His idea was that if you add these magnetic nanoparticles to fuel, you can move it around in zero gravity with a magnetic field. But since then, ferrofluids have been used far and wide. Today, you can find ferrofluids in speakers, hard drives, and skateboards.
But the future of biomedicine is where things get really exciting. Scientists like Thomas Webster, the director of the Nanomedicine Laboratory at Northeastern University, are looking at the ways ferrofluid can kill cancer cells, fight drug-resistant infections, and even help neurons communicate with each other.
Watch the video above to delve into the sci-fi world of ferrofluid — and enjoy some hypnotizing goo along the way. Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week.
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Ferrofluids are used by the military to coat aircraft; this helps them elude radar. Ferrofluid comes to you courtesy of the same folks who brought you Tang and freeze-dried ice cream: NASA scientists!
They came up with the idea in order to confine liquids in space. Watch Ferrofluids in Action! The movies show a ferrofluid in two different situations: Plastic Petri Upsweep. The ferrofluid is in a plastic dish with a slightly convex bottom, so the ferrofluid moves towards the outer edge. As the movie plays, the magnetic field is getting stronger, and the fluid coalesces into smaller and smaller cone-like structures which you see from the top down.
Last modified on 17 March The ferric chloride conversion is clever. Electronics enthusiasts often keep ferric chloride at home to eat away copper which makes a reasonable DIY circuit board. The chemistry involved seems easy enough. Finally, we have what looks like the most DIY approach—acetone to extract the iron particles from old casette tapes.
Obtaining tapes and using acetone is labor intensive, but commendable. Combining two unusual uses of magnetic fluids invites further empowerment for the maker. This French nail polish has magnetic particles that can be triggered into elegant patterns after being applied and before setting up. This magnet attracts the ferrofluid, setting up a density gradient within the liquid and repelling the non-magnetic flakes.
For a large-scale separator, this process requires a strong magnetic field and magnetic nanoparticles that are very stably suspended in the ferrofluid so that they do not rapidly race towards the magnet and sediment out. There is also currently a lack of commercially made ferrofluid for supplying large-scale MDS. Further north, in the Dutch city of Groningen, Fionn Ferreira is working on ways to deal with the tinier scraps of plastic entering our wastewater systems. In , he won the Google Science Fair prize for his concept of extracting microplastics from water using ferrofluids.
Using simple, nonpolar interactions between oil and plastic, he demonstrated that he could simply lift microplastics out of polluted water with a magnet by mixing in a rough-and-ready oil-based ferrofluid. Ferreira wants to replicate this in an industrial process. Working with a Footprint Coalition grant and engineering firm Stress Engineering, Ferreira says he is attempting to optimise his system to make devices that can be used to magnetically remove microplastics in wastewater treatment plants.
Warner leads a coalition of scientists, under the banner Natural Science , developing a device for cleaning up oil spills using magnets. The particles are not small enough to be suspended in a Brownian fashion as in ferrofluids and there are no surfactants — avoiding applying synthetic chemicals to water — yet these fluids can still be guided by a magnetic field. Van der Waals forces are just strong enough to keep hold of the oil, allowing the magnetised fluid to behave in a surprising way.
The system uses a conveyor belt to transport the oil away from the water surface and separate out iron oxide for reuse. The idea was to demonstrate the utility of ferrofluids not as fuels but in non-mechanical pumping systems — in space, the fewer opportunities there are for mechanical parts to break, the better.
As team member Franziska Hild explains, they connected with their small box to move ferrofluids around in tiny pipes using magnetic arrays. Such pumps could be used for long-life cooling or ventilation systems. The wheels are super-precisely produced but are still known to break down after a few years, at great expense.
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