Lab Experiment
In physics education a simple experimental configuration is sometime used to illustrate Lenz's law. When a magnet is dropped down a conducting pipe, eddy currents are induced in the pipe, and these retard the decent of the magnet. As one set of authors explained
- If one views the magnet as an assembly of circulating atomic currents moving through the pipe, Lenz’s law implies that the induced eddies in the pipe wall counter circulate ahead of the moving magnet and co-circulate behind it. But this implies that the moving magnet is repelled in front and attracted in rear, hence acted upon by a retarding force.
Laboratory work ranges from comparison of time-of-fall with a magnet in a cardboard tube, to oscilloscope reading of current in a loop wound around the pipe, to use of multiple magnets.
Read more about this topic: Eddy Current Brake
Famous quotes containing the word experiment:
“The man who invented Eskimo Pie made a million dollars, so one is told, but E.E. Cummings, whose verse has been appearing off and on for three years now, and whose experiments should not be more appalling to those interested in poetry than the experiment of surrounding ice-cream with a layer of chocolate was to those interested in soda fountains, has hardly made a dent in the doughy minds of our so-called poetry lovers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)