Interesting Facts about Magnet | You have not Heard before

1.     Magnets always have two poles: even if you cut them in half. Magnetic monopoles do not exist --as far as we know. Magnets will always have two poles, a magnetic north and a magnetic south. If you don’t believe us, take a bar magnet and cut it in half. The two remaining pieces will still have a north and a south. You can cut it dozens of times and the results will be the same.

2.     The most powerful Magnet: The most powerful magnet in the universe is actually a star called a magnetar. These are stars that have died off and had a supernova explosion. The magnetars are what is left over, and they are strong enough to destroy small planets if they get close enough. Luckily, there are only a dozen of these according to scientists, and they are far far far away from Earth.

3.     Strong rare earth: Magnets can turn some metals into magnets. Ferromagnetic materials like iron can be magnetized with a strong permanent magnet. You can try it for yourself by rubbing a magnet on a screwdriver. The screwdriver will be able to pick up magnetic objects.

4.     The Earth is like one big bar magnet: It has a magnetic north and a magnetic south, which is what the needle on a compass points to. However, this is geographically different than the actual north and south poles. Invisible magnetic field lines run from the north to south poles.

5.     Magnetic resonance imaging machines use magnets, and they generate stronger fields than the Earth. In fact, it is about 60,000 times stronger than the Earth’s.

6.     Some animals are affected by magnets. Magnets have been used to study bee communication patterns, migratory cycles and several other animal behaviors. This is because many animals can sense magnetic fields. For instance, some sharks are repelled by them and birds and turtles navigate by them.

7.     Magnets are ancient: Well, today’s man-made magnets may not be so ancient, but the Chinese are said to have used lodestone, a natural magnet as far back as date. In fact, ancient mariners are said to have used lodestones to help them navigate.

8.     There are magnetic hills: said to pull cars and other large magnetic objects towards certain locations. However, researchers have found out that these are not really a magnetic anomaly as much as a topographical illusion.

9.   Magnetism is relativistic: That's right — whenever you turn on an electromagnet and stick it to a fridge, you are demonstrating relativity. Why? According to the theory of special relativity, the distance along the direction of motion gets shorter — that is, a fast-moving car would look squished, even though the person in the car wouldn't notice. That person would see everything around him or her as squished in the direction in which the individual was traveling.

10.   The world's most powerful magnets: The two biggest magnets reside at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Florida State University (FSU). The two sister laboratories have magnets that can reach 100 and 45 tesla, respectively.  By comparison, junkyard magnets — the ones that lift cars — are about 2 tesla.It's not safe to play with aluminum canisters near the Los Alamos magnet, for the same reason that it isn't safe to stand in the room in which the magnet is housed. "Every pulsed magnet will eventually destroy itself," McDonald said, because of the stresses of the magnetic forces on the coils. When they fail, they can fail catastrophically. "We have something like 100 sticks of dynamite's worth of energy in there and we contain 99.9 percent of it," he said. But that last percentage point is still a lot, so LANL evacuates the building when its magnet is on.

11.   Magnets showed that quantum mechanics worked: The discovery of one of the fundamental quantum mechanical properties of elementary particles — spin — involved magnets. It's called the Stern-Gerlach experiment, after physicists Otto Stern and Walter Gerlach. They conducted the experiment in 1922, to test ideas about the then-new theories of quantum mechanics. They used two magnets, one on top of the other, each shaped to produce a long, asymmetrical magnetic field. They then fired uncharged particles — silver atoms — through the field at a target. The asymmetrical field will alter the silver atoms' trajectory slightly. , Since the atoms will be oriented in random directions and their angular momenta will also be random, the trajectory should be different for each silver atom, but it was not known by how much. The target should have shown a smooth distribution of hits from one end to the other.

12.  Magnet Invention: The Chinese invented the first magnetic compasses during the Qin Dynasty, around 221 to 206 B.C, for use by fortunetellers. It wasn’t until the 19th Century that the Chinese developed compasses for navigational purposes.

13.  Opposite Attract: The phrases opposites attract because of the way magnets work. Every magnet has a north pole and a south pole. It’s only possible for a magnet to fuse with another magnet if their opposite poles are touching.

14.  Strong Magnet Effect: If you find a strong magnet, be careful not to put it anywhere near computer hard drives, credit cards or video and audiotapes. Why? Magnets that are strong enough have the ability to completely erase the data that is stored on these devices. It’s considered good practice, however, that if you want to throw away a hard drive, then firstly format it, run strong magnets over it then smash it to bits!

15.  Heat Iron (Magnet): Heated iron can’t be magnetized! The thermal energy from heating it up makes the atoms in the material jiggle. When atoms jiggle, it’s difficult for them to line up properly, so heated iron actually loses it’s magnetism. The point at which this occurs is the Curie Point, named after Pierre Curie. Who’s he? A physicist that discovered this.

16.  Feeding Magnet: Feeding or inserting magnets into cattle might sound extremely horrendous but it’s actually common practice. When cows graze, they might ingest bits of wire and nails left in fields by careless workers. These shards of metal can cause huge health problems if they become lodged into the lining of the stomach. Not only that, but the cow can’t eat properly and stops producing milk. To prevent this, magnets are carefully placed in cows stomach to attract any pieces of metal.