Watch Powerful Electromagnets Shrink Coins

You have to wonder who came up with the idea to use an electromagnet to shrink a coin. Really, how does that even occur to someone? It's either a stroke of genius or some strange and random arc of research leading down a truly odd rabbit hole. Either way, yes, you can shrink a coin using an electromagnet. But how? Physics.

Note: DO NOT try this at home. If you want your own shrunken coins, there are companies out there that have proper setups to do so.

How do you turn a normal quarter into a tiny quarter? Electricity.

It's going to take heaps of it, however. You have to generate a super-strong magnetic field, and that requires a TON of current. 

Basically, you have to charge up a capacitor to about 8,000 volts before passing the current through a coil wrapped around the coin.

As the electricity passes through the coil, it creates a powerful magnetic field that flows around the coin and squishes it down with inward forces. The coil, on the other hand, experiences similar outward forces that blow it to smithereens.

The currents involved are crazy, about 100,000 amps – comparable to a lightning bolt.

Which is exactly why you don't want to try this at home — check out the shards of piping hot metal created by the coil blowing apart. Physics Girl's experiment uses a metal box around the apparatus to keep the shrapnel from flying around the room, which seems wise.

You can see the whole video below!

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