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How does a magnet work? |
Have you heard the phrase opposites attract? It’s especially true with magnets. You’re probably most familiar with the types of magnets that hold your drawings or your report cards to the refrigerator, but magnets have lots of uses. They’re used in generators to make electricity. They’re used in junkyards to pick up scrap metal, and they are used to make computers, phones, doorbells and some trains work!
Magnets seem to have a magic sticking power. The surface of a magnet isn’t actually sticky though. Your hand won’t stick to it. What magnets do is they create a magnetic field, which is a space around the magnet where energy is actually changed. Just like the Earth has two poles, so do magnets. They have north and south poles that change energy in different ways. Just because they are called north and south doesn’t mean they have to face those directions. They can face any way, but they are always at opposite ends of a magnet.
A magnetic field enters a magnet at one pole and leaves through the other. A magnetic field can be hard to imagine, so check out the links below for a diagram. If you have two magnets and put their north poles together, the magnets will be repelled, or “pushed away from each other.” The energy fields around them are moving against each other, so it won’t let the magnets touch.
When the south pole of one magnet comes near the north pole of another, that’s when you hear a clacking sound and see the two magnets move together. Opposites attract! In a sense the two magnets become one single magnet with a single magnetic field. The magnetic field exits the magnet at the north pole of one and then returns though the south pole of another.
Often, magnets are made by rubbing certain metals with other magnets. Three chemical elements (which make up metals) are able to be turned into long-lasting magnets. They are iron, cobalt and nickel.
The World’s Largest Magnet
Have you ever used a compass to find your direction? The needle of a compass is magnet, and it always points north. Try using a compass. You can spin around with it as much as you want, but that needle will always find north.
There’s another magnet helping the compass find its way. It’s the Earth! Our whole planet is a magnet.
Use your compass to find which way your home faces. See if you can figure out in which direction the sun rises and which way the sun sets.
