Noob with some questions on Modeling Earth

  • Context: High School 
  • Thread starter Thread starter cbeckelhymer
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Earth Modeling Noob
Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around modeling the Earth and the behavior of magnetic fields in relation to spinning spheres and inert gases. Participants explore experimental ideas and theoretical implications of creating a magnetic sphere in a vacuum environment, particularly focusing on the effects of rotation and the interaction with inert gases.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • One participant expresses interest in conducting experiments with a solid sphere that has magnetic poles, questioning if it can be set up in a vacuum with inert gases while spinning at various RPMs.
  • Another participant suggests that nothing special will happen unless the sphere is placed in a suitable magnetic field, indicating that the concept of a spherical magnet is not inherently unique.
  • A participant raises curiosity about how the spinning of a dense sphere with magnetic poles might affect inert gases and speculates on potential connections to planetary formation and gravity.
  • Some participants argue that the behavior of magnetic fields is well understood, suggesting that the proposed experiments may not yield new insights.
  • There is a discussion about the alignment of Earth's magnetic poles and the complexity of Earth's magnetic field generation, with some participants asserting that the outcomes of such experiments can be predicted without direct experimentation.
  • One participant challenges the notion that the effects of spinning magnets in gas are fully understood, citing past experiments as evidence that further exploration could be valuable.
  • Another participant mentions having conducted similar experiments and emphasizes that while the outcomes may seem predictable, the inquiry into the effects of inert gases remains open to exploration.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the value and potential outcomes of the proposed experiments. While some believe that the effects of spinning magnets are well understood and predictable, others argue for the merit of further investigation and question the completeness of existing knowledge.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference past experiments and existing literature, but there is no consensus on the necessity or potential novelty of the proposed experimental setup. The discussion highlights the complexity of magnetic fields and the behavior of gases in relation to spinning objects, with various assumptions and conditions influencing the arguments presented.

cbeckelhymer
Messages
17
Reaction score
1
as i mentioned I am a huge noob in the reals of math and physics, but if anyone can explain things to me as a noob that would be awesome.

magnetism had always fascinated me so i think that's where i want to dive into.

i am curious about experiments or ideas on a model of the earth, and inert gases. i want to know if its possible to get a solid sphere to have magnetic poles like the Earth has. then if it can be set up in a vacuum lab setting except for a substantial amount of inert gas, then have the sphere spinning on its axis at different rpm's and see what happens.

maybe at the start, just have He gas and do a wide range of rpm's, from slow to super fast

then later add in other inert gases. anyways i would love to know what might happen or how i could do this experiment.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Nothing special will happen. If you put the spinning sphere in a suitable magnetic field, you can levitate it, otherwise you have to suspend it in a different way.
 
yes I am sure you have to suspend it, but I am not asking about having a sphere in a magnetic field, I am asking to make a sphere that is magnetic with N and S polar ends like the earth. thanks for the link, i will check it out!
 
Every permanent magnet in spherical shape is a sphere with two magnetic poles. There is nothing special about the spherical shape either.

I just suggested the external field to levitate this permanent magnet. That is the only somewhat interesting application I see.
 
what i want to know is if the spinning of a dense sphere with magnetic poles and field in the presence of at first inert gas if they will react and be drawn towards the sphere. with a regular magnet on a flat surface you can see the field lines with metal shavings. but if its spherical and not 2 dimensional, and spinning how will the lines behave? how will this affect inert gas? how will it affect polarized gas? i guess you don't really see what I am curious about, although i think jedishrfu is understanding what i asked about. maybe this can show how saturns rings form, or how our planet attracted gas from the early forming solar system, or maybe it can show the gravity is somehow connected to super high rpms of a sphereical electromagnet.

no need to insult me.
 
jedishrfu said:
Welcome to PF!

Have you done a google search to see what you could learn? There may be Youtube videos on magnetism and this very experiment.

I found this article on NPR about real world experiments similar to what you've described:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90947943
i read the article its from 2008, do you know if there is anything about his results?
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: sophiecentaur
cbeckelhymer said:
no need to insult me.
Where do you see an insult?

If the magnetic field is rotating aligned with its axis, the rotation does not change the magnetic field. You get a little bit of diamagnetism in your gas. If the axes are not aligned, you get a time-dependent magnetic field, again with a completely negligible impact on the slightly diamagnetic gas.
cbeckelhymer said:
maybe this can show how saturns rings form, or how our planet attracted gas from the early forming solar system, or maybe it can show the gravity is somehow connected to super high rpms of a sphereical electromagnet.
No, not at all, and wild speculation doesn't help.
 
so you have already done this experiment or you think nothing will happen? even if i was a PhD in all the fields of physics does that mean i stop asking questions?

if these experiments have been done can you please link me the info so i can read about it instead of getting your dead end answers.

are our poles aligned? do our magnetic field lines stay perfectly parallel from pole to pole? what about how our poles migrate and flip?
 
  • #10
Presently, magnetic fields are very well understood by physicists and engineers. There really isn't much to gain from this kind of unfocused experiment. Perhaps you long for the days of Faraday or Ampere when there was a lot to discover by simply observing phenomena. But those days are mostly over, at least for classical magnetism. We already know what will happen when you spin a magnet.

I do not mean to denigrate the work of earlier scientists. Just that the frontier has moved. And so we don't bother to run certain experiments anymore except for educational purposes. And we tend to pick educational experiments where we already know something interesting is going to happen. Because what's the point in running an educational experiment where nothing happens?
 
  • #11
ok then why on the first link about a Professor of Physics at the university of maryland was attempting some of what I am asking about in 2008?

and if you and so many others know what happen when you spin a magnet can you direct me to where i can read about it? maybe a youtube vid?
 
  • #12
cbeckelhymer said:
so you have already done this experiment or you think nothing will happen?
You don't have to check if every apple falls down. We have seen enough to be quite confident that it will.
Same with your experiment. Magnetism and inert gases are understood well enough to predict the result without actually trying.

cbeckelhymer said:
are our poles aligned? do our magnetic field lines stay perfectly parallel from pole to pole? what about how our poles migrate and flip?
Earth is not a simple magnet. The creation of magnetic field in the molten core is a fairly complicated process, but Earth's atmosphere has no effect on it.
 
  • #13
yeah and gravity is still a theory...special relativity is still a theory...yes plenty of math to back it up but they are still theories. if you don't want to help me out with links to the experiments and research that has been done then why reply?

you act as if i want to play with marble size magnets and spin then on a potters wheel. and no you don't know what will happen to inert gas in a vacuum with a large dense sphere traveling at super high speeds that has a magnetic field...you don't know so stop acting like you do. the first response showed that a Dr in Physics who works at the University of Maryland was trying an idea similar to what I am asking about in 2008...that doesn't sound like its that well understood and known about for YEARS.

dont be a jerk, show me where all this has been documented and researched or don't reply with your know it all attitude please
 
  • #15
cbeckelhymer said:
so you have already done this experiment or you think nothing will happen?
I have spun permanent magnets in gas, with and without levitation. But that is not the point. As @SlowThinker mentioned already: To predict that an apple will fall down you do not have to check every apple ever grown. After you observed a few thousand you can be reasonably sure that all regular apples will fall down in the same way all others did.

You can google "magnetic levitation", "levitron", "levitation toy" or similar things if you want to see videos of spinning magnets, but you can also get a magnet yourself and spin it.
cbeckelhymer said:
even if i was a PhD in all the fields of physics does that mean i stop asking questions?
Don't stop asking questions. Asking questions is great! But asking questions only makes sense if you are interested in the answers. Sometimes the answer is just "nothing will happen", and no matter how much you dislike the answer - that is the universe we live in.
cbeckelhymer said:
ok then why on the first link about a Professor of Physics at the university of maryland was attempting some of what I am asking about in 2008?
He did not try what you described. He studied how a rotating sphere of molten metal can generate a magnetic field. That is completely different from the question you asked.
cbeckelhymer said:
yeah and gravity is still a theory
A scientific theory is the best we can ever get, and it has nothing to do with the way the word is sometimes used in everyday language. What does "still a theory" mean?
cbeckelhymer said:
and no you don't know what will happen to inert gas in a vacuum with a large dense sphere traveling at super high speeds that has a magnetic field
I do know what will happen: Nothing special. The reaction to gas particles to magnetic fields is incredibly well-studied, and the Maxwell equations have been tested in countless experiments with incredible precision. An apple falling up would have been noted hundred years ago.

https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.24.418
http://chemistrynotmystery.blogspot.de/2014/09/why-is-o2-paramagnetic-while-n2.html
http://www.periodictable.com/Properties/A/MagneticType.html

And here are some more recent research papers: This is the level of current studies.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1006.5179
https://arxiv.org/abs/1006.4705
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3719/19/36/016
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01691749
 
  • #16
hopefully more helpful people can respond...another thing i was thinking, so you have a magnetic sphere, you drop lots of metal fillings on it, then spin the sphere on its axis. do the shavings come off? do they show the magnetic lines? do they bend?
 
  • #17
Your original post asked for a solid sphere. The experiment in the response is using a molten metal sphere to try to understand the dynamo effect, which is the source of the Earth's magnetic field. There is a big difference. Usually, when scientists run an experiment, they have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen, but they want to test the details. Perhaps, see if the theory matches very well or if there are small deviations. They don't just run something and see what happens.

It's not useful for you to read current experiments before you learn the basic textbook stuff. That's why people aren't just giving you links to papers. Really, all that is for is to quiet you down. But it's better for you to rethink how you learn. The subject you need to learn about is electromagnetism. You seem to distrust theories. But theories our our best interpretation of a large number of experimental results.
 
  • #18
cbeckelhymer said:
hopefully more helpful people can respond...another thing i was thinking, so you have a magnetic sphere, you drop lots of metal fillings on it, then spin the sphere on its axis. do the shavings come off? do they show the magnetic lines? do they bend?
If you spin it slowly (or don't spin it), they will just stick to the surface of the sphere, especially close to the poles. If you spin it fast enough, centrifugal force will win and they will be flung away and hit the walls. If the walls are close enough they might get attracted by the sphere again, fly to it and get accelerated again, only to be flung away again.
 
  • #19
cbeckelhymer said:
no need to insult me.
By the risk to insult you: You know, that we do not allow web-talk and require the use of capital letters whenever indicated?
 
  • #20
cbeckelhymer said:
hopefully more helpful people can respond...another thing i was thinking, so you have a magnetic sphere, you drop lots of metal fillings on it, then spin the sphere on its axis. do the shavings come off? do they show the magnetic lines? do they bend?

Please be kinder here. There are a lot of people helping a lot more than is necessary for this kind of question. You have questions that even you yourself can't answer and yet you expect us to dumb it down so that you can understand and then when you still don't understand you just can't say we are not being helpful.

Changing gears, with respect to the baby Earth research,of Prof Lathrop apparently it's still ongoing. Here's a more recent article from 2016. You might have to contact him or seek out his webpage if any describing his research and its status.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/spinning-core
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Borg
  • #21
i actually emailed him yesterday after reading the link you added.

so mfb...i apologize I am so elementary, retarded, asinine, moronic and all together worthless for even thinking to have the audacity to think let alone ask questions. so it makes me wonder, why then did you do the exact same experiment i asked about? if I am so below the intelligence of the dumbest human being on record then why would you have done this experiment, especially considering that you stated everyone knows everything about all of this, why would you have to go and do it?

after that can you please tell me how large your sphere was? how fast did you spin it? what was the purpose of this? some basic lab experimenter for class? or what? why did you do it? what was it for? what level was it for? i know I am such a worthless moron but i can't see an undergrad doing this, but I am probably wrong, I am sure middle school students do this regularly all the time and I am so dumb i ask about it, so dumb in fact i haven't even asked why apples fall
 
  • #22
reading the update on Lathrops experiment...wow who would have guessed they found out things they didnt expect?!? NOOOO WAYYYYY i thought everything about everything was already known and scientists don't just do experiments to see what will happen, that dang was done and over with in the 1600's duhhh

but I am glad i found this site, now i can be shown the light and be put in my place by the Gods of intelligence. since you guys have pointed out that anything and everything about everything has been figured out there is no need for me to be curious or interested in anything. and not just me but everyone, which makes me think (please forgive me for thinking), if you guys are so sure that everything in the universe is known and has been figured out, why do experiments? why teach physics? what's the point if you guys are the rulers of supreme intelligence? scrap it so know one else wastes their time trying to learn what you guys have already figured out, and since all of it is soooooo elementary to you guys then why waste your time trying to explain it to anyone else?

i know I am sooooo moronic and dumb as dang and twice as stupid, but i still think that gravity and magnetism are connected, I am sure you guys have already figured that out...well i will try to do work on my own and then foolishly post my ideas on here so i can feel the wrath of the Gods of Supreme Intellect.
 
  • #23
cbeckelhymer said:
yeah and gravity is still a theory...special relativity is still a theory...yes plenty of math to back it up but they are still theories. if you don't want to help me out with links to the experiments and research that has been done then why reply?
This thread has gone downhill, but I got to just pop in and say I don't understand this attitude. Isn't learning what is already known and understood so you can avoid doing a useless experiment better than wasting your time doing a useless experiment? You should be thanking these guys for the great help they have given, not getting mad that the answers aren't what you hoped for! Learning is a good thing! It's your goal! I don't get getting mad about achieving your goal faster and easier.
 
Last edited:
  • #24
no you have it incorrect. they assume what I am wondering about then telling me its dumb then go on and say they did the experiment. if my idea is dumb then why did they do the experiment? if I am so dumb then why is Lathrop doing an experiment and finding NEW discoveries? yes you do the math you come to some hypothesis of what to expect, and then how the hell are new discoveries made?

i came in thinking and hoping to get some insight but instead i mostly have received this arrogant attitude that I am an worthless idiot who has no right to think i can think.

why did mfb do the experiment? what was he looking for? if what he was looking for has already been figured out loooooong ago and is soooo elementary that EVERYONE in the world with an IQ more than mine already knows, then why did he do it? what help have the given me? really i have yet to see any help.

what you are saying is that since they replied and told me what I am asking about is dumb ass dang, i should thank them?

yes if i was infinitely wealthy i would have a lab and hire you Gods of Intellect to help me. I am sure lots would say no cause its already been done and getting a large paycheck from an idiot wouldn't be worth it.no back to more ideas

trying to figure something out if anyone can actually drop down to a 3rd grade level for me

what is the Tesla strength of the Earth at the pole, and the Sun if you can. i don't care if its been done or how easy it is for you, if you don't want to help then don't ok? like I am forcing you at gun point.

im interested in the right hand rule model of an infinitely long wire. but instead of a wire, use the pole of the earth, and then sun. i need your minds to help me find out not the Tesla strength for the Earth and the sun, so i can solve for I. thanks to men like you the magnetic constant has already been figured out, same with pi...sweet

why am i doing this? well I am sure you already know its been done a million times since the beginning of time

oh and one more thing please...whats the equation of how the strength of the magnetic field diminishes further away from the source...i need that later thanks
 
  • #26
cbeckelhymer said:
why did mfb do the experiment?
Levitating spinning tops are nice toys. No new physics, just toys.

There is no point in continuing this thread, it will stay closed.
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: davenn

Similar threads

High School Can frame dragging do this?
  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
877
High School Problems with modelling the vertical motion of a dust particle
  • · Replies 15 ·
Replies
15
Views
2K
High School A flip of the Earth on its axis
  • · Replies 32 ·
2
Replies
32
Views
6K
Graduate Simple math model for a Particle Image Velocimetry system
  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
1K
High School How the Earth's Magnetic field deflects the solar wind
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
3K
High School Can a hypothetical atom be made out of positrons and electrons ?
  • · Replies 9 ·
Replies
9
Views
3K
High School A contradiction of the equivalence principle?
  • · Replies 99 ·
4
Replies
99
Views
6K
High School Is Photon Rotation Key to Solar Wind and Earth's Orbit Stability?
  • · Replies 3 ·
Replies
3
Views
2K
High School Some website about new Bohr model
  • · Replies 3 ·
Replies
3
Views
2K
High School How do physicists know that the past is immutable?
  • · Replies 4 ·
Replies
4
Views
2K