Materials scientist and Christmas Lecturer Mark Miodownik demonstrates some of the weird properties of ferrofluid. This liquid is literally ‘dripping with magnetism’, containing a suspension of ferromagnetic nanoparticles that make the liquid responsive to external magnetic fields, generating unusual patterns, shapes and motion.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of ferrofluids, there’s a cool ferrofluid machine at the Science 26 exposition at the Montreal Science Centre, but the thing has been broken for the past few months, so if anyone from the Science Centre is reading this, please have the machine fixed? :)

[TheRoyalInstitution | Via IHC]