Science Fairs
Through my schooling, there were many occasions when I was required to do science fair projects; although they were required, they were some of the most fun things that I have ever done. Every single project was thought up completely on my own and were based off of projects that I had done the previous year. Every year at my school, I placed in 2nd place or better.
ElectroMagnet
The simplest of all my projects was creating an electromagnet. I decided that I would test and see if the voltage of a battery would affect the strength of the magnetic field produced by the electromagnet. In my experiments, there was a very small difference in strength of the magnetic field produced by the batteries of varying voltage. I successfully won 2nd place in my school's science fair with this project. However, the electromagnet stimulated thought of what I would do in the following year's project.
Diamagnetic Levitation
With a title like that, who wouldn't be impressed. The year after I completed the electromagnet project, I decided that I would build a diamagnetic levitation system. A diamagnetic levitation system works my using a substance that is diamagnetic (I used Bismuth), and magnets(I used Neodymium Iron Boron and ceramic magnets). I then proceeded to test the effect that the various strength magnets would have. I was also curious to see if I could actually make something diamagnetically levitate.
The Diamagnetic Levitation project brought me a great amount of success in the science fair as well. I won 2nd place in my school's science fair and I then brought it down to compete in the regional competition. At the regional competition, the project placed 2nd place. This made me feel very proud of my accomplishment and made me eager to do another project.
Magnetohydrodynamic Boat
The final and most interesting of my science fair projects was my Magnetohydrodynamic boat. I had recently been reading on the internet of this technology that would allow boats to travel through salt water without the use of a moving part. The process that allowed this to happen was magnetohydrodynamics. I was extremely fascinated by this and began coming up with ways which I could build a magnetohydrodynamic boat.
From previous science fair projects, I had some very powerful magnets that I knew I could use in the construction of an MHD boat. So I decided that I will build a boat a little less than a foot long that would show the effects that MHD can have. In my project I used styrofoam for the boats hull due to it's light weight and ability to float. I soldered a 24.5 volt battery pack to provide power.
The boat worked very well overall. I was testing ultimately to see which size pipe would provide more thrust to boat and the smaller one did. The experiment was not only fun to perform, but it taught me soldering skills and that sometimes things that seem simple can take a long time to create. I had to drill holes in the pipe to run a wire inside to the copper. The copper had to be cut in half and molded to fit into the PVC pipe.
I think that here I will explain how the MHD Drive works. In the boat that I created, there was a NdFeB magnet located above and below the PCV pipe. One is buried inside the styrofoam and the other can be seen in the pictures above. There is a 24.5V batter pack located inside the boat and has a wire connecting the positive side down to one half of the copper pipe below and the negative side to the other half of the copper pipe. Now, in order for this process to work correctly, the conducting substance(copper) must not be touching the other conducting substance(view image below) because the salt water must act as a conductor as well. Before the boat is placed in the water, the circuit is open and no current flows through. When the boat is placed in the water, the sodium and chloride ions in the water act as conductors. When they act as conductors, they also become magnetically charged. This allows the circuit to be completed and the sodium and chloride ions to get pushed out the back therefore creating thrust.
This project won me first place at my school's science fair and I was very pleased.