Mystery of magnets

Take a piece of wood and place it near another place of wood , nothing happens.Now place a piece of rock with another rock,nothing happens.But now put a piece of iron with another piece of magnets,magic happens.

Do you know how magnets were discovered ??Roughly 4,000 years ago, a Greek shepherd named Magnes is said to have been tending his sheep in a region of northern Greece called Magnesia. He took a step and suddenly found that the nails that held his shoe together and the metal tip of his staff were stuck fast to the rock he was standing on! Intrigued, he began digging and discovered the first recorded lodestone. Lodestones were henceforth known as “magnetite,” probably named after Magnes or Magnesia.

Magnets are able to attract each other from long distances because they generate magnetic fields.It has two poles north and south.Like poles repel each other and opposite poles attract each other.
But the mystery is from where these magnetic fields come form ??Well that's easy,we have known from long time that electricity and magnetism are relative like two faces of same coin like mass and energy or time and space , they can be transformed into one another.

An magnetic field is build when electric charge starts moving.Then why we don't get shock from magnets ??Its because at the microscopic levels there are a lots of electrons whizzing around in atoms and molecules that make up any solid.

This bring us to a point that magnetic behavior of any object is influenced by combination of effects ranging from the level of particles to atom and collection of atoms.
Fundamental particles like electron have some some properties like mass ,charge and one of they is magnetism(intrinsic magnetic moment).Each electron is a tiny magnet.But why ??And no body has answer to this.Like no one knows why electrons have mass or charge , no one knows why they have magnetic properties.We just know that this is how universe works.And not all the electrons produce magnetic effect,there are the  free electrons(not paired) which results in magnetism.


After knowing all this my mind asked me question that all objects around us are made up of electrons then why don't they attract each other ?? This is because strength of magnetic field depends upon movement and alignment of electrons like in an atom two electron moves in opposite direction or aligned in opposite to each other ,then the resultant of them will be 0,so they will not
attract.That is why when we rub iron needle with magnets for some time it start behaving like magnets because alignment of electrons in iron gets changed due to magnet.


This brings us to the concept of magnetic materials:

 

• Diamagnetic: In this all electrons are paired so they dont are not attracted by magnet .They are repelled by magnet.
• Paramagnetic: In this some of the electrons are unpaired so they play role in magnetism and they are weakly attracted by magnetism.
• Ferromagnetic:In this type of material , most of the electrons are unpaired so they are strongly attracted by magnets.

Magnet is one of the greatest discovery of all time.Most of our current technology is based on and have major role of magnets.And one of its biggest application is electromagnetism in which magnets are used to generate electricity.And our planet is also a huge magnet and will discuss about it another blog.Until then

STAY TUNED...