one of those nifty electron valence shell models. Each dot is an electron.
.
:O.
..
Oxygen "wants" a complete electron shell so it forms a double bond with another oxygen, each sharing its 2 unpaired electrons.
O=O
no radicals there.
Veramocor
Veramocor
looks like you are right. using simple models you would get unpaired electrons but not with MO theory.
ChemE to much engineering not enough chem
Veramocor
The leader of the group is french, and still
manages his lab in Toulouse. The project
is half french, half american, and students
travel continuously in between the two labs.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
science is a religion
I was under the impression that electric motors
were already quite efficient.
I looked at some numbers, and even without these
new magnets, electric motors are often 90%
efficient or better.
I tend to think that the primary gain of a better
magnet is, if anything, the ability to make
the motors smaller.
I think the main waste of power in an electric
motor has nothing to do with the strength
of the magnet, but rather resistive losses
in the coils.
Now we all just have to wait until someone invents the one-direction magnet. It has to exist (according to Einstein), but no one has been able to even conceive of a way to do it yet. Perhaps this stable singlet diradical substance is just a step or two below uni-directional magnetism.
Continue magnet research!
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
It is true that electric motors are very efficient, but this ultra-strong magnet technology does not profess to increase the efficiency, but the power output. If you have a motor with 90% efficiency, you need to find a way to raise the gross output, not the efficiency. In internal combustion engines, which are anywhere between 10% and 25% efficient, raised efficiency is a huge bonus, but not in electric motors.
/. article).
Stronger magnets will yield stronger electric motors, which may be able to finally bring them into the popular consumer automobile market. The powerful electric motor is the key to electric cars, because battery technology appears to have run its course (seen in a recent
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
IANA Material Science Physicist, but IIRC usual magnets are monoatomic arrays of atoms/ions with a free electron, which due to inter-spin hamiltonian do a phase-transition to unidirectional spin (so called Ising model).
except for the fact that here are pairs of different atoms with radical electrons, what is the difference from Ising model ?
why does this give higher free-electron (hence magnetic field) density than normal monoatomic magnets ?
what am I missing ?
Working for necessity's mother.