Answers to Magnets Exercises

Let’s see how you did! If you didn’t get a few of these, don’t let it stress you out – it just means you need to play with more experiments in this area. We’re all works in progress, and we have our entire lifetime to puzzle together the mysteries of the universe!

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Answers:
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1. You get two smaller magnets, each with their own north and south pole. You cannot separate the north and south pole of a manget.

2. Electrons. More accurately, a majority of electrons moving in a similar direction creates a magnetic field.

3. Electrons move on their own. They move around the nucleus and they spin. It’s the electron spin that tends to be responsible for the magnetic field in those “permanent” magnets (the magnets that maintain a magnetic field without electricity flowing).

4. Aluminum conducts electricity, but is not magnetic as detectable by the human eye (called ferromagnetic). Aluminum is technically paramagnetic (very weakly attracted to both poles of a magnet).

5. Iron, nickel, and cobalt are ferromagnetic (attracted to both poles of the magnet).

6. A magnetic field is something I can’t tell you about – it just is (like gravity). Best thing I can do is tell you that a field is an area around an electrical, magnetic or gravitational source that will create a force on another electrical, magnetic or gravitational source that comes within the reach of the field.

7. The earth. On a universe-scale, magnetars (magnetized neutron stars) are the biggest known magnets out there.

8. Off the coast of Antarctica in the ocean.

9. When you heat a magnet past the ‘Curie Temperature’, the magnet loses its magnetism. Once cooled back down, it will regain magnetism again.

10. The grape contains sugar water, which is diamagnetic (repelled by both poles).

11. The eddy currents in the metal plate created by the moving (sliding) magnet slow down the magnet and counteracts gravity.

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