Magnetic Grapes

By Anupum Pant

Try this at home. Take two grapes, pierce them with a straw or wooden toothpick on both ends and try to balance the contraption from the middle part on a sharp edge. All of it to reduce friction – you get the idea…

Now bring a strong magnet towards it, you’ll repel the grape. Try doing it with the other pole of the magnet. It still goes away. So are grapes magnetic?

Well, intrinsically the grapes are not magnetized, but when you bring a strong magnet closer, it gets magnetized in the field of this magnet. Stronger  the magnet, more is the magnetization. This, because it contains water, which is diamagnetic.

By that logic, even frogs are magnetic. So are water droplets. In the year 2000 Andrey Geim, yes the same person who was given a Nobel prize for isolating graphene using a scotch tape, won an Ignobel prize for levitating a frog, water droplets and a variety of other objects using very strong electromagnets. – Levitation without meditation.

Here’s the levitating frog…

and here are the magnetic grapes…

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