Andre Geim: co-winner of 2010 Nobel Prize “two-dimensional material graphene” & 2000 Ig Nobel Prize “using magnets to levitate a frog”

It is good to see serious scientist knowing how to have fun too.

Andre Geim (U of Manchester page): co-winner of 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics “two-dimensional material graphene” was also the co-winner of 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics (in an unrelated subject area) “using magnets to levitate a frog“.

Here is that frog video and the joint-paper “Of flying frogs and Levitrons“. Enjoy.

See “University of Manchester scientists win the Nobel Prize for Physics“. Here is PBS general news report “Graphene: Nobel Winners’ Thin, Mighty Material Holds Much Promise”

Also check out “The Frog That Learned to Fly” (with videos of levitating strawberry, grasshopper, etc). Here is an excerpt (emphasis added),

Why frogs?

However common in biology research, frogs are rare customers in physics laboratories and one may wonder why the Dutch boffins levitated frogs rather than “something scientific”, … like a mumbo-jumbo, for instance. We apologise to those who believe that “the real physics” should involve only obscure substances and be always dull.

Diamagnetic levitation was first demonstrated as long ago as in 1939 when small beads of graphite and bismuth were levitated in an electromagnet (for historic details, read Physics Today). It took scientists another 50 years to rediscover levitation when physicists from Grenoble lifted several organic materials by the diamagnetic force. They were not aware of the earlier experiment. Although Grenoble’s research was published in Nature, a few scientists noticed it.

When we, in our turn, rediscovered levitation being unaware of the previous experiments, we were amazed to find out that 90% of our colleagues did not believe that we were not joking that water can levitate. It became obvious to us that it was important to make scientists (as well as non-scientists) aware of the phenomenon. We levitated a live frog and other not-very-scientific objects because of their obvious appeal to a broader audience and in the hope that researchers from various disciplines, not only physicists, would never ever forget this often neglected force and the opportunities it offers.

In addition, the frog picture will probably help students studying magnetism to get less easily bored.

Why does the frog fly?

(this explanation is written in response to numerous inquiries from children who have not studied physics yet … or even do not want to study it at all)

[…] As you probably saw many times when playing with magnets, magnets push each other away if you try to bring together their like poles, for example, two north or two south poles. Similarly, the north pole of the external field will try to push away the “north poles” of magnetized atoms.

Our magnet creates a very large magnetic field (about 100 to 1000 times larger than school or household magnets).

In this field, all the atoms inside the frog act as very small magnets creating a field of about 2 Gauss (although very small, such a field can still be detected by a compass). One may say that the frog is now built up of these tiny magnets all of which are repelled by the large magnet. The force, which is directed upwards, appears to be strong enough to compensate the force of gravity (directed downwards) that also acts on every single atom of the frog. So, the frog’s atoms do not feel any force at all and the frog floats as if it were in a spacecraft.