A magnet works because all the atoms inside the metal(Iron, nickel, cobalt) are lined up facing the same way so their tiny magnetic forces all work together.
Every electron acts like a tiny magnet due to a property called spin(A science word, not actually spinning), and also because it moves around the atom’s nucleus. In most materials, all those little magnetic moments point in random directions, so they cancel each other out.
In metals like iron, cobalt, and nickel, the situation’s different. The electrons interact through what’s called the exchange interaction, which basically makes it more stable for neighbouring spins to line up the same way. When enough of these spins align, they form regions called magnetic domains. Each domain is like a tiny magnet.
In an unmagnetized piece of metal, those domains point every which way, so the fields cancel. When you magnetise it, the domains start lining up, and their combined fields create one strong magnetic field that extends outside the metal.
Sorry, but “theres a lot of tiny magnets inside” is pretty much it. Every charged particle in motion creates a magnetic field. Moving electric charge = magnetic field. So if something contains moving electrons, and every atom does, then at the microscopic level, there’s always some magnetic field being created.
Here’s a funny thing. You are right that it’s unsatisfactory because there is not going to be a satisfactory answer. The most simple explanation is it’s “sticky lines in space” but that’s probably even less satisfying. We can study electromagnetic waves and how they propagate, how they interact with anything, we have complex and highly accurate models for how these fundamental forces interact to make things like magnetic lines grow and stretch and interact with other things, and this skill in predicting and manipulating them is how you’re reading this right now.
But it’s very possible we may never know “what” they are. You cannot (as far as we know) split open a magnetic “line” and find a bunch of little guys linking arms. Or any kind of structure or new “stuff” that they can be made of.
We can work out deeper layers to reality where the waves are made of disturbances in a “field” of “something” that permeates the universe… but even that is going to hit a bedrock of our capability to understand. At a certain point when we’re talking about fundamentals of the universe, there is a point we reach when asking “why” something is the way it is, where it just becomes “that’s just the way it is.”
If I had access to whatever Infinity Stone could make it happen, I would change popular rhetoric and attitudes from “I don’t get it” to “I want to get it”
A magnet works because all the atoms inside the metal(Iron, nickel, cobalt) are lined up facing the same way so their tiny magnetic forces all work together.
“There’s a lot of tiny magnets inside” is no explanation at all!
Every electron acts like a tiny magnet due to a property called spin(A science word, not actually spinning), and also because it moves around the atom’s nucleus. In most materials, all those little magnetic moments point in random directions, so they cancel each other out.
In metals like iron, cobalt, and nickel, the situation’s different. The electrons interact through what’s called the exchange interaction, which basically makes it more stable for neighbouring spins to line up the same way. When enough of these spins align, they form regions called magnetic domains. Each domain is like a tiny magnet.
In an unmagnetized piece of metal, those domains point every which way, so the fields cancel. When you magnetise it, the domains start lining up, and their combined fields create one strong magnetic field that extends outside the metal.
Sorry, but “theres a lot of tiny magnets inside” is pretty much it. Every charged particle in motion creates a magnetic field. Moving electric charge = magnetic field. So if something contains moving electrons, and every atom does, then at the microscopic level, there’s always some magnetic field being created.
I know that, but that’s a very unsatisfactory explanation!
Still, I do appreciate the response.
Here’s a funny thing. You are right that it’s unsatisfactory because there is not going to be a satisfactory answer. The most simple explanation is it’s “sticky lines in space” but that’s probably even less satisfying. We can study electromagnetic waves and how they propagate, how they interact with anything, we have complex and highly accurate models for how these fundamental forces interact to make things like magnetic lines grow and stretch and interact with other things, and this skill in predicting and manipulating them is how you’re reading this right now.
But it’s very possible we may never know “what” they are. You cannot (as far as we know) split open a magnetic “line” and find a bunch of little guys linking arms. Or any kind of structure or new “stuff” that they can be made of.
We can work out deeper layers to reality where the waves are made of disturbances in a “field” of “something” that permeates the universe… but even that is going to hit a bedrock of our capability to understand. At a certain point when we’re talking about fundamentals of the universe, there is a point we reach when asking “why” something is the way it is, where it just becomes “that’s just the way it is.”
A great physicist said it better than me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8
If I had access to whatever Infinity Stone could make it happen, I would change popular rhetoric and attitudes from “I don’t get it” to “I want to get it”