Kitchen-Top Science – Eddy Current Braking

Real science does not necessarily need a fully equipped laboratory and/or extremebudgets. An intelligent experimental design can reduce costs dramatically.Where I have bought something specifically for this experimental work I have said howmuch it cost and exactly what it was. his is for the sake of reproducibility anddefiniteness! but should not be taken as an endorsement of the item or vendor chosen.

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Kitchen-Top Setup

#ote the $%& child's school set square used to set the slope of the (erspex sheet to adefinite angle.

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It is also important to note that I have not been paid for any product placement or indeed for anything else related to this work.

Leslie Green CEng MIEE1 of 17Dec 2014

 

Materials Testing 

In order to test different materials you have to have different materials) Also! cutting sheetmetal whilst keeping it flat is not easy by hand. I therefore ordered some "**mm x "**mmsquares from a supplier off the internet for whom this is a standard si+e.

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 Aluminium "*%*-".,mmrass 01"*2-".,mm0opper 0"*3-".,mm4tainless 4teel 5"3 -*.6mm he material grades are 7ust what the supplier offered and were not chosen specifically.he stainless steel was an after thought! costing me extra shipping fees



. hree gradesof stainless were chosen! but the only common si+e was *.6mm. As it turns out only the5"3 sample was suitable and that

was

 available in ".,mm. he best comparison wouldhave been with identical thicknesses! but science has taken a back seat to economics inthis case.It is worth mentioning why the stainless steel samples of $5* and 5*$ were not used.8irstly $5* is a magnetic grade of stainless steel. $5* is unsuitable for these tests becausethe magnet 7ust sticks to it! even when upside down. he 5*$ sample is another matter.5*$! also known as A,! should be non9magnetic and yet at the edges the magnet could 7ust manage to stick to the material enough to prevent sliding. his was not roughness onthe edges! but could be a change of magnetic properties due to the cutting of the sheet.his in itself is interesting from an engineering viewpoint.

Measurement Process

It turns out that my camera

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 has a :super9slow motion; mode so this was chosen as themeasurement method. he camera specification

claims

 ,$* frames per second at <=>A-5,*?,$*. It would be at best incautious to take such a specification at face value. Withimage compression running in real time it is possible that the frame rate depends on theamount of data changing between frames.

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 As a precaution! all movies were taken with astopwatch

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 running in the scene for comparison. his technique eliminates ambiguities of which slow9motion speed the camera was set to! as well as taking into account anyunspecified -undocumented :features; of the recording process.he camera was facing directly down onto the sliding surface! as set by eye. 4ince wedon't want to get variations between the frictional resistances of the surfaces! all testswere done using the same sheet of paper as the sliding surface. Additionally this paper was printed with a series of parallel lines! %mm apart -created in @4 Word! to provideaccurate distance measurements.

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 These were all supplied by www.metalocuts.co.uk. The rst order was for copper, aluminium, mild steel and brass (£!."# inc shipping and ta$%. The second order was for stainless steel grades "&', "! and '"& (£!.' inc shipping and ta$%.

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)anon *ower+hot +#!&-+

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 T

echnical support for the supplier have stated that the frame speed is constant.

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 This seems to be an ownbrand item by /rgos, labelled /01&!& and !!2"

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Leslie Green CEng MIEE2 of 17Dec 2014

 

he ambient lighting level was not adequate for high quality images so a portable %**Wworklight

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 was pro7ected onto the ceiling to give a strong but diffused light.his snapshot was taken from one of the recorded .@= movie files! played on =B0media player ,.".%! and saved using the built9in snapshot facility.

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he magnet is actually two #eodymium super9magnets

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 stuck together using their ownmagnetic attraction -no adhesive needed. his 9shaped arrangement is more stable thana single rectangular magnet on its own. 4ome experimenters use circular magnets rather than rectangular magnets! thereby avoiding the stability issue! but they miss out on someimportant science by doing so. 8or now we will stick with the 9shape to do the materialcomparison and come back to the shape aspect later on.his 9shape raises another interesting point. he experiments presented here are not thefirst version of the experiments. he results of the earlier experiments increasedunderstanding of the phenomena so that better experiments could be devised.

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0obert 3yas own brand, £!4.44

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5ote that using the standard 6indows screenshot method does not work unless you disable hardware acceleration.

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 These were described as ' $ 4 $ mm 5eodymium super magnets when bought from )hoice3I7 via ama8on.co.uk in 9une &!". ' magnets cost £!&.' including shipping and ta$.

Leslie Green CEng MIEE3 of 17Dec 2014