I would expect the air pressure to decerase near the flame. Basically a sort of Venturi effect. I might be very wrong with my assumtion, as it would form in an unclosed area, not a pipe.
@@erikziak1249 I think the Bernoulli Effect would apply in that case. Anyway, I meant measuring the effect of the magnet on the air without the flame. Also measuring the O2 concentration might be interesting, but I think we need precise measurement devices for these things.
You are correct and you propose a very interesting idea. Now the question is, how to measure it scientifically? Could it be used to enrich the air with O2, e. g. in high altitudes? How would such an apparatus look like? How efficient would it be? What could we expect? Questions over questions....
What about some schlieren photography or a flat laser beam like what Physics girl showed in her recent video. Maybe we would be able to see the air being pushed with that laser cross-section
One possibly interesting experiment is to use a reverse flame. I recall Cody's Lab doing a video on an oxygen flame in a propane environment. You could make an atmosphere of some hydrocarbon that does not respond to a magnet, and flow a stream of oxygen through a small steel tube then light it. Then see if the magnet will deflect the oxygen flame towards it due to paramagnetism.
It'd be really hard to falsify the results considering a flame needs oxygen to even exist. We would need to find a flame that can enter a plasma state in the absence of oxygen in an a inert atmosphere to test. The flame is also susceptible to electrostatic fields, so we cannot be completely neutral.
Or maybe, you could try testing each theory one by one, without the use of flames, the air displacing the flame theory, for example can be tested with any sensitive system that would detect the air being displaced by the magnet.
i was thinking the same, my idea is that the charged particles in the flame move mecause of convection and so get deflected as the cros the magnetic flield lines.
@@laharl2k I don't think the ionization plays a significant role. Fire is a quasineutral plasma, the intermediate products have a fairly even distribution of ionization.
The solution to testing if air is the problem is rudimentary, even scholastic! Simply light the candle in a vacuum, where there is, of course, no air, and test it there! :)
I've just try with my own 35mm wide neodymium magnet and a lighter. Came closer and closer and... lighter escape of my hand and hit the magnet... Feel dumb xD
There migt be some Conada effect on the bearing ball as well, attracting the flame to the ball. At least a little bit. Same goes with the magnetic ball, as it is defined by shape and air flow. However, the other effects are much stronger. Btw. a very nice video and I especially like how you take the air itself into account. This is really proper science here, applying the scientific method to explain the observed events.
One thing I wondered: Why hasn't been exploited as a generator? Plasma moves up because of convection so two electrodes in top and bottom of the flame should have a potential? This is possibly the simplest heat engine generator!
Really nice! Maybe, you could try hanging very small sheets of paper(or a any material that has very weak diamagnetism/paramagnetism, being almost neutral to the magnet's force) with as little mass as possible, and putting your strongest magnet near it, to see if it would be pushed away from the magnet due to the air being attracted to it. For even further research, you could use a vacuum chamber, take out all the air from it, add any diamagnetic gas(like argon) and doing the same test inside the chamber, and if the magnet indeed pushes the flame due to the air displacing it, the first test would be true and the second false. I love your videos! Keep with the good work!
I think the flame got bigger/smaller when you moved the newly created contraption was because the air was repelled into the flame making it burn bigger and faster, and opposite for when the flame was smaller. Thus the flame itself wasn't directly effected from the magnetic fields but rather from the air being pushed and pulled by the magnet and this resulted in this effect. Just a thought though, I'm no scientist.
Okay i just started watching but have to say this, i love the explenation you put for diagmanetism on the top of the video! Its great because while i know the meaning i can sometimes forget! Thank you for taking the time and doing so, especially when it's put in such a clean and easy way to read without disturbing the showed footage!
Thank you so much for making this! It was super fun and intresting as always, and it was super cool to see the flames reaction to the magnets, as well as what the actual reasons behind it was!
This is such a brilliant, elegant explanation. I'm embarrassed I didn't arrive at it myself after having seen the effect shown so clearly in other places like Ben Krasnow's channel. You've effectively rediscovered a version of the magneto-Archimedes effect published some years back (see one of my earliest videos). Everyone was so distracted by the ionization potential of the flame, including myself, that it blinded us from the obvious and more parsimonious explanation. I now believe the relevant paper here is probably Ueno and Harada's 1987 "Effects of magnetic fields on flames and gas flow". Most excellent work. I will be initiating regular donation to your patreon shortly.
@@Poppacap79 I know what he means but the flame has such a low temperature that it won't happen. If magnets get high enough temperature it will lose its magnetizing power.
@@Canadian_Teemo Candle flames certainly are hot enough, by a lot. Those bigger magnets will take a while, but for smaller magnets (say, 10mm diameter and below) it only takes a few seconds for them to fall off of whatever they're stuck to due to loss of magnatism.
Beyond that it's essential to life, the only thing I knew about air is that it's thermal reactive, it expands when hot and contracts when cold. That's why our cars get tire warning lights in summer and winter for overpressure and underpressure respectively. It never occurred to me that air was paramagnetic as well. Learning something new with every video, thank you Sir Brian!
Brainiac is back! I really missed these :D Thank you for coming back, you're one of the few channels that can subside my thirst for science. Looking forward to more. How have you been? :)
Hehe, I do upload each month, but maybe you are only recommend my videos with 'Monster magnet meets...' in the title? Try clicking the notification bell if you want to tell RU-vid to show every of my video.... Thanks for watching this one, Sacred :D
@@brainiac75 I do have the bell set up in order to show every video, it's just that I am subscribed to channels with a very constant upload schedule and you get used to seeing new videos very often. Of course, quality over quantity is best, I love every video of yours and I won't complain at all for your upload style. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. Thank you for your concern and reply.
Interesting effect! However you lack a control test: in a environment without oxygen there should not be any deflection. Creating a flame in an oxygen starved environment is hard, but can be done if you seperate the oxygen inlet. However, I immediately thought of magneto hydrodynamics (MHD) . The flame consists of moving magnetic molecules, thereby they experience a Lorentz force. The equations for this also describe the effects in the core of the earth. Pretty cool stuff!
@@brainiac75 I heard it before the magnet got near it. It's a high frequency kind of pitch that all of those TVs put off. I can always tell there's a CRT TV nearby when I hear that noise.
Somebody never had a tv b4 flatscreens. I'm like the last reply, that sound is tell tale. I'll actually give it the likely hood that it's not completely aged ears but rather being used to the sound. It's only slightly off tone from when your ears are ringing. (Or the sound used in movies/tv for "explosion disorientation") But i will say i hear nothing in the flash back clip.
8:40 When you are playing with the double magnet and the flame there is a very noticeable lag between magnet position and flame orientation. The flame effectively seems to be reacting to where the magnets were, 1/4 of a second before. This strongly supports the thought that the flame is not being directly pulled/repelled by the magnet, but rather by a secondary effect. I.E. the "wind" caused by the magnets' effect on the air surrounding them and the flame. Maybe some tests with smoketrails in the air, if you can find a smoke substance that is very neutral magnetically and thus not itself affected, just carried by the air movements?
06:58 Woooah dude, did you really sacrifice a second sponge just to make them match the plastic cap colors? Even though you knew that the sponges get obscured by the magnets? That's some brutal determination.
It's the material in the wicks some have threads of metal. Metallic ions in the combustion is what is making the flames dance in the presence of a magnetic field.
That was a very excellent video. I would have never thought that a magnet would have altered the flame. The way you present your evidence is very beautiful. I've been a subscriber for a little while and I've seen your channel change and get better more professional excellent keep up the great work Brian
I was admittedly excited about the confirmation that diamagnetism is part of the answer, because at the beginning of the video I guessed that before the intro was even over. I'm proud of myself. :P
There is a tiny amount of plasma in fire. It's not much, but it is enough to create an ion wind away from the magnet. If you'll notice, the effect is more pronounced at the base of the flame, where it is more blue and the ions are in higher concentration.
This was refreshing and enlightening. You put it simply enough that even I could grasp what was going on. Brava/o! Air is Paramagnetic! Cool! I wonder how that might be applied industrially.
I'd suggest running small/slow pump with intake hose as close as possible to magnet, use captured gas in to flame test and see if it is oxygen in majority.
Flames are definitely conductive, just not at the few volts of a DMM probe. At higher voltages they become extremely reactive to electricity and adding more ions to the flame increases this effect. It can be used to make plasma speakers which are more efficient than air-ionized ones.
So it's a mixture of cow and palm oil/fats? FYI the magnetic field of normal candle flame (why it has a stable shape) is very self contained so it doesnt changes shape easily when exposed to outside sources but if it was a flame tornado it should be more easily manipulated. (this is going on the theory of the flame battery where a bigger flame increases the electrical discharge.
At 6:31 you could almost have a little piece of cone incense stuck to magnet, so you could see a visual of the air drawing around it. Additionally I would like to see the results on the flame if you had both those magnets set to repel each other. You might also ground the candle wick, they do have a little metal wire in a lot of em, grounding it might result in a different effect.
There is something very satisfying about watching a flame dance without actually touching it , thank you , your videos always teach me something new , this is going to be a fun topic to talk about with my friend , keep up the amazing work that you are doing , I still get nervous when you are working with the giant magnet please be careful As always sorry for any grammatical errors PS: greetings from Iran 🌷💓
If there were smoke, you could see how the particles of smoke moved and from that understand how the air was moving. If the magnet is really repelling the flame, a styrofoam boat with a candle and a magnet fixed to the boat should propel itself along.
Very nice video, as always with astonishing image quality and presentation, everything was very well explained! Once more, Congrats! About the flames, I think we can call it "case closed"!
Years ago I used a fish tank air pump to draw oxygen from a magnet. I directed the flow into a Bunsen burner and used a thermocouple to measure the increase in temperature to confirm the increase of oxygen. The setup was crude so I could not determine any absolute values. That was long before the availibility of rare earth magnets and the thermocouple was a simple twisted wire. The effect was very slight but it did work. It was an interesting experiment.
If it can be done safely, I'd love to see one of the monster manners and a metal object sandwiching some different objects to visualize the crushing force produced by the magnet.
Flames will actually conduct a bit of dc voltage across it. It will even rectify it from ac to dc as elections will only flow one way across a flame (from bottom to top). This is used to tell if a natural gass furnace is on for safety reasons.
Man I've seen an experiment to prove it, use liquid oxygen between your powerful magnets! you can clearly 'see' the effect. Glad I could relate it to that :) P.S. Great video again man.
To test if the oxygen is attracted, and not the flame is repelled, you can do the following test: ignite a mix of air & fuel. Let the flame exit through a hole into a vacuum chamber. You can then repeat the magnet test in the vacuum chamber. Another interesting test: put a candle on the surface of a monster-magnet, where the oxygen content is said to be higher. Light the candle and watch the air flow above it, as fresh oxygen is constantly pulled to the magnet, replacing the exhaust fume.
Here's something to think about, put 2 disc magnets near each other with like poles facing each other enough to feel a force, what do the fields look like as you go closer.
I have a question. If air is repelled by a magnetic force, then would it appear to be attracted toward a vacuum chamber? Because air would only be present on one side of the magnet, it might push the magnet toward the chamber.
I think from what we see with the one sided magnet is that it's pulling denser air closer, which means the lighter hot air will end up on the exterior. Similar to how Helium will want to go towards less dense air, even though we might think that gravity should pull it down, it's actually the dense air pushing the light away. I think that's what he is explaining at 6:30 where it says "High temperature = Low density" and "Lower temperature = Higher density". And I think what you say does occur when there are two magnets at 8:24 where the flame gets higher than normal.
pretty cool, did you try the magnet on the arc lighter. I just tried it with mine and it moves the arc pretty drastically. I tried a candle too, it move but not as much as yours, but your magnets are much stronger than mine.
Very nice video. I wonder if there is a way to use a magnetic field to put out a fire. Maybe pulsing the field to prevent combustion. If you could start with putting out a candle and then upscale to a plane over a forest fire would be one of the best inventions this century.
Magnets have the problem, that air is not a good 'magnetic conductor' (it has low permeability), so if your idea is possible, the magnet would have to be very close to the fire. In this case there are cheaper ways than a giant magnet :) Thanks for watching!
I think your 3rd theory is the major player. The conductive plasma is flowing upward, cutting the lines of flux from the magnet. The induced eddy current in the flame reflects the magnetic field, creating repulsion. If you took the big, flat magnet, and held it edge wise to the flame, it would have had a big effect on the flame, just like passing aluminum through the field. That explains why the flame is repelled when you have a north pole on one side, a south pole on the other. Just drop a bar of aluminum through the gap, you'll see the force i'm talking about. It has to be moving to do it, and the rapidly rising flame provides that velocity. Granted, the plasma has high resistance, but those Neodymium Iron Boron magnets do generate a pretty dense magnetic field, and it doesn't take much force to influence a low density flame. the up draft velocity of a flame is actually pretty quick, due to the buoyancy of the light flame.
I once put a notebook computer with an old school CRT monitor on the passenger seat of my van. When driving on the Interstate Highways, the image on the CRT monitor was effected by the MAGNET fields of the rebar encased inside of the concrete road bed. Go figure.
If the effect mostly relies on moved air, could you test this by a fogmachine instead of candleflame or even stream of airbubbles from an aquariumpump in a glas of water :) ? This would be nice to see
Recently joined the subscribers and would like to thank you for your work! Gotta ask: you did the calculation for air paramagnetism given average values for "air", but near a flame, some of that oxygen is being consumed, yes? What does that entail for the forces involved? Does flowing oxygen vs static nitrogen cause any interesting effects, due to their different magnetic susceptibilities? Dont let fire play with you... love it!
Hi Timofei. Glad you like my videos :) The oxygen isn't consumed until it enters the flame. There's a strong draft towards the flame of fresh air. It's this stream of air I believe prefer to stick to the magnet and replace the flame for the reasons mentioned. But it sure is a complicated interaction for something that seems so simple at first glance :)
Maybe try putting a neodymium magnet on an induction desk. Just keep your ears safe from the pitch sound, its intensity could be mutliplied by the magnet's force.
Is oxygen enriched near the magnet? It would be very interesting to measure a pressure change, though the pressure sensing tube would need to be filled with a non-paramagnetic gas. Though it would be difficult to visualize, perhaps an experiment with a gas of higher density could be used as a manometer to measure the pressure change.
