How Does a Magnet Attract Metal?

How Does a Magnet Attract Metal?

A magnet is a metal that can pull pieces of iron towards itself and cause them stick to it. A horseshoe magnet aimed at a clip will make it jump up from a table and adhere to the magnet until it is pulled off.

The horseshoe magnet possesses 2 magnetic poles, or ends, a plus and a minus one. If you position the 2 positive poles of 2 magnets together, nothing occurs. Only if you touch the positive magnetic pole of one magnet to the negative of the other, you feel a substantial attractraction. This is because opposite magnetic pole attract each other.

The reason the magnet attracts iron objects is that it sets up an unseeable atmosphere around itself called a magnetic field. When a  common nail is in that field, it becomes a little magnet too.

Usually, the millions of molecules in the nail are packed in a scattered way, only when the nail enters a magnetic field, more and more of its positive molecule poles aim in one direction, towards the negative magnetic pole of the bigger magnet, and more and more of its negative molecule poles point the opposite way, to the bigger magnet’s positive magnetic pole.

Because these opposite magnetic pole attract each other, the common nail will now jump up and adhere to the magnet.

The greatest magnet in the world is the earth itself, because the hot nickel and iron at its core pull everything towards it!

Source:  BigSiteOfAmazingFacts.com