If there was going to be any response, it was presumed that it would be small. The typical saturation magnetostrictive of iron is ~14ppm, and we expected any response to be a fraction of that. I’ll save our hypotheses as to why the effect would not be equivalent to the full magnitude of the saturated value for another section, but could start by assuming the magnetization is not at its fully saturated value. In order to detect such small motions without a full laser interferometer, it made sense to increase the amplitude by using the effect to induce a vibration at the beams resonance frequency. Ivan came up with the setup in which current would be conducted through two beams supporting a weight, allowing current to be conducted through a closed path. The parts were machined, current was conducted as driven by a high power amplifier driven by a frequency generator, and motion was seen to be self sustaining.
Our findings were submitted as an abstract to the 2016 MMM / Intermag Joint Conference held in San Diego.
