Whoa!

I'm Luka, this is Paul, and this is Nate Ball.

We're going to watch some videos.

(kids screaming and giggling on video) I wanted to show this one to you and see what you guys thought.

LUKA: In this video, a guy was trying to make hover shoes.

NATE: So what he's showing is that by adding a 9-volt battery to some magnets, they begin repelling metal.

But I don't think it's real.

I don't think it's real.

I don't think it's real.

I don't think it's real.

So do you guys want to try this out?

(saw whirring) Today we're working at Artisan's Asylum.

It's a place where people share to make stuff.

NATE: So I'm going to have you help me wire these batteries directly to the magnets.

PAUL: We've attached the magnets, then we've attached wires to the magnets.

LUKA: And the wires and the magnets are connected to the batteries.

I think this is how the video showed it.

You're supposed to be able to hover.

Who's ready to try it?

Let's just grab a big piece of metal and stick it down on the floor.

But it's not going to work.

NATE: Are you sure?

LUKA: Yes.

Let's set it up and try it out.

We've gone this far; we can't not try it just because we don't think it's going to work.

It's not going to work.

NATE: Oh, man, okay, well, maybe that's not actually how that...

I don't think it's real.

NATE: In the video we watched, the guy must have been hanging to make it look like the shoes were hovering.

All right, so we just made a set of hover shoes, based on what that video told us to do.

And obviously, that's not how it all works.

Magnets grab pieces of metal.

They don't just repel things that are metal.

So now we're going to make a real set of hover shoes still using permanent magnets, but in a way that they'll actually repel each other.

Magnets always have two what are called poles.

There's a north pole and a south pole.

If we stuck two magnets together, the way they're lined up is like this, where the south pole is grabbing on to the north pole.

Now, to make them push each other apart, we would flip that other magnet over so that this was the north and then south was on top.

Now, that force is going to push them apart.

So what are we going to do?

We're going to use really strong permanent magnets and set them into blocks of wood.

We're going to have them all aligned in the same direction and then we're going to make a base that has magnets that are opposing that direction so that force that you can feel is going to hopefully be enough to hold us off the ground.

You feel it opposing there?

PAUL: I feel it.

It feels like there's a lot, a lot, a lot of force.

Why don't I just try to hold it in place.

Does that feel a little more hoverish?

Yeah.

There's definitely enough opposing force on those magnets to hold up at least half of Luka's body weight, if not more.

I think what I learned is that making hover shoes is a little more complicated than it might seem.

What do you think?

Yeah, I think it's pretty complicated.

We got to try making one of those barfing cup videos.

(man groaning on computer)