Report on meeting of the ONWARD group in April by Peter Read Vice Chairman, Photography Subject Adviser, Web Master.
This is but a small part of the morning that was full of interest where we dabble in almost any topic. New members are very welcome to our small group.
1. Neodymium Magnets. Terry found an article on the BBC Earth Lab site. This led to a long discussion. Terry found that 2 new magnetic materials have been found by using a supercomputer; researchers used supercomputers to create a shortcut in the process by modelling the potential magnetism of hundreds of thousands of candidates rapidly, cutting the list of potential configurations from 236,115 to just 14. They know the modelling process works because they’ve already created two completely novel magnetic materials based on their predictions.
Brian wondered about the domains within the magnets and Richard is curious about how the magnets are made magnetic. We surmised that they were magnetised in a powerful elctro magnet  1 gauss is 10^-4 tesla. Teslas are in the SI system whilst Gauss for the old CGS and as you can tell much smaller. See http://www.periodictable.com/Elements/RareEarthMetals/
An interesting sideline is the Bitter Electromagnet capable of 45 Tesla compared to the 7T used in MRI scanners
It led in part to my remembering the Eutectic Point for metal mixtures. Below is the Phase diagram explaining how this works. Essentially all that above the topmost lines is a liquid mix and all below the lines are solid. At 100% A or B represents the melting point of A and B. So this shows that the eutectic point is the lowest melting point because the areas L + a and L +b [Greek letters do not seem to work for me] liquids. See the YouTube for more accurate info.
As it happens I have just booked for the Sci-Tech Group a talk on Rare Earth Metals on 26th June 2017 by Linda Morley. See the Sci-Tech Prog. Do come if you can please.
2. We then looked into the Hall Effect found in 1879 by Edward Hall. The deflection of electrons in, say, a strip of metal under the influence of a magnetic field can be detected at the edges of the metal. Using this idea one can measure the rotational speed of engines and such like. 
3. Smart Bandages are an ingenious way of knowing if a wound is healing correctly without the need to remove expensive dressings. These bandages utilise nano technology, 3D printing and the 5G network. Do look at the links. This could be a big thing.
4. Experiments on the new £5 polypropelene bank notes said to be more durable are to be seen on https://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos. There are lots more interesting videos here not the least of which is the method of making new elements up to atomic number 118. The method utilises a special form of Calcium that costs a fortune. The rare isotope Calcium-48 plays a key role in the creation of superheavy elements. But it's not easy to obtain. Filmed at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, in Dubna, Russia.