Can Someone Explain The Power Of Magnetism?

Magnetism is related to the atom alignment. You can magnetize a piece of iron by simply striking it. Similarly you can demagnetize it by heating it up.
True, and you can magnetize a needle (temporarily) by simply rubbing it against a magnet a few times. All kinds of ferrous metal can become incidentally and temporarily magnetized in various common ways. If you put a magnetic compass near a screwdriver or pair scissors you have around the house, it will probably deflect the needle. Also, microwave ovens have powerful magnets and if you wear a mechanical wristwatch, it will become magnetized if you wear it nearby. When a mechanical watch becomes magnetized, its timekeeping accuracy suffers until it is demagnetized. You can demagnetize common objects with a basic tape deck demagnetizer wand (which those over a certain age will remember).
 
Like any complex physics phenomena, understanding of magnetism is multi-layered.

How Stuff Works has a good explanation: https://science.howstuffworks.com/magnet.htm

Another good place to start is what causes the Earth to have a magnetic field. Earth's core is hot, and the Earth is spinning, causing liquified metals like iron and nickel to flow. These flowing metals create electric currents that create a magnetic field. But not all planets have a magnetic field - for example Mars. It used to, but doesn't anymore. Wikipedia has good articles on this.
People who navigate with map and compass already know this, but the Earth’s magnetic field moves around and is not aligned to the geographic N and S poles. You have to account for this difference between magnetic north and geographic north when using a paper map to navigate. It’s because the solid inner core moves within the liquid outer core that the magnetic field is able to shift.

Even wilder is the evidence that N and S magnetic poles have actually reversed many times in the recent past. When iron rich magmas cool they retain evidence of the field direction and the Atlantic ocean floor shows a mirror pattern of alternating N and S orientations on both sides of the mid ocean ridge. This was discovered by magnetic anomaly detectors looking for Soviet submarines in the 1960’s and was one of the final pieces of evidence that led to widespread acceptance of continental drift by providing a credible mechanism for plate tectonics.
 
I always hated this stuff, even though I did OK in an upper division fields and waves class. Couldn't quite figure out how light waves were related to radio frequency and magnetism, but somehow it was.

The whole thing about magnetic forces and "right hand curl" still brings back unpleasant memories. I'm pretty sure that also explained gyroscopic forces. That's why I went into digital logic.
 
I always hated this stuff, even though I did OK in an upper division fields and waves class. Couldn't quite figure out how light waves were related to radio frequency and magnetism, but somehow it was. ...
Light waves are more than just "related" to radio waves. Light waves and radio waves are both the same thing - electromagnetic radiation. The only difference is the frequency at which they oscillate. To make an analogy to sound, if radio waves are "bass", then light waves are "treble".
 
Light waves are more than just "related" to radio waves. Light waves and radio waves are both the same thing - electromagnetic radiation. The only difference is the frequency at which they oscillate. To make an analogy to sound, if radio waves are "bass", then light waves are "treble".

Sure. The one thing I did understand was the duopoly of photons being both particles and waves.
 
Somewhere I saw a video of a photon of light passing through an empty 2 liter Coke bottle. That has got to be the ultimate slow motion video. I have no idea how they did it.

It was shot at something like one trillion frames per second.
 
Sure. The one thing I did understand was the duopoly of photons being both particles and waves.
Back in college I remember a little book by Max Born. The preface had a paragraph about this. Sadly I don't have the book anymore but I remember it as this. His take on particle/wave duality was that probably neither really exists, they are only useful concepts that we create. Put differently: the universe is made up of stuff. But we can't perceive the stuff directly as it really is. Every form of perception we use involves more stuff, which interacts with the stuff being perceived. What we perceive is not the stuff itself, but the interaction between the stuff we used to perceive it, and the stuff being perceived. That interaction appears or behaves as either wave or particle.
 
Google says gravity waves travel at C. Newtonian gravity is instant but Einstein's General Relativity corrected that to C.
It travels at the speed of light. Gravity waves have been detected, and they travel at the speed of light.
 
The source of magnetism has to be traced to the orbiting electron of an atom.

"The field created by the magnet is associated with the motions and interactions of its electrons, the minute charged particles which orbit the nucleus of each atom. Electricity is the movement of electrons, whether in a wire or in an atom, so each atom represents a tiny permanent magnet in its own right. The circulating electron produces its own orbital magnetic moment, measured in Bohr magnetons (µB), and there is also a spin magnetic moment associated with it due to the electron itself spinning, like the earth, on its own axis (illustrated in figure 2). In most materials there are resultant magnetic moments, due to the electrons being grouped in pairs causing the magnetic moment to be cancelled by its neighbour. Figure 2: The orbit of a spinning electron about the nucleus of an atom. In certain magnetic materials the magnetic moments of a large proportion of the electrons align, producing a unified magnetic field. The field produced in the material (or by an electromagnet) has a direction of flow and any magnet will experience a force trying to align it with an externally applied field, just like a compass needle..."

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Docume...terials-Background-2-Origins-of-Magnetism.pdf

A more rigorous treatment is given here:
https://www.neutron-sciences.org/articles/sfn/pdf/2014/01/sfn201401001.pdf
 
Imho, if magnetism was well and properly understood we'd have free electricity sources, on wait, nevermind... What nonsense, free energy, cannot be allowed!
 
"Magnetism is fascinating. Most of us remember at some point in grammar school, having a science teacher using magnetism to explain the positive and negative parts of the Earth's magnetic field, or some such. Usually using a magnet with iron filings sprinkled on to a piece of paper to recreate a model of it.

But they never really explained it's invisible power, or how it actually works. Or where the actual physical force it applies to objects, comes from?... Without any physical connection or link between the 2.

How can something, (besides gravity and / or centrifugal force), exert physical force on to something without any type of direct link? What got me thinking about this, was when I was going through my tools and stuff a while back, I found a really strong pair of Neodymium magnets I had from years ago.

I could barely get them apart. My wife saw me struggling, and asked me how they could be so stuck together? I didn't really have an answer. Do any of you?"


The current explanation for what mediates the electric and magnetic forces is the exchange of virtual photons. A virtual photon is a photon which spontaneously comes into existance and is allowed to exist for a short time as goverened by the hiesenberg uncertainty relation. So, if this theory is correct, there is something traveling through space that gives rise to these forces. Anyone wanting to know more about this should look into the theory of quantum electrodynamics, but doing this without a good knowledge of calculus and a pretty sophisticated knowledge of theoretical physics will be difficult.

To those who doubt the theory of quantum electrodynamics I refer you to the magnetic moment of the electron. The experimentaly determined value of this agrees with the value calculated by quantum electrodynamics to 11 decimal places. The most perfect agreement of theory with experiment to date, and one wonders if it will ever be surpassed.
 
Sorry to fail you, but the answer, is "no". No-one can explain how something can pass through something, or pass through nothing, and exert a force on something magnetic, but not on something non-magnetic. There is, however, a secret manual that women have, of knowledge never to be revealed to men. Have you asked any women?
 
Sorry to fail you, but the answer, is "no". No-one can explain how something can pass through something, or pass through nothing, and exert a force on something magnetic, but not on something non-magnetic. There is, however, a secret manual that women have, of knowledge never to be revealed to men. Have you asked any women?
What? You joined for this?
 
Dang man, break him in easy, he doesnt know the power of the Kschachn Snark Factor, which like magnetism and gravity, often travels at the speed of light.

(Although, it was a perfectly valid question.....)
 
Light waves are more than just "related" to radio waves. Light waves and radio waves are both the same thing - electromagnetic radiation. The only difference is the frequency at which they oscillate. To make an analogy to sound, if radio waves are "bass", then light waves are "treble".
radio waves on this side of visible (ROYGBIV) followed by X then gamma on this side. All the same sort of "stuff" and put into use by all of us daily: remote on your garage door opener: radio, remote on your TV controller: infrared.
 
... How can something, (besides gravity and / or centrifugal force), exert physical force on to something without any type of direct link?
If you get down to it, nothing has any direct link. All forces are exerted over some distance in space, call them "fields". Even the coffee cup resting on my desk isn't actually touching the desk. By that I mean the atoms are never in contact, but are separated from each other. They are very close to each other. Close enough for the closest atoms of the desk and of the coffee cup to exert forces against each other over that tiny distance. Intuitively the terms "touch" or "in contact" don't mean what we think, but instead they mean close enough for these local forces to take effect.

What got me thinking about this, was when I was going through my tools and stuff a while back, I found a really strong pair of Neodymium magnets I had from years ago. I could barely get them apart. My wife saw me struggling, and asked me how they could be so stuck together? I didn't really have an answer. Do any of you?"
The answer is that the force, like gravity, is inversely proportional to the square of distance. That means small changes in distance make big changes in the strength of the force. It's easier if you don't pull directly against the magnetic field, but perpendicular to it - slide them against each other until they are offset which weakens the magnetic attraction.
 
All kidding aside, the question, as asked, cannot be answered. We can predict magnetism's behavior, but nobody knows how it works. The learned folks here have struggled mightily, and at length, to answer your question. I, too, can discuss wavelength and frequency, field strength and electric versus magnetic properties, but those don't answer your question. Consider Albert Einstein's explanation of wireless telegraphy, which was something like this...."A telegraph is like a long cat. You pull his tail in New York, and he meows in Boston. Wireless is exactly the same, except there is no cat".
 
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