Ferrofluid Sculpture – More Proof That Science Is Awesome

So I’m gonna be totally honest here: I only have a very slight idea what’s actually going on in the above video. All I know is that it looks like living liquid metal, and living liquid metal – when it’s not hunting you endlessly through time in an effort to reduce the human race to nothing more than a somewhat Kardashian obsessed memory – is awesome.

The prefix “Ferro” generally involves magnetism, so we’ve got that, but how it goes from “rotating spikes” to “melty thing” to “hedgehog having sex with a viking helmet,” I have no idea. So I’m going to avoid falling back on the “fucking magnets, how do they work?” joke and just copy shamelessly from the description:

A steel sculpture with changing magnetisation is coated with ferrofluid.
The fluid is pulled in the direction of increasing flux density and forms peaks, which become smaller in higher flux density. At an accumulation of fluid at ridges, the flux density at the surface decreases. The flow and the distribution of the fluid can be observed at several characteristic locations.

…

The crown has horizontal cavities that discontinue the gradient of flux density. On the way to the top the fluid is accumulated until the cavities are bridged by fountains. On the way back the fluid falls in large drops over the gap. The horizontal cavity at the ridge of the hexagon remains filled at the retreat. With increasing magnetisation the fluid at the ridge rises steeply as the flux density on the hexagon is slightly higher than at the other side of the cavity.

Yeah, totally got it now. Thanks guys.

(Science is awesome!)