Veritasium
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2020–2022
8:27 · 3.1M views · Jul 14, 2018
Veritasium shows an experiment from Prof. Dan Lathrop's lab with a spinning sphere of molten sodium, used to study how turbulent convection in Earth's core generates a magnetic field. It is a short demonstration of dynamo physics.
Cited as a visual example of dynamo flows and of the care needed when handling reactive liquid sodium.
3 comments from Hacker News
I thought it was well-accepted that current flows and their resultant magnetic fields were the dominant forces in the Earth's core. Modeling a chaotic dynamo is difficult, but people are working on it. The more I think about it, the more annoyed I am with this article. this video
Considering our very recent understanding of sodium Coulombic explosions[0], using liquid sodium for... anything requires an enormous amount of care[1]. [0] [LINK] [1] this video
I don't know about chlorine trifloride, but that is one of the strategies used for reactive substances, like molten sodium: this video