Diamagnetism: How to Levitate a Frog

You might associate levitation with magic, but science has its own version.

Hosted by: Hank Green
----------
----------
Dooblydoo thanks go to the following Patreon supporters: Kelly Landrum Jones, Sam Lutfi, Kevin Knupp, Nicholas Smith, Inerri, D.A. Noe, alexander wadsworth, سلطان الخليفي, Piya Shedden, KatieMarie Magnone, Scott Satovsky Jr, Bella Nash, Charles Southerland, Bader AlGhamdi, James Harshaw, Patrick Merrithew, Patrick D. Ashmore, Candy, Tim Curwick, charles george, Saul, Mark Terrio-Cameron, Viraansh Bhanushali, Kevin Bealer, Philippe von Bergen, Chris Peters, Justin Lentz
----------
Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet?
----------
Sources:

Image Sources:

[mr.dr.genius]

I am a master at the ancient technique of down-levitation, some people also call it falling.

[AliMuhammadAli]

0:43 *Not Even Remotely To Scale! .. oh!

[Master_Therion]

Physicist 1: We levitated a frog in our lab using powerful magnets. It has some _attractive_ real-world applications.
Physicist 2: I find that _repulsive._

[CJdoesntlikehandles]

0:54
"*not even remotely to scale"
literally the funniest thing i've seen all day and i dont know why its funny to me.

[alysaronda]

*NOT EVEN REMOTELY TO I love that the SciShow team adds that note. Brought a smile to my face! Thanks!!!!

[combatking]

Pharaoh Magnetism? I'll ask my mummy about it.

[Howtheheckarehandleswit]

I didn’t get a notification despite having pressed the bell, I just saw this in my home page

[uss_]

Its not easy being green.
Especially when scientists are around.
🐸

[zaccandels]

I just finished my E&M class several days ago, it's cool hearing about an application of the stuff I learned this semester

[CharlesBosse]

I had the pleasure of doing a summer internship at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Dr. Brooks' group (yes, it was amazing). He had at least some part in the whole 'levitating frogs' thing. You may wonder, 'why frogs?'... if so, you should know that the NHMFL is in Florida, and tree frogs are, well, common is a bit of an understatement. It's hard to go jogging in the morning or evening without kicking frogs, and you quickly learn to pay attention to where you step when around vegetation. That's not to say they just went outside and grabbed one, but I feel rather sure they didn't have to work hard to aquire frogs.

Fun fact: the hybrid magnet has a fairly large 'bore' for the 20 Tesla superconducting portion because the 25 T water-cooled electromagnet has to fit inside. That results in a large 'stray field' or magnetized space with a field of a few Tesla, so that walking around will cause certain people (like me) to have strong enough nervous system eddy currents to experience some dizziness and nausea. Fortunately walking slowly solved this problem. Also, containers for transporting cryogens (esp. liquid nitrogen) tend to be metal cylinders on the outside, which, due to hall effect, means the fall really slowly. At the top of the bore, the field is such that you can set the container on edge, pouring, let go, and the container will tip just fast enough to maintain a nearly constant flow rate for the cryogen (this is the same effect that happens if you drop a magnet through a metal tube or let one slide down a conducive surface like a sheet of copper)

[PaleGhost]

But can we use this to create hoverboards? We are gonna be 2 years late on that invention soon.

[jackielinde]

"Hey, Bob? Are you at the lab? What are you doing?" "Oh, nothing much. Just watching mice float around all day."

[tylerbrown]

disappointed, i wanted to see a frog floating

[sion]

Science, the endless quest to make things look cool.

[CybershamanX]

You forgot that you need to go 88mph, too. Along with the 1 Gigawatt of power. Well, since you're using less than Doc Brown's 1.21 Gigawatt requirement for his Delorean, maybe we need to adjust the speed accordingly? ;) :P

[microbuilder]

"large sack of mostly water"
Wasnt that a line in a Star Trek episode?

[ryanwakebradtelle]

About a month ago I looked up magnet videos for reasons that I forget, and I came across this guy who decided to test out if the iron and hemoglobin or blood wood be attracted by magnets. Long story short he tested a few things like the powder on matches to burned matches and eventually Pig's blood because you can actually go buy that at a local butcher. The match powder pre burned was lightly attracted to the magnet and the burned magnet had more pure iron in it so it was attracted more. Finally tested the pig's blood and he got a cup of it and it was lightly repelled.

[ksharky]

perfect! I was just looking for a how-to on levitating a frog

[yisiang]

People in the 1900's : we are going to have floating cars!
People now : floating frog, take it or leave it

[gcs]

I wonder if the Frog was tripping balls while in the magnetic field