Geniuses tend to know quite a bit, and, as most of us have learned, “knowledge is power”. So, as one might expect, these luminaries make up a pretty powerful, albeit, relatively sparsely populated, group of problem solvers. Interestingly, as it turns out, all of that horsepower can sometimes be an impediment to discovery. One particular problem exemplifies this rather nicely and is stated thus: Using ordinary permanent magnets, how do you stably levitate one such magnet above another? Anyone who’s had even a modicum of interest in the peculiar behavior of magnets has tried this repeatedly, perhaps even obsessively, only to become frustrated as the would-be floater, without fail, flipped over and slammed into the intended supporting magnet, polar north against polar south. It is a problem whose solution most in the scientific realm would now characterize as “relatively simple”; yet, remarkably, no one–not even the scientists–were up to the task. Perhaps the scientists can be forgiven. After all, they'd entered a state of suspended curiosity. They’d learned that a theorem of renowned nineteenth century mathematician Samuel Earnshaw prohibited the arrangement of permanent magnets in such a way that a magnet of that arrangement could be held in static levitation entirely through the effect of that arrangement. Ever since, physicists had been of the mind that any attempt to produce levitation with permanent magnets merely served as testament to one’s scientific illiteracy. Then, in 1983, inventor and ostensible member of the American Society for the Scientifically Illiterate, Roy M. Harrigan, patented what was to become known as the first spin-stabilized magnetic levitation device, employing permanent magnets and nothing else of consequence. His invention, an elegant display of eye-popping, fantasy-feeding flight, is now the popular levitating spinning top device known as the Levitron®. Now, before you release your inner cynic and note that the likelihood of such a discovery occurring in the dimly lit outskirts of academia is tantamount to finding a particular grain of sand in the Sahara, know that lightning struck twice with this very discovery. In 1984, a college drop-out named Joseph Chieffo, who was unaware of Harrigan’s patented (but little known) air-borne revelation, also discovered spin-stabilized magnetic levitation.
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| The Levitron® - Courtesy of img finder |
