Floating balls. How?

Question

Can anyone explain how the floating balls exhibit at the BMW museum in Munich is set up?

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/assets/library/080620picoftheday--121395727246462200.jpg

Answer 1

It's  very thin strings holding each ball up.

Here's a nice video of them in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVhVClFMg...

You can see the strings clearly in this article:

http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2008...

Answer 2

The room's dark so I'm wondering if it's got something to do with pepper's ghost?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppers_Gho...

(I think it would make any strings disappear too!)

Answer 3

Looking at it I would guess there are 2 ways of doing it.

My first thought is magnetism. If you magnetise a ball, and place it over sa magnetic field of the same polarity then it will float away from the magnet. The distance it does this depends on the strength of the 2 magnets and the weight of the ball.

If you have 2 balls and magnetise them differently - 1 stronger than another, then one will float higher than the other - get 200 balls and carefully magnetise them all, place them in order on a glass sheet over an electromagnet, turn it on and the balls just might rise to form the shape of a car.

Obviously BMW has the money to make this happen

The other way would be to use hollow balls, and fill them with a mix of lighter than air gas - this makes the balls light enough to float, and get the weight and gas right and they can float into shape. Dont think they have done this because the balls would float around the room with the breeze.

Id go with the magnet idea

Answer 4

Maybe they have them suspended by invisible string?

I really don't know, but thanks for posting this one.

It is neat!

Answer 5

i cant find the image anywhere else.... is it not just a photoshop job 4 promotion.... if it's an actual exhibition, im really amazed..... hung from ceiling?

Answer 6

basically, this is the use of the knowledge about hyperbolas

an image/structure below the glass located in one of the foci of the hyperbola is reflected to another foci, which is on the top of the glass.

edit//

this thing ^^^^ holds true of the exhibit if it is intangible but an image appears