I am constantly on the outlook for people that think outside the box, or do something in an abnormal way. Recently a video caught my eye, hopefully you will think it is as neat as I did.

Levitation in the Laboratory

It takes a lot of heat to melt metal, aluminum melts at a temperature 4x hotter than any stove is capable of getting. In order to melt a metal like aluminum it normally requires heavy-duty equipment. However, through the use of a little bit of ingenuity and the always epic properties of electromagnetic fields with a bit of electricity and some heavy duty wire, you can melt a sizable piece of aluminum. The neatest thing about this process is the metal floats while you melt it!

Take a look at the video, it is quite epic:

Power

In this video the aluminum piece has a weight of 2.6 grams. In order to melt this it took 1.6kW of power oscillating at a frequency of 204kHz for 3 minutes. I do not know if this is extremely inefficient or within reason of other methods of melting small amounts of aluminum. If anyone knows please let me know in the comments.

Think Outside

I realize that this took a lot of power but it did make for a very fun video to watch. It is near impossible to determine what the next big thing will be. Many of the common place technologies in use today were all but science fiction a few years ago, but because a few people were willing to do something slightly different new discoveries were made and new ideas brought to life.

Also I would like to note that I love this experiment and would love to try it some day. Melting metal looks like fun!