I. Love. Ferrofluid.
Except for the price of it.
So in this video I'll show you how
to easily make something similar
yourself. It's even quite cheap.
How about a kilogram of it for the
price of a couple of Big Mac meals?
This time I'll handle powerful magnets and stuff so
messy you won't believe the cleanup afterwards.
Oh, and if you suffer from trypophobia
you may find some clips disturbing.
Other than this it's fairly
safe. Do try this at home!
In my latest video I ended up
with a lot of unused cooking oil.
I don't feel like drinking
all of this but I've been told
that by just mixing cooking oil and a special
printer toner you can make a simple ferrofluid
The toner needs to be of the MICR type.
This is an old technology used
for printing magnetic characters
which can be read by a magnetic read head.
The toner contains iron oxide
and it's clearly attracted by a magnet.
A promising start.
However, I tried mixing it with different oils 
- even mineral oil - but never had a good result.
It was either a thick paste or a thick paste
with excessive oil floating on top of it.
I'm not saying it is impossible so
feel free to do your own experiments.
I just couldn't get it to spike.
So I ditched the toner which
is filled with unnecessary stuff
and went directly for the magic ingredient in it.
Iron oxide.
I went to the local hardware store
and bought these three pigments for paints.
These are all nothing
but types of iron oxides.
The yellow one is useless for this purpose.
Way to weak interaction with a magnet.
When opening the red type it instantly
made me think of a Martian landscape.
Not a coincidence since the planet
Mars is red due to iron oxides.
This does visibly react to a magnet but
it's much weaker than the printer toner.
Let's move on to the black one...
As for color, the brownish black iron
oxide is the most boring of the three.
Yet, it's response to a magnet is phenomenal.
Tsk, aww....
I mean, oh yes!
This is the stuff I need.
This is magnetite. The most magnetic
of all minerals you can find in nature.
I tried mixing this with the cooking oils
and did see some small spikes but
nothing impressive and still problems
with separation of the oil and magnetite.
I felt like I was making 'failfluid'.
One of the problems is that I'm only adding
two of three parts needed for good spikes.
The magnetite is the active magnetic
part and the oil is the carrier fluid.
But I need a surfactant to
cover the magnetite particles
or they will clump together and
drop to the bottom of the fluid.
After some more experiments I discovered
a surprising solution for this.
I immediately made a larger batch
of this to see if I could scale it up.
Using the table top as a shield between the
petri dish and the magnet I started testing it.
I call this ferripaste since it is more
viscous than the commercial ferrofluid
and it is ferrimagnetic - not ferromagnetic -
but more about that later.
Right now, you are probably more
interested in making it yourself.
Here's how I did it.
I took 10 grams of the
black iron oxide pigment.
Accuracy is not critical -
you don't need a milligram scale for it.
Then I took 10 grams of an oil that works
both as a carrier fluid and as a surfactant.
This is not a cooking oil.
It is Magnatec motor oil.
It is not magnetic even though they seem to imply it.
There's a lot of marketing mumbo jumbo on it
but it's designed to create a thin
film on the metal inside an engine.
It seems to work well for
covering magnetite as well
keeping it from sticking
together in the ferripaste.
All I had to do was mix
the iron oxide and motor oil.
I used a chopstick as a stirring rod.
There you go.
It really is that easy.
This is great and since it is
easy and cheap to make
it's time to go from great to huge!
I've got a larger magnet
which needs some exercise.
Let's go from 20 grams to
1000 grams of ferripaste.
This is beyond what I'll mix with a chopstick
so I bought the cheapest, electric
hand mixer I could find - as a sacrificial tool.
I predict this will be messy.
It may even be too cheap since it will
overheat if used for more than 5 minutes.
Maybe it'll burst into flames over the
motor oil - especially if I use the turbo button.
Brilliant...
Uhm, this seems more than fast enough
but I've got to try that turbo button.
Tighten your sphincters.
I'm going for turbo mode!
Awwwrgghh!
It doesn't work.
After lowering the speed I realized all the
button does is to go to speed setting 5...
After around five minutes of mixing
it is time for a magnet test. Will it work?
Oh yes, there's definitely a mutual attraction.
A lot of that is!
And I see spikes.
Now, my monster magnet is 13 times
larger than this one and of higher grade
so I will have to be more careful. I will
use the table top as a barrier again.
Enjoy the show.
There's one thing I would like to know.
Did you enjoy it?
Or did it freak you out?!?
Let me know in the comments.
Meanwhile, I'll try to explain the difference
between ferri- and ferromagnetism.
In my video 'Exotic Elements vs. Magnet Part 4'
I showed how we in our daily lives
only divide materials into
magnetic or non-magnetic.
This is too simplified
since all materials - even the non-
magnetic - react to a magnet.
Most materials just react so weakly
that we can't feel it or see it
unless we try to detect it in a sensitive setup.
These three types of magnetisms describe
the macroscopic reactions we can see.
But if we zoom in on an atomic level
magnetism is caused by the movement
of unpaired electrons in the materials.
Especially how they align in groups
called domains inside the material.
In fact, they can align in so many ways
that we have found a lot of
different types of magnetisms.
To our eyes a ferrimagnetic material
reacts exactly like a ferromagnetic one.
But  the domains inside align
differently like shown here.
In ferromagnetism all domains
align in the same direction.
In ferrimagnetism however
- like in magnetite -
some weaker domains align
opposite of the stronger ones.
This happens since magnetite
contains two different ions of iron.
Alright, hope you liked this video
enough to click the thumbs up button.
And maybe even subscribe
if you are new here.
See you in the next one and thanks for watching!
