Hi everyone,
I just completed my Rodin Coil using a plastic ring off a baby toy set (fisher price/mattel) and copper wire that was salvaged from a TV.
I have put a video on youtube showing a few basic things along with it acting like a strong solenoid.
I will put more up as I go.
See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsJ45P0iybEIt takes a little patience to make sure all the windings are done correctly and tightly but is an amazing shape to look at and should be researched more, I would encourage more people to build one as needless to say, it creates some very interesting effects. I did several experiments using DC and have done a few with AC.
It can get quite warm very quickly with DC ( I was putting in 2.04 Amps) but interestingly enough, it will run much more coolly and handle a more current if you use AC (was putting in 3 amps).
I will put more videos up as I go, for now though I can say that it definitely creates a rotating magnetic field or magnetic vortex. If you place a very smal magnet in the centre, it will go round and round and will try to exit the coil, even if it is flying out its trajectory will conform to the direction of the strands.
You should very easily be able to make a motor by simply placing an axis with magnets in the centre, I will do this when I have time to prove it.
As you can see from a diagram of this coil, it is actually made up of two coils on one torus, if you connect only one coil (to DC), a magnet placed inside will just stick to one of the bands of that coil. It will not rotate.
If you connect one coil and give the other coil a quick jolt, a small magnet will rotate (it can stop rotating if it moves to a wrong spot). This rotating field may occur due to the temporary AC spike from when the coil is switched on.
If you connect both coils to DC, the small magnet will rotate continuously.
There must be something happening here with the initial AC spike continuing somehow through the coil.
You can see in the video that when I use a large magnet the coil acts like a strong solenoid if only one coil is connected, however when both are live they function differently and interact and make a rotating magnetic field.
If you connect AC to only one coil you will still get a rotating field and there is no difference if you connect the second coil.
I am going to do more experiments with DC, but from my observations this coil seems to favour AC.
Another interesting observation about the rodin coil when you run DC through it is that it does not behave like a normal solenoid though if you have one coil hooked up it does behave like a normal solenoid and repulses or attracts a magnet (it was several large magnet in this case, the ones in the video). However if you connect both coils the magnet will always want to be in the centre of the coil (even if you flip the poles around) and will vibrate or shake, obviously rotating slowly.
This coil exerts a lot of force and concentrates its magnetic vortex at the centre, I would love to see what it does if given a large discharge from a cap (sadly I don't have many caps so can't test this).
I am going to make more coils and will see what happens if the are stacked (amplified effects maybe?), I need more copper wire and will have to find some more dead TV's to scrounge it from as it costs a lot here.
I am also going to run some experiments, placing Mercury inside the torus (will also do this with a normal toroidal coil) if I can get hold of some.
I live in western Canada and I can not find a way to get mercury ANYWHERE, it is impossible to get hold of

. I haven't been able to get Bismuth here either, I tried Ebay but couldn't get it shipped here and the non-lead fishing weights available here do not contain Bismuth.
I have a gram or two of mercury from a thermostat switch but need much more, if you happen to have a cheap source of mercury or are able to get me discarded switches containing Mercury I would very much appreciate hearing from you

I haven't watched the lectures yet but will soon, I forgot to mention that each of the two coils on my Rodin coil contains 18 winds. I did 18 because I remembered something about Rodin's numerical model working around number 9 and multiples of 9 ans and I also needed that many winds to fill the gaps as best as possible.
I might build a coil using 15 degree spacing instead of 10 degree spacing, this could allow for a coil with no gaps.