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PHYSICSVILLE — As any loyal viewer of the TV show “Breaking Bad” knows, magnets are awesome.
Not only can they lift stuff, repel things and supposedly wipe hard drives, magnets and their fields can do cool things like cause an aluminum can to rip itself in half.
A video uploaded to YouTube by Physics Girl shows a can exploding at 11,000 frames per second — shot on a Phantom high-speed camera — and has a scientist there to explain the whole process.
Arc Attack is a performance group based in Austin, Texas, that is also a band that will conduct experiments on stage and play songs on singing Tesla coils. Seriously. They teamed up with Physics Girl on YouTube to explain why inserting a can into a circle with two strong magnetic fields caused it to rend in twain.
“This can is actually tearing itself apart,” Arc Attack member Joe Hanson said.
The science of it is explained in the video, but the gist is this: A coil of wire is wrapped around a ring and a current is sent through that creates a magnetic field. Two of these coils are put together with opposing field directions and when the can is put inside with the current running through it, it creates a strong enough pull in both directions that the thin aluminum surface is split.
It also creates a fun loud pop and looks cool in super slow-mo.
Science is always at its best when it's making stuff explode, I always say!
