This is a real phenomenon. With your parent or guardian's permission you can do this at home. It's a fun and easy demonstration. In science, when something is observed, we must always think about whether what we are observing is the result of the thing that we are trying to measure or if it is affected by something else. For example, it would be fruitless to use a setup like this to measure the force of gravity (it could be done, theoretically, but would be complicated to do in practice; it is much better to use a non-magnetic material or an insulating pipe (a pipe that wouldn't allow these eddy currents). It is important to always know what you are measuring and the things that could effect those measurements. For this reason, we run controlled experiments.
A Blog by the SEP Collaboration of the National Science Foundation
Monday, June 16, 2014
Real or Not?
This is a real phenomenon. With your parent or guardian's permission you can do this at home. It's a fun and easy demonstration. In science, when something is observed, we must always think about whether what we are observing is the result of the thing that we are trying to measure or if it is affected by something else. For example, it would be fruitless to use a setup like this to measure the force of gravity (it could be done, theoretically, but would be complicated to do in practice; it is much better to use a non-magnetic material or an insulating pipe (a pipe that wouldn't allow these eddy currents). It is important to always know what you are measuring and the things that could effect those measurements. For this reason, we run controlled experiments.
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