It goes to 11: Florida lab sets new magnet strength record
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Engineers at a lab in Florida have been working quietly for the last two and a half years on building one of the most powerful magnets in the world.
And on Monday, they succeeded. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory — whose main location is housed at Florida State University — met its goal and reclaimed its status as home to the world’s strongest resistive magnet.
They called it “Project 11,”a nod to the comedy film “This is Spinal Tap” about a fictional heavy metal band whose guitarist boasts an amplifier that doesn’t go up to 10 but to 11.
Lab officials said they tested a 41.4-tesla magnet, which is roughly 20 times the strength of a magnet used in medical imaging machines and vastly stronger than the ones that get stuck to the door of a household refrigerator. The Earth’s magnetic field, by comparison, is one twenty thousandth (.00005) of a tesla. A tesla is a measure of magnetic field strength.