Information on electromagnets etc and their feasibility for my project

[jimblebee]

Hi all, thought I might post in here.

So.. I have a 3rd year project to complete. I'm designing and building a fully functioning light. I'm thinking of going along an unconventional route to spice things up a bit, however, I need some help with a few things.

The basic idea is to have a triangular prism lamp shade type thing which sits on a base, simple. Then there is another triangular prism lamp shade to sit on the outside of the previous lamp shade.. just slightly bigger. This is easy.. however I want to incorporate some form of electromagnetic device into the base that allows the outer lamp shade (with some form of magnet(s) to levitate when switched on.. and return to it's normal position when switched off. How I go about doing this is somewhat confusing to me. I am a Product Design student and not an electrical engineering student/professional therefore I rely on your help.

Can it be done? I have seen YouTube videos of the magnetic levitation with a hall effect sensor.. This seems complicated to me and seems to require quite a lot of space to implement. Assume I need something reasonably compact, so it could easily fit into a light. I was thinking along the lines of an electromagnet that would simply repel instead of attract? I'm not sure how feasible any of this is but I thought I might as well ask and see.

Thanks in advance!

Jason