All your science in here

Good chance it’s always been out there breaking down natural resins and suchlike in obscure habitats, such things could go unnoticed if it wasn’t for humans creating novel habitats in abundance. Fungi have been doing it for as long as there have been plastics - witness the black mold that grows in the shower, and there’s even a species of toadstool which to date is only known from bitumen-impregnated railway sleepers - it probably evolved to take advantage of wood part-buried in tar-pits, and simply managed to spread. Where there are hydrocarbons, there are things eating them.

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I’m fairly sure Stronzetto emits spores that are quite unique. It would be nice if he had a shower but he calls it the ‘crying wall’ and gets in a terrible funk.

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I don’t know… I wonder if there’s a strain that has self-extinguishing properties?

You know - in case of defective speakers…:grin:

So there’s rotten egg gas around Uranus…

Who knew

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@Jim could have saved them a load of time, energy and money :roll_eyes:

If you choose an appropriate frame of reference you can do away with magnetism (at least all the magnetism that doesn’t arise from the inherent magnetic moments of subatomic particles, I think) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetism#Magnetism,_electricity,_and_special_relativity. So, in a sense, there’s no such thing as magnetism. It’s just relativistic electricity.

I don’t think you can do away with clowns though.

Watching a strong magnet fall oh-so-slowly down through a copper pipe is impressive the first time you see it.

VB

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That’s obviously that new magnetic copper stuff

Not even in a different frame of reference :wink:.

VB

This makes my brane itch.

I’d ask for an explanation, but I won’t understand it.

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The slow-falling magnet thing goes:

Moving magnet generates electric field (electromagnetic induction, like a bike dynamo)

Electric field drives current in the copper (assuming there is copper nearby)

Current in the copper makes another magnetic field (i.e. it’s an electromagnet)

This second magnetic field acts back on the falling magnet, slowing it down (like a bar magnet would if only we were clever enough to put the bar magnet in exactly the right place).

The current also heats up the copper, the energy required to do that being the kinetic energy that the falling magnet would have acquired if the copper tube hadn’t slowed it down.

As for why there’s no such thing as magnetism … that’s relativity, so harder (but it’s only special relativity, so not as hard as it could have been).

VB

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Thank-you, now I have drool in my beard…

Copper is diamagnetic.

Magnetic properties aren’t one thing, most people are only familiar with ferromagnetism.

So let me get this right, if I put a super powerful magnet under my speaker cables I can do away with the lifters… :thinking:

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People from Lincolnshire can do Faraday’s left and right hand rules with one hand

Yup, like water. Diamagnetic stuff is repelled out of regions of strong magnetic field and so it can be levitated if you can make the field strong enough. Frog is mostly water. Here is some frog inside a very, very strong electromagnet

Count yourself lucky (see above). I think the frog seemed to survive fine. Unfortunately they couldn’t ask it what it felt like. I imagine it might be a bit of a bugger if you’ve got metal tooth fillings (magnets induce electricity).

VB

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If you wave it about fast enough you can do away (but not in a good way) with the output transistors in your amp too.

VB

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None installed by the badgers…

Oops !

VB

There’ll be some frogs in there tonight though… :grinning:

It is great when scientific breakthroughs filter down to real world life improving applications.

At last the best use of Graphene