Hello all.

A magnet moving/sliding/spinning next to a conductor generates the eddy currents within the conductor. What if the conductor is an electrolyte ? As in moving/spinning a magnetic field next to a glass vessel with a conductive fluid ? Or reverse, moving an electrolyte within a magnetic field ?

How would you set up an experiment to prove the presence or not of electrical current in the fluid during the magnetic field motion ?

(Not about propulsion as in MHD, just the electrical eddy current)

Not sure, or I'd have to think about, an experiment to observe/quantify the effect.

Eddy currents due to varying magnetic fields are produced whenever a material contains freely moving electrical charges ( electrons or ions ), and that, is the definition of an electrolyte.

2 hours ago, Externet said:

Hello all.

A magnet moving/sliding/spinning next to a conductor generates the eddy currents within the conductor. What if the conductor is an electrolyte ? As in moving/spinning a magnetic field next to a glass vessel with a conductive fluid ? Or reverse, moving an electrolyte within a magnetic field ?

How would you set up an experiment to prove the presence or not of electrical current in the fluid during the magnetic field motion ?

(Not about propulsion as in MHD, just the electrical eddy current)

Yes you are right there is interaction between conduction fluids ( not just ionic solutions, but even non ionic ones) but it is generally of a different nature from eddy currents.

Two techniques that employ this are Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Magnetohydrodynamics.

Eddy currents are caused by the interaction of 'free' electrons in the conduction band of metals.

Remember, however that ions have a much large mass than electron so the same field will have lesser and different effects on them.

The smallest ion is 1800 times more massive than the electron.

When we consider magnetohydrodynamics another effect occurs.

Bulk metals are electrical neutral (charges balanced) by nature but plasmas are usually charged.