Two words: Permeability, and flux saturation. Iron has the highest saturation density of any of the elements. Cobalt has a higher permeability. Wrap 20 turns of wire around the samples, to make solenoid electromagnets. Apply 1 amp to each magnet. The Cobalt will be the strongest, followed by nickel, then a close third place, will be iron. Now, increase the current, until core saturation occurs. every element will reach a maximum, after which, it will not become any stronger, no matter how much more current is applied. Iron will be the clear winner. All these samples were saturated in your direct contact pull test, with the spring scale. That chart will apply. The distance tests, are permeability. (the one where they were floated on water. The one with the magnet placed above the samples on the scale, may have saturated some cores, but not others, based on their permeability times their saturation level. Those giant Neodymium magnets you used in this test are no joke. They cast a large field, and can saturate those small samples, without direct contact. I hope this answers more questions, than it begs. Excellent video!

'My house is not prepared for handling the liquid helium needed to cool it.....yet'. And that is why I love Braniac's videos.

Man, its good to see an upload from you. The brain needs a good workout.

Your ability to setup these experiments (and get results) by combining common household items with simple mesuring equipment, is really brilliant.

The reason for the results is magnetic saturation. When the magnetic field trough a ferromagnetic material becomes strong enough it begins to lose its ferromagnetic properties and begin acting more like air. If you search for magnetic saturation on Wikipedia you will get a graph that shows the magnetization curves for iron, cobalt and nickel. This is also the reason why iron is used for the cores of transformers.

There is no mystery about iron and cobalt. Cobalt has a high permeability at low field intensities, as nickel does also, but to a lesser extent. Iron has lower permeability, but higher saturation flux density. If you tried any of the iron-nickel "mu-metals", you could get more attraction in the water-bath or "at-a-distance" tests, but poor performance in the contact pull force tests. You ought to try a sample of "vanadium Permendur", an alloy 49% Fe, 49% Co, 2% V. It has the highest saturation flux density of any material. You probably will need to buy a rod, and machine it to size. Then the hard part: a heat-treatment anneal in wet hydrogen at 960C. This should give you the strongest pull.

0:45 that's unbelievable how a very simple chart and that explanation have made me understand each type of magnet after 5 years since I've first learnt about it without understanding. Thank you so much!

Is there any significant difference in the mass of the samples? Enough to make a difference in the inertia that needs to be overcome to get the sample moving in the water bath?

Fascinating! A perfect example of the value of amateur science. Have you strayed into unexplored territory? Or, merely little-known? It hardly matters. You've awakened broader awareness of a phenomenon of genuine interest and perhaps of significant practical value.

Hey. Could you make an experiment with melting bismuth and forming bismuth crystals ? I'm really curios what will happen if you place a strong magnet under the bismuth while it's crystallizing. Bismuth behaves really weird with magnets and so far, no one make this kind of experiment. Also quick tip, when melting bismuth, the key to get the crystals is to let it cool down slow. The slower it cools down, the better are the results, that's why people melt bismuth inside a secondary sand container.

I love the "... yet" at the end. The little scientist in me couldn't suppress a "Yessssss!" hearing this. :)

This channel is absolutely amazing and I'm grateful I found you! Fascinating stuff!!

Loved the Dane Weather joke, that earned my Like. Great videos, I'll always watch the new ones.

Cool set of experiments! The 3rd experiment was particularly surprising. One thing to keep in mind is that the last experiment is greatly affected by the mass of the sample and not just the magnetic properties of it. A more dense (massive) sample will have more inertia and therefore a longer measured time of travel. A more massive sample will also need to displace more water leading to increased drag as it moves through the water. Something to think about...

I love your channel for showing clear experimental data!

I love his reasoning for including Gadolinium in the room temperature test.

I like very very much your idea of Hazard roulette. It is always good to remind people that any serious (or semi-serious) experiment can cause harm, if safety measures are not taken. I learned new thing today. I never heard of change in magnetic behavior of some elements. Thank you very much - keep up the good work (also can't wait for a video featuring liquid helium coolant :D)

Like.. I love your experiments and all. But I'm always impressed by your lego contraptions lol Keep up the good work :D

Always great videos from you man, really appreciate the effort!

I was just thinking about this kind of experiment the other day. Glad you already made a video about it :)

Great video, as always! Thank you 👍

Elemental Brainiacium is probably the most attracted to magnets, but you'd need to run a different set of tests for that.

Your videos are always a treat!

Your videos are always as interesting and educational as they are charming, which is to say very! Thank you!!

Here's what I believe happens. Cobalt responds to weak magnetic fields more easily than iron. Meaning hysteresis graph of iron would be taller and thicker (and at an angle closer to 45 degrees), while cobalt would be shorter and thinner (but more upright). This means that iron can produce stronger maximum magnetic field, but it takes more work to create it. On the other hand cobalt will far more quickly respond to magnetic field, but will not be able to create field as strong as iron. Basically, at the distance from a magnet, there will be weak magnetic field. Cobalt will magnetize quickly and start moving towards magnet, while iron will magnetize weakly until it gets closer. Kind of like how it's so very hard to change magnetization of neodymium magnets, while if you put Alnico close to a strong magnet it immediately changes it's magnetization. This is also possible to explain by permeability, but I don't understand how permeability works too well.

Keep performing these experiments, I love seeing this stuff! Great job with this experiment too, you've really tried to adhere to the Scientific method and your results are indeed baffling. I would venture the opinion that it has something to do with the molecular configuration of these materials that makes them more or less attracted to magnets. When you cool down the gadolinium and it became more magnetic, the only thing that is affected by temperature, is the molecular orientation of the crystals making up the metal. When you change that temperature, you either excite them or take that energy away with colder temperatures. All materials react the same way, well almost all, the colder something gets, the more compact the molecules become, so that there is where the answer lies with your results. Thanks again!

Another commenter offered a really cool idea for an experiment, the person is Navi Retlav, and the experiment is to melt and then let Bismuth form crystals while over top of a strong magnet! That is a really cool idea for an experiment, but you would need to have something that could maintain a very slow temperature cool down so that the molten Bismuth would have the best circumstances to form their beautiful crystals! I totally vote for this one! Brainiac, you have to perform this experiment!!!!!

That was amazing to see each Sample affected by the Magnetic Field while it was still almost a foot away. Awesome video as always...

Yer it's always cold in Denmark to be fair we had a grade Sommer and it comes in really handy when doing magnet tests ❤️😂

Not liquid helium no, but how about liquid nitrogen? Is there any element that when put in liquid nitrogen gets even more attracted to magnets than iron and cobalt? If you don't have access to liquid nitrogen, well, see if the winter in Denmark is strong enough to create better results than room temperature metals. Great video by the way, thought all your videos are great so this isn't any news :D. Greetings from Brazil.

Great video as usual. Thanks a lot! And kudos to Lake Shore Cryotronics for the donated unit. The F71 looks very advanced. Subbed to their channel as well.

A good experiment can bring questions as well as answers. Great share.

"there are only three magnetic elements at room temperature - iron, nickle, and cobalt" "Let's measure them on this neodymium magnet."

"Yet".

Hope you had a great Christmas! Always nice to see a new great video from a famous yet very humble and beloved guy in Europe

I haven't gone down through all the comments, so this may have already been said, but ... an important magnetic characteristic of iron is its coercive force. The magnetic domains of iron flip discretely, at different H-force excitation levels. At very low excitation, e.g. from a distant attracting magnet, very few domains reach their minimum thresholds and flip, so the macroscopic sample appears to have a low permeability. As the excitation increases, more domains are brought into play and the apparent permeability increases. When nearly all the domains have flipped into alignment with the excitation field, the apparent permeability declines again in magnetic saturation. A more complete picture of iron response would use a low-frequency AC excitation, low enough so eddy currents wouldn't affect the result, and with the excitation amplitude increasing with time. Plotting coil amperes, which can be calibrated to the excitatory H-field, versus B-field in the iron, either by time integration of voltage induced in a coil around the iron, or by detection of surface field strength at a Hall sensor (with some geometric considerations), one can obtain a trace plotting dynamic B versus H. The coercive force is manifested as hysteresis in the plot. That gives a fairly complete story. Iron that is annealed acquires large crystals and similarly large domains, which exhibit low coercive force, while work-hardened iron has smaller crystals (from breaking up the original big ones), and that iron is also magnetically hardened, with higher coercive force and characteristics more like a permanent magnet. Nickel, Cobalt, and Gadolinium will show similar coercive force, in varying proportions and again dependent on crystalline structure, which will depend on the history of temperature and mechanical stress. It's not just a matter of the place in the periodic table.

Would it make sense to test them all at the same (low) temperature?

Isn't the magnetic force of the magnet itself influenced by temperature? Colder makes the magnet stronger right?

Yet another video so interesting I can't take my eyes off it!

Been a subscriber for a long time, love the videos!

When your brain is on E, come to brainiac for all your refueling needs!

Could you do a video showing which elements are more repelled by magnets

That's amazing! I thought for sure iron would be the big winner, but it seems cobalt has alot of potential!

Very interesting results. Keep up the good work.

Could cobalt be used in a compass?

It would be very interesting to make the magnetic induction test with cold gadolinium and see the curie transition as it occurs

This is like my favorite high school science class with my favorite science teacher who teaches cool amazing stuff and makes it fun and NEVER gives homework!!

Well presented; great video, good audio; great scripting and pacing. Well done, Sir.

Where did you get these element samples?

Density? Cobalt: 8.90 g/cm3 Iron: 7.874 g/cm3 Hypothesis: Perhaps the higher density of Cobalt helps with the permeability?

That was lovely!! Great video!

I was rooting for Cobalt the whole time and I was initially disappointed but Cobalt pulled through in the end. Thank you for another great video!

Is there a material that can block magnetic field ? Like a lead foil that can block radiation ....

Just like :) Edit thanks for the likes :)

I don't know what's more amazing: 1. The fact that Cobalt beat Iron (Fe) at distanced FE-rromagnetism, or, 2. The fact that you have a Windows phone 😅 Seriously though, I love these videos. I love seeing someone do (and upload 😉) all the awesome experiments I cannot myself perform.... Thank you!

That was very interesting. The best experiments are the ones that have surprising results.

Curie point for iron is 210 celsius, after that temperature iron no longer reacts to magnetic fields

Gravity is just Magnetism that works on everything

That's a surprising result!

Very interesting and learned some stuff from the comments too!

The clock says ***LEET*** at 5:03

It's IRONic how you rated them using gold, silver, and bronze medals LOL

This was extremely interesting and informative. Thank you for making the video.

Thank you for the video. I didn't realize one could so dramatically change the magnetic properties of a metal with such minor temperature changes. I'm working on moving heat around and knowing this about gadmium may be useful in place of a thermostat or temperature sensitive switches/valves.

"yet"

Early squad OwO

Impressive tesla meter you got there ! thats no childs play ! i like the slow pace in the videos ! very relaxing !

i can confirm the results of your experiment by theory too considering the electronic configurations of these elements and deducing weather they are dia,para, or ferro and to what extent :)

Those were quite interesting and unexpected results indeed!

What a pleasure to learn & gain insight into the workings of science & life - thank you

Well done! Thanks for sharing this very educational content!

Love this channel!

Cool to see these element rods on video. I've been collecting them too.

I'm learning much from this channel. The fact that gadolinium changes between the ferromagnetic state and the paramagnetic state at a point near room temperature I find particularly interesting. The distance attraction strength thing is odd for sure. Magnets are weird. :)

God bless you for this material!!!

Another great video. Conductivity and stability and molecular electro dispersion changing the properties of alignment at distance due to the photon angle

As usual, a great video.

What a voice! Love this channel

Another cool video. Cheers.

very interesting. especially how cooling the Gd by just 10° is enough to bring it below it's curie temperature

Brilliant video!

Before the video, I'm saying ferrite. After the video, I'm saying, nailed it.

I really like your videos!

13:14 "My house is not prepared for handling the liquid helium ...yet" I laughed out loud because I love magnets as much as you.

I love you man! No homo doe, but I am very grateful to know this channel. It always lightens up my mood and you always have top notch ideas

Excellent safety card on the intro. Thank you, as always.

I really like how you say Hi at every start of a video

you are by far one of the most underrated channels on KZfaq.

Bro you just blew my mind.

Really intresting experiment.

Relaxed fields have greater effect at distance. Worked with large electromagnets for years, some as heavy as 3 tons. Add electrical potential to tighten fields to lift dense iron and reduce electrical potential to better lift non-dense iron. It's all in understanding Magnetic Funny Actions. To understand magnetic funny actions, one can look to Magnetic Universe Theory.

3:50 LA BEAST HERE

Thanks for another great video! Your production quality is great! What camera and lens are you using? Thanks from east Tennessee!

Analytical forever, always happy to see another upload.

To get a more conclusive results you would need to tests all the elements at the lower temperature as well, if nothing else it would be interesting. Love the videos

Great work.

I found this very interesting due to my bass guitar playing where we use magnetic pickups and different types of metal strings to create sound.

Good vid. Makes me want to try some of this myself.

Ha! :D The braniac forgot that on film you can pause the video instead pausing the timer. Love your vids

I think so that the different densities of the metals show the different readings . Also depends upon the mass of the samples thus affecting the attraction. Even a minute difference can change the results.