Slashdot Mirror
World's First Practical Plastic Magnet
Stopmotioncleaverman writes "New Scientist is reporting that scientists at the University of Durham in the UK have created the world's first plastic magnet to work at room temperature from two compounds, emeraldine base polyaniline (PANi) and tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ). In 2001, scientists in Nebraska created a plastic magnet, but it only worked at 10 Kelvin.
Most notably from the article - "One of the most likely applications is in the magnetic coating of computer hard discs, which could lead to a new generation of high-capacity discs".
This story is also being reported in lots of other places."
No, I think you did, infact, manage to make a bad joke.
I for one welcome our plastic robot overlords... of the non-vibrating kind...
of Michael Jackson stuck to a lamppost
So this is going to confuse poor operators of MRI machines then. Now they can't even take plastic stuff in. They'll have to go in naked.
:)
Mmmmm Naked Nurses
Whoohoo! In 2007, you'll be able to attach Barbie to the fridge.
"Gee, I really want to get one of those newfangled plastic drives for my PC"
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I might be wrong though, I'm not a rocket scientist (or polymer scientist if you want)
Does this mean people with ferromagnetic dentures will have to stop eating McDonalds cheeseburgers?
I'm sure the audiophiles will correct me, but is it possible that this could be used to produce seriously high quality audio gear: specifically speakers?
My understanding of speaker technology is that at it's most basic, a cone is held attached in some way to a magnet, which is moved by modulating the intensity of an opposing magnetic field. The movement of the cone produces sound.
If you could build the magnet into the cone, ie make the cone out of magnetic plastic, that would have to eliminate a source of distortion from the reproduction, which would lead to better quality sound.
I see this as a more realistic first application than building platters out of plastic.
What do the audiophiles have to say?
Does this mean that I can now stick my floppy discs to the refrigerator without wiping out the data?
:)
Heh
This is going to have some serious implications on the world's superhero balance of power.
... and people say my inflatable girlfriend doesn't have a magnetic personality! Fah!
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
Coat your HDD in magnets...
Disclaimer: don't try this at home kids.
----
Could this lead to lighter electric motors? Which might make the future of printing products in a personal 3D printer more functional.
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
Will this be possible with plastic magnets ?... If it will be then we could have better
electric motors and generators isnt it ?
fifteen jugglers, five believers
One of the most likely applications is in the magnetic coating of computer hard discs, which could lead to a new generation of high-capacity discs The way my disk gets hammered the bloody thing would melt in a minute :o)
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
Erm the point is that this one works at room temperature.
Philip
Signatures are broken
This is great. Imagine a house full of items made from this material. Cups, pens, paper pads, tools etc. Just stick them to a table, wall, or door, and they stay put.
I remember not so long ago a news about some researchers that managed to create a conductive plastic; it was a remarkably better conductor than cooper. They were working into making it cheaper for mass production (can't find a link, anyone?).
If these people manage to create powerful magnets for cheap, expect a lot of magnet-based devices (motors, hard disks, generators) to drop prices in the future; powerful ceramic magnets are still very expensive.
I wonder what is its conductivity?
The problem with most magnets and electromagnets is that they are excellent conductors. In some applications this is desired, in many irrelevant, in some very undesired. A neat new way to mount easily replacable chips/cartridges, etc wherever spare metal parts may mean problems...
And a nice property of many polymers is that it's quite common to make transparent derivatives. "glass magnet", interesting idea?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
The real test... does it stick to the refrigerator?
Replacing the copper spools of the electro engine in hydrogen fuelcell engines with light polymers will give fuelcell cars a serious weight advantage over combustion engines with their metal explosive combustion chambers.
:-)
For us Europeans at least, for US American cars the reduced weight would be, what a reduction of 1%, and most likely be meaningless.
--
Dennis SCP
Why would you mix magnetic dust with blutac that already sticks to stuff?
Ha ha! Now I just need to rush out and patent the name "Magnetic Silly Putty" and the world will be mine...all mine!!
/too much caffine...
If they made a movie of your life, would anybody buy a ticket?
From the article: "And in addition to computer hard discs, the team thinks that plastic magnets could have important medical applications, (...). Organic magnetic materials are less likely to be rejected by the body." Who volunteers to become the first human memo board?
individual magnetic domains are macroscopic, on the order of mm or tenths of mm. dust is too small, you'd lose magnetic-ness.
Please RTFS ( read the fine synopsis) before posting. Scientists in Nebraska made the 10 Kelvin plastic magnet 3 years ago. The one from Durham works at room temp.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
For those like me that aren't inimately familliar with the kelvin scale of temperature measurement...
10 Kelvin = -263.15 degrees Celsius
According to Google.
Just imagine what this could do for the bra industry if you could make magnetic breast implants!
Never pet a burning dog.
Now it would stick to things from a distance!
This article might be a tad misleading, most days room temperature here is about 10 Kelvin if you leave a window open.
(For people that don't understand the Kelvin temperature scale this is not true and is in fact a bad attempt at humour)
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
They could claim that the heat from their processors enable newer hard drives to work.
If the poly is magnetic, It can thus been made to vibrate. :)
- This week, we had "lubricant for faster hard drives".
- Today we have "Plastic for better hard drive".
- And now we have the naked nurse to go with...
Thank you guy ! Man, I love your style !Too bad : today I don't work at the NMRI, but at the CAT/Scan... Doh !
- Hum, sorry colleagues, but I'll have to leave early...
{ Grabs a hard disk and a pack of "lubrificated plastics" }
-
{ Runs fast accross the corridor to the MRI room... }
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yes and the one in the MRI room accross the coridor looks rather sexy...
- Sorry, miss ? Is this a pure coton shirt or is it synthetic ?
- It's symthetic, but I don't see the poin... Hey ! Stop that ! WHAT ARE YOU DOING ?!?!?
- Sorry, but I have to ask you to remove your shirt. With all these new materials, you never know...
{ ducks }
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Powerful ceramic magnets are insanely cheap nowadays. I'm not sure why you think these plastic ones will be cheaper?
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
-phozz
You'd think an article in a pub titled "New Scientist" would have at least ONE relevant number, such as the magnet strength, remanence, permittivity, maybe even a B-H curve? But Noooo.....
Seriously, only the BEST magnetic materials are suitable for hard disk surfaces, and there's not even a hint that this organic stuff has ANY of the required specs.
tetracyanoquinodimethane: Now that sound nice and healthy...
Get your own free personal location tracker
I want my plastic railgun, dammit! Where is it?
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Years back I read an article about a flame loudspeaker. The flame is pretty well ionized to begin with, so add an electrode at the bottom and top to inject the audio voltage. The envelope of the flame is modulated and it produces sound. Now that I think of it, the raw ionization of the flame was a bit weak, so they seeded some sodium (I forget if it was sodium glass or a wick into salt water.) into the bottom and got much better volume out.
About as close to zero mass as you can get. By no means stiff at all, but equally driven over its entire surface, so stiffness isn't important in this case.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
But I need to attach her to the fridge NOW!
Which means the magnets only working during a Nebraska winter.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
I had beginning undergraduate chemistry from Joel Miller at the University of Utah. He's working on plastic magnets as well, but he doesn't have them working at room temperature yet AFAIK. He was quite possibly the worst teacher I've ever had, though he's apparently a fabulous chemist. When talking about the noble gasses, he would always pronounce it 'Nobel', and he even corrected his spelling on the chalkboard from 'noble' to 'nobel'. Our TA's said that he has his eyes on the prize.
As any fool know, windows is much cheaper than that awful swedish DOS imitator. /. .. forever!
This is my final public post in this site ever so dont bother replying to me. I use Slackware 10.0 on an 80GB Seagate working with an Athlon64. Its all I run. There will be no Windows of any kind on my machine. I am in the process of setting up Cedega - Windows API for Linux - it will be the only weak link. As for servers. My bozx rules in user mode 3 - no GUI. Its so fast. My cd burner works very well in KDE with K3B too thankyou. You insensitive clod. Goodbye
With the advent of plastic magnets, I feel strongly that this will ruin the hilarity new versions of the Wiley Coyote cartoons, for example. I grew up watching that infamous episode where Wiley buys an ACME nuclear (or similarly powered) magnet that he puts out in the desert. It was huge -- 2 stories tall, assuming Wiley was as tall as a person.
He fed that annoying RoadRunner BBs and birdseed and turned on the magnet.
It pulled in things like satellites, cars, boats, etc.
Now, with this new invention -- plastic magnets -- a new version of that episode just won't have the cool metallic clanginess of the old version. No more battleship hulls grinding up against the metallic magnet from the old version. No more tink-tink of small forks and spoons getting sucked in to the magnet.
No...it'll just be a relatively un-entertaining "thunk."
Sometimes, we should just stop technological progress while we're ahead.
And fuck the RoadRunner -- can NO ONE run that fucking bird over?
IronChefMorimoto
Why do they always take a brand new technology and apply it to an outdated commercial use? Why not create a new mass storage medium that has no spinning platters, or other moving parts.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Nebraska winters are a doddle. At least it gets you out in the open air.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
"With Linux, after buying text books or paying for a course and maybe replacing some hardware you can finally get some use out of it if all you want to do is run a web server."
You've obviously never tried to use IIS, have you?
Karnal
but it only worked at 10 Kelvin. Would have worked fine in my mother in laws house then...
Google is your friend.
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
Think of all the equipment now that uses medium sized ferite mags... replace them with plastic: The best things could mean cheaper HDD, speakers, small motors etc. This is a good thing.
How about plastic magnets driving a featherweight earbud? Not only lightweight and cheap, but flexible in design and physical practice. So it's comfortable, and the magnetic field can be contoured to precisely drive air pressure against your eardrum, without blocking the canal and excluding external noise. We might never remove these bionic ears.
--
make install -not war
Hoorah, more stuff to waste oil on -_- But nice nevertheless
Proud owner of BOT2K3 [ bot2k3.net ]
How do you know mercury expands/contracts at a similar rate over a temperature scale? Can you be sure the glass thermometer is correct? ;) That doesn't make them any more true. There are other ways of measuring temperature than just mercury, including infrared and other detector based measurements.
You can posit these conspiracy theories all you want
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I was wondering if someone could clarify whether or not these plastic magnets attract plastic like a regular magnet would metal, or only other magnetic objects.
Funniest comment on slashdot... EVER. Mod parent up
They could be used in magnetic tyres (the kind that has sensors deducing the way a tyre deflects during breaking by the change in the magnetic field generated by magnetic powder interspersed in the tyre's rubber). Instead of mixing magnetic material with rubber, one could mix these polymers with rubber. Maybe it would work better, I don't know.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
I use it frquently. And very good it is too.
I was of course pointing out that linux is not very useful to most people, as most people do not want to run web servers.
your sig: "Yes I make mistakes. Don't we all?"
noo.