Flying car....

[Goosemaster]

While I am in here I will field this question:


While magnetism in metal is prevalent, is it not possible to use a controlled amount of negative charge to make a magnet any substance?

I ask this because I once saw a documentray on the Histroy channel that mentioned a US project in the early 20th centrury to create Uranium 235. THat number is probably not correct.. I am referring to the process of making available uranium weapons-grade.

Somewhere they mentioned that early attempts with massive magnets had failed to produce a suffiecient amount, but they had found that with these huge magnets and the elctrical powerhouses that powered them, seemingly unmagnetic items could be attracted and repeled. Basically, a suffiecient change between a particle's charge and that of the magnet, if created, could possibly repel any desired substance.


So taking this information, and say, with enough energy, could you create a universal magnet?
In addition, with the advent of controlled hydrogen-based energy, could you easily power this beast?

Finally, what are the possibilities of applying this to transportation?
Could you pheasibly create a portable super-magnet that would operate at regular variable temperatures?
(superconductors eeems to only like the cold:roll


Obviously many problems can occur, such as the computation power htat will be needed to filter out particles that need to be repelled?...repelling the 'ground' isn't realistic?


Thanks.

I have been pondering this one for years.

 

[Jeff7]

I did see on TV once a live frog being suspended by a powerful magnetic field. Don't know much about it though.

Main problem I see with putting this technology into cars would be producing enough power. Current power technology still makes it a little impractical to produce a car powered purely by electricity; now imagine trying to store/generate enough power to put out a super-powerful magnetic field. Maybe an antimatter reactor? Right now, antimatter is unbelievably expensive to produce, and storing it is difficult as well.
The one other problem I see - one of the last things that the average person needs is a FLYING car. Too many are dangerous when confined to 2 dimensional travel on the ground; making them responsible for a car that can move across all 3 dimensions is scary.

 

[Shalmanese]

It would not be worth it. The amout of power you would need to supply would make them far more inefficiant that your normal wheeled versions.

 

[jarfykk]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster
While I am in here I will field this question:


I ask this because I once saw a documentray on the Histroy channel that mentioned a US project in the early 20th centrury to create Uranium 235. THat number is probably not correct.

It is U238, weapon's grade/enriched Uranium. Good times.

 

[dkozloski]

The enrichment plants using magnetic deflection coils required so much power to operate that they were built near large hydrelectric projects on the Columbia River and the Tennessee Valley. I read that after they had used up enough power to operate a moderate sized city they had about a pinhead sized U238 sample to show for it. At this point it was obvious thet the gaseous diffusion system was going to be the way to go until the ultra centrifuge came online.

 

[PowerEngineer]

I didn't see the documentary you're referring to, but I'm sure they weren't using the giant magnets to "create" uranium 235.

Uranium is found in two isotopes: 235 and 238, 235 being much more prevelent (>99% I believe). In order to build a bomb with uranium, you need to have a much higher than natural percentage of the 238 isotope. One way to attempt this is to ionize the uranium atoms and then pass them through a strong magnetic field. Because they are charged particles, the magnetic field will apply a force to them that is perpedicular to both their direction and the magnetic field, causing them to arc away from their straight-line path. Of course, the heavier 238 isotope will tend to stray less because of their slightly heavier atomic mass. So theoretically the uranium atoms collected close to the straight-line path should have a higher concentration of the heavier 238 isotope. And repeating this process should incrementally increase the concentration further. Anyway, I believe that was the theory.

Objects become magnets (i.e. magnetized) when the magnetic dipoles of their atoms become aligned in the same direction. Of course, one thing that can cause this to happen is a strong magnetic field. As an example, the screwdriver or scissors that become magnetic when left in contact with a magnet. And (although I wouldn't knwo why you'd do this) I suppose you could make a frog magnetic too. However, most things (particularly frogs!) loose their magnetism almost immediately after the external magnetic field is removed. Those magnetic dipoles lose their common direction and go back to being random.

 

[dkozloski]

PowerEngineer, the U235/U238 mixture was placed in a sort of particle accelerator and formed into a beam sent through an intense magnetic field. The heavier U238 molecules were not deflectd as far as the U235 and thus hit and were collected at a different target. The process was so inefficient that hundreds of millions were spent collecting less than required to make one bomb but it did work as theorized. Iraq was still trying this method and some of the devices were seen being hauled around on trucks after the Gulf War.

 

[alankool]

Since were talking about antimatter I have a question
Ok, I searched on google and found this site Antimatter site which explains what antimatter is and so on. The only problem I don't understand is what is a antineutron? This is how I understand it. Lets represent an electron as -1 a proton as +1 or just 1 and a neutron as 0. The opposite of an electron (-1) is represented as 1. the opposite of a proton (1) is -1. but with a neutron which is zero I don't get, 0 doesn't have an opposite or does it. Does anyone have any ideas because I don't have a clue.