I suspect you are dealing with rare earth magnets.
Neodymium rare earth magnets are very strong and have all sorts of applications in science/education, industry, and even magic. If two of these magnets come close enough, they will snap together so quickly they could break your finger or cause a serious blood blister.
I made the mistake of putting one on my fridge door, and before I got close the bugger flew from my hand and snap hit the side of the appliance making a small dent. I couldn’t lift the magnet off- I had to s-l-i-d-e it to the edge (making some serious scratches on the fridge, and not just to the paint, but to the metal beneath) so I could get enough leverage to work it free.
I plucked many smaller ones from defective laser assemblies (they are used to help focus the beam by moving a deflection coil through the permenant field of these magnets) and they are very small, but one can still support the weight of another when each are placed on opposite sides of my arm.
I tried waving one over one of my Zip disks (the one labeled “Only copy of all my important docs”), but I don’t think much happened. What was I supposed to see?
I was intrigued. I got one of my dad’s old 170 meg hard drives and took it all apart, inside, I only found two magnets. Both were strangely shaped trapezoids, hard and black, not powdery like most magnets. They had orange paint along the short sides.
They are really, really strong.
I played with them all last night, and most of today, but I dropped one and it broke in two, so I’m going to have to rip open another drive to get a new one. Lesse, what’s this? ::rips open drive:: Ahh, dad didn’t need this 56 gig HD anyway!
–Tim
We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first “lost generation” nor today’s lost generation; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak.
Hey, rotary voice-coil actuators are good for something after the drive is dead. If you want more than your share of yucks (not to mention severed digits) take apart one of the really old drive assemblies 20MB linear actuator…I believe they are Western Digital drives and weigh about 180 lbs without the mounting rails.
Just don’t stick these magnets (which weigh about 15 lbs each) to the fridge…you’ll never get them off.
Have fun!
–Kalél Common ¢ for all ages…
“Well, there was that thing with the Cheese-Wiz…but I’m feeling much better now!” – John Astin, Night Court
Since this thread is more about having fun with magnets than anything else, here’s a story that a friend told. She’s a PhD geologist who, when working on her thesis, was using an electromagnet to do heavy mineral separations (Heavy minerals have lots of iron & magnesium in them and have higher magnetic susceptibility than other minerals. They can be separated from other minerals with a strong magnetic field.)
The electromagnet could be adjusted to different strengths and one late evening she got to wondering just how strong it was when turned up to the highest setting. There was a fairly heavy steel plate in the room and she she figured she could use it gauge the strength of the electromagnet. With the electromagnet turned all the way up, she started approaching it with the steel plate in front of her, holding the plate at its edges with both hands. Suddenly she was violently pulled towards the electromagnet and couldn’t react in time to let go of the plate. She was trapped with the fingers of both hands pinned between the plate and electromagnet and was unable to reach the switch to turn the damn thing off. As you can imagine, it was also REALLY! painful. She was crying and on the verge of passing out from the pain when, luckily, someone happened along and turned the equipment and freed her.
Now, the kicker is that a year later (I can’t believe that she actually admitted this to me) she came across a friend who was using the same machine and she told her the story of how she’d gotten trapped the year before. She went so far as to demonstrate what had happened and BAM! there she was again with her fingers pinned to the electromagnet by the steel plate, crying out in pain.
You wouldn’t know it from this post, but she’s really a very smart person and a fine geologist.
I had an idea on becoming a super hero using magnets and rollerblades. It would be kind of like Batman and all his Batcrap ™. I figured you would need to have very strong electromagnets that had two settings, on and off. When the magnets were on they would have to be strong enough to lift maybe 300 lbs a piece. You could turn them on and point them at street lights and away you would fly up in the air, turn them off to go back towards the ground. Or you could aim them at cars and go racing around after them on your roller blades. Anyone know where I could find these type of magnets? heheheheh I see the possibility of being very evil. World domination through magnetic power. Did I say that out loud?
HUGS!
Sqrl
From now on just call me Super-Magnetic Man. (I had a comic book villain named that… he looked like an M&M)
