Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

my group are working on a maglev train...
well...it's just a small one anyway
the principles are simple...
we'll make electromagnets... make some of them for the tracks...
some of them for the train itself...
when we make the like poles face each other, of course, they'll repel
everything is fine and cool

but the only problem is
i think we need to show equations and stuff...

for example,
how would we know how much voltage should we should pass through the wires of the electromagnets of the track so that it could repel the train weighing 5 Newtons... or bleep...

i've been researching real hard and i could find some things that bridges them but they're not enough... can you please help...

sorry if i couldn't get the principles right... we're just in Fourth Year highschool...
thanks for your time!

Hi JosephRaphael!

You can find websites by plugging in "equations for maglev" to answers.com. Note several of the sites seem to point to same paper by Yao et al. Also, some of the mathematics seems to involve college level mathematics, so you may need additional help from your project mentor.

In addition, you may be able to find additional sites by looking at my posting "Search Sites" dated 7/7/2005 on the Physical Science and Math forum.