Circle Howard Johnson MagneticGate - Project started

[LaraGeel]

If you have investigated the clip accurately and not with pink glasses you will realize 2 things:

1) the "train" eventually slows down when it reaches the end of the track, it doesn't accelerate
2) after it passed the first gate the repulsion from a second gate would be too strong to let it go through

In short: it doesn't work. I also experimented with magnets myself. Good luck.

True what you say, but also I think there is rail-connection in, that gives a kind of "nak" sounding. The second thing is, it speeds-up, but it's keep rolling even when started at zero-speed. Probably the weight of the wagon builds extra energy, kinetic one. Like a fly-wheel. But if I can rotate the wheel by hand and it will keep running, then it is ok. Adding a fly-wheel builds up extra energy.

BUt I have lot of work on it, and finding extra magnets for the rings.

I have the book of Howard Johnson, I ordered two other DVD's, it's keeping my interest higher and higher. I know that my north pole is sucking in by the squared north magnetic field. BUT, if I use the bigger neodium, I have more problems. a) the strength of it b) the size not fitting in the ?magnetic donot?. Weird explained.

The mix of size magnets and project, also the strength, will break it or not.

Lara.

[mscoffman]

@Laura;

An interesting experiment would be designing a line
following mobil robot steered by a microcomputer with
onboard battery power but with only magnet forward
motion power. This would allow the computer to do
slight course adjustments via steering, but cart motion
would all be magnetic. It may be able to steer around
magnetic sticky spots and stuff.

A neural network software would allow it to learn it's
steering commands to produce the fastest RPM's.

You could make a course with very spread out magnets
on a large diameter loop on a gym floor for example that
would make it difficult for the magnets to communicate
to form global sticky spots because of the very large
diameter loop track. Just a thought. It would be
interesting to know what happens.

:S:MarkSCoffman