>>10966946They are uncharged silver atoms, not ions (they were evaporated from an oven).
They aren't bonded with each other.
There's no fluid pressure.
The orientation of the magnetic dipole moment of an atom depends on its angular momentum. This angular momentum is randomly oriented when the atoms are evaporated off. Passing through an inhomogeneous magnetic field causes a force to be exerted proportional to the component of the magnetic moment (and thus the angular momentum) parallel with the field. Classically, this vertical component of angular momentum should have a random, continuous distribution between the opposite maximal values. Instead, the vertical components actually have a random discrete distribution between 2 opposite, equal magnitude values.
