Most of us learnt about the basics of magnetism in science class at school. There’s some heavy science that can be gone in to but I’m not aiming to give an in-depth physics lesson right now (and wouldn’t really be able to either.)
The basic idea is that there is some magnetic qualities present in everything… with electromagnetic fields being created by the electrically (positively and negatively) charged parts that make up an atom. Usually these magnetic fields come from the work of negatively charged electrons, and the way different materials are attracted or repelled by each others’ magnetic fields is what we know as magnetism.
So everything contains some form of ‘magnetic’ qualities or form of magnetism, but of course the magnetic fields of the atoms in most objects aren’t really doing much…otherwise everyone and everything would constantly be repelling and sticking to each other.This is because most materials are made up of atoms whose magnetic fields are not all aligned so as to make the overall effect of being a ‘magnet.’
So in materials which we would call ‘magnetic,’ it’s as though charged electromagnetic fields are all working together to push and pull away or towards other materials… whereby ‘opposites attract’ and the positive and negative charges will head for each other.
Magnetism and magnets are at work everywhere…from super fast ‘Maglev’ trains in Japan; to giving the whole world a ‘north’ and ‘south’ or even life saving ‘MRI’ scanners in your local hospital.
Apart from all the incredible, world changing, and often mind boggling things however, magnets can be as useful as sticking postcards to your fridge or as surprisingly addictive as a simple desktop toy.
We posted a while back on our MOXO Floating Speaker which uses magnets to levitate while it pumps put your favourite tunes. And we’ve got a range of other Magnetic toys and gadgets on the site too. It turns out you can spend much more time that you might think playing with this magnetic hourglass and with these magnetic beads – as we did this afternoon.
If you ending up making something that is actually cool from your own set of magnetic beads let us know about it.
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