@ lewis82

All of these plots are for hydrogen alone; only the first one is the ground state. Larger atoms fill up more than one of those orbitals at a time.

Appropriately inexplicable.

Also: his middle name is (was?) Allan, not Allen.

Sorry-- site was down for server maintenance tonight; it's back up now. :)

That's Edgar *Allan* Poe.

>...would look nicer if it didn’t look like exposed wiring

The one in the picture is an older version; the new ones have solid black circuit boards: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ulBf7NIl8

I have a cube of neodymium magnets. I can confirm that as soon as you pick it up, you can't get anything else done.

Rather than spheres, "weakly" magnetized 1/8" - 3/16" cubical magnets are the best choice for this. Be sure to get a perfect cube. (K&J magnetics sells them in cubic quantities, even!)

Even worse than the pumpkin floating is that typical knives do as well-- put your knife down for a moment and it's gone!