Now all through my life I have heard how there are three metals which are attracted to magnets, iron, nickel and theres one more that I’ve forgotten but thats not important.
I’m more interested the actual magnets themselves, the attracting device.
I know that to make a magnet u can take a ferromagnetic material like iron and wrap a current carrying conductor around it and you’ve got a magnet.
But what I want to know is how are natural magnets formed? How is it that an ordinary lump of iron will not attract another lump of iron. Are natural magnets special mixtures or compounds of iron. Does the earth’s magnetic field create dipoles in these minerals?
You could also take a piece of iron and line it up with the Earth’s magnetic field and bang the hell out of it that would give you a weak magnet.
Now to dreg up what prof. Atherton taught…
Basically it comes down to the way the spin angular momentum of the electrons in the iron line up. Electrons produce a small magnetic field (i.e. a moving charge produces a magnetic field), however typically you have pairs of electrons and their fields tend to cancel each other out. Unpaired electrons can exist and they provide a net magnetic field. In ferrous materials due to quantum effects the fields can align spontaneously. However over larger distances classical effects like North poles aligning to South poles kicks in which tends to make bulk amounts of ferrous material non magnetic overall. Now place that piece of iron in an external field and it helps propagate the quantum alignment over a much bigger piece of material.
Cobalt, but it is possible to make magnets out of other metals and there have even been experimental magnets made that contain no metallic elements at all.
I believe Boji Stones are naturally occuring male and female magnets. I have a pair in my study at home. When you take them in each hand and move them closer to each other you can feel the resistance.
There’s really no such thing as a natural magnet. All ferromagnetic materials must be magnetized in order to become a magnet. The magnetic field of the Earth is not strong enough to accomplish this so it is thought that it must be the result of lighting strikes.
The real mystery is ferromagnetism itself. QM tells us that two electrons that are close together have a very strong tendency to have their spins anti-parallel, but just the opposite is required. Somehow the inner electrons must mediate this interaction but to the best of my knowledge no one has successfully figure out how this occurs
Ferromagnetic material cooling from above the Curie point, as in, say, a lava flow, will align itself wrt the earth’s field. I’m not sure what part of that or lightning you consider “unnatural.”
Also - there is a fourth ferromagnetic material - gadolinium, whose Curie point is 16 C.
You forgot the biggest magnet: find a guy with buns of steel and put him on Queer eye for the straight guy. As the gay guys run around him they give off fagtrons which align his masculinity. Women are instantly attracted to him. The Chick Magnet.
Thanks – I vaguely remembered that gadolinium was ferromagnetic and that “high natural temperatures” put it over the Curie point.
Worth noting that iron, nickel, cobalt, and gadolinium are the four natural ferromagnetic elements – hundreds of compounds and alloys are also ferromagnetic. Many commerical magnets are made of “Alnico” – an alloy of aluminum with nickel and cobalt, which is magnetic although aluminum is not.
I believe that there are a number of other elements than those four that are ferromagnetic at cryogenic temperatures but whose Curie points are so low that they wouldn’t even work on Pluto.
I’m not sure what “male” and “female” are supposed to mean in connection with magnets, but my best guess is that you mean north and south poles. Except that every magnet must have both*. If you take a magnet with north on one end and south on the other and cut it in half, then a new north and south will form at the cut, so each piece still has a north and a south.
*Strictly speaking, magnetic monopoles do exist, but the best theoretical estimate is that there are approximately zero of them in the known Universe. I’m still not betting on there being a New Age website selling them.
