Hello, I am Jared. Welcome to FunScienceDemos. I have in my hands what scientists would call
a magnet, and what do magnets do? Well, we are going to zoom in and take a closer look to
see. So, we have a pencil and a scissors, there is a metal part to the scissors, a plastic part,
to the scissors, a wooden part to the pencil, and it even looks like a little metal part.
Let us see what our magnet does. You can see over here the magnet seems to attract this
kind of metal, it does nothing for the plastic, it does nothing for the wood, and it actually
does not do anything for that type of metal either. So, a magnet moves certain types of
metals, now magnets can come in all different shapes and sizes. There are tiny magnets in these
little plastic pieces. I have a round flat magnet, a bigger round magnet, a smaller round
magnet, these kind of magnets... and they not only come in different shapes and sizes, they
actually come in different strengths. Some magnets are stronger than others, and when
I push them, they could repel or attract.
So, we can see that magnets are attracted to certain types of metals. What I have in this
bottle is a special type of metal that is all ground up into tiny little pieces. It is a bottle
of iron filings, and I am going to zoom in so you can see how small they really are when
I pour them out. So, there is a little bit of the iron filings, and watch what happens
when the magnet gets close. You can see the iron filings start to get attracted to the
magnet. All magnets put out lines of force, and these iron filings are following those
lines of force put out by this magnet. We are going to use these iron filings and the magnet
to create a really cool art project. That is right, I know we are a science channel, but we are
making an art project. Why? Well, you hear a lot of people talk about STEM, which stands
for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Well, other people are also talking about STEAM,
which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. There is a lot of creativity in
science that goes into art, and that is why we are doing a really cool art project using
magnets and iron filings. So, let us take a closer look at what we are doing. Now, we got this idea
from an old toy that was around even before I was a kid, and it involved a magnet
on a stick with iron filings, and a drawing inside an enclosed container. So, the idea works
like this: there is a magnet on the end of the stick, I have iron filings and a drawing, and
what I can use? I can use these iron filings, and I can drag them around, to almost make
it look like hair growing on my picture. We have zoomed in so you can see what is going on here.
All I did was tape a tiny magnet to a popsicle stick, and this is the first one we made, and
you can see we put in a little too many filings for this. You can not even see his chin.
So, if I wanted to take the magnet and pull up the iron filings, I could create a beard.
I could pull them further and work on creating a mustache, drag them over, or I
could pull everything up and try and give them some hair or thicker eyebrows. Now, there
is a definite technique that you need to develop to get this to work - you have to pull a little
bit of the iron filings at a time and you can see those iron filings want to follow
the force of the magnet, so grab a little bit and get it sliding - there we go - pull it over
his eyes,
and I can design hair. Now, if I want to use a weaker magnet, I may not be able to get those
iron filings to move with this magnet, but I can almost style his hair by getting the
iron filings to follow the force of the magnet and turn a different direction. Pretty cool.
So, we could draw our own picture on a little piece of paper - and we found that foam core
works the best, gives it some structure - I could draw right on this, or I could draw on a piece
of paper and glue it, but we wanted to make a personalized picture today, so we used some
technology to create a picture of me without hair. So what I did is I downloaded a free
app onto my phone, took my picture, and that app removed my hair - it made me bald, and it is
perfect for our little art project. I glued that picture onto some foam core to give it
some sturdiness and structure, and now I am ready to go. I have to make sure the picture
fits in my baggy, open the bag, drop in my picture, and now I am going to use tape - clear tape - to
wrap that baggie around my picture, but before I do that I have to pour in some iron filings.
So what I did, is, I folded the baggie and taped it so my picture fits really nicely inside.
Now it is time to add my iron filings, you want to be careful not to add too much like we
did the first time.
We are going to give it a try, you can see I already have the beard, but we are going to
try and give me some hair. So, now I have to seal this up and tape it closed. Now, when we
made ours we figured out that the bag is a little bit thin, so we reinforce it with some
clear tape over the whole front.
I am going to do that all the way up my bag.
So we have everything taped up and assembled, let us see if we can give me some hair - grab
some iron filings and drag them, and let them go,
and you can see I can get my hair designed and styled any way I want - go from this side
beautiful! The cool part about this is now I can explore and try different things: what
if I use different magnets? Bigger magnets, smaller magnets, stronger magnets, weaker magnets...
Would I get different results? I could make all kinds of pictures and put them in our
little bag, seal it up with the iron filings and have a great toy that I can play with
for a long time. I could even get more artistic and put some picture frame around it, seal
it with colored tape so you can not even see the iron filings at the bottom. I could do
a lot of really cool designing with this little art project, and the coolest part is there is
a ton of science going on in this art project,
and the really neat thing about this project is when I want to start all over, just turn
it right side up, give it a couple taps and all the iron filings fall down to the bottom.
Really cool - if you want to learn more about magnets or get some ideas on other steam projects,
check out our channel, FunScienceDemos - science is so cool! Even when it involves hairstyling.
Thanks for watching.