So it happened some days ago, during an unusually in-depth cleaning session of the lab, that we came across super-strong magnets. Such a great discovery should not be in vain. So since then, we have been trying to come up with some uses for these.
I mean, they can be very useful to pull magnetic stirrers out of a solution if you don’t want to throw away the solution or contaminate it by putting something else in it. But THEN, the magnets might be so strong that if you would use a pair of “metal” forceps to grab the magnetic stirrer sitting on the lip of the bottle, the super-strong magnets might deflect the FORCEPS themselves and you may not be able to grab the magnet AT ALL (yes, I tried – in a casual evasion-of-common-sense moment).
But of course, that could not be the only possible use. What if, instead of pulling the stirrers out of solutions, you wanted to keep the stirrers INSIDE? Like when you are washing magnetic stirrers in a bottle and you come to the part when you have to drain the liquid (soap solution, ethanol, etc.). There’s always a risk of dropping the stirrer with it, which means you have to wash it all over again (depending on where you actually drop it).
So then, if you would use a super-strong magnet (or maybe even just a magnet), you can keep the magnet inside while completely inverting your bottle to drain the solvent. Can be pretty useful sometimes. And now you have a use for super-strong magnets lying around (or rather, sticking around) in your lab.
And as I am now discovering, they are also quite good for designing little games. Like taking smaller magnets and dropping them close enough to the bigger magnets and see how they deflect the dropping magnets. If you control the distance precisely, you can make them hit a particular point on a metal pole.
And there, now you have a game of magnet darts (and another use for super-strong magnets lying around in your lab).