PPPL Tests Magnetic Field In Free Fall

This sounds like a fun experiment done at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. It certainly would make a nice, crashing noise, if nothing else.

A crowd of scientists and other spectators gathered outside the PPPL yesterday as the group attempted to mimic a zero-gravity situation by throwing a box from the top of a 100-foot fire engine ladder. They were testing to see how iron filaments would react to a magnet in a no-gravity scenario — specifically, if the magnet would pull the filaments into the same oblong shape of the earth’s magnetic field, PPPL employee Stephanie Wissel explained.

And it appears from the report that the iron filaments arranged themselves in the familiar pattern even in "zero g".

Zz.