MagLev C

[Nevin2e]

The spacing of the magnets is what I'm asking about. How does the spacing between the magnets on the track compare to the spacing of the magnets on the vehicle?

they are both on the very edges of the track and the vehicle

[iwonder]

And the vehicle is just about as wide(less than 1/4" gap) as the track?

[Nevin2e]

And the vehicle is just about as wide(less than 1/4" gap) as the track?

yup.

[blakinator8]

And the vehicle is just about as wide(less than 1/4" gap) as the track?

yup.

Would you mind better describing the vehicle/posting a picture of it?

[Nevin2e]

And the vehicle is just about as wide(less than 1/4" gap) as the track?

yup.

Would you mind better describing the vehicle/posting a picture of it?

sure later round 4:00 though i have science olympiad then

[twototwenty]

Hey My maglev Vehicle keeps tipping and i was wondering if anyone has any placement ideas for it. thanks for Feedback

In my experience, this would most likely point to your vehicle simply not being wide enough for your track. The magnets of the car are naturally going to try to get away from the magnet fields of the track's magnets, which means if the car can, it will tip over to do so, regardless of how well it is balanced. Try widening the vehicle so there is less "wiggle room" between it and the sides of the track, so it is less able to tip.

[jesseman121]

Well I have looked at comments on this website and some people have told me to look at kelvin.com so I did and I found this http://www.kelvin.com/Merchant2/merchan ... gory_Code= and I have seen the exact same tape at home depot and that tape didn't even work, so I just want to be confirmed that this tape is the right tape to use.

[iwonder]

Those magnets will work fine. What was most likely at home depot was a thing called a hallbach array, which is a strip of magnets where sections of the magnets aren't lined up(one pole may be horizontal, then vertical, etc). These are used on cheaper magnet strips, you can tell if somethings an array like this if two pieces of the strip 'click' when you rub them together.

[chalker]

Those magnets will work fine. What was most likely at home depot was a thing called a hallbach array, which is a strip of magnets where sections of the magnets aren't lined up(one pole may be horizontal, then vertical, etc). These are used on cheaper magnet strips, you can tell if somethings an array like this if two pieces of the strip 'click' when you rub them together.

This is generally correct. just to be clear, just about every magnetic tapes you can buy in a home improvement store will be a halbach array (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbach_array), which is essentially the same thing as a kitchen magnet and doesn't have an obvious north or south pole. These are relatively cheap to make and serve most any purposes EXCEPT FOR THIS EVENT. You need to get magnetic tape with true north / south poles, from a supplier such as Science Kit or Pittsco. These will generally cost quite a bit more than the halbach array tapes, because they are harder to produce.

[joeyjoejoe]

Those adhesive strip magnets will meet your needs....unless you actually want to win or at least place.
Even those strip magnets from Kelvin will not do much more than demonstrate the ability of "like poles repelling". We started with them but couldn't get anything over 400g to levitate reliably - not good if you want to increase your vehicle score (VS). I don't know, maybe we did something wrong or got a bad batch or something.
I'd go with the ceramic magnets. They may be harder to mount but they are much more powerfull imo.