- #1
Toothbrush
- 5
- 2
There's enough angular momentum in electron spin to get a 1cm radius ring of silver atoms to turn with a period of order days after relaxing from spin-up into randomness. (assuming you could get all of it to show up externally, and not end up in microscopic rotations or l quantum numbers.)
I could conceivably arrange this by passing all of my ring material through a Stern Gerlach experiment beforehand. If the alignment of the spins would decay too fast, I could get the same rotation by spraying spin-up silver on to a floating target, as it was coming from the magnets. The issue that I'm no so sure about is: how can I get the angular momentum to go into macroscopic motion, and not something else?
(I don't know enough physics to tell whether or not this boils down to designing the right lattice to spray the silver on to, so feel free to move my post.)
I could conceivably arrange this by passing all of my ring material through a Stern Gerlach experiment beforehand. If the alignment of the spins would decay too fast, I could get the same rotation by spraying spin-up silver on to a floating target, as it was coming from the magnets. The issue that I'm no so sure about is: how can I get the angular momentum to go into macroscopic motion, and not something else?
(I don't know enough physics to tell whether or not this boils down to designing the right lattice to spray the silver on to, so feel free to move my post.)