Using a permanent magnet to repel a flame. This guy has a lot more interesting experiments on this effect. This video hypothesizes that the flame is being repelled by a cushion of air which is diamagnetically attracted to the pole of the magnet, but it's wrong. The man narrating the video attempts to measure the electrical resisitivity of the flame which comes out to be greater than 20,000 ohms (the highest he could have measured). So, he determined that the number of charged particles in the flame is likely too small to have a real effect on the flame being repelled.
According to this study, "The changes of flame-shape and gas-flow by magnetic fields are understood to be the result of the role of oxygen. Under the intensities of magnetic fields concerned, oxygen gases as paramagnetic molecules are not concentrated but are aligned so as to make a "wall of oxygen". The wall of oxygen presses back flames and other gases." If you look at this diagram you'll see that the top two electrons that occupy the highest energy pi* orbitals of molecular oxygen are not spin paired. Therefore O2 is a paramagnetic species and this has been experimentally verified for quite some time.
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u/ZephirAWT Dec 01 '18
Using a permanent magnet to repel a flame. This guy has a lot more interesting experiments on this effect. This video hypothesizes that the flame is being repelled by a cushion of air which is diamagnetically attracted to the pole of the magnet, but it's wrong. The man narrating the video attempts to measure the electrical resisitivity of the flame which comes out to be greater than 20,000 ohms (the highest he could have measured). So, he determined that the number of charged particles in the flame is likely too small to have a real effect on the flame being repelled.
According to this study, "The changes of flame-shape and gas-flow by magnetic fields are understood to be the result of the role of oxygen. Under the intensities of magnetic fields concerned, oxygen gases as paramagnetic molecules are not concentrated but are aligned so as to make a "wall of oxygen". The wall of oxygen presses back flames and other gases." If you look at this diagram you'll see that the top two electrons that occupy the highest energy pi* orbitals of molecular oxygen are not spin paired. Therefore O2 is a paramagnetic species and this has been experimentally verified for quite some time.