Ferrofluid for the neophytes.

If there's one thing that gets on my pet peeves, it's the one curious friend who touches your stuff and doesn't put it back where it belongs. Farewell $13.99 flashlight; wherever you may be.

He'll have to do the job for the time being.

Fortunately, I had a Shamwow to clean up the tears. (I'm still an advocate for Zorbeez, but who sells that anymore?) Unfortunately, there's one thing that the Shamwow doesn't clean up.

In fact, nothing can clean this up.

That's the magnetic liquid we all know and love. Especially my physics professor, who didn't realize how ferromagnetic the fluid actually is until he held a magnet next to the open bottle. I'll let you imagine the rest.

Time to answer the million dollar question: Where do you buy ferrofluid from? I purchased mine from United Nuclear, but I personally believe that all ferrofluid is the same. So go ahead and buy it on Ebay, and who knows, it might have bits of love in the packaging.

Now you're getting anxious. What is there to do with this stuff? Did I really just waste my money on it? Sadly, there's no turning back now. It usually goes something like this:

1. Put a magnet next to the bottle. 
2. Make a prodigious mess. 
3. Attempt to launder it with more magnets. 
4. Spend hours fruitlessly trying everything to clean it up. 
5. ??? 
6. No, no profit this time.

Thankfully, we have jars.

Oh Dickinson's preserves, how you make life so easy.

A nice jar o' jelly does the trick, but it doesn't capture the full fluidic essence of ferrofluid. Thus the testing began. I tried putting the ferrofluid in several disparate liquids in order to achieve a floating effect. The only liquid that worked was fog juice.

I'm convinced.

Fog juice is typically a combination of glycerin and water, so perhaps if someone wants to test out combinations of such fluids then you are free to report your findings. However, since there is water in the fog fluid, the ferrofluid will rust over time. This doesn't affect the consistency of the fluid, but the rust makes it a nice bronze color.

Magnets; How do they work?

Electrons.
Grant