Actually magneto-rhelocial(sp?) fluids are nothing new; they were discovered almost 40 years ago, when they left ball bearings in oil test tubes. After a while, they forgot about them, and then later came back and the ball bearings scaled off and became little particles. Somehow they found when in the presence of a magnetic field, the particles would align themselves along the magnetic field lines and increase the viscosity of the fluid substantially. They weren't really used though because at that time, they had difficulties with making uniform viscosities, and the particles would bunch up in certain areas of the tube. A lot of research went into this area of fluid dynamics in the late 90's to make the results uniform throughout the fluid. The neat thing about this approach is the response time of the particles is amazingly fast. Because of the mobility of the micro-particles (between a few and 10 micrometers) the response time from being suspended to align is on the order of 1/20,000 of a second. Because of this responce time, the appilcation can be use to dampen vibrations of cycles (such as in laundry machines) changes in road surface, ect. People have even thought of using it for a "liquid body armor"
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