Science brings ink dragon to life

[NoodlersFan]

Here is an experimental video I made in which an ink drop comes to life.

 

No computer graphics or animation were used - it's all live action. Instead, I relied on some science to produce the special effects.

 

Hope you enjoy the video, and I'm curious whether you can guess what's going on

 

 

Best,

 

Alex aka NoodlersFan.

Edited November 19, 2013 by NoodlersFan

[hoola]

looks like a magnetic fluid of some sort...perhaps scavenged from tweeters out of your stereo system. They sometimes use a "ferro-magnetic" fluid to increase the efficiency and maintain an even pole piece to voice coil centering...am I close?.....edd

[NoodlersFan]

Hi hoola,

 

Yes - the fluid isn't from a tweeter, although that's a good guess. I actually tried to make a ferrofluid out of the ink, but was unable to get the iron powder into solution without totally changing the colour. I also tried iron oxide which is a closer match to the red colour of the dragon's napalm ink, but it seems to be only weakly ferromagnetic. So the spiky version of the ink drop is just iron power stirred into the ink which lifts the ink up around it when exposed to a magnetic field. Not as elegant as an actual ferrofluid, but it worked in a pinch. I used a stack of five small rare earth magnets to manipulate the "puppet".

 

The skating effect was achieved by treating the paper with a hydrophobic spray.

 

Thanks for watching!

 

Cheers,

NF

[hoola]

I suppose that real ferrofluid is available from a supplier somewhere....that would be fun to play around with....I understand the ferrofluid conducts heat away from the voice coil in a speaker....it would be interesting to take a standard large speaker, like a woofer and inject the fluid into the voice coil gap and see how it perform.....perhaps the large excursions would make the fluid viscosity dampen movement that doesn't affect the tweeter.....edd