⚡ Key Takeaways
- Setup: 8" disc floating on 8" disc — levitation achieved between two identically sized discs
- 3 donut ring magnets placed on the outside poles, all opposing (pushing away from each other)
- A wrist flick starts the spin — the outside donut magnets help sustain and extend motion
- Multiple unused poles around the disc circumference — adding more donuts could maximize coverage
- Outside placement = maximum lever arm for torque — the most efficient location for rotational assist
- This setup is a direct predecessor to the more advanced configurations in later experiments
Sometimes the most interesting experiments are the ones where you keep adding things and see what changes. This video documents Papa Bale at exactly that stage — he has an 8-inch disc levitating on another 8-inch disc, and he's surrounding it with donut ring magnets on the outside poles, all opposing. Three magnets. A flick. Then the question: could more magnets do more?
The 8-on-8 Setup
Using two identically sized discs — one on top of the other — might seem like the obvious starting point, but getting two 8" discs to levitate each other reliably requires careful polarity management. The top disc has to face the bottom disc with the same polarity (north facing north, for example), and the magnets have to be arranged so the repulsion is distributed evenly enough to prevent tilting.
Papa Bale achieves this. The top disc floats. And once it's floating, the question becomes: what do you do with all those exposed poles around the edge?
Outside Donut Magnets: The Logic
The outside edge of the disc — where the magnets are farthest from the center — is the highest-leverage location for anything that exerts rotational force. A small force applied at the edge produces much more torque than the same force applied near the center. Papa Bale places three donut ring magnets around the outside of the disc stack, all oriented to oppose (push) rather than attract.
The result is that as the disc spins and its edge magnets pass the fixed donut magnets, there's a brief push at each interaction — small, but repeated with every rotation. Over time, these small pushes either sustain the spin or at minimum reduce the rate at which the disc slows down.
Flick and Observe
Papa Bale gives the floating disc a wrist flick and watches. The spin lasts — not as long as later optimized setups, but long enough to make the case that the outside donut magnets are doing something. The experiment is qualitative at this stage: does it spin longer with the donuts than without? The answer appears to be yes.
Remaining Poles and Next Steps
With only three donut magnets in place, there are gaps around the disc circumference — unused outside poles where the edge magnets pass without interacting with anything. Papa Bale discusses adding more donut magnets to fill those gaps, creating more interaction events per revolution. The hypothesis: more interactions = more sustained motion = longer spin duration from the same initial flick.
This sets up the experiments that follow — each one adding or adjusting elements to push the spin time further.