Measurement of ferrofluid dynamics in undergraduate physics laboratory

We present an activity performed in the second-year Physics Laboratory of the undergraduate course in Physics at the University of Insubria (Como, Italy). The work is focused on the characterization of a ferrofluid sample in an external magnetic field. The didactic approach to the experiment was to leave the students free to choose the experimental procedure and the measurements to perform. The measurements were performed by taking pictures of the structures at the different distances. The images were processed to extract the dimensions and shape of the structures, which were fitted with some models for the shape of the peaks.