It is widely known that heating of a magnet will degrade its magnetic field.
In looking into this I did a few very simple experiments.
Firstly I magnetized the tip of a stainless steel knife and tested its new magnetic strength.
Next I heated the tip of the knife under a flame then immediately exposed it to a neo field. Not surprisingly the steel absorbed much more of the field while cooling in contact with a strong field.
Electric current is pretty much the rate of change of a magnetic field so I guessed using steel in combination with a coil and heat could produce current.
Next I made a coil from wrapping copper coated steel wire (coax core wire) around a screw driver shaft that was the same size as my neos.
I ended up with about a 3 inch long air core coil.
On one end of the coil I inserted a neo and the same on the other side (+ns-space-ns-).
I hooked the coil output to a multimeter and proceeded to heat the center of the coil. 
I only got around 10 micro amps and very little voltage and nothing without the magnets (surprise!).
Turns out this method of changing the field with heat is pretty inefficient, but its food for thought!

Any pointers to similar experiments done would be appreciated, but other than that I gave up on these experiments due to lack of output energy.     

Hello,

I are probable aware of Nikola Tesla's experiments on this field that he described in one of his patents, US 396121, see this link to a free download: http://www.pat2pdf.org/  and copy and past the 396121 into it.

I am not sure how much electric output energy he received. He used magnetized iron that has a Curie point of arounf  700 degree C and he cooled it below this temperature with steam as I read somewhere... 
The rate of flux change (that defines induced voltage/current) totally depends on how fast you can heat up the magnet to the Curie temperature and suddenly cool it down to regain magnetism.

Nowadays lab experiments seem to utilize so called giant magnetocaloric effects at room temperatures.  There are certain rare earth materials that behave rather unusually like gadolinium: it heats up when placed in a magnetic field and cools when the field is removed.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329661355-117422,00.html
http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/Current/Projects/28484.pdf

rgds,  Gyula

From http://technology.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329661355-117422,00.html :

"A cool new idea from British scientists: the magnetic fridge"

Now the British claim the idea?

There was a great deal of research being done on this by the US and other countries some decades ago. The info trail dried up on the US work after reports of anomolous light effects and temperature drops of 13 degrees C around the test units. I suppose we Americans did the usual - not good enough? TURN UP THE POWER! 

Still, wouldn't it be great if we could buy these materials by the pound at the hardware store?
Makes me wonder if 'cold electricity' is related.

I am glad to see you have learned something

Quote from: 0ne on May 28, 2008, 07:18:42 AM
I am glad to see you have learned something

I hope so! What's da point if not?