Ionized Air Flowing Through A Magnetic Field

[aseylys]

So I'm going to try to explain this as best as I can.

If you have ionized air created by the Ion Air Jet (link below) and it flows through a magnetic field, will the air accelerate?

I'm trying to think if this would have rail-gun/air-gun hybrid attributes. Like as the walls of a device create an oppositely charged field to that of the ionized air, the air should accelerate out creating a faster stream of air than that when it went in. Like in a rail-gun, the magnetic field pushes the metal object out though the path with the least resistance.

Can anyone lend some thoughts?

 

[Simon Bridge]

If you have ionized air created by the Ion Air Jet (link below) and it flows through a magnetic field, will the air accelerate?

Yes - it will change direction due to unbalanced force vxB.

I'm trying to think if this would have rail-gun/air-gun hybrid attributes. [...] accelerate out creating a faster stream of air than that when it went in.

... yep - the effect is used in some particle accelerators - look up "cyclotron".

 

[Nessdude14]

Another common (and quite useful) application of this concept is mass spectrometry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry