A curious novelty toy.

[rukiddingme]

A curious novelty toy which, like a Levitron, produces a kind of near-illusion of violating the Earnshaw theorem, but doesn't


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyvfDzRLsiU

[TinselKoala]

It's nice to see someone has figured out how to make a little money from what I call the "Nikolayev trailer hitch." This effect or principle or arrangement of magnetic fields to produce this "locked in" balance between attraction and repulsion was described by Nikolayev, a mentor of Stefan Marinov, in an old Russian book I once had access to. I used Nikolayev's drawings to stack together some magnets that produced the same sort of effect, and mounted them on wheels to make a train of cars that could be pulled-pushed along without making contact.
Later, I realised that the same thing could be done with an additional degree of freedom; the system can rotate freely around an axis formed by the stable repulsion-attraction field "valley".

In the configuration used in the "invention" shown in the video above, the use of a bunch of discrete magnets instead of an outer ring magnet causes there to be multiple potential valleys, making it like a gear, with the separate magnet stack resting in between the virtual gearteeth.

Here's an old video where I illustrate the effect using a ring magnet and a cylinder magnet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNaxoKkGTRM

[conradelektro]

Here's an old video where I illustrate the effect using a ring magnet and a cylinder magnet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNaxoKkGTRM

In the video one can see clearly that the experiment only works because that bird or duck is sitting in the background.

The birds or ducks are descendants of the dinosaurs who could bend magnetic fields.

Only a few people realised that birds or ducks can bend magnetic fields as well (but only a little). Nikolayev was one of these very good observers of nature and now TinselKoala has caught on.

Greetings, Conrad

[rensseak]

And is this video also known already?