The Floating Frog: The Experiment That Won a Nobel Prize

In 1997, physicist Andre Geim and his team conducted a historic experiment: they levitated a frog inside a powerful magnet.

Three years later, this endeavor earned them the Ig Nobel Prize, the 'humorous Nobel' for the most unexpected scientific discoveries. Later, Geim himself won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of graphene.

The frog's levitation is due to diamagnetism. All objects have a tiny magnetic field. When exposed to an extremely strong magnet, this field can react repulsively and 'push' the object away.

Scientists exploited this phenomenon by placing the frog inside a strong magnetic field, causing its water-filled body to be repelled and levitate.