A long time ago I was riding in a subway train. The subway car was mostly or very likely completely empty because it was late at night, likely the last one of the day. There was a paper clip laying on the floor between my feet and then I noticed that it had started to stand up on its own. One of the ends of the paperclip was still touching the floor inside the train, but the other end was pointed up and it wobbled around softly for a while.
A day or two later I mentioned this to my electricity teacher at the time, an electrical engineer who just happened to work for the subway agency. I expected him to say that it was some kind of magnetic effect due to the proximity of the high-voltage supply lines used to power the subway, but he instead said that it was impossible and I must have been hallucinating. I’ve never hallucinated in my life. I still wonder what could have caused that phenomenon. I’m sure that there’s a scientific explanation for it, but I haven’t found it yet.
Edit: Hmmm, I just realized… maybe I was witnessing the real clippy coming to life?
Hmmmmm… My intuition tells me something like this could be possible with a vertical alternating magnetic field. If the paperclip formed a closed loop, eddy currents would produce an opposing magnetic field to hold it up. Sorta like in this video: https://youtu.be/5HnihTg1rso
Unfortunately I can’t find anything online showing this off, and I’m not really sure what could generate a field like that on the subway anyways.
Thank you for attempting to link a theory to explain it! The video you linked doesn’t look too different from what I saw, except that the whole coil seemed to levitate rather than just one end of it like the paperclip did. Still seems like a plausible potential explanation. Thanks again.
A long time ago I was riding in a subway train. The subway car was mostly or very likely completely empty because it was late at night, likely the last one of the day. There was a paper clip laying on the floor between my feet and then I noticed that it had started to stand up on its own. One of the ends of the paperclip was still touching the floor inside the train, but the other end was pointed up and it wobbled around softly for a while.
A day or two later I mentioned this to my electricity teacher at the time, an electrical engineer who just happened to work for the subway agency. I expected him to say that it was some kind of magnetic effect due to the proximity of the high-voltage supply lines used to power the subway, but he instead said that it was impossible and I must have been hallucinating. I’ve never hallucinated in my life. I still wonder what could have caused that phenomenon. I’m sure that there’s a scientific explanation for it, but I haven’t found it yet.
Edit: Hmmm, I just realized… maybe I was witnessing the real clippy coming to life?
Hmmmmm… My intuition tells me something like this could be possible with a vertical alternating magnetic field. If the paperclip formed a closed loop, eddy currents would produce an opposing magnetic field to hold it up. Sorta like in this video: https://youtu.be/5HnihTg1rso
Unfortunately I can’t find anything online showing this off, and I’m not really sure what could generate a field like that on the subway anyways.
Thank you for attempting to link a theory to explain it! The video you linked doesn’t look too different from what I saw, except that the whole coil seemed to levitate rather than just one end of it like the paperclip did. Still seems like a plausible potential explanation. Thanks again.