I put a wire on a magnet a few weeks ago. I think I even started a thread related to this in the past. I’ve noticed that if I have the vertical, eventually the wire will appear to have moved. Here is a picture before and a few days later.
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
I suspect that someone is moving it: maybe the cleaning person, maybe me accidently moving stuff around, maybe the vibration inherent in the building?
It always seems to move the same direction and doesn’t appear to be ‘top heavy’ to where gravity will cause it to turn.
Is there any natural phenomena, like the earths rotation that would cause this wire to move? Or is it pretty much going to have to be some human mechanism.
I don’t remember doing anything to it, but I guess its possible I’ve accidently brushed up against it working at my desk. i just want to know if there is some really cool natural magnetic phenomenum that I’m experiencing.
Pieces of ferromagnetic metal that stay in one orientation for a long period of time (i.e. years) will occasionally become magnetized in response to the Earth’s magnetic field. Iron bathtubs are particularly well-known for this, but if your desk is made of the right kind of metal and is never moved, you might see a similar effect there as well. Maybe the wire is trying to align itself with the magnetic field of the desk?
Its from a paperclip and is ferrous metal. I’ve had it on the magnet for sometime so it is magnetic. if I pull it off the magnet, and float it on water it will alighn itself North/South.
If I had it on the other side of the shelf where it could line up North South, I could understand the movement a little better. But it isn’t lined up in that direction. THe camera was facing South when I took the picture, East is to the left, West to the right. The bottom tends to move to the West, the top to the East.
Don’t know why. It still could be someone (me?) moving it inadvertently, but just wanted to know if there is some natural forces causing the movement.
When you hold a compass parallel to the ground, the needle is free to move in a plane parallel to the ground, and so tries to point North. If you hold a compass perpendicular to the ground, you get a device which measures “Magnetic Dip” or Magnetic Inclination. Now, if the compass is held perpendicular to the ground, but free to pivot around a line normal to the ground, the needle will tend to point down, and to the North. If the compass is not free to pivot, the needle will still point down, but since it can’t pivot, it will stay in the plane of the compass body, or in this case, the magnet on the desk.
How about simple vibrations - from people walking around etc. Those will vibrate the needle a little and allow other forces (gravity, the local magnetic field, etc.) to have an effect in how the thing is oriented.
Personally my first thought is that it’s a random direction caused by the vibrations, since I doubt the amount of magnetism the needle has developed is enough to override the round magnet’s pull. The round magnet’s north pole is unlikely to be aligned in that exact NNE (or SSW) direction either - I’d guess its north is one of the two flat surfaces (the one the needle is on, or the one stuck to the metal shelf).
Ideally you could find something that would let the needle spin freely, and put that between the magnet and the needle, and see what happens.