Magnetohydrodynamics - Propelling Liquid Metal with Magnets!
Tech Ingredients2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2018–2023
explainer · intermediate · evergreen · 2018–2023 on HN
Tech Ingredients explains the principles of magnetohydrodynamics and builds several demonstrations, including propelling liquid metal and electrolytes with magnets and a railgun-style setup.
It comes up as a great explainer on magnetohydrodynamic drives and pumps in threads about silent submarine propulsion.
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3 comments from Hacker News
There's a great video from one of my favorite YouTube channels about Magnetohydrodynamic drives. Really fascinating drive design and channel for anyone interested in engineering. ▶ this video
Interesting. If I understand correctly, they need a electrode that's in physical contact with the sea water. I'm not sure I understand it entirely, but there's a video on the Tech Ingredients channel that explains magnetohydrodynamic pumps: ▶ this video
If can get to 4 billion tesla I /think/ that's enough to generate electrons from the vacuum of space (see:schwinger magnetic induction) and you could do something akin to magnetohydrodynamics ( see: ▶ this video ) which would use the magnetic field to accelerate the electrons away from the ship, I could be incorrect here though