A Liquid 'Homopolar Motor'

Sweet.

For the first 13 seconds of Part 2 you can see a handful of tiny submerged bubbles counter-rotating right above the tip of the battery. This makes sense, as the tip has the same magnetic polarity as the bottom of the magnet and opposite that of the top. Hence the water at that location is counter-rotating.

What puzzles me in Part 2 is that triangular shape to the rotating water. I wonder if something similar (albeit at a huge scale, and hexagonal) is happening at Saturn's north pole - but not at its south pole.

Nice! Let's scale it up and put it in a submarine like they did in "The Hunt for Red October".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive

The U.S. experimented with MHD drives in the 60s. Thing is, they require a strong magnetic field. This could be supplied by superconducting magnets, and nuclear subs can generate the needed power. The downside is the magnetic field makes the sub highly detectable to MAD sensors (the one thing Clancy overlooked in his novel).

MHD can also be used to generate electricity directly using plasma as the medium. I think Russia built a large MHD generator based on combustion of natural gas? Check me on this.

Yeah, no point in being silent if you're a big magnet!

Clancy didn't write the screenplay. He knew better about he detectability and wouldn't have overlooked so obvious a flaw.

The magnetic signature was overlooked by Ferguson, Stewart, and Milius.

The movie depicted the October with MHD. The book, however used a caterpillar pumpjet. More traditional pumpjets are currently used with success as a propulsion plant, but are still detectable.

The amazingly fake thing about the move and book was that Jonesy could hear singing when contact was lost on the October. So fake...as if the plethora of noise from the October was masking the singing.

You seem to be producing some hydrogen....maybe you could light it up...?,,, via tea light candles...

I repeated the experiment, this time using two stacks of neodymium magnets and a plastic, US-quarter coin tube for clarity. The coin tube let me see much more clearly what was going on inside.

The magnets are oriented with like poles facing each other such as N-S : S-N (conversely, S-N : N-S). With this configuration the entire bulk of the water rotates in the same direction, as seen in the video.

When the magnets are oriented N-S : N-S (conversely, S-N : S-N), the water at each end rotates in the opposite direction with respect to the other. The water is stationary at the midpoint where the two rotations cancel (no video).

The rectilinear aspect of the bubbles exclusion zone is very interesting. Since this was seen on a larger scale as hexagonal pattern on the pole of Saturn?, could this be a non-linear dyanmic effect of control parameter criticality? In other words, a quasi-stable state (of rotation in this case) changes to the 3-stable, then 6-stable? I have not a clue if this is correct at all, just curious. There is something odd that bubbles would line up in a triangle shape though.

Your experiment is producing a lot of gas.

Interesting! Unfortunately, I don't have any washer magnets to try it myself.

In your experiment #2, you specify the polarities of the magnets. Was it the same configuration(s) in Exp#1?

Home Depot carries them. Lowe's may carry them, but I didn't check.

Experiment #3

Here we can see the direction of rotation as a function of magnet polarity.

Four cases are considered:

1. (top) N-S +:::- S-N (bottom)
2. (top) S-N +:::- N-S (bottom)
3. (top) N-S +:::- N-S (bottom)
4. (top) S-N +:::- S-N (bottom)

Apparatus:

1. 1.5 V AA alkaline battery,

2. 4 ea. 17 mm x 2.5 mm neodymium (N45) disk magnets.

3. 2 ea. 18 mm (OD) x 9 mm (ID) x 2.5 mm neodymium (N45) ring magnets*.

4. US Quarter plastic coin tube.

5. Saturated solution of saltwater at 20 degrees C.

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* I used ring magnets on the battery-side of each stack to help center the stacks on the battery terminals: