Ferrofluid

So the oil and printer toner particles was a no-go. The picture that was posted up earlier represents the lacklustre result.

My mother (Zoe Gaffen) has been an absolute star helping me with this bit. She studied bio-chemistry and has access to a laboratory, and helped clear me for access to conduct some experiments under her supervision.

Firstly, what was going wrong with the toner/oil solution;

To understand this, first a base understanding of the chemistry of ferrofluid must be known. Now mine is hardly stellar, but it should be able to provide a mildly adequate description:

• Ferrofluid is a combination of three parts, the ferrous particles, a surfactant and a carrier. The ferrous particles are the 'tiny magnets' that cause the fluid to behave the way it does. The surfactant is used to dissolve the particles into a liquid (the carrier). The 'liquid-like' behaviour works because the particles are dispersed evenly through the liquid, causing it to take on magnetic properties.

The oil didn't work because although vegetable oil has a little oleic acid in it (one form of surfactant) it needs to be mixed with the ferrous particulate before the carrier is added. My mother seems to think that a 5% particulate, 10% surfactant and an 85% carrier mixture will work best.

Some photo's of the different mixtures to come and a quick description of what does/doesn't work about each one.