Hi Doug,

At 10:28 AM 10/12/01 -0400, you wrote:
>One is for pumping liquid solder in wave solder machines.  If you have a
>pipe filled with liquid solder and you put a magnetic field crosswise
>through the pipe and an electric current vertically through the pipe it
>pumps solder through the pipe.  There are no moving parts except the
>solder so maintenance is easy.  I have heard of something similar for
>pumping liquid sodium in nuclear reactors.

I haven't heard of this and it sounds really clever, but something doesn't
seem right. Are you sure that the current is along the length of the pipe?
The Lorentz force law says F=v cross B, so F has to be perpendicular to
both velocity and B field. Velocity is parallel to electric current flow,
so I don't see how it could be causing a force along the direction of
electric current flow.

Sean




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