Comment on The box that Doom comes in will play Doom
papalonian@lemmy.world 1 week agoIt is done entirely with magnets.
There’s a few ways it can be arranged, but typically, there will be a large, powerful magnet in the base, a small magnet at the bottom of the floating object that is attracted to the big magnet (to keep the object upright), and a series of other magnets around the object that are repelled by the big magnet (to make it float).
I’ve seen some that use a secondary “key” magnet on the base and object that is the opposite polarity of the base magnet, that forces the object to sit in a specific orientation. Otherwise, the object can just kind of freely spin/float, so long as the bottom magnet stays pointing down.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
That sounds cool af and difficult to get a system in balance like that. Do you know of any videos anywhere where someone has magnets like that set up?
papalonian@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I don’t know of any videos, but the concept seems to have gotten pretty popular in the last year or two. I’m in the 3D printing community, and there’s pretty frequently a “magic floating <whatever>” in the “popular” section.
I assume the most difficult part would be determining what size magnets to use to achieve the desired float height. The rest should (in theory) be relatively simple; the magnets’ natural characteristics do all the hard work.