Lets say someone created a ball of magnets like a basketball and then inside that ball was there the opposite magnet, would it just freely float inside that ball forever ? Since it would had no way to escape
In: Engineering
You do not even need all the magnets in the ball, just a few of the magnet at the bottom to make a magnetic field that opposes the forces of gravity. And yes, such magnetic levetating does exist. You can buy cheap versions of them in places that sell trinkets and such. You might wonder how it does not run out of energy. The forces perfectly oppose each other so nothing in the system is moving. Levetating a magnet on a magnetic field is no different then putting the magnet on a table. The forces are the same, the energy transfered are the same. And just like you would not expect a table to suddenly run out of energy and let everything resting on it through and onto the floor a magnet does not run out of energy either because it does not transfer any.
If you had a bunch of small magnets, glued them on a tennis ball with all N sides facing outwards. Then created a larger size ball (basketball size) with all the N sides facing inwards then it would be possible. (Opposite poles attract, similar poles reflect)
It would depend on the magnetic strength as well as the weight of the tennis ball object though.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4zZhQz1Xqc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4zZhQz1Xqc)
There is no such thing as an “opposite magnet”. All magnets have both poles, north and south. If you made a ball of magnets with north pointing inwards and put another magnet inside of that, then the north side of that magnet would repel the walls while the south side would attract, and so your magnet immediately snaps to the side. This is unpreventable; there is no stable (levitating) arrangement of magnets that does not include some other force as well.
You can’t have north or south magnets. Magnets always have norths AND souths. The magnet would stick somewhere on the inside of the ball.
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