Physics geek pedanticism: Even a single magnet is a dipole (no magnetic monopoles, remember) so the field drops off as inverse cube. Two magnets facing each other is a quadrupole, so inverse 4th power. And so on.
Itâs not strictly levitation - you canât do that with permanent magnets, unless you use whacky diamagnetic materials like pyrolitic carbon or dutch frogs. Itâs really a table made from a tensile structure of wires, tensioned with magnetic repulsion. An obscure sort of tensegrity structure.
If you wanted a no-field version of this, either shield the magnets (not that hard to do, on this scale and this budget) or just replace the magnets with discreet springs. They wouldnât look much more obvious than the current wires.
I think heâd have to have, since the steel cables are mentioned in his pull quote, and âmagnetizedâ is in quotes in his blurb, with a subtle, but detectable nod to the tension / megnet relationship. Unless this edit came later, I think this is some hot, steamy kettle and pot action.
This is weird, youâre posting a bunch of stuff that in no way invalidates my point.
The point is not that it does use cables, but that it does not use magnets. I was just taking a dig at Cory apparently glancing over the thing and going OH COOL, MAGNETS and posting it with an incorrect description. Not sure why youâre overanalysing it and trying to twist things into my somehow having been wrong or hypocritical when Iâm not at all, but I guess you like arguing with random internet people and so do I so thatâs cool.
Um, Iâm pretty sure there are magnets in that table. The cables are to keep the blocks from flying apart due to the magnetic repulsion. I donât think those big wooden blocks are standing on those thing metal wires.
Not at all, my idea that they were not actually magnetic came from reading all of what little information I found on the site and tricking my brain by taking unnecessary quotation marks literally and being emotionally put off the idea of it actually being magnetic by other postersâ nonsensical concern trolling about it wiping devices that wouldnât even be affected by magnetism.
Further research reveals that it does in fact incorporate actual magnets!
(photo of the construction process here http://instagram.com/p/cb2inpnUQz/) So I was literally wrong about that, but was not really doing the same thing I incorrectly (in this particular instance tho not in general) criticised Cory for.
It funny, though I was genuinely defending Cory here, but about a month ago, I jumped to make a sarcastic comment about the unnecessary inclusion of â3D printedâ in the description of a product. The fact that parts of the product had been 3D printed was totally immaterial to the end product, and it really rubbed me the wrong way. We may well be as similar as you suspectedâŚ