The magnets I have seen are either bar shaped or horseshoe shaped. Is it possible to magnetize ball bearings?
I wear a hematite bracelet that’s a bunch of balls of hematite stone on an elastic cord. I’ve gone through several of them. They are not magnetic to start out with, but every one, over time, turns magnetic. I don’t know how. But they are little round balls that can be magnetized. Looking on Google, I see that some hematite bracelets are sold specifically as “magnetic hematite bracelets.”
As long as the ball bearings are made of ferris metal they could be magnetized. I wouldn’t think magnetized ball bearings would be good thing though. Magnetized ball bearings would accumulate particulate ferris metals from normal wear of the ball bearings and surrounding casing. This could cause the ball bearings to fail earlier than they should.
Well, the earth is more or less spherical.
what, you’ve never seen a fridge magnet?? Those aren’t long or horseshoe shaped, they’re generally quite flat.
Yes, it is. There’s even a toy set that uses them to hook things together, so are some “atom models” sets.
I think that maybe the question you are really asking is, “What would the poles of a spherical shaped magnet be?”
And the answer is that one half would be a north pole, and one half would be a south pole. Magnetic poles are pretty interesting–a bar shaped magnet can have each end as a pole, or act like several bar shaped magnets in a row, or the top half could be a north pole, and the bottom be south.