“This
adds a new dimension to our understanding of acoustic waves. We've shown that
we can steer heat magnetically. With a strong enough magnetic field, we should
be able to steer sound waves, too”
Professor of Mechanical
Engineering at Ohio State Dr. Joseph Heremans, who is also an Ohio Eminent
Scholar in Nanotechnology
All
forms of energy be it electromagnetic, heat, sound, magnetic and even nuclear
can be used to cause an effect on the other. But I would have never imagined
magnetic fields can have an effect on heat and sound, despite their energetic
connection.
Researchers
from Ohio State University led by Dr. Wolfgang Windl in a groundbreaking study
have demonstrated that it is possible for a magnetic field to affect heat and
even sound as reported in the article “Researchers provemagnetism can control heat, sound”, published May 28, 2015, Physorg.
The
research, performed by Professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State, Dr.
Joseph Heremans used a 7 Tesla MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) on a small
sample of a semiconductor material indium antimonide that had been chilled down
to 268 degrees Celsius (450 degrees Fahrenheit). It was while doing this
experiment that they discovered that the strong magnetic field reduces the
effect of heat on the indium antimonide circuit by 12%.
To
figure out why this occurred, Dr. Wolfgang Windl and his team from Ohio State
University borrowed time on the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) Oakley cluster
at Ohio State University to model the diamagnetic moment of electrons within
the non-magnetic cluster of atoms in a macromolecular structure of indium
antimonide.
Based
on their results, it implies that this may be true for ANY material that is
diamagnetic i.e. has no magnetic moment and cannot be magnetized. Heat in
diamagnetic materials is affected by magnetic field and can be reduced by a
strong magnetic field, suggesting magnetic fields can one day be used in
specialized cooling circuits or even a magnetic refrigerator.
It
also implies that sound and possibly even radiation, being as they are closely
related to heat being as both are can be produced by vibration of atoms, can
also be affected by magnetic fields.
So
if that's possible, it is safe to say that sound and heat are the same with
radiation as a close cousin? And if so, what's the connection to magnetism?
Ohio State University
and Heat reduction using Magnetic fields - How Heat, Sound, Radiation and
Magnetism are related
Heat,
often considered Waste Energy as it typically is recycled in manufacturing
processes to be used elsewhere in a Process Plant e.g. Bauxite mining, is
closely related to sound, as a heating effect often can be cause by sound.
A
heating effect can be cause by conduction, convection and radiation. Convection
is really a special case of conduction using air molecules, so it's really
radiation and conduction.
Radiation
connection to heat is clear cut and is usually created by and causes a heating
effect. Microwave radiation exciting molecular bonds from a ground Vibrational/Rotational
state to an excited Vibrational/Rotational state as explained in my blog article
entitled “General
Electric Research Team develops Portable Microwave Calorie Counter - Counting
Calories one Water and Fat Molecule at a time”.
IR
(Infra Red) radiation, which is just above microwaves in the spectrum band and
UV (Ultra Voilet) radiation, which is above violet in the visible light
spectrum, is also created by and causes a heating effect. So there is a clear connection
between heat and electromagnetic radiation.
It
is therefore possible that heat is connected to sound via conduction or radiation
or both. Add to this the observation that both sound waves and heat result in
the vibration of atoms and cause a heating effect as well as radiation to be possibly
produced. Radiation can also cause atoms to vibrate, creating sound and heat.
This
is best illustrated by the diagram below.
Please
note that the sound may be a very low or very high frequency sound that cannot
be heard by the human ear which has a range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Thus sound,
which is a compression wave of vibrating atoms, can also be seen as the
transmission of heat energy and that sound and heat may in fact one and the
same.
So,
using De Broglie Wave-Particle Duality Theory, in much the same way photons can
be seen as the elementary particles that transmits electromagnetic radiation
energy, possibly there may be an elementary particle that transmits heat and
sound energy, being as they are ALL manifestations of Vibrational and
Rotational energy.
According
to the paper, these elementary particles are called phonons and it these
particles that the magnetic field was able to affect, causing the reduction of
the heating effect by 12%.
So
how did the magnetic field affect phonons? And if it can affect phonons which
are connected to the vibrational energy of heat, sound and radiation, what
about photons? Can a magnetic field also affect photons?
Paramagnetic and Diamagnetic
materials – Heating and Cooling effect of Magnetic Fields
Dr.
Wolfgang Windl and his team from Ohio State University examined all possible
responses that a non-magnetic cluster of atoms in a macromolecular structure could
have to a rapidly rotating external magnetic field whose polarity is constantly
changing.
They
realized that the only response that non-magnetic cluster of atoms in a
macromolecular structure could have to a magnetic field was a diamagnetic
response.
That
is, the external magnetic field would cause an e.m.f (Electromotive Force) and
electrical current to be generated based on the direction of the Magnetic Field
as indicated by Ampere's Right Hand Rule or the Left Hand Rule.
This
electric field generates a magnetic field that opposes the external magnetic
field as described by Lenz's Law, which is really a special case of magnetic
repulsion in diamagnetic materials.
This
electrical current may cause a minor heating effect as it flows through the
conductor, but is would be less pronounced as heating effects are more a phenomenon
of paramagnetic materials such as Iron and Steel as explained in my Geezam blog article entitled “Samsung
declares 2015 Year of Wireless Smartphone Charging becoming an Industry
Standard”.
The
heating effect is more obvious for paramagnetic materials than diamagnetic
materials, which usually experience little or no heating effect. In fact, this heating
effect in paramagnetic materials is the basis for Induction cooking and even
devices such as the Miito Induction Kettle as explained in my MICO Wars blog article
entitled “US$100
Miito Induction Kettle on Kickstarter heats Water quickly in any container”.
Diamagnetic
materials oppose the external magnetic field and usually do not experience a
heating effect. This can be seen clearly in the video as the reason why Stainless
Steel and Iron pots are used for cooking and not Copper, which is diamagnetic
and also a good conductor.
So
if paramagnetic materials experience a heating effect, do diamagnetic materials
experience a cooling effect?
Density Function Theory at Ohio Supercomputer Center
- Year of Simulation time for Magnetic repulsion of Heat
In
order to determine if a magnetic field had an effect on phonons in diamagnetic
materials as noticed in the experiment, Dr. Wolfgang Windl and his team decided
to use a quantum mechanical modeling Theory known as DFT (Density Function
Theory) using the Ohio Supercomputer
Center (OSC) Oakley cluster at Ohio State University.
DFT
allows the researchers to determine the distribution of electrons within a
non-magnetic cluster of atoms in a macromolecular structure around the
vibrating atoms when an external magnetic field is present. The idea is that the magnetic field would
cause the electrons to be aligned to the magnetic field when an external
magnetic field is applied.
If
the material is paramagnetic, the electrons align in such as way as to create a
magnetic field that has opposite polarity and hence is attracted to the
external magnetic field. If the material
is diamagnetic, the electrons align in such as way as to create a magnetic
field that has the same polarity and hence is repelled by the external magnetic
field.
This
change in magnetic field to opposite polarity or same polarity as the external
magnetic field is referred to as the paramagnetic moment or diamagnetic moment
respectively.
In
short, just in the same way a paramagnetic moment appears to accelerate the
heating effect in paramagnetic material like iron and stainless steel by
accelerating the motion of phonons, the diamagnetic moment should, in theory,
be observed to decelerate the heating effect in diamagnetic material like
copper and salt water by decelerating the motion of phonons.
The
Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) Oakley cluster at Ohio State University is a
HP/Intel Xeon system. It has some 8,300 Processors that can achieve a peak
performance rate of 154 Teraflops or 154 float point calculations per second.
Because of the scale of the computation it took Dr. Wolfgang Windl and his team
from Ohio State University 1.5 million CPU hours or basically 62500 CPU hours
or 171.23 CPU years of simulated time.
To
quote doctoral student Nikolas Antolin, who is a part of Dr. Wolfgang Windl,
they actually got a lot of help from the OSC, quote: “OSC offered us phenomenal support; they
supported our compilation and parallel threading issues, helped us troubleshoot
hardware issues when they arose due to code demands, and moved us to the Lustre
highperformance file system after we jammed their regular file system”.
After
a really long coffee and donut break, the DFT Model produced a huge amount of
data, which was processed through OSC's high-throughput parallel file
system. Eventually they'll have the
answer to the questions they seek; why heat flees in the face of a very strong
magnetic personality!
Future Research – Magnetic
Field to deflect Sound and Radiation for Star Trek’s Deflector Shield
Hopefully
their future investigations into using magnetic fields to deflect sound waves,
which is a logical implication of this research will yield similar positive
results. Hopefully they’ll extend this to radiation, as magnetic fields must
also have an effect on them as well.
After
all, if a strong magnetic field reduces a heating effect in a non-magnetic
cluster of atoms in a macromolecular structure, it should also follow that:
1.
Sound can be reduced or deflected by using a
strong Magnetic field
2.
Radiation can be reduced or deflected by using a
strong Magnetic field
The
effect on heat by sound has already been demonstrated by Computer engineering
major Viet Tran and electrical engineering major Seth Robertson of George Mason
University in Fairfax, Virginia using their equiptment to put out a fire using
a directed low bass sound as explained in my blog article
entitled “Portable
Sound Fire Extinguisher - George Mason University Engineering Graduate Students
extinguish Fires using DARPA Research”.
In
that article, my theory was that the sound created standing waves by matching
the vibrational and rotational energy needed for the oxygen molecules to break
their covalent bonds and lose electrons in order to react chemical and cause
combustion. Thus, the sound waves makes the oxygen molecules unreactive.
If
this is true, then a magnetic field should also have the same effect on sound,
being as sound and heat are a manifestation of the same vibrational and
rotational phenomenon of atoms and sound is just a travelling compression wave.
A strong enough magnetic field should be able to stop all vibrations in an
oncoming compression wave made up of air molecules and dissipate or even
deflect an oncoming sound wave.
I'm
not sure what effect it would have on photons.
But
potentially, being as light is travelling standing wave made up of a magnetic
and electrical moment that are orthogonal to each other, it might cause a beam
of light to be totally stopped in its tracks, once the magnetic field is
sufficiently strong based on the Right Hand Rule or the Left Hand Rule.
Assumedly,
it would imply that light near a Magnetar, a neutron Star with a spinning ferrous
plasma cloud as described in my blog article
entitled “Binary
Black Holes and 48th Magnetar Westerlund 1-5 - Magnetic Personality in Space as
Black Holes feed on Stars” it might also have radiation trapped in a
complex bottle made up of both gravity, which is already known to bend light
and a very strong magnetic field.
This
is already groundbreaking stuff that may not only lead to the development of a
Magnetic Refrigerators but also the development of deflector shield arrays for
future spacecraft to protect them debris in Outer Space.
Excited
to see what more this groundbreaking study by Dr. Wolfgang Windl and his
research team at Ohio State University can reveal!
No comments:
Post a Comment