Magnets don’t just work on metal. They work on frogs too!

12 Jan

Yup, scientists at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, managed to use a magnet to levitate a frog!

We all know that magnets pushed together at opposite poles will repel each other but how does something that isn’t magnetic repel enough to levitate? Well the reason takes a little explaining but it’s based on something called diamagnetic repulsion.

Diamagnetic repulsion is basically a posh name for what happens to the electrons inside atoms when they’re exposed to a very strong magnetic field. The electrons really don’t like being subject to such a strong magnetic force and adjust their orbits in such a way that they themselves become magnetized, in concert, but in the opposite direction. In the case of the levitating frog, every atom in the frog was acting as a magnet itself.

Now admittedly, you need a pretty gargantuan magnet to pull this of (around 1000 times stronger than the ones you used in school) but in theory, you could levitate anything you like. The magnet at the University of Nijmegan produced a magnetic field over a million times more powerful than that of the Earth.

So it’s not easy to do and unlikely you’re going to pull this one out as your next party trick but it’s a pretty trippy ride for whoever’s in the magnet; just take a look at the video,..