Spinning a magnet can make another one levitate – and now we know why

New Scientist
Oct 20 2023

Researchers have filled in details of how rotating one magnet can make another levitate, a phenomenon they initially found completely baffling.

Quickly spinning a magnet makes another levitate above it in a configuration much more unexpected than two magnets attracting or repelling each other.

Frederik Durhuus who worked on the project says that you can make a magnet move away from another by aligning their like poles, but usually after a short time magnetic torque flips one of them and they end up sticking together. Here, rotation counters that magnetic torque, like how for a spinning top rotation counters the downward pull of gravity, he says.

Learn more ➤ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398452-mysterious-rotation-trick-makes-magnets-float-in-the-air/

[...]

Mysterious rotation trick makes magnets float in the air

A few years ago, researchers discovered that a rapidly rotating magnet will cause other nearby magnets to levitate, and they have now worked out why

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
20 October 2023

There is a simple way to levitate magnets – and physicists are beginning to understand how it works. The technique could have applications for robotics in the future.

In 2021, Hamdi Ucar – then at Göksal Aeronautics in Turkey – posted a YouTube video showing two magnetic spheres levitating on either side of a rapidly spinning bar magnet that was positioned with its north-south poles oriented vertically. Ucar also published a paper on the phenomenon, which attracted the attention of Rasmus Bjørk at the Technical University of Denmark.

With a colleague, Bjørk decided to replicate Ucar’s levitation technique.

[...]