Saturday, January 9, 2016

experimental physics - Does a magnetically suspended frog feel weightless?


Magnetic levitation has been used to suspend frogs in midair. I was wondering: Does the animal still feel gravitational pull? I mean: Does the frog feel like an astronaut on the ISS, or does he feel like a trapeze artist suspended by a harness?



Answer



You would feel weightless if every part of your body of mass $m$ would be subject to an upward force equal to $m$ times the local gravitational acceleration $g$. Such an exact part-by-part cancellation is not going to happen via diamagnetic levitation as utilized on the frog in your example. Not only does this levitation couple according to magnetic susceptibility, and not to mass, but more importantly, such levitation relies on inhomogeneous magnetic fields. This means that one or more (central) parts of the frog get pulled up more strongly than other parts.


My guess is that the frog feels less weight but strangely suspended by its stomach.


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