News
Official Guinness World Record: World's longest magnetic ball accelerator at JGU Mainz
On Sunday, June 11th the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) established an official world record at Guinness World Records TM with the longest magnetic ball accelerator. On a total length of 546 meters the physicists built up their experiment on a rail of the tram next to the campus. The main idea of this event was to illustrate physical phenomena, which are also relevant for Spin+X and MAINZ, in a popular scientific way. In a magnetic ball accelerator, magnetic forces on iron or steel balls are utilized: An iron ball is rolled towards a small, but strong magnet and is accelerated in its field. On the other side of the magnet, two or more iron balls are put. The momentum of the first, accelerated ball is transferred to the last one – similar to billiard. As there is a little distance between the last ball and the magnet, its attraction is smaller than the transferred momentum. Because of this, the velocity of the last ball leaving its position is higher than the velocity of the first ball hitting the magnet, resulting in a chain reaction over several hundred meters.
Beside the world record attempt itself, the JGU also organized lab tours and lectures for the public. The contribution of Spin+X within this framework was a common booth with the excellence graduate school MAINZ which was visited by the minister for science, further education and culture, Prof. Dr. Conrad Wolf. Here, different spin phenomena and applications were explained by several exhibits of the outreach project.
Mehr Informationen finden Sie unter: http://www.weltrekord.uni-mainz.de/