Levitation and Diamagnetism

Thanks to one of my students, for sending me this link of levitating mice in a magnetic field. It's actually really similar to a bunch of work on levitating a frog in a magnetic field. Of course frogs and mice are not magnetic, but do become so if you apply a strong enough magnetic field (several Teslas) via an effect called Diamagnetism.

When the field is turned off (gently) the frog/mouse is no longer magnetic and returns to the ground. There are apparently no adverse or lasting side effects–you experience similar fields in an MRI machine.

WIreless power

Since nowadays your keyboard and mouse can be used wirelessly, wouldn't it be great if you could power your laptop wirelessly? Or charge your phone without having to plug it in? These people from MIT demonstrate an early prototype of such an application as one of the TED talks.

Virtual Reality displays that you wear on your eyeball

Kudos to one of my students, Jessica Hatch, for spotting this great article about research into displays that you wear like a contact lens. The display opens the possibility of "augmented reality" whereby what you see normally can have computer-generated objects added to it. You might for example see floating arrows that indicate the direction you need to go in as you're walking around (a la Google Maps directions finder).

(I have to admit this sounds like something straight out of a novel by Philip K Dick)

The biggest ever Wimshurst machine

I've been using the Wimshurst in class a great deal as an electrostatic generator --- I supply mechanical work to separate electric charge --- and we've seen some cool effects such as sparks, the electric field and the Parallel Plate capacitor. But how big can you make it? Have a read of this story about the largest Wimshurst ever made.