A fountain is a great way of adding a little flair to an otherwise boring pond. All you need is a pump, a filter and some pipes, along with a nozzle to scatter the pressurized water in some aesthetically pleasing way. Fountains are generally quite safe: if any of the parts malfunction, the worst thing that can happen is some minor flooding.
How different this is for [Advanced Tinkering]’s recent project, the NaK Fountain. If this one were to spring a leak, it’s quite likely to take out its surroundings in a huge fireball. That’s because the fluid inside is an alloy of sodium and potassium in about a 1:3 ratio, known as NaK (pronounced like “knack”), which is a liquid at room temperature. Unfortunately, it’s also highly reactive: NaK oxidizes quickly when exposed to air and can even catch fire spontaneously. Contact with water will result in a fiery explosion that scatters corrosive liquids everywhere.
[Avanced Tinkering] therefore built the whole setup inside a custom-made glass enclosure. In his video (embedded after the break) he shows off his glass-blowing skills to make a small nozzle inside a larger glass tube that acts as a reservoir, with a pipe bringing the liquid back to the nozzle. Also embedded in the glasswork are two tungsten electrodes that serve to implement a rather unusual type of pump.
This magneto-hydrodynamic pump works thanks to the Lorentz force. The two electrodes are used to pass a current through the liquid metal in the x direction, while a pair of neodymium magnets positioned just outside provide a magnetic field oriented along the y ..
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