• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Either it's a great idea, or I am insane.

Verfremdungseffekt

videodrones; questions
Joined
Apr 23, 2009
Messages
866
MBTI Type
INTp
Enneagram
5w4
Well, it was a monorail. I don't know if monorails use magnetic levitation. Also, famously, the full episode that Conan O'Brien wrote. (He contributed to a bunch of other scripts.)

If you've played Riven, that's riddled with maglev devices.
 

Shimmy

New member
Joined
Jun 9, 2009
Messages
1,867
MBTI Type
SEXY
I think there's a similar concept applied to certain trains, so it's not as crazy as you think...

ETA: I knew I'm not making this up: Maglev . I saw a mention of the Tobu-Kyuryo Japanese one in the news quite a while back when it started service.

I've been on a Maglev train once. There's this test track in Germany. You know what would be even better. If you placed a maglev train in a vacuum tunnel you wouldn't even have any air drag, making the train even faster, and energy economical.
 

Athenian200

Protocol Droid
Joined
Jul 1, 2007
Messages
8,828
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
Or both.

So I know that there are ridiculously smart people on here who can probably help me out with this idea, and tell me whether it is possible, probable, or if it is an idea that can be manipulated for some kind of use.

We all know how the opposite polar ends of a magnet attract, and the similar ones repel. Well, I was thinking, can we use the repelling magnetic forces to create an efficient transportation system?

I suppose the basic idea would be laying a magnetic sheet in the ground, with a certain amount of magnet on the bottom of the vehicle (or object) in question. Then I figured that the height it would rise off the ground could be determined by something weakening the magnetic force and lowering it, or somehow multiplying the force and rising it.

As a sub idea, it could make the use of chair legs, table legs, shelves to a certain extent, etc obsolete, minus the aesthetically pleasing reasons.

It could be just some crazy idea, but it just kind of came to me one day and I was hoping that some of the intellects on here could tell me the flaws or provide better ideas.

I like this idea a lot. I came up with something similar when I was little. The problem I always encountered was that the opposite magnet would always throw the other one completely away as soon as they weren't being held together, and I couldn't figure out how to design something that would allow one to push the other away a little, without giving it enough room to be pushed away far enough to fall to the ground affected by gravity.
 

Antimony

You're fired. Lol.
Joined
Jun 11, 2009
Messages
3,428
MBTI Type
ESTP
Enneagram
8w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I like this idea a lot. I came up with something similar when I was little. The problem I always encountered was that the opposite magnet would always throw the other one completely away as soon as they weren't being held together, and I couldn't figure out how to design something that would allow one to push the other away a little, without giving it enough room to be pushed away far enough to fall to the ground affected by gravity.

I actually came up with this idea when I was in the fifth grade and only recently started seriously thinking about it, now that I understand fully what cars run off of and what it does to our environment. I really would love to have such an efficient system for transportation and I am always sitting in wonder as to why people don't think of doing something like this.

And from the talk of maglev trains, it looks like I should look into it more. The idea of the vacuum tunnel is a good idea. Now there are going to be little plans for designs littering the house :)
 

Athenian200

Protocol Droid
Joined
Jul 1, 2007
Messages
8,828
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
I am always sitting in wonder as to why people don't think of doing something like this.

I think they often do, but then they figure someone else has already tried it, or is already working on it, so they just let it slip through their mind.

There's probably a lot of untapped creative potential in the general population, honestly.
 

Antimony

You're fired. Lol.
Joined
Jun 11, 2009
Messages
3,428
MBTI Type
ESTP
Enneagram
8w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Maybe if everyone collaborated with the different strengths and weaknesses, and different kinds of intellects, we could actually get something done.

God forbid, it sounds like an organization!

That's what I want. I want an organization to create something revolutionary.
 

OrionzRevenge

New member
Joined
Jun 9, 2009
Messages
82
MBTI Type
INTP
I like this idea a lot. I came up with something similar when I was little. The problem I always encountered was that the opposite magnet would always throw the other one completely away as soon as they weren't being held together, and I couldn't figure out how to design something that would allow one to push the other away a little, without giving it enough room to be pushed away far enough to fall to the ground affected by gravity.

The solution that is employed quite often is to have the base or the floater constructed of a varible electro-magnet. You may have seen such novelty items a a globe with a small magnet under the north pole that floats freely in the concavity of a crescent shaped frame. you can reach over and gently spin the globe and it keeps going a very long time just floating in space.In the top of the crescent is an electro-magnet (coils of wire wrapped around a metal center. The exact voltage needed to create just enough pull is regulated by an IC circuit that gets feed-back from sensors along the inner curve.

The economic issue is that to levitate a substantial weight requires substantial electricity, and the key technology that can make it cost effective is high temperature super-conductivity. High Temperature meaning room temperature.

When electrons pass through a wire at normal temperatures the thermodynamic vibration of the atoms eat away at your lot of electrons and start vibrating faster (getting hot) this makes the loss worse and can light your bulbs. However, the power or battery company expects you to pay for those electrons. Yet when you get near absolute zero (0K) or minus 476 degrees C, the electrons pass unimpeded through the wire like throwing a baseball in outer space. No loss of electrons, no power bill. Labs around the world are working on alchemical compounds that remain SC at higher and higher temps. But the philosopher's stone remains to be found.
 

FC3S

New member
Joined
May 17, 2009
Messages
371
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
666
I hate to play the card but, you know...

FlyingDeLorean.jpg
 

Antimony

You're fired. Lol.
Joined
Jun 11, 2009
Messages
3,428
MBTI Type
ESTP
Enneagram
8w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I am starting to feel rather unoriginal. It is rather deppressing to see my ingenuity diminished like this.
 

Antimony

You're fired. Lol.
Joined
Jun 11, 2009
Messages
3,428
MBTI Type
ESTP
Enneagram
8w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Aghhh, my inventive heart!
 

OrionzRevenge

New member
Joined
Jun 9, 2009
Messages
82
MBTI Type
INTP
[YOUTUBE="Y6LdXIkRJRE"]Not floating, but a nice example anyway.[/YOUTUBE]
I once pondered a novelty (Spencers type) based on this sort of Induction at a distance. Having a little snow globe sitting in a base with lights and fountain inside. You could pick up the globe and all stopped

Under the plywood table in the video is a coil similar to the one below the light. Passing AC current through the coil unseen produces fluctuating lines of magnetic flux that 'Induces' a voltage in the lamp's coil above.

Aghhh, my inventive heart!

Hey, no need to feel crestfallen about someone else connecting dots before you. How many people play with magnets and think nothing?
 

Antimony

You're fired. Lol.
Joined
Jun 11, 2009
Messages
3,428
MBTI Type
ESTP
Enneagram
8w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Hey, no need to feel crestfallen about someone else connecting dots before you. How many people play with magnets and think nothing?

I know. I will live. I will just figure out something completely amazing.
 

Shimmy

New member
Joined
Jun 9, 2009
Messages
1,867
MBTI Type
SEXY
I wanted to do a high school project on induction powered trains. But the school wouldn't help me get/pay supplies to actually build one (a scalemodel, not full sized, mind you ).
 

Antimony

You're fired. Lol.
Joined
Jun 11, 2009
Messages
3,428
MBTI Type
ESTP
Enneagram
8w7
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Really? You should put your idea into action now! That would be really great.

I think a wealth of knowledge can be found on this forum, it seems.
 

yenom

Alexander the Terrible
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
1,755
nike-just-do-it.jpg


I have a more insane idea than you but i am not going to disclose it here. :)
 

OrionzRevenge

New member
Joined
Jun 9, 2009
Messages
82
MBTI Type
INTP
I posted this over at the other site today.

I once made a Spencers type novelty that would be an Acid Dropper's Dream. It used the phenomenon of Birefringence (The same optical physics that causes rainbows to appear from a few drops of motor oil in a mud puddle).
I filled a one liter round bottom flask with mineral oil and clear plastic confetti made from cigarette pack wrapper acetate. Then I corked the top with a DC motor wrapped in duct tape to size that had a small length of wire crazy glued to the motor shaft to act as a whip stirrer. Then I inverted the Flask in a make-shift stew can base and wired the motor to a 3VDC power pack and plugged it in. I then sat this 'Orb' in front of a photographers light box sat on end (Think doctors looking at X-Rays) with a sheet of polarized film from Edmund Scientific taped to the front of the box.
In operation, you would just see a glass orb with the clear confetti whirling about in a clear liquid. However, if you put on a pair of polarized sun glasses the confetti became brightly colored. The color depending upon how many layers of confetti the light passed. One layer being a Royal Blue. every color of the rainbow could be had as the spectrum repeats as the layers add up.
 
Top