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FSU Sets 7 World Records In High Magnetics Research

spence calder writes "FSU's High Magnetic Field Lab, more specifically my Kenpo teacher, just broke 7 world records, and brought the record for a superconducting magnet to 25 Tesla. Check it out at FSView and a more detailed article here. Now if only our football team was that cool." And if you'd like your magnetic toys to shoot metal bits, Jason Rollette points to his railgun project, which looks like good, clean, high-voltage fun.

25 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. 25 Tesla? by Read+Icculus · · Score: 5, Funny

    That'll keep those damn Americans off my base.

    FP

    --
    Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
  2. "...good, clean, high-voltage fun." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yep, Alfred Nobel probably said a similar thing when inventing dynamite.

  3. Football? by Jonas+the+Bold · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now if only our football team was that cool Are you sure you're a geek?

    --
    Everything seemed to be going so nice
    'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
  4. The problem with railguns by afidel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is that no material can take the EM pulse AND the physical abrasion. I guess levitating the object and magnetically containing it during its travel might work but no one has done that so far AFAIK. Every rail gun experiment I have seen needs to replace the rails every couple of shots if they try very high pulse energies.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    1. Re:The problem with railguns by imsabbel · · Score: 4, Informative

      The problem is that you cant levitate your object because you need it touching the rail to conduct the drive current.

      Thats the main problem. Else you could just throw a bagload of teflon on the slug and fire away.

      The main problem is not physical abrasion, but the fact that even if the projectile fits perfectly, the current density creates arc discharges between rail and slug, vaporizing the top layers

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
  5. Railgun: Repeatable Access Denial System by dbIII · · Score: 3, Funny
    Metalstorm (www.metalstorm.com) is a company possibly within projectile distance of where I live that are working on railguns.

    Since they are working on a system called "Repeatable Access Denial System" they just have to be mentioned on slashdot!

  6. Re:Congratulations by DrLudicrous · · Score: 5, Informative
    Yes and no. Most MRI systems for humans operate at about 1.5 Tesla. I know of at least one 8 Tesla system, but that is experimental. The higher the static field (i.e. the 25 Tesla), the better the resolution of your system can be.

    No one knows the effects of an 25 Tesla magnet on biological tissues. In addition, in order to get useable information out of an MRI system, one must hit it with radiofrequency (RF) waves. The higher the static field is, the higher these frequencies are going to be. A 7-tesla magnet uses frequences around 300 MHz. Therefore, by extrapolation (which I believe is right, since I know that a 9T system uses about 383 MHz), a 25 Hz system would need about 1.1 GHz. This might very well be extremely detrimental to biological tissue. In other words, to do MRI, you'd have to cook your sample.

    Finally, to truly achieve a resolution advantage, you will need very powerful gradients. The gradients one would need to take advantage of such a system would be gigantic, at least tens if not hundreds of Tesla per meter. This would be very difficult to design for samples as large as a human body, if not impossible with today's technology, and at the very least extremely expensive.

    Personally, I can see a 25 Tesla magnet being useful, just not for MRI. Perhaps for NMR being using not for imaging purposes, but in the study of non-soft condensed matter systems (i.e. not biological or organic, but solid state). It would be useful for examining superconductivity also.

  7. Re:25 Tesla by DrLudicrous · · Score: 4, Informative
    The charge is not static. It says "velocity of one meter per second". That means it's moving- if it wasn't moving, there would be no force on it, despite the magnetic field.

    One electron has a charge of 1.6E-19 Coloumbs, so you are talking about the equivalent of 6.7E18 electrons moving at 1m/s. One coulomb is the amount of charge that passes through a point in a wire in one second which is carrying one Amp of current.

    The instantaneous force being described would be perpendicular to both the motion of the particle and that of the magnetic field. Make a gun with your right hand, let your index finger point in the direction of the charge, let the field point in the direction of your thumb. Stick out your middle finger so it makes a right angle with both digits, and that is the direction of the force.

  8. Re:Is there any breakthrough here? by hbackert · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is a bit more tricky than just 'add more coils' or 'use more current'.

    Back at university we had a 14T He cooled magnet. Reaching 12T was standard. No issues. But having 2 more Teslas out of that thing took many tricks: pumping off the Helium to make it even colder, increasing current near the limit. The thick copper cables got pretty warm. And heat and superconducting coils and Helium don't mix well, so for us, 15T was unreachable.

    It's not unsimilar to the 10s/100m in athletics: Everyone get's close, but it took some time until someone finally was faster than 10s.

    20T was the limit for 'usual' magnets. Getting more needed a new trick. But I admit that for people not using this stuff, it looks very much like no particular breakthrough. Like I never cared if I can run 100m in 10.1 or 9.9s. It's just 2% difference after all, isn't it?

  9. Re:Congratulations by DrLudicrous · · Score: 4, Informative
    MRI is all about pulses my friend. Good point. The reason for the pulses is not to protect the tissues- basically it is a timing issue that allows for nuclear spins to reach certain alignments which are favorable to making measurements that can lead to making an image, hence magnetic (the field) resonance (nuclear spin resonance of the hydrogen [most common] atoms in your sample), imaging (after data analysis of RF signals, you get a pretty picture).

    BTW, at smaller scales, things work a bit differently- it is much easier to make powerful gradients over a small distance (say a few millimeters, or hundreds of microns) than it is over larger ones (say a human torso, or even a forearm). I wish I could be more specific about this, but my theory background on MRI is still a work in progress- I hope I didn't screw anything up in my post above. Any MRI geeks out there, feel free to correct or add anything I missed.

  10. Advanced Technology by soliaus · · Score: 5, Funny
    The high tech lab offers researchers specialized equipment that is not available anywhere else in the country
    http://www.fsunews.com/vnews/display.v?TARGET=show Image&article_id=3f56a1ad62845&image_num=1

    Thats one hell of a soldering iron.

    --
    Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
  11. Re:There are also potential medical benefits by dbIII · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The health benefits of magnet therapy, useful in the treatment of everything from carpal tunnel syndrome to back pain, are well known.
    That is entirely true - those that sell the things to the credulous can afford a high standard of health care.

    If you are old enough to read this and comprehend words such as "carpal" you are most likely older than the whole magnetic scam - unless you include the last time this was done by discredited folks such as Mesmer well over a century back (yes - it was a joke then too and only belonged in horror novels).

  12. Re:Huh? by DrLudicrous · · Score: 3, Informative
    The magentic field in these magnets is very localized. They have tiny "bores", i.e. the area inside the magnet where there is actually high field. The earth on the other hand, has a much larger volume of magnetic field, even though it is smaller in magntiude.

    So it is kind of a matter of concentration. Your keys aren't going to flying out of your pocket b/c these magnets get turned on, nor will they affect your compass because you are too far away from the space that they affect. The earth on the other hand will affect your compass, because you are in its (fields) area of affect.

  13. Silly question from the ignorant by questamor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just curiously, if these fields are being generated as 500,000 times stronger than tha earth's own... are they detectable from space?

    1. Re:Silly question from the ignorant by DrLudicrous · · Score: 3, Informative

      No. They are very localized spatially. You would not be able to feel their effects until you got within about 20-30 meters (that is a complete eyeball estimate, probably need to get closer). The Earth's magnetic field, while smaller in magnitude, is not as localized, hence a compass will work pretty much anywhere (except for the poles, where it just spins wildly while you walk in circles waiting for the arctic wolves to devour you).

  14. World record? Where? by earthy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now, I may be just stupid, but I'd say the people at the
    High Field Magnet Laboratory in Nijmegen have a much stronger claim
    to world records... (33T continuous, 60T pulsed).

    Where is the world record?

    1. Re:World record? Where? by wakaranai · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think FSU are only claiming the record for a *superconducting* magnet, not for the highest continuous magnetic field generated using a hybrid magnet.

      So yes... relatively speaking, I'm not so sure the FSU's world record is so impressive. Guess this advance could lead to advances in hydrid magnets though...?

  15. In Other News... by insane8 · · Score: 5, Funny

    None of my credit cards seem to be working anymore...

  16. 31 T (or greater) Hybrid Magnets by wakaranai · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's possible to go to generate higher continuous (i.e. as opposed to pulsed) magnetic fields, using hydrids of superconducting and electromagnets.

    I saw a hybrid magnet in the Insitutue of Materials Research (KINKEN) in Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan) with a maximum field of 31 T.
    http://www.imr.tohoku.ac.jp

    I got the impression that there are other devices (worldwide) with even higher continuous fields.

  17. Re:25 Tesla by DrLudicrous · · Score: 4, Informative
    Well, that is a good try. The equation you have is one of the first taught in electroSTATICS. We are talking about electroDYNAMICS, ie moving charged particles, versus arrangements of particles that aren't moving.

    In that case, the equivalent of Coulomb's Law becomes

    F=q(E+v x B)

    Here, F is force, q is the charge that is moving, E is the electric field (if present, you may remember something like E=kq/|r|, which is basically the force law you listed divided by a charge, giving units of Newtons/Coulomb), v is the velocity of the moving particle. All quantities in bold refer to vectors, so they not only have magnitude, but direction. In the case of the weber definition above, there is no electric field, so that part has no contribution. We are then left with:

    F=q(v x B)

    Here, the x does not just mean normal scalar multiplication but vector multiplication. All this means is to take into account the angles between the directions of the velocity and the magnetic field. Either way, the force will be perpendicular to both, so if you can imagine drawing lines indicating the velocity and magnetic field lying in a plane, the force the particle experiences points straight out of that plane. The more in line the velocity and field are (i.e. the smaller the angle they make relative to one another in that plane) than the smaller the force will be. If the particle is moving in the direction that the magnetic field points in, then it will experience no force- again, this is a result of the vector multiplication (better known as the cross product, where A x B=|A||B|Cos[theta], where theta is the angle between A and B.

    Make sense? If you have questions, post them here.

  18. But did they check properly? by adeyadey · · Score: 3, Funny

    By holding a piece of paper over it and sprinkling some iron filings?

    --
    "You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
  19. Energy storage/regulation applications.. by adeyadey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Perhaps, after the recent power outages in the US, the most important application of supercoducting magnets could be power storage. There seem to be 2 ways they are used - either to make friction-free magnetic bearings for traditional flywheel systems, or (more interesting) direct short-term storage of power. For situations where you need to temporarily store a *lot* of power this is an interesting technology alternative to batteries/hydro/etc.. Current devices seem to cover mainly very short term variations, but what about covering longer term regulation (hours/days) of variable power from a wind-farm, or solar, for example?

    Anyone got more gen on this?

    Try Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) Systems

    This link describes a commercial device that stores 3 megawatt-seconds..

    --
    "You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
  20. Woah, back off with the big words! by DirkDaring · · Score: 3, Funny

    "FSU's High Magnetic Field Lab, more specifically my Kenpo teacher, just broke 7 world records, and brought the record for a superconducting magnet to 25 Tesla. Check it out at FSView and a more detailed article here. Now if only our football team was that cool."

    What makes you think people here know something about 'football'?

  21. Explosions? by A55M0NKEY · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Ok, so you're pumping the electrical output of a medium sized hydroelectric plant through thick copper cables into freezing superconducting contacts. All is fine as your magnet draws millions of amps - for a while, until your copper wires start getting a little too hot. Soon you are using all your helium to cool them so that they don't heat up your superconducting contacts, but you are running out of helium! You want to shut off the power, but that can not be done with a switch because of the danger of arcing, the only way to disconnect the power is by letting the generators spin down. You call the power plant to tell them to spin down their genreators, but they laugh at you. The helium is gone. It is only a matter of time before the superconductors warm up. The magnet groans. You can not imagine why a superconducting magnet would make such a noise, but never the less, the magnet groans. All of a sudden the superconducting properties of the coils break down. You smell smoke.

    You expect the arcing to be the familiar blue-violet glow, but instead, you see bright yellow arcing because of the residual helium, and some reds and greens from the vaporizing metals in the ceramic superconducting wire.

    The heat of the electrical arc spreads the failure to the surrounding superconducting wire. It starts slowly, but the electrical fire seems to be spreading at an exponential rate. Through the thick pyrex view plate once so clear but now covered in places with an opaque layer of condensed metal smoke, and in others so foggy that all you can see is flashing yellow electrical arcs tinted in places with other colors, you see the immenent destruction of the whole lab. The heat will build pressure in the coil chamber the helium and vaporized metal plasma will weaken the three inch thick pyrex view plate, causing it to shatter. You run for it.

    Outside you watch the side of the building for smoke, nothing, no sign of the disaster within. People rush out of the exits and gather next to the person - you - who was considerate enough to pull the fire alarm.

    BANG!! The brick wall bursts, smoke, broken bricks, and glass, and a brief yellow flash. The glowing gas bubbles upward, ball shaped for an instant before disappearing.

    You watch the smoke billow out of the building. The roof has not collapsed. You creep around a wide circle to see into the building you just destroyed. There is a loud buzz. You see a mean blue-violet-green stationary arc from the end of your 12 inch thick melting copper cable to the ground cable. Red hot copper has eaten it's way through the floor, and started a fire in the basement. Hopefully it doesn't fall on the huge tanks of fuel oil they use for heating.

    BANG! They blow up. The fire pressurized the kerosene-like fuel in the tanks, causing them to explode. The normally benign hydrocarbon is atomized, hot volitile and well mixed with air. The entire building shatters spraying splintered, burning wood, and crumbled brick bits of wall for hundereds of feet in every direction. The billowing orange, no red, no black mushroom cloud rises into the sky, a beacon for the fire department to find. All eyes are on you. It was your lab that blew up. You melt backwards towards the parking lot and take off squealing your tires on the way to the newstand to look for another job..

    --

    Eat at Joe's.

  22. Some tidbits of info... by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 3, Informative

    As someone who works next door to the FSU Mag Lab, and has taken a tour of the facilities, I have heard a couple things about it that boggle the mind... First, if they didn't contain the magnetic field that they are producing, they claim that it would erase everyone's floppies, hard drives, and credit cards in the entire city of Tallahassee. Second, they consume one quarter of the entire power consumption of Tallahassee to create the fields they are creating. The city of Tallahassee had to install a power generation station nearby just to get power to them easily. They apparently ramp up the magnets while everyone else is sleeping, in order to prevent brownouts during the day.

    Out of curiosity, I just looked up their electric bill online, but it lumps the Mag Lab's usage with multiple other FSU buildings... The total bill was $500k this month, so it must be an amount less than that.