Copasetic Flow

I'll be doing some reading this weekend trying to get some more information behind the experimental results I've seen this week.  The rough observations this week were: 1.  Levitation force seems to go down for the same peak magnetic field as frequency increases. 2.  The levitation force can be increased at a given frequency by increasing the peak magnetic field. I haven't found much research that measures the levitation force between an AC electromagnet and a superconductor.  I have found some interesting papers on the attenuation of magnetic flux trapped within a superconductor when an AC magnetic field is applied to the superconductor.  Two of the more interesting papers I've found are Ueda, H., Itoh, M., & Ishiyama, a. (2003). Trapped field characteristic of HTS bulk in AC external magnetic field. IEEE Transactions on Appiled Superconductivity, 13(2), 2283-2286. doi:10.1109/TASC.2003.813075 and Ogawa, J., Iwamoto, M., Yamagishi, K., Tsukamot...

Great news!  The bridged output mode on the Peavey amplifier I'm using here works!  That means I can apply roughly twice as much power to the levitation force providing electromagnet.  The bridge mode appeared not to be working two days ago.  A little reading of the manual provided the reason.  When in bridge mode, the speaker outputs don't like to be applied to any kind of ground.  I was trying to measure the output of the amplifier using a grounded oscilloscope.  Apparently this is what was causing the amplifier to shut itself off in bridged mode.  After removing the oscilloscope from the speaker outputs today, everything is working great.  Instead of hooking the scope directly to the electromagnet inputs, I attached it to  the pick-up coil.  As I mentioned a few days ago, this a better measure of the power available for levitation anyway. I don't have time to write up everything in a classy fashion at this point, but I would ...

Alternating current power can be reflected by a reactive load, (like an electromagnet). Ham radio operators are familiar with this concept and measure the amount of reflected power as the standing wave ratio, (SWR). As the frequency driving a ham radio antenna is changed away from the antenna's resonant frequency, the SWR increases, less power is driven into the antenna and more power is reflected back into the radio's amplifier. On Friday, I observed that the levitation height of the superconductor decreased when the frequency of the current driving the levitating electromagnet was increased. This is the expected result based on the experience of the other teams that tried to replicate Podkletnov's experiment. However, the same behavior would have resulted if power from the amplifier was being reflected without entering the electromagnet.  The amount of reflected power is usually measured with a directional wattmeter, or with an SWR meter.  I don't have either of...

The first oscillating magnetic field superconductor levitation tests yesterday went great. With the Peavey power amplifier driving the electromagnet, the superconductor levitated at frequencies up to 164 Hz. An interesting measurement problem arose that required the use of a math trick to compensate for the limitations of the oscilloscope. Our oscilloscope has a maximum vertical range of 5 volts per division. There are 8 vertical divisions on the screen, so as long as the oscillating voltage from the amplifier is less than or equal to 40 volts peak to peak, we can read its peak value by counting divisions on the oscilloscope screen. To attain the necessary levitation force however, the oscillating voltage applied to the electromagnet had to be greater than 40 V peak. Instead of readable trace like the one shown above, the oscilliscope looked like: There aren't enough divisions on the scope screen to read the voltage. This is where the math trick comes in. We know t...

My dad and both of my grandfathers are masons. Consequently, as a kid, I could always find a copy of Albert Pike's, "Morals and Dogma", or a lodge monitor, full of geometric diagrams, on the bookshelf. My dad and I would talk about geometry problems like Euclid's 47th problem, the Pythagorean Theorem. Dad told a story that Euclid had proposed this problem to his student Pythagoras by sketching it in the sand while walking along the beach. Then, by drawing out a right triangle and making squares of the sides, Dd would show that the squares in the Pythagorean formula had geometric as well as mathematical meaning. The areas of squares made from the short legs of the triangle will add up to the area of the square made from the long leg of the triangle. Geometry presented as a story instead of a dry rigorous science is what held my interest as a kid and is what has piqued my recent interest in the new series "Touch" and " Daybreak " with their ...

While doing research for the NMSU Superconductor Gravity Experiment, I came across an article published by J.E. Hirsch of UCSD . He writes that his 'hole theory of superconductivity', (more on this in a later post), predicts that x-ray photons should be emitted by a superconductor similar in size to our sample when it changes from the superconducting to the non-superconducting state. The superconducting sample I'm using cycles between states each time a set of levitation force data is taken, so I decided to go ahead and try to detect the radiation predicted by Dr. Hirsch as a side project. A Geiger counter is being used as the radiation detector because it was readily available. Data acquisition with the Geiger detector turned out to be a little more work than I expected. My first thought was that I could simply record the beeps coming from the Geiger counter and then use Audacity to analyze the resulting audio file. There were a few issues that cropped up with thi...

Chapter 4 of Daybreak premiered yesterday! It was a little mushy and a little short for my taste, but it had another great physics quote delivered by Charles: "oceanic overturn followed by a series of mega-tsunamis and hyper-hurricanes" Oh the alliteration! There were also some interesting references to Wardenclyffe, Tesla's last laboratory. Which brings up the question, do real physicists hang out around Wardenclyffe? Although the transmitting tower was torn down and sold for scrap to pay Tesla's hotel bills, the laboratory building behind the tower is still there, and yes, yours truly got to hang out at Wardenclyffe for a day. A group on Long Islan, the Tesla Science Center, is working to restore Tesla's last lab into a working science museum and makers space. In support of the efforts to restore the lab, I worked with Jeff Murray, K1NSS, ham radio cartoonist extraordinaire, Diana Eng , Make magazine contributor, fashion designer, and NYC ham ra...