Hey Guys,

 

I am new here and hope this is the right forum to post this in. I have been wondering for a while what would happen in this scenario. What if you had a bowl shape covered in permanent magnets with the negative poles facing up and in and then you have a ball covered in permanent magnets with the positive poles facing out. I say "covered" because I don't know if radially charged magnets exist and even if they do I'm sure they are rare and/or pricey. So I envision using small neodymium magnets to cover the surface of the two shapes. Now in this setup what would happen when the ball is lowered in the bowl? I envision the ball levitating but probably spinning and/or moving about. Would this be the outcome? How would changing the ball or bowl size affect the outcome? I hope I have explained this in a way that is understandable.

 

Thanks for any comments.

Permanent magnets can't be used for confinement; it's forbidden by Earnshaw's theorem. Magnetic fields form closed loops, so "radially charged" magnets don't exist. Doing this with static electric charges won't work, either.