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Magnetic Levitation, or 'Maglev' is the product of repulsion generated as a result of 2 magnetic fields. An object is said to be levitated when the force created by the repulsion of electromagnetic forces is greater or equal to the weight of the object. To create magnetic levitation, diamagnetic materials such as superconductors much be used to stabilize the opposite poles of the magnets, creating an electrodynamic field, or a branch of electromagnetism. Levitation using magnets is useful as it can allow objects such as trains to travel at immense speeds. Maglev is the future of travel due to practicality, and the sheer speed of which an object can move.
Link: https://www.brighthubengineering.com/machine-design/36161-what-is-magnetic-levitation/

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Magnetism was first discovered by humans around 600 B.C. The force was first observed in a natural stone called 'lodestone', which had its own, small magnetic field. Englishman William Gilbert (1540–1603) was the first person to investigate the phenomenon of magnetism systematically using scientific methods. He was also the one who found that the Earth itself is a giant magnet. Another physicist, Hans Christian Oersted (1777–1851), from Denmark, suggested links between electricity and magnetism. He found that an electrical current always produces a magnetic field around itself, like when you flick a switch. Magnets are activated every single time you use something with electricity, making the use of magnets in society integral.
Link:
http://www.scienceclarified.com/Io-Ma/Magnetism.html

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Since its discovery around 600 B.C, magnets have been used in many ways. They have been used in motors, maglev, and are used whenever you flick a switch or do an activity that used electricity. Whenever you use electricity, a small magnetic field is formed around the electrical signal. Therefore, it is possible to create a magnetic force using energy. In addition, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRI, allow doctors to see inside any person's body without needing to perform any invasive procedures, and are used in modern day X-Rays. Without magnetism, we would be without many of the gadgets and technology that are now a part of our everyday lives.
Link:
https://www.apexmagnets.com/news-how-tos/inventions-that-make-us-thankful-for-magnetism/

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this article explained the connection between electricity and magnets and explains how it works. it explains the molecular level of magnets and electricity. i found this article really interesting because of how simple it was. it was a short article and it explained a lot.

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Earth’s magnetic field has shields that protect our planet from dangerous cosmic rays. As the poles try to move that shield is weakened. scientists think it could diminish little as a tenth of its force. changes have begun within the Earth. the shield has weakened over the South Atlantic so much that satellites have been exposed to the radiation. i found the part of the article where they explain the consequences most interesting

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3. Article - Implanted Magnetic Probes Measure Brain Activity 

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3. Article - Implanted Magnetic Probes Measure Brain Activity 

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Brain activity is often measured using electricity. However, there is another way to analyze brain function and monitor is activity. This is by using magnets. This article shows not only how magnetism can be used to track a brain's function, but how it is actually a beneficial alternative to using electrical energy.

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© GEORGE RETSECK

The brain is often described in terms of its wiring, connections, and circuits, and such language is not merely an analogy to a building's electrical infrastructure. Neurons control the flow of charged ions-receiving, perpetuating, and discharging currents-to perform their essential functions.

Analyzing the brain's electrical activity to gain insights into its function can be achieved with electrodes either placed upon the scalp-as in electroencephalograms (EEGs)-or inserted into the brain. But electrical currents also produce magnetic fields, and detecting these fields can offer several advantages over voltage measurements, says Myriam Pannetier-Lecoeur of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.

For example, while electrical fields and voltage measurements are distorted by the insulating or conductive properties of surrounding tissues, magnetic fields are not. Furthermore, electrodes are unable to detect the direction of an electrical current flow, making the source of neuronal activity hard to pinpoint. Magnetic sensors, on the other hand, can determine both the intensity and direction of a magnetic field and, by inference, the underlying current flow. Lastly, for measuring voltages, a second reference electrode is required, which can complicate interpretations, whereas magnetic recordings need just one detector.

Like voltages, however, magnetic fields become weaker the farther away a detector is located, explains Pannetier-Lecoeur. So she and her colleagues have developed the first magnetic probe for insertion directly into the mammalian brain.

To create magnetic detectors small enough to insert into the brain, yet powerful enough to detect magnetic fields, the team used a new technological approach called spin electronics. This allowed them to engineer needle-shape probes just 150 µm wide-an impossibility with previous magnetic sensor technologies. Inserting these probes, called magnetrodes, into the visual cortex of anesthetized cats, the researchers could monitor the brain's magnetic activity in response to light stimulation of one eye.

Although the signal-to-noise ratio of Pannetier-Lecoeur's magnetrodes isn't yet perfect, notes Lauri Parkkonen of Aalto University in Helsinki who was not involved in the work, "spin electronics is a field that is advancing rapidly," so improvement in sensitivity "I think is likely."

Riitta Hari, also of Aalto University, adds: "This is an interesting proof-of-concept paper . . . that can open a new important research line in neurophysiology." (Neuron, 95:1283-91, 2017)

IN-BRAIN ACTIVITY DETECTOR

HOW IT WORKS

LOCALIZATION OF ACTIVITY SOURCE

IN VIVO SIGNAL DISTORTION

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

Electrodes

Two electrodes (one signal and one reference) are needed, at least one of them inserted into the cortex. The difference in voltage between the two is measured.

Multiple electrodes (with
their reference electrodes)
can improve mapping of
the activity source.

Yes, the properties of nearby tissues can interfere with the signal.

None

Magnetrode

One magnetrode is inserted into the cortex to measure the intesity and orientation of the magnetic field.

Multiple magnetrodes can be used to accurately pinpoint the activity source.

No, magnetic fields are not distorted by tissues.

To improve magnetrode sensitivity a magnetically shielded area would be required, which may be costly to construct.

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Implanted Magnetic Probes Measure Brain Activity

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© GEORGE RETSECK The brain is often described in terms of its wiring, connections, and circuits, and such language is not merely an analogy to a building's electrical infrastructure. Neurons control the flow of charged ions-receiving, perpetuating, and discharging currents-to perform their essential functions.

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2. Article - 8 Strange Facts About Magnets and Magnetism 

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2. Article - 8 Strange Facts About Magnets and Magnetism 

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This article describes several different facts about magnetism or that of which involve magnetism. The facts range from simple facts about the normal magnets we see on Earth to crazy facts about magnetism in space. One of the facts included in the article is that animals are affected by magnets. Each fact is given a detailed description of how it is true.

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8 Strange Facts About Magnets and Magnetism

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Magnets are interesting and strange materials. There are still some mysteries that scientists and researchers have yet to solve when it comes to magnets. However, some mysteries have been solved. In this blog, we have compiled a list of some of the strangest facts about magnets and magnetism.

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This is an article about how birds use the earth's magnetic field to navigate. It explains a theory that the birds use photoreceptors in their eye. These photoreceptors can absorb light, and a chemical reaction happens which produces photochemical molecules that are sensitive to the magnitude and direction of magnetic fields.

Here is the link:
https://www.livescience.com/32276-how-do-birds-navigate.html

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1. Article - 6 ways magnets will change our lives (probably clickbait) 

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1. Article - 6 ways magnets will change our lives (probably clickbait) 

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One type of technology with magnets mentioned in this article are the Japanese hyperspeed maglev train. These trains have broken the world record for fastest trains. They travel at 366 miles per hour. Another piece of magnetic technology shown is this article is the magnetic hoverboard. Using the same technology as a maglev train, it floats an inch off the grounds.

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Magnets. You already know what they are and everything about them. Or do you? Magnets are crucial to many more emerging technologies than you might expect. The tried-and-true magnet is about to change everything-from how we drive and treat cancer to how we play sports.

1. Maglev Trains
Lightning-fast trains that hover using magnets, like this one in Japan seen in 2010, are positioned to be the next major transportation breakthrough. Credit: Getty
Earlier this year, Japan broke a world speed record for a train: 366 miles an hour. How'd they do it? Magnets, of course.

Japan used a maglev train: a special type of high-speed train that nixes wheels for magnets. How do magnets help trains go faster? It's pretty simple: Friction is totally eliminated. The trains hover above the rails, wheel-free, and are pulled along at nutso speeds using electromagnets.

Here's how Japan's Guinness-worthy using the classic principle of magnetic repulsion. The forces being repelled from one another are the train's onboard superconducting magnets and magnetic coils in the sides of the surrounding guide rails. These opposing forces with alternating north and south poles create a push-and-pull effect that propel it forward.

Also built into the guide rails are more coils that become electromagnets as those superconducting magnets aboard the train pass through. This creates a second push-and-pull force that lifts the train a few inches off the ground. (Those guide rails that cradle Japan's maglev are U-shaped to prevent derailments.)

Thanks to this simple notion in magnets and physics, maglev trains are greener, faster, quieter, and deliver smoother rides than traditional trains.

High-speed rail has existed in developed countries the world over for decades, but these blink-and-you'll-miss-'em maglev models mark the next stage of train evolution. In fact, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the US earlier this year on a diplomatic trip, he said he wants the Japanese government to help build a maglev train linking Baltimore and Washington, DC. Since magnets mean big infrastructural projects, they mean big business, too.

Countries 'round the globe have all started pursuing this new transportation tech, as well. Shanghai's been running a maglev in China for over a decade, and Seoul's Incheon Airport will sport a smaller scale maglev train starting this summer.

2. Hoverboards
The Hendo Hoverboard by Arx Pax is shown here in 2014. It's a commercial hoverboard that uses magnets to float about an inch from terra firma. Credit: AP
As 2015 drew nearer, people started demanding a Back to the Future 2-style hoverboard-and now, companies are actually attempting to deliver. Will they bring a McFly-approved mode of futuristic transport to consumers? They've actually taken big steps toward doing so, with the help of magnets.

Earlier this month, debuted its hoverboard Slide (which tested), achieving what was thought to be unachievable: Though heavy and unwieldy, it was a ridable, skateboard-like object that actually floated an inch off the ground. Lexus the board as "assembling maglev technology onto a board." Gizmodo tested another hoverboard using similar maglev technology called .

The body of Lexus's board contains superconductors surrounded by liquid hydrogen reservoirs that plummet the superconductors to -322 degrees Fahrenheit, plus two magnets on each end of the board. The board is placed on a floor with magnets built into it, and lifts the board in a similar way to a maglev train.

Don't get us wrong; there's still plenty to be skeptical of. These boards are hard to navigate, can only hover under certain conditions, and the battery in the one we tried died lickety split. But, as is the case with those supertrains popping up across the planet, magnets mean big things for tomorrow's transportation-not to mention tomorrow's toys.

3. Cancer-detecting Pills
Pathologists, like this one examining biopsy samples, might one day be able to harness the power of magnetic fields to help fight cancer cells in humans. Credit: Shutterstock
Emerging technologies often seem like moonshots at first, and Google X's arsenal of out-there projects is no exception. One in particular uses magnets in a really cool, surprising way: Stick 'em in small to sniff out deadly diseases in the human body.

How does it work? The answer lies in magnetic nanoparticles-ridiculously small particles containing a harmless magnetic material that would attach themselves to circulating cancer cells in a patient's bloodstream. Google wants to develop a swallowable tablet filled with these nanoparticles that would, upon consumption, cruise the user's bloodstream in search for cancerous cells. Those findings would be relayed back to a wearable sensor on the wrist, where the magnetized, cancer-detecting nanoparticles would gather. This would help doctors find cancer early in patients.

Other folks have pursued magnets as cancer-busting super weapons, as well. In , South Korean researchers said they came up with a way to use a magnetic field to actually destroy cancerous cells. That's advantageous to chemo, they said, since chemotherapy can also inadvertently harm noncancerous cells in the body.

4. Concussion-proof Football Helmets
Denver Broncos strong safety David Bruton being treated for suspected concussion late last year in a match against the Oakland Raiders. Credit: Getty
Magnet technology is even sneaking its way into sports. By using magnets in protective gear in American football, the industry could better prevent concussions and other serious head injuries among its players.

Football used to be straight up deadly, as Science last November. When those soft, leather helmets of yore were swapped for polycarbonate helmet shells, the number of fatalities went way down. Still, America's most-watched sport has been under intense fire recently, and rightfully so: Last year, 123 concussions were in the NFL, most of them incurred by defensive players. Now, football helmets might be on the verge of another design revolution.

Hard helmets protect skulls, but still leave brains vulnerable to injury since they just float in cerebral spinal fluid. But Raymond Colello, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, asserts that adding lightweight magnets to the front and sides of all football helmets could act as "brakes" in head-to-head collisions, Science reports. As two players approach either mid-tackle, the magnetized helmets slightly repel each other, decreasing the g-forces that would hit each player's head in the collision.

Of course, this only safeguards against noggin-to-noggin traumas, not noggin-to-knee, say. But Colello's plan could provide technology that might significantly reduce the overall number of concussions sustained among players in an incredibly dangerous sport.

5. Controlling Heat and Sound
This year, scientists proved magnets can manipulate the amount of heat traveling through a semiconductor. Credit: The Ohio State University
It sounds like an X-Men subplot, but scientists recently showed that magnetic fields can be used manipulate heat and sound.

Researchers at the Ohio State University earlier this year that they can control heat with magnetic fields. But their discovery affects sound, too. They examined the magnetic properties of phonons, which are particles that transmit both sound and heat. Using an MRI-sized magnetic field, they controlled the behavior of phonons and lowered the amount of heat that flowed through a semiconductor by 12 percent. Their work is a big deal because it shows that magnetic fields can manipulate heat in materials that aren't traditionally magnetic, like glass, plastic, or stone. Currently, however, doing so requires a big-ass magnet.

The team also said they could direct sound waves magnetically-again, if the magnetic field was sizable enough.

Until now, phonons weren't as extensively studied as say, photons. But their heat and sound both involve atoms vibrating-expressions of the same form of quantum mechanic energy, the university says. The university admits that this discovery is still largely bound to labs. The experiment used a 7-tesla magnet, which aren't exactly growing on trees out in the real world, and also involved chilling the phonons to near absolute zero in order to slow their movement for study. (Hoverboard and maglev trains need wicked cold temperatures to activate magnets' potential, as well.)

Still, it's a big discovery that could make scientists seriously reevaluate the way they look at and study phonons. Using magnetic fields to steer heat and sound could open a lot of doors in energy production down the road.

6. Roads for Self-Driving Cars
Volvo announced last year plans to use magnets that can help align self-driving cars on the road. Credit: Volvo
Driverless vehicles are currently the hottest race among tech companies, auto companies, and startups of all stripes. And it's becoming a more crowded arena all the time. But given how accident-prone these human-free chariots might be, we need to make sure our highways are ready for their widespread arrival. Again: cue the magnets.

Volvo last year that it had completed a research project that showed the advantages of implanting magnetic sensors in streets. These could serve as "tracks" to help guide the company's self-driving cars. These magnets have an edge over other technologies, like GPS, which might fuzz out in certain conditions and can sometimes be unreliable.

Plus, we've still yet to fully understand how self-driving cars perform in adverse conditions like rain or snow. But Volvo says these magnets can help driverless cars navigate that kind of gross weather, too. While self-driving cars can function without these magnet-embedded super streets, they would provide a nice complement.

Of course, they also present a colossal infrastructural challenge: Like the Slide hoverboard, Volvo's plan involves specially designed tracks that would be ready for the vehicle ahead of time. Having to totally revamp the roads-and build some from scratch-might make the technology way more trouble than it's worth.

You can see the challenges that many of these magnet-oriented technologies face going forward: Idiosyncratic infrastructure, monstrously low temperatures, and other tricky requirements must be met in order for magnets to work this kind of magic.

But, like all emerging technologies, once these projects gradually start to leave the lab and approach commercialization, we'll see humans unlocking magnets' potential in a ton of sectors, from sports to medicine and, especially, to transportation.

The most familiar tools can sometimes yield the most astonishing results. The future has big plans for magnets, and they go way beyond your fridge door.
Image by Jim Cooke

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6 Ways That Magnets Are About to Change Our Lives

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Magnets. You already know what they are and everything about them. Or do you? Magnets are crucial to many more emerging technologies than you might expect. The tried-and-true magnet is about to change everything-from how we drive and treat cancer to how we play sports.

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2. Article - Household objects that use magnets

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2. Article - Household objects that use magnets

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One household item that uses magnets are household speakers. Magnets along with wire coils produce vibrations in the speaker. This is the music you hear. Debit and Credit cards also use magnets. The dark strip along the side is a magnet.

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Your home contains many kinds of magnets you might not know about. Some, like the magnetic strip on a credit card, are plainly visible; others are hidden inside appliances, speakers, toys and other devices. The magnets may be permanently magnetic or become magnetic only with electric power. The attracting and repelling forces magnets produce make them useful for motors, speakers, door latches and data storage devices.

The speakers in your stereo contain magnets. The speaker consists of a stationary magnet in a metal frame, a paper diaphragm and a wire coil molded into the diaphragm's center. When an electric current flows through the coil, magnetic forces between the coil and the stationary magnet make the diaphragm vibrate in and out. The vibration produces the music you hear. Almost every kind of speaker has a magnet, from tiny earbuds to large loudspeakers.

Your vacuum cleaner has an electric motor that runs by magnetism. Inside the motor, wire coils produce repelling forces when electric current flows through them. The forces make the motor spin. Unlike refrigerator magnets, which use no power, the magnetic coils in the motor have no magnetism when the vacuum cleaner is turned off. The coils have much stronger magnetism than the magnets you stick on your refrigerator door.

The doors to many medicine cabinets have a magnetic latch. A magnetic latch consists simply of a permanent magnet in the cabinet and a metal piece on the door. The magnet has just enough force to hold the door shut and opens easily when you pull on it. The magnetic refrigerator door seal replaced mechanical door latch mechanisms in the late 1950s as a safety measure.

Many building toys have magnets in them. The magnets make the building blocks stick together. You'll also see magnet couplers used to connect the cars in a toy train set. Magnetic chess and checkers sets keep the game organized with a little magnet in each game piece. By themselves, magnets make fascinating toys and clearly demonstrate magnetic principles.

The bank cards in your wallet have a dark magnetic strip on the back. The strip contains data codes including the account number and your name. When you swipe the card at a store, an electronic device in the reader senses the magnetic codes and converts them into readable words and numbers. Note that the data strip has relatively weak magnetism; contact with strong magnets can damage or erase it.

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Your home contains many kinds of magnets you might not know about. Some, like the magnetic strip on a credit card, are plainly visible; others are hidden inside appliances, speakers, toys and other devices. The magnets may be permanently magnetic or become magnetic only with electric power.

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One useful way magnets can be used is to pry out dead batteries from your items that need batteries (such as your walking and talking Elmo in the back of your closet). With magnets, you can also close chip bags by putting magnets on either side of them. Also, if you keep on losing your pens, just attach a magnet to it and attach it to your fridge. That way you'll always have a pen handy.

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Here are seventeen of our favorite magnet tricks, projects and demos.

Extract batteries from stubborn holders
We've all got things that take batteries. Some of them are well designed, and some of them are not. The worst offenders are electronic toys that take (say) half a dozen AA batteries, all of which must be inserted with the correct orientation- spring side first- and pried out, well, somehow. Rather than risk puncturing your batteries by prying them out with something pointy, just use a magnet to lift them out.

Find studs in your walls

Move a magnet over the wall until it finds a screw or nail head under the paint. You don't even need to mark the wall- you can just leave the magnet there until you've drilled your holes.
Make a homopolar motor
One of our favorite demos of all time is a homopolar motor. A magnet, a wire, a battery and a screw are all you need to make a motor spin up to 10,000 rpm.

Make LED Throwies
LED throwies are useful for many more things than graffiti. We've made variations from garden lights to origami to greeting cards, but it's not a real throwie without a magnet.

Demonstrate magnetohydrodynamic propulsion

You can make your very own caterpillar drive like the one in The Hunt for Red October with this magnetohydrodynamic demonstration.

Play with the coolest toy ever: 512 1/8″ cube magnets
Available from K&J Magnetics, this is enough magnets to really have some fun. More magnet sources are in our links section.
Make a simple compass Make almost anything (ferromagnetic) into a building set
We've previously shown how to make stupidly simple compasses that float on water or spin on a smooth surface. Here's another method: sandwich a thread between two very strong magnets and hang it down for an instant compass.

Experiment with self assembly
In a process that is a lot like assembly of biological molecules or crystal formation, randomly ordered magnets can almost automagically form themselves into neat chains. Here are some magnetic self assembly videos.

With magnets as connectors, you can build tins into anything you like. (Just be sure to get Bawls Mints, not Bawls Buzz).

Make a Curie motor
A Curie motor uses heat to demagnetize an area of a magnet, causing it to move away from the heat where the cycle starts again. On BoingBoingTV, Mark Frauenfelder shows you how to build one with a candle, a wire and a couple of magnets.

Freaking awesome chip clips
Make a fridge pen
Fold over the open top of the bag and put magnets on either side to hold it closed.

Play with eddy current damping
Drop a magnet down an aluminum or copper tube, and you'll see a hovering slow fall caused by eddy current damping. Here's a quick video.

Slip a small magnet underneath the metal clip on a pen (these uniballs are our favorite) and you can keep a pen handy on the fridge for your shopping list and phone messages.

Defeat magnetic safety interlocks
All kinds of cool industrial machines from photocopiers to deep fat fryers have magnetic safety interlocks to prevent the machine from working with the cover open. Whenever you see a magnet attached to a hinge, it's there to protect you. So if you ever want to do something ridiculously dangerous like laser engrave your fingernails, you'll need magnets to disable the magnetic interlocks.

Make anything into a fridge magnet
We like to make unusual things into fridge magnets. And this trick has occasionally fooled folks into trying to open our fridge magnets to look for candy.

Demonstrate diamagnetic levitation
By placing diamagnetic material (such as bismuth or graphite) between a large magnet and a small one, you can levitate the small one. Detailed instructions and links to kits for this are on Bill Beaty's site, amasci.com.

Wake up your laptop or put it to sleep
Many laptops have a magnetic switch that tells the computer to go to sleep when the lid closes. Older Macs could be fooled into going to sleep with their lids up by waving a magnet by the upper right hand corner of the lid. Newer Macs can be fooled by resting a magnet on the switch on the right hand side of the keyboard. Caution: don't put a magnet near your hard drive!

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Here are seventeen of our favorite magnet tricks, projects and demos. Extract batteries from stubborn holders We've all got things that take batteries. Some of them are well designed, and some of them are not.

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http://www.ece.neu.edu/fac-ece/nian/mom/technology.html
Magnets are included in multiple examples of technology. They are used for medical purposes and help show scientists what they need to know. they are also used in everyday objects.

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2. Article- How does heat affect magnets?

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2. Article- How does heat affect magnets?

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https://sciencing.com/heat-affect-magnets-4926450.html
The temperature of a magnet can affect how it functions. Excessive heat within a magnet can cause alack of cohesion, decreasing its force. When it is cold,the force of the magnet increases.

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Many problems can be solved with magnets, from keeping bags of chips closed to extracting iron from your cereal!

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Other than sticking your crayon drawings onto your refrigerator door, magnets have a variety of unexpected and sometimes surprisingly practical uses, ranging from keeping your chip bags sealed to creating weird patterns on your nail beds using magnetic nail polish.

The strongest magnet in the world stands 22-feet tall and weighs 34 tons. It has a magnetic field of 45 teslas, which is 45,000 times stronger than that of Earth's. That's cool, but we won't need such power for our magnetic hacks. No, a simple permanent magnet will be quite enough to find us true north, fashion a fridge pen, pick up pointy metal objects, and get iron out of our cereal.

Don't Miss: How to Make Any Picture into a Magnet

1. Find True North with a Magnet

So you need to find true north but you're without a compass and the sky and sun are covered with clouds. Well, if you have a magnet, a piece of cork, a bowl of water, and a straight pin, you have a way.

To go about finding north on Earth's axis, rub the pin across the magnet 50 times in the same direction. Next, push the pin through the cork to create a pointer of sorts. Last, place the DIY magnetic needle into the bowl of water, and there you have it: true north. No matter how you turn or tilt the bowl, the pin will always point north.

2. Use a Magnet to Locate Studs in a Wall

An electronic stud finder can be hit or miss when it comes to locating studs behind walls so why not use a magnet to do the searching instead. A strong magnet can easily find the nails and/or screws holding the stud and (dry)wall together. All you need to do (as you would a stud finder) is move the magnet over a wall until it sticks to it. What's happening? It's found the metal fastener beneath the paint.

3. Keep Chip Bags Sealed with Magnets

Don't Miss: 5 Delicious Ways to Reinvent Your Stale Potato Chips

An opened bag of potato chips can be on its way to Stalesville if enough air gets to the crisps and binds to the starch in them. The simple solution, of course, is to use a bag clip (or clothespin, binder clip, etc.). But if you don't have one handy, and you do have magnets, then you still have a solution: Just fold over the top of the chips bag a few times and apply magnets on the opposite sides.

5. Pick Up Metal Things with a Magnet

Magnets are also extremely useful for safely picking up screws, needles, and other pointy objects from the floor if you ever have an accidental spill during your DIY home project or sewing spree.

7. Design with Magnetized Paint & Polish

Magnetic paint is a DIY idea that could very well spruce up your home office, dorm room, or kitchen. The primer paint, which has tiny particles of iron dust mixed in it, can be used to magnetize wall space into a fun "board" for notes, photos, receipts, and more. Bob Vila recommends using a lot of primer and covering it with at most two coats of paint as each coat will diminish the primer's overall magnetism.

Speaking of aesthetics, a kind of magnetic "paint" has recently entered the beauty realm as well, in the form of magnetic nail polish. For some fun and weird patterns on your nail beds, simply hover a magnet over freshly painted nails and see what designs emerge before the paint dries.

11. Get Iron Out of Cereal with a Magnet

And finally, if you ever suspect that your fortified nutritious breakfast cereal doesn't contain as much iron as it claims, you can verify your theory by grinding up the cereal in a blender and then seeing for yourself just how much black iron fuzz sticks onto a magnet when you sift through the cereal dust. Pretty weird and wonderful, right?

Don't Miss: 11 More Weird & Wonderful Uses for Magnets

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Other than sticking your crayon drawings onto your refrigerator door, magnets have a variety of unexpected and sometimes surprisingly practical uses, ranging from keeping your chip bags sealed to creating weird patterns on your nail beds using magnetic nail polish. The strongest magnet in the world stands 22-feet tall and weighs 34 tons.

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3. Article - Google's Cancer-Detecting Tech Using Mangets

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3. Article - Google's Cancer-Detecting Tech Using Mangets

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Google is in the process of developing a pill that uses tiny nanoparticles of magnets to latch on to diseases and cancer, identifying people whether they could have a life-threatening disease.
https://www.wired.com/2014/11/googles-cancer-detecting-pill-just-hype/

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Water has a higher melting point when it's in a strong magnetic field. Many scientists think this is because the magnetism strengthens the hydrogen bonds in the water.

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Magnetic effects seen in water - Physics World

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Melting point can be changed by applying a magnetic field

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The specifics on how earths magnetic field is created. The iron within earth affects our everyday lives in more ways than expected. The objects we use require it and we need it for our safety

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1. Article - Your Brain Contains Magnetic Particles, and Scientists Want to Know Why By

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1. Article - Your Brain Contains Magnetic Particles, and Scientists Want to Know Why By

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There are magnetic particles in your brain, and scientists think there's a biological reason for them.

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Credit: Shutterstock

This article was updated Aug. 9 at 3:30 pm E.T.

In a remote forest laboratory in Germany, free from the widespread pollution found in cities, scientists are studying slices of human brains.

The lab's isolated location, 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Munich, gives the researchers the opportunity to examine a bizarre quirk of the brain: the presence of magnetic particles deep within the organ's tissues.

Scientists have known since the 1990s that the human brain contains these particles, but researchers didn't know why. Some experts proposed that these particles served some biological purpose, while other researchers suggested that the magnets came from environmental pollution. [ Inside the Brain: A Photo Journey Through Time]

Now, the German scientists have evidence for the former explanation. In a new, small study that included data on seven postmortem brains, researchers found that some parts of the brains were more magnetic than others. That is, these areas contained more magnetic particles. What's more, all seven brains in the study had very similar distributions of magnetic particles throughout, suggesting that the particles are not a result of environmental absorption but rather serve some biological function, the team wrote in the study, published July 27 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Joseph Kirschvink, a professor of geobiology at Caltech who was not part of the study, said that the new research is "a very important advance, as it rules out obvious sources of external contamination" from pollution. Contamination is always possible, "but would not be the same in multiple individuals," he told Live Science in an email.

In the study, the researchers looked at slices of brain from seven people who had died in the early 1990s at ages 54 to 87. In the remote forest lab, far from widespread sources of magnetic pollution including car exhaust and cigarette ashes, and shielded by leaves known to absorb magnetic particles, the scientists placed their slices under a device that measures magnetic forces.

After taking a control reading, the researchers placed the brain slices next to very strong magnets to magnetize the samples and then took another reading. If the slice contained magnetic particles, those particles would then show up as a reading in the magnetometer.

(Don't worry about your brain particles magnetizing in day-to-day life, though: The kind of magnet used in the experiment is way stronger than anything you would come across in nature, said lead author Stuart Gilder, a professor of geophysics at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. The magnet in the study was 1 tesla strong, or 20,000 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field, which is about 50 microteslas strong. An MRI, at 1 to 3 teslas strong, however, could magnetize the particles, Kirschvink said. But "to do damage you need to pull on those [particles] hard enough to break the cell membranes," Kirschvink said, and added that he is unaware of "any studies showing damage from the strong, static magnetic fields of an MRI.")

The scientists found that most parts of the brain could be magnetized; in other words, these areas all contained magnetic particles. But in all seven brains, the brain stem and the cerebellum had greater magnetism than the higher-up cerebral cortex. Both the brain stem and the cerebellum are in the lower back portions in the brain, and both are more evolutionarily ancient than the cerebral cortex.

It's still unclear why the particles appear in this pattern of concentrations, the scientists said. But because the researchers spotted the pattern in all of the brains examined, "it probably has, or had, some kind of biological significance," Gilder said.

For example, because these particles were more concentrated lower down in the brain and then tapered off higher up, they likely play a role in helping electrical signals travel from the spine up and into the brain, Gilder told Live Science. However, he stressed that the finding remains fully open to interpretation.

Furthermore, because the particles weren't found specifically at higher concentrations near the olfactory bulb - which is what would happen if the particles were absorbed from the environment - Gilder said he doesn't think the particles are the result of exposure to pollution. (Here, the idea is that the particles would be inhaled through the nose and then pass into the brain's olfactory bulb.)

The researchers hypothesized that the type of magnetic particle found in these brain regions is a compound called magnetite (Fe3O4), based on previous studies that found this particle in human brains. It's possible, however, that other kinds of magnetic particles exist in the brain besides magnetite, Gilder noted.

Many animals also have magnetic particles in their brains. Some past research has suggested that animals such as eels or sea turtles use these particles to help navigate. But Gilder said that only one group of creatures are definitely known to use particles of magnetite for orienting themselves in space: magnetotactic bacteria. These bacteria migrate along magnetic field lines of the Earth's magnetic field.

Humans, on the other hand, probably don't do that, Gilder said.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Aug. 9 to include information about the effects of MRIs on magnetic particles in the brain.

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Your Brain Contains Magnetic Particles, and Scientists Want to Know Why

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This article was updated Aug. 9 at 3:30 pm E.T. In a remote forest laboratory in Germany, free from the widespread pollution found in cities, scientists are studying slices of human brains. The lab's isolated location, 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Munich, gives the researchers the opportunity to examine a bizarre quirk of the brain: the presence of magnetic particles deep within the organ's tissues.

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Iron man is going stop some bad guys from destroying thing with tanks, but he gets stuck on a magnet because his suit is made out of iron. Maybe he should not make his suit out of iron anymore.

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https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110406/full/472022a.html
This article shows why magnets are hard to manufacture and how it impacts society today. As the use of magnets increases, so does the price of these magnets. In later uses of magnets, they might be made up of different materials.

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Published online 6 April 2011 | Nature 472, 22-23 (2011) | doi:10.1038/472022a
Corrected online:

News Feature

Super-powerful magnets would boost the performance of electric cars and other green technology. Why is it so hard to make them?

For Christmas, magnetics researcher William McCallum got one of the latest cool toys: 'Buckyballs: The Amazing Magnetic Desktoy You Can't Put Down!' The magnets are state-of-the-art - strong enough that, if they were cubes rather than spheres, you wouldn't be able to pry them apart. But if McCallum has his way, his team will make them look like weaklings.

McCallum, a materials scientist at Iowa State University in Ames, is tackling two big problems at the same time: magnet strength and cost. For most of the twentieth century, the strength of available magnets doubled every decade or two, but it stalled in the 1990s. The limit has hampered efforts to make high-tech products such as electric cars more efficient. And in the past two years, the cost of the rare-earth elements that are essential to advanced magnets has shot up. The price of neodymium oxide jumped from US$17 a kilogram to $85 a kilogram in 2010 alone.

Despite their name, rare-earth elements such as neodymium aren't truly rare geologically, but they are expensive to mine and process. China, which provides about 95% of the 96,000 tonnes currently produced worldwide every year, has put increasingly stringent caps on exports, even as the need for the elements is booming. Magnets made with them are at the heart of modern technology from mobile phones and laptops to high-efficiency washing machines. And many devices that are part of the green economy require substantial amounts: an electric car carries a few kilograms of rare-earth elements, and a 3-megawatt wind turbine uses about 1.5 tonnes. Demand leapt from 30,000 tonnes in the 1980s to 120,000 tonnes in 2010 (which was met in part by depletion of national stockpiles), and is predicted to hit 200,000 tonnes by 2015, says Gareth Hatch, founder of the Technology Metals Research consultancy in Carpentersville, Illinois (see 'Market forces').

Click for larger version.

Fortunately, the leading idea for how to make 'next-generation' magnets could solve both problems at once. It involves combining nanoparticles of rare-earth magnets with nanoparticles of cheaper magnetic materials - creating super-strong end-products with far less of the expensive ingredients. Governments keen to invest in energy-efficient technology, and scared by a global crunch in the rare-earth market, have started to pay attention to magnetics research.

In the United States, an infusion of funds has come from the Department of Energy, home of the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), which was established in 2009 to bring high-risk, potentially 'transformative' technologies to the market. ARPA-E has allocated $6.6 million to research on next-generation magnets - a shot in the arm for the field. "We're long overdue" for the next magnet revolution, says George Hadjipanayis, a physicist at the University of Delaware in Newark, who is head of a $4.4-million ARPA-E consortium of which McCallum is part. "We need to do it."

Permanent magnets get their pulling power from the orbits and spins of unpaired electrons, which tend to align with an external magnetic field and stay that way when that field is taken away. These magnets are ranked by their 'energy product' in kilojoules per cubic metre (kJ m −3) - a combination of how much they respond to an applied magnetic field (their magnetization) and how well they resist being demagnetized. These properties don't always go hand in hand. Iron-cobalt alloy has the highest potential magnetization known, but its energy product is effectively zero because it is easily demagnetized: it has a symmetrical cubic crystal structure, with nothing to keep its electron spins pointing in any one direction, so they can be jolted out of alignment by a bump or a nearby magnetic field.

Spins in sync

Newer magnetic materials have a complex crystalline structure that helps to keep the spins pointing one way. In the 1950s, the best of such magnets, made of an alloy of iron, aluminium, nickel and cobalt called Alnico, achieved an energy product of 40 kJm −3 (see 'Stalled progress'). The 1960s brought the first generation of rare-earth magnets, made of samarium and cobalt, which eventually enabled energy products to exceed 250 kJm −3. In the 1980s, researchers devised neodymium-iron-boron (NIB) magnets, which hold the record at about 470 kJm −3. If the magnets have to work at high temperatures - such as in a car engine - the rare-earth element dysprosium is added to the mix.

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The dream is to unite the magnetic punch of something like iron-cobalt with the stability of, for example, a NIB magnet. That should be possible by combining nanoparticles of the two, packed so closely that neighbouring electrons influence each other and keep their spins aligned. In theory, a nanocomposite could reach an energy product of a whopping 960 kJm −3, with rare earths making up just 5% of its weight, compared with 27% in a normal NIB magnet ( R. Skomski and J. M. D. Coey Phys. Rev. B 48, 15812-15816; 1993). But making such a composite is extremely difficult.

The grains in a successful nanocomposite must be small (10 nanometres or less); have the right crystal structure; have aligned magnetic directions; and be tightly packed. Achieving all of these at once is an engineering nightmare. On top of that, rare-earth nanoparticles aren't stable - they love to react with oxygen, which ruins their magnetic properties.

In 2006, a team led by Ping Liu, a physicist at the University of Texas at Arlington, pioneered a manufacturing method that used steel balls to grind up magnetic material with the desired crystalline structure in a solution containing detergents. "I had postdocs working for years on this before we got a publication," says Liu. "They hated me." The soap lets the team produce nano-sized grains that don't adhere to each other but do keep their magnetic properties. Hadjipanayis is using the same technique, and says that in the past year he has made grains as small as 2.7 nanometres.

Even more difficult is making a bulk magnet out of these grains. One standard technique - pressing the grains together and heating them to 800-1,000°C - causes them to diffuse into each other, so they become too big to create the cooperative nanocomposite effect. Another method - using polymer glues to bind the grains - dilutes the magnetic material.

There are alternatives. Hadjipanayis plans to charge one set of nanoparticles positively and the other negatively, so that electrostatic attraction binds them together. Liu's group squeezes about half a gram of the nano-grains in a press for 30 minutes instead of the standard half a minute. He also adds a bit of warmth (about 500°C) to help them deform, but not so much as to ruin them. Using this method, Liu has managed to make relatively strong, dense magnets, but the grains aren't magnetically aligned, so the magnets are still weaker than a standard NIB one.

Alignment is the final hurdle. Liu's group is trying to clear it by putting material through a second slow- compaction process, but is having limited success. The researchers are fiddling with the details, trying to hit on a recipe that works. "I hope it can be done before my retirement," says Liu.

Corporate competition

Liu could be beaten by his competition before he reaches that deadline. The technology firm General Electric, headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, has been given a $2.2-million ARPA-E grant to pursue nanocomposites, and has beefed up its magnetics research team. The company, which started its experimental work in January, told Nature that it has a good way to make crystalline grains, but it wouldn't give details.

"Yes, it is ambitious, but that's exactly why we need to be doing it."

Last December, the US Department of Energy released its Critical Materials Strategy, which outlines a three-part mission to deal with shortages in rare-earth elements: secure new supplies, promote recycling and conduct research into alternatives, such as next-generation magnets. This push toward stronger magnets is a welcome change with potentially big pay-offs, says Liu. According to his calculations, doubling the strength of a magnet in an electric car should improve the motor's efficiency by about 70% - although that number could vary wildly depending on the design of the magnet and engine.

Although the United States seems to be making the most concerted push towards creating the strongest magnets, other nations have invested more money in general magnetics research, says Liu. China's 5-year economic plan for 2011-15 includes a big boost - reportedly more than 4 trillion renminbi (US$610 billion) - for spending in seven 'strategic emerging industries', including energy systems, clean cars and new materials. Observers such as Hatch and Liu expect great things from the investment. Japan has invested heavily in magnet research for its high-tech industry, and has strong government-industry collaborations - although one of its largest centres for magnetics research is Tohoku University in Sendai, which was hit hard by the earthquake and tsunami in March (see ).

Last year, the European Union's research-funding framework put out a €4-million (US$6.3-million) call for proposals from groups working to develop novel materials, with the goal of totally replacing rare earths. But most researchers say that this is massively overreaching. "This is a joke, scientifically," says Liu of the quest to remove rare earths from strong magnets. Several major labs have had proposals rejected because they aimed simply to reduce the quantities of rare earths used in magnets, says Dominique Givord, a magnetics researcher at the Louis Néel Laboratory in Grenoble, France.

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Researchers' target of building next-generation nanocomposite magnets is, most admit, a long shot. "I know that this activity is becoming popular in the United States, but I feel that their goal is a bit too ambitious," says Kazuhiro Hono, a magnetics researcher at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan. Givord agrees. "It is extraordinarily challenging," he says. More realistic, he says, are attempts to make existing magnets a bit stronger and cheaper by altering their microstructures. In Japan, such efforts have helped to reduce dysprosium demand.

But Hatch, who has worked in the field for nearly two decades, says that next-generation magnets are worth the battle. "Yes, it is ambitious, but that's exactly why we need to be doing it," he says. "It's time to put money behind it."

Nicola Jones is a freelance journalist based near Vancouver, Canada.

The graph 'Stalled progress' incorrectly labelled one line as samarium-iron-nickel. This should have read samarium-iron-nitrogen. The graphics displayed here and in the PDF version have been updated to correct this.

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Materials science: The pull of stronger magnets

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Published online 6 April 2011 | Nature 472, 22-23 (2011) | doi:10.1038/472022a Corrected online: News Feature Super-powerful magnets would boost the performance of electric cars and other green technology. Why is it so hard to make them? For Christmas, magnetics researcher William McCallum got one of the latest cool toys: 'Buckyballs: The Amazing Magnetic Desktoy You Can't Put Down!'

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Magnets were not invented, but rather found by Greeks. There is a story about a shepherd who's shoe containing nails got stuck on a rock containing magnetite. However, there are many other theories about who figured out about magnets. Some stories say that they were figured out by Vikings. Nobody knows.

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3. Article - Why do plants react to Magnets

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3. Article - Why do plants react to Magnets

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According to this article (and others), plant growth is benefited from magnets. This can happen in two ways. Water that is exposed to certain magnets can change. The salt ions can change and make the water purer for a plant. The magnets can also make seeds germinate faster and better, making the growth of the plant faster and better.
Link:
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/info/magnetism-and-plant-growth.htm

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This article is about an experiment to see if magnets work in space the same way they do on Earth. They take magnets to space and an astronaut tests the magnets out. They immediately notice that the magnets line up with the Earth's magnetic poles, even in space! I find it very interesting that Earth's magnetic field attracts charged particles even in space!

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According to the first article, magnets do sense Earth's magnetic field in space.

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2. Cool Science Video - How liquids impact a magnet experiment

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2. Cool Science Video - How liquids impact a magnet experiment

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This video shows how a magnet will attract paper clips differently depending on the liquid the paper clips are in.

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3. Article-Dogs align with magnetic fields while pooping

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3. Article-Dogs align with magnetic fields while pooping

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This article explains how dogs poop along the north-south magnetic axis when pooping. She studied 70 dogs of 37 different breeds (1893 times total). However, they found that when the magnetic field shifts, then dogs find it harder to find the magnetic poles. Using Google Earth aerial pictures, biologist Sabine Begall found that the red fox "have a preference for the N-E during their mousing jumps." However, scientists still do not know why these animals choose these directions to defecate.
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/03/science/la-sci-sn-dogs-poop-compass-magnetic-field-earth-20140103

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https://www.factmonster.com/dk/encyclopedia/science/magnetism
This article explains many confusing things in magnetism. Many facts are very simple but hard to comprehend so this is very useful.

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Magnetic Declination, also known as Magnetic Variation, is the angle between magnetic north and true north. When magnetic north is east of true north, the declination is positive and negative when west. There is more magnetic declination near the poles. To calculate the true bearing, you add the magnetic bearing to the magnetic declination.
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/declination.shtml

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3. Video - Magnets used in sepaation of rockets.

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3. Video - Magnets used in sepaation of rockets.

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Magnets and small explosives are used in separation of rocket stages.

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Rocket stage separation seen from the outside for the first time ever

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This article is about a therapeutic magnetic wristband that  is used to reduce pain and treat ailments in various parts of the body. This is very interesting because certain cells and tissues in the body emit electromagnetic impulses.

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According to the American Cancer Society (ACS) magnetic therapy is used to reduce pain and treat ailments in various parts of the body. Promoters say magnetic rings, bracelets and other magnetic apparatus work because certain cells and tissues in the body emit electromagnetic impulses. Theoretically, when disease or injury hampers their flow, magnetic energy can rectify the imbalance and reestablish health. Magnetic therapy has been marketed as being effective to alleviate migraine headaches, repair broken bones, improve circulation and even cure cancer. However the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says magnets have no medicinal value.

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How Do Magnetic Bracelets Work? | Livestrong.com

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According to the American Cancer Society (ACS) magnetic therapy is used to reduce pain and treat ailments in various parts of the body. Promoters say magnetic rings, bracelets and other magnetic apparatus work because certain cells and tissues in the body emit electromagnetic impulses.

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What Did the Ancient World Know About Magnets

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What Did the Ancient World Know About Magnets

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Magnets were discovered by ancient Greece in 600 B.C. by a shepherd named Magnes who accidentally found a naturally made magnet that is a mineral called magnetite because the found it in an area called Magnesia, the magnet stuck to the iron studs in his sandal. they called them load stones and then also proceeded to find that if you take a magnets and touch it to steel then that steel also becomes a magnet for a short  limited amount of time.
then in the 12th century, Chinese used the magnets to make a compass.

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http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jul-aug/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-magnetism
This article has cool facts about magnets. It talks about many uses of magnets and different ways of finding magnetism. Also, it includes interesting theories about how certain magnetic containing rocks are formed

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Article about science - 10 major news stories in science in 2018

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Article about science - 10 major news stories in science in 2018

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this article is a beneficial article for anybody that may have missed out on the science developments that may have occurred during the recent year. Gene - edited babies, the end of mosquitoes, and many more surprises await the reader in this article.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/top-science-stories-2018-yir

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1. Technology - Maglev trains: why aren't we gliding home on hovering carriages?

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1. Technology - Maglev trains: why aren't we gliding home on hovering carriages?

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This article explains the amazing invention that is the Maglev Trains. Maglev Trains are high-speed vehicles that use magnetism to hover above the tracks. This provides an eco-friendly and efficient alternative to normal transportation by train. This Guardian article also explains the reason for why Maglev Trains are not very common.

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Clean, green, quick and quiet; no wheels, no engines to fail; able to stop quickly and safely and glide off noiselessly on a cushion of air.

Magnetic levitation (maglev) was, according to 1980s science shows such as Tomorrow's World, going to make domestic air travel defunct, humming from city to city at 500mph with negligible effects on the environment (and no need to remove your belt and shoes).

With no wheels and only one track, Maglev trains would pooh-pooh bad weather, the wrong type of leaves on the line, or a points failure at Cricklewood. Because of the way maglev (in various ways) repels the train above its track, derailments are unlikely: the further the vehicle gets from its track, the stronger the magnetic force pushing it back. No signalling or moving parts to go wrong, with all the trains travelling at the same rate. Imagine the effect on commuting and by extension the economy - the Midlands would be half an hour from London.

Amid the traffic jams and pollution, a greener mass transit solution makes sense more than ever.

So why weren't you able to glide to work at supersonic speeds this morning? The concept has been under development for over a century, with dozens of patents filed since the early 1900s. While there have only been a handful of commercially viable systems built, of which only three - all in Asia - survive today, more are now being tested around the world.

Britain actually ran the world's first: the Birmingham airport AirLink shuttle that ran from 1984-95. It was popular and cheap to run, but unreliable and expensive to maintain as the one-off components were hard to find.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel rode the world's first commercial maglev TransRapid train to Shanghai airport to catch her flight back to Berlin in May 2006. Photograph: Rolf Vennenbernd/EPA

Germany also blazed a trail in the late 1980s with West Berlin's M-Bahn, a driverless train on a mile of track with just three stations. But floating trains were put on the backburner and the line was closed with reunification in 1990. The manufacturer, TransRapid, maintained a test facility for the trains until an accident killed 23 in Lathen in 2006.

That would have sealed it for German maglev had TransRapid not already been commissioned to build the Shanghai airport maglev in 2001. This remains the world's fastest electric train (268mph), and makes the 19-mile, hour-long taxi journey from the airport to Shanghai's business district in just eight minutes. China also has a medium-to-low speed (about 99mph) maglev line in operation in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. China likes maglev so much it says it plans to launch services in up to 12 cities by 2020.

There are now several other maglev projects in progress in Asia; the best known perhaps being the unmanned EcoBee shuttle that travels to and from South Korea's Incheon airport. This shortish line linking seven stations along which the shuttle travels at the comparatively sedate 68mph was completed in 2012. And it's free: Heathrow Express take note.

Japan's Linimo line near Nagoya runs a similar urban light rail-style vehicle at relatively low speeds. The Japanese are old hands at maglev, having laboured patiently (and expensively) with the technology since 1969. Their much more ambitious Chuo Shinkansen (central bullet train) maglev line is already under construction and will see trains eat up the 178 miles between Tokyo and Nagoya at 310mph - mostly underground.

It can be done - so why can't we do it? Why are we ripping up the Cotswolds to allow HS2 to blast noisily through our dwindling countryside when the Japanese will be able to silently tube through 178 miles in under 40 minutes?

Money. If you're going to build maglev you must do so from scratch. Most governments simply won't take that hit, especially if standard rail infrastructure is already in place. Shanghai's comparatively small maglev cost £840m to build, while Japan's will be around £58bn. The US Federal Railroad Administration has balked at the up to $100m (£70m) per mile it estimates it would cost to build.

Plus, there's no guarantee of profit, and if that's your motivation, the political will is unlikely to be forthcoming. Even the successful Asian projects were brought to fruition decades late and at great cost. Japan has been at it for four decades. The Shanghai line has been losing money - some 600-700m yuan (£70m to £82m) a year, in addition to its massively expensive build cost, since it floated in 2004.

The Chinese government may be able to engage in such chest-thumping, but most governments will feel it's cheaper to upgrade existing railways, unless the cash comes from private sources. But even the much vaunted, ostensibly private Japan Railways Group was for most of its history state-run, and even today is heavily subsidised.

A magnetically levitating train operated by Central Japan Railway Co in Kyodo, April 2015. Photograph: Kyodo/Reuters

As for Britain, it has been suggested that the UK's current power profile may mean maglev is uneconomical for long distances - hence no maglev HS2. Yet a state-run, clean, green, cheap rapid transit system should surely be an investment for the future, with big potential savings down the line in lower future maintenance and better reliability.

Incheon's maglev may have cost £25m per km, but they boast that's a third of the cost of regular rail, and "while the cost of supplying electricity to a maglev line is 30% greater than for a regular light rail, it costs 60% to 70% less to operate the train."

Likewise, the Japanese Linimo line may have cost around £70m per km to build, but is proving to be low-maintenance, reliable and quiet compared with traditional transit systems (and ideal for cities, with its zero emissions). In the UK, it was estimated in 2006 that the cost of a maglev track would only have been half that of the Channel tunnel rail link.

We should watch Asia with interest. If nothing else, they are showing that if there's a political will, there's a maglev railway.

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Maglev trains: why aren't we gliding home on hovering carriages?

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Clean, green, quick and quiet; no wheels, no engines to fail; able to stop quickly and safely and glide off noiselessly on a cushion of air. Magnetic levitation (maglev) was, according to 1980s science shows such as Tomorrow's World, going to make domestic air travel defunct, humming from city to city at 500mph with negligible effects on the environment (and no need to remove your belt and shoes).

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This article talks about rocks and their relation to magnetism. Rocks, when they fossilize can record magnetic fields. These fields can be very ancient and this is known as paleomagnetism. I find it very interesting that these rocks with the ability to record magnetism and magnetic field lines were the basis for compasses.

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Print publication year:

Online publication date:

Chapter 1 - Magnetism in nature

Magnetism has fascinated mankind since the invention of compasses that could track invisible magnetic field lines over the earth's surface. Much later came the discovery that rocks can fossilize a record of ancient magnetic fields. Unravelling this record - the 'archeology' of magnetism - is the science of paleomagnetism, and understanding how the microscopic fossil 'compasses' in rocks behave has come to be known as rock magnetism.

Rock magnetism is both a basic and an applied science. Its fundamentals concern ferromagnetism and magnetic domains and were developed most authoritatively by Néel. Its applications continue to expand, giving impetus to new research into the mechanisms and fidelity of rock magnetic recording. Some of the history and applications are described in this chapter.

A brief history

Earth magnetism

Compasses were used in China and the Arab world for centuries before Petrus Peregrinus in 1269 gave the first European description of a working compass. The earliest compasses were lodestones, naturally occurring ores of magnetite (Fe3O4). Particular areas, or poles, of one lodestone would attract or repel the poles of another lodestone. This magnetic polarization is the key to their use as compasses in navigation. A suspended lodestone will rotate until its axis of magnetization or polarization, joining north and south poles of the lodestone, lines up with imaginary field lines joining the north and south geomagnetic poles. In modern terminology, the magnetization aligns with the field .

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Magnetism in nature (Chapter 1) - Rock Magnetism

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Print publication year: Online publication date: Magnetism has fascinated mankind since the invention of compasses that could track invisible magnetic field lines over the earth's surface. Much later came the discovery that rocks can fossilize a record of ancient magnetic fields.

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http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=54
This artical shows how magnets are used to make speakers form sound. It has in depth explination on how the speackers work. The speakers work as the magnets repel and atract to move the cone which move th eair around it forming sound waves.

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This article shows how magnets can be used in unusual ways that could actually help us in our everyday life.  It shows lots of ways that magnets can be used for satisfaction to emergencies

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I love magnets!

There are many practical uses for magnets that we see everyday, but there are so many more ways to use magnets that the maker nerd in all of us will appreciate. Though there are a few types of magnets on the market, for almost every application I prefer neodymium magnets (also known as rare-earth magnets) as they are the best choice - They are small, very powerful, and come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes.

From the workshop to the kitchen, there's plenty of unusual uses for magnets. Let's explore!

Step 1: Hammer Helper

If you've ever used a hammer you've probably kept a few nails in your mouth to keep yourself productive. While this is an effective method, it can be cumbersome if you've got a few types of nails in use. Modify your hammer to do double duty and carry some nails with a small magnet!

Wood handled hammers are perfect for including a small magnet in the flat bottom. I found a drill pit with a matching diameter to the magnet I wanted to use.

Secure the hammer so the location for the magnet is facing upwards, then drill into the bottom of the handle as deep as required to contain your magnet.

Add a small dab of epoxy into the cavity and then insert the magnet until fully seated. Allow the epoxy to cure and you're good to go!

8 People Made This Project!

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Step 2: Magnetize Screwdrivers

Staying in the workshop: magnets also work great to polarize your screwdrivers, allowing you to pick up a screw with the tip of the screwdriver. This is especially helpful to keep a screw seated on the end of the driver as you start screwing it into the opening - the time when most screws can fall off the end of the driver.

To magnetize screwdrivers stroke the magnet along the shaft of the screwdriver from handle to tip a few times. That's all that's needed to polarize the screwdriver and allow it to be magnetized.

To remove the magnetic properties just stroke the magnet in the reverse direction and the screwdriver will be demagnetized.

Step 3: Nail + Screw Finder

Maybe you're working outside and drop a nail or screw, finding it in the dirt or grass can be a laborious task. Whether finding fasteners, earrings, or cleaning up steel shavings, a small magnet on a stick will make your life a lot easier.

I made this handy pick-up tool by just gluing a strong magnet on the end of a dowel. There's plenty of ways to make this a more robust tool for you needs, like adding wheels to the dowel which would allow you to roll it around on the ground at a consistent height. What other ways can you think to make this tool better?

Step 4: Stud Finder

Though residential homes have wood studs, a magnet can help you find the stud locations by being attracted to the the drywall screws. In older homes where there's lath and plaster, a magnet can help you locate the nails where the lath is attached to the studs.

By lightly tapping on a wall you can roughly locate where the studs aren't by listening for a hollow sound. Continue tapping until you locate a dense thud sound, there should be a stud in this general location. Use your magnet to hone in on the exact stud location by moving the magnet around the wall until it becomes attracted to the drywall screw or lath nail.

Conventional construction has studs located 16" apart, so once you find one stud you can measure out 16" and use your magnet to locate more studs.

Step 5: Keep Supplies Close By

Crafty makers void warranties and fix all their own stuff. Keep your screws and other bits organized when you're doing your next disassembly with a magnetized dish.

Almost any dish can work for this, but I used a stainless steel container. Since some types of stainless steel aren't magnetic magnetic, I used a strong adhesive (E6000) to bond my large diameter flat magnet to the underside of the dish.

Allow the adhesive plenty of time to cure (I left mine overnight), then your dish is ready to be used.

Whether holding sewing needles for your textiles, or screws for your repair job, a magnetic dish will make your live easier and more organized!

Step 6: Visual Shopping List

I'm a visual person, I'm also a creature of habit and usually get the same staples at the grocery store. Combining these two traits lead me to making a visual grocery list, a quick way to remind myself what I need at the store at a glance, and without opening up the fridge.

When I'm in the fridge and use the last of the milk, I just slide the milk magnet over to the grocery list. Now I know that I'm out of milk and need to grab some next time I'm out.

This easy visual style can be used for all kinds of applications outside of the kitchen. All you need is a sheet magnet and a printer to make your own.

Step 7: Magnetic Silly Putty

Magnetic Silly Putty is super easy to make, and displays some curious properties when a strong magnet is placed nearby. Making your own is easy, you just need some silly putty, a little black iron oxide powder, and a powerful rare earth magnet.

Magnetic silly putty is a great teaching tool, as well as a fun science toy for kids of all ages.

Step 8: Ferromagnetic Fluid

Magnetic putty isn't the only science toy to make with magnets, there's also ferromagnetic fluid! This simple project uses the same black iron oxide powder suspended in a water solution and all contained in a small jar. The jar is then sealed up to keep the contents from spilling out.

When a magnet is introduced to the side of the jar you will be able to see the magnetic fields action on the iron oxide powder inside the jar. Remove the magnet and watch the powder drop to the bottom of the jar.

This simple project is fun to play with and visually demonstrates how a magnetic works.

Step 9: Emergency Keys

Hide your keys somewhere safe in case you get locked out.

Some keys are brass, and not magnetic. An easy way to use this trick with brass keys is to use key rings, which are steel. Place a key ring onto your key, then use a small neodymium magnet to hide the key somewhere inconspicuous, like under a table or inside a drawer.

Step 10: Magnetic Fidget Spinner

The fidget spinner fad is still in full effect, with all kinds of new ways to modify and customize your favorite toy. There's an unwritten competition among spinner to see who's can go the fastest. While air compressors seem like the easiest way to achieve maximum RPM, brainy Instructables member tanner_tech shows us a new spin on accelerating with his Electromagnetic Fidget Spinner Accelerator.

From the Instructable:

The magnets on the fidget spinner are mounted so that all the magnets have their north pole facing outwards. The electromagnet is wired so that the side that is closest to the spinner will have a north polarity when it is powered. As the magnet on one side of the spinner passes the electromagnet it will trigger the reed switch, activating the electromagnet [and] that arm of the spinner will be pushed away from the electromagnet.

Step 11: Craving More?

Can't get enough magnets? Me neither! That's why I made a collection of magnetic projects I've made over the years. They are sure to get your creative juices flowing, and I hope you find them attractive :)

Do you have your own unusual use for a magnet? I want to see it!

Share a picture of your usual use for magnets in the comments below and get a free Pro Membership to Instructables!

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Unusual Uses for Magnets: I love magnets! There are many practical uses for magnets that we see everyday, but there are so many more ways to use magnets that the maker nerd in all of us will appreciate. Though there are a few types of magnets on the market, for almost ever...

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1. What Happens When You Drop a Magnet Through a Copper Tube

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1. What Happens When You Drop a Magnet Through a Copper Tube

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This article, put simply, demonstrates Lenz's law, which states that "when a current is induced in a conductor, [like the copper tube] a magnetic field is generated that opposes the action that produces the current [in this case the magnet]"
https://www.iflscience.com/physics/what-happens-when-you-drop-magnet-through-copper-tube/

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2. Video - Magnets used for entertainment and for travelling.

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2. Video - Magnets used for entertainment and for travelling.

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We can use magnets to use less fuel and now it uses less time to almost fly over to your destination.

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It's 2015 and Lexus might have your hoverboard - video

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A promotional video for the new Lexus Slide suggests the technology we have dreamt of since Back to the Future II has finally arrived. The clip released on Tuesday shows a real-life hoverboard being tested at a skatepark in Barcelona

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This is an article that shows evidence of how magnets work. They use fluoride from their experiment to prove their point. This article basically is just a really simple version on how magnets work. This article however does not in depth about field lines and such.

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2. Magnetars, the Most Magnetic Stars in the Universe

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2. Magnetars, the Most Magnetic Stars in the Universe

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What happens if you take 100 trillion refrigerator magnets and chuck it into space? You get the equivalent of a Mangetar, the most magnetic thing that we know exists. It's a special type of star that scientists still have yet to learn about.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/deepspace/f_magnetars.html

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https://www.apexmagnets.com/news-how-tos/8-strange-facts-about-magnets-and-magnetism/

This article is about magnetic force and how earth can actually form magnets from other metal. Also, how magnets are used a lot and are very important for survival.

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This article talks about the many uses of magnets in computers. It's really interesting how the poles of electromagnets represent the terms 0 and 1, which is how they are able to store data. The data they store can also be changed by reversing the magnets' polarity
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/the-uses-of-magnets-in-computers

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This is a video showing all of the weird things that magnets do when you set them up in certain ways. Some of these things are the magnets standing up by themselves and then going back down. Another strange occurrence was when the magnets were repelling, but didn't move away even though they were attached to the ground. Overall this is a very good video that can show some of the weird phenomenons of magnets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BCdJPWrpLw

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This is an article about facts about magnets. A few facts inform about magnets. Some of the facts talk about different types of magnets. Other go in depth on how they work

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This article is about MRI, a way to produce three-dimensional anatomical scans without radiation. MRIs work by using strong magnets to force protons in the body to align with the field. When a radiofrenquency current pulses through the patient, the protons are stimulated and try to break away from the magnetic force. After the current is turned off, the MRI can analyze the patient based on the time it takes for the protons to realign.
https://www.nibib.nih.gov/science-education/science-topics/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri

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This article is about magnets and some strange things that they can do. Some of these things are that you can make your own makeshift compass out of a block of wood, a bowl of water, and a magnet! This article also shows all of the different magnets that you can buy, and the purposes of them. Finally, it explains the basic uses of magnets. https://www.first4magnets.com/fun-magnet-facts-for-kids-i77

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This article explains about animals' inner sense of magnetism. Some animals have a "magnetically aligned material, some of which is known to be magnetite (iron oxide)." These substances give some animals some sense of magnetic direction. For example, animals that have these magnetic particles can move in straight lines, while others that don't move around in circles. Like the video we watched said, Earth's magnetic pole has switched in the past, and with the switch, the animals' magnetic sense has also changed. Also,
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-05-21/local/me-108_1_magnetic-field

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1. Technology - High-tech magnet smashes record and opens new frontiers in tech

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1. Technology - High-tech magnet smashes record and opens new frontiers in tech

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This article explains how a lab in Florida created a magnet that is 3,000 times more powerful than refrigerator magnets, and is the worlds most powerful super conducting magnet in the world. This allows new technology to be made with stronger magnets.

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In brief: The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory has created the world's most powerful superconducting magnet. Named 32 T, it's 33 percent more powerful than the previous record-holding magnet, and thousands of times stronger than refrigerator magnets.
BACK ON TOP

The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (National MagLab) is no stranger to breaking records. In August, the team took back the title of "world's strongest resistive magnet" - after losing it in 2014 - with their Project 11 magnet that reached 41.4 teslas, a unit of magnetic field strength. On December 8, they came back once again to set a new record: this time, for the world's most powerful superconducting magnet.

Their new superconducting magnet, created in the MagLab Tallahassee facility, created a magnetic field of 32 teslas, making it nearly 33 percent stronger than the magnet that held the previous record (and giving it the nickname of "32T"). For reference, that's 3000 times stronger than the magnets we put on our refrigerators. According to MagLab, the world record set last week represents one of the biggest improvements made in the last 40 years.

"This is a transformational step in magnet technology, a true revolution in the making," said Greg Boebinger, MagLab Director, in a press release. "Not only will this state-of-the-art magnet design allow us to offer new experimental techniques here at the lab, but it will boost the power of other scientific tools such as X-rays and neutron scattering around the world."

ADVANCED PHYSICS

Superconductors are already vital to the operation of a range of different devices, from MRI machines to high-speed transportation systems, and nuclear fusion reactors to enormous particle colliders. This superconducting magnet is therefore expected to help advance research in several areas, including physics, chemistry, biology, and quantum matter. To help facilitate its use, MagLab is allowing scientists from around the world to apply for the opportunity to use it.

The team doesn't intend to stop at 32 teslas, however. One day, the superconducting magnet may be as powerful as the lab's record-breaking resistive magnet, though MagLab engineer Huub Weijers - who oversaw the magnet's construction - foresees magnets going even further beyond that.

"We've opened up an enormous new realm," said Weijers in the press release. "I don't know what that limit is, but it's beyond 100 teslas. The required materials exist. It's just technology and dollars that are between us and 100 teslas."
"New Superconducting Magnet Smashes World Record" was originally published by Futurism, LLC on Dec. 19, 2017 by Kyree Leary. Copyright 2017. Futurism, LLC. All rights reserved.
FOLLOW NBC NEWS MACH ON TWITTER, FACEBOOK, AND INSTAGRAM.

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High-tech magnet smashes world record and opens new frontiers in tech

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In brief: The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory has created the world's most powerful superconducting magnet. Named 32 T, it's 33 percent more powerful than the previous record-holding magnet, and thousands of times stronger than refrigerator magnets. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (National MagLab) is no stranger to breaking records.

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This is an article on 17 cool thing you can do with magnets. You can also use them to improve your life. Many of these tricks use very affordable magnets which makes these tricks very accessible

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Through NASA's Juno spacecraft, we figured out a strange occurrence of Jupiter. In 2016, we realized that Jupiter has two south poles. Their magnetic field is very different, and an unprecedented occurrence. Scientists think that this is because of extraordinarily high density and pressure of the planet. https://www.popsci.com/jupiter-magnetic-field-wacky

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1. Article- Biomagnetism: Magnetic Fields Produced by the Human Body

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1. Article- Biomagnetism: Magnetic Fields Produced by the Human Body

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This is an article about magnetism in the human body, also known as magnetism. The article talks about how magnetism in the body is very weak. So, scientists have figured out different magnetic field measuring tools. I find it very interesting that this can be used to make a better diagnosis of the brain.

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Biomagnetism: Magnetic Fields Produced by the Human Body | Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth

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Biomagnetism is the phenomenon where magnetic fields are produced by the living things, especially by the human body; (different from magnetic fields applied to the body, called magnetobiology). The body's magnetic fields are very weak, and are measured with the sensitive detector called a SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device), usually in a magnetically shielded room, which excludes most external disturbances.

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this video has 9 different magnetic gadgets. it shows the gadget then it shows how it works. i think this video is really informative because it shows how people can use magnets in objects. it gives us a way to view magnets in a less scientific and more "real life" way.

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Science News - Magnet Discoveries All Around Time and The World

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Science News - Magnet Discoveries All Around Time and The World

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This article features the most important magnetic discoveries. It includes the discovery that the earth itself is a magnet, who sparked the idea that magnetism and electricity could be linked. The article includes the funny anecdotes behind accidental discoveries, and the people who made them. My favorite piece was the Greek shepherd's stumbling-upon of the first piece of lodestone known to man! The ways people discover things after weird incidents, such as Newton's gravity epiphany after the apple, are very overall interesting.

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Good question, and the answer depends on who you ask and what you mean by "discover." You see, magnets make the world go 'round, and stories about the discovery and use of magnets seem to come from almost every corner of the world. Read on for some enticing tales about the evolution of the modern magnet.
In Greece In Rome In Scandinavia In China In France In England In Denmark
Scientists continue to explore the amazing properties of magnetism and electromagnetism in labs all over the world. Will you be one of them?

Tags: Chinese compass , compass , dry compass , first magnet , Hands Christian Oersted , history of magnets , lodestone , Magnes , magnet discovery , magnet history , magnet origins , magnetite , magnets , Petrus Peregrinus , Piny the Elder , Viking navigation , who discovered magnets , William Gilbert
Share This:

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Good question, and the answer depends on who you ask and what you mean by "discover." You see, magnets make the world go 'round, and stories about the discovery and use of magnets seem to come from almost every corner of the world. Read on for some enticing tales about the evolution of the modern magnet.

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2. Article - Humans And The Magnetic Field

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2. Article - Humans And The Magnetic Field

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I thought that it was only animals who had a reaction to magnets, but here it says that humans do have some sort of magnets in their eye, but it doesn't necessarily react to magnets.

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Many birds have a compass in their eyes. Their retinas are loaded with a protein called cryptochrome, which is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic fields. It's possible that the birds can literally see these fields, overlaid on top of their normal vision. This remarkable sense allows them to keep their bearings when no other landmarks are visible.

But cryptochrome isn't unique to birds - it's an ancient protein with versions in all branches of life. In most cases, these proteins control daily rhythms. Humans, for example, have two cryptochromes - CRY1 and CRY2 - which help to control our body clocks. But Lauren Foley from the University of Massachusetts Medical School has found that CRY2 can double as a magnetic sensor.

Foley worked with Drosophila flies, which can normally sense magnetic fields using cryptochome. You can show this by placing them in an artificial magnetic field and training them to head in a specific direction in search for food. Normal flies can do this easily. Mutants that don't have the cry gene, which makes the cryptochrome protein, lose their ability to find their meal.

To restore their internal compass, Foley simply has to give the mutant flies extra copies of cry. But she found that the human version of the gene works just as well. When she loaded her mutants flies with human CRY2, she found that they could sense magnetic fields like their normal peers. Foley also found that human cryptochrome is sensitive to blue light. It only managed to restore the magnetic sense of flies when they were bathed in this colour.

These simple experiments show that human cryptohrome can act as a magnetic sensor. This doesn't mean that it does, much less that humans can sense magnetic fields. Plugging human cryptochrome into an alien environment like the body of a fly tells you very little about what it does in its native surroundings.

Roswitha Wiltschko, one of the scientists who first discovered the magnetic sense of birds, says, "To sense the magnetic field, one does not only need a molecule like cryptochrome, but also an apparatus that picks up the changes in that molecule and mediates it to the brain. Drosophila obviously has this apparatus, but humans? I have my doubts." Steven Reppert, who led the new study, is also cautious. However, he notes that Cry2 is heavily active in the human retina. "It's beautifully poised to sense light but we don't know if it has the downstream pathways that communicate magnetic information to the brain. The possibility exists."
A radical idea
The connections between light, cryptochrome and a magnetic sense were laid out by Klaus Schulten and Thorsten Ritz in 2000, in a bravura paper that united biology and quantum physics. They suggested that when cryptochrome is struck by blue light, it transfers one of its electrons across to a partner molecule called FAD. Electrons normally waltz around in pairs, but thanks to the light, cryptochrome and FAD now have lone electrons. They are known as a "radical pair".

Electrons also have a property called "spin". In a radical pair, the spins of the two solo electrons are linked - they can either spin together or in opposite directions. These two states have different chemical properties, the radical pair can flip between them, and the angle of the Earth's magnetic field can influence these flips. In doing so, it can affect the outcome or the speed of chemical reactions involving the radical pair. This is one of the ways in which the Earth's magnetic field can affect living cells. It explains why the magnetic sense of animals like birds is tied to vision - after all, cryptochrome is found in the eye, and it's converted into a radical pair by light.

Several experiments in the past few decades have support Schulten and Ritz's theory. Foley's work also seems to fit - human cryptochrome can support a magnetic sense in flies, in a way that depends on blue light. But Wiltschko thinks that using the human protein is a red herring. "All cryptochromes should be light-sensitive and since they form radical pairs, they should be sensitive to magnetic fields. The authors are describing intrinsic properties of cryptochrome. Using human cryptochrome is a nice gag!"

Indeed, Reppert says, "Of all the cryptochromes one could think of, the human one seemed the most interesting. We thought that if it did work, it might reignite some interest in magnetoreception in humans, which has waned down to virtually nothing."
Can humans sense magnetic fields?
The current consensus is that humans cannot sense magnetic fields. Birds can do it, as can bats, turtles, ants, mole rats, sharks, rays, and more. Recently, Czech scientists have suggested that foxes, cows and deer also have the same ability. But look at all the recent reviews in this field, and you'll see very little mention of our own species. A decade ago, a German group showed that our vision is slightly more sensitive in some directions than in others, but the results have not caught on.

It wasn't always like this. In the 1980s, Robin Baker from the University of Manchester carried out a series of experiments which seemed to show that humans could sense magnetic fields. He took busloads of blindfolded volunteers on winding journeys for several kilometres before asking them to point their way back home. They did so more often than expected, and if they wore magnets on their heads, their accuracy dropped.

The results were published in Scienceand you can read Baker's own description of his study in this 1980 issue of New Scientist. He even wrote a book about it. At the time, Baker said, "Whatever the repercussions, we have no alternative but to take seriously the possibility that Man has a magnetic sense of direction."

Unfortunately, the main repercussion was a fierce series of rebuttals. Over the next decade, several groups around the world failed to repeat Baker's results, even though Baker himself had no problems in doing so. He argued that their failure could have been due to local magnetic anomalies or brief changes in the strength of the magnetic field due to solar activity.

An American duo - Gould and Able - charitably suggested that Baker's British students "either had cues available to them which were absent in our experiments, or are dramatically better than Americans in using whatever cues may be involved." Max Westby and Karen Partridge, who failed to replicate Baker's results in Sheffield, were less kind. "Perhaps it depends on which side of the Pennine Hills the experiments are conducted?" they asked. "It is obviously extremely difficult to counter all conceivable explanations for a negative result but we are forced to wonder about the ecological importance of a magnetic sense, the existence of which is so difficult to demonstrate."

In the end, Baker relented and he moved on to the science of sperm. When I talked to him about the new study, he confesses that he hasn't kept up with the field. "I'd spent nearly a decade, tested thousands of people under all sorts of conditions, and had absolutely no doubt. Then people did a few tests here and there and claimed the experiments didn't replicate," he says. "Even after I'd collected everybody else's results and published that taken together, they did in fact constitute successful replication, nobody wanted to know. There was an element of 'Sod them, then'."

Reppert thinks that Baker's story was an unfortunate one, especially since he stopped just when others were starting to discover light-based magnetic sensors. "I think Baker's work was very good work but a lot of people had trouble reproducing aspects of it," says Reppert. "It's just very hard to do these sorts of behavioural experiments in humans."
The hardest sense
Magnetoreception has to be one of the hardest of all animal senses to study. Thorsten Ritz says, "Basic things that you do in other senses don't make sense when it comes to magnetoreception. Almost every other sense is linked to an opening in bone structure - eyes, ears and so on. The magnetic sense could sit anywhere in the body because the magnetic field penetrates the body."

To complicate matters, we don't really know what a magnetic sense would be used for. For birds and turtles, it seems obvious that an internal compass would help them to navigate over long migrations. But that doesn't really apply to humans, and we know that lost humans tend to go round in circles when other landmarks are unavailable.

But navigation isn't the only use for a magnetic sense. Recently, John Philips has suggested that animals could use magnetic fields to estimate distances over much smaller scales. Indeed, it's possible that foxes could use a magnetic range finder to gauge the distance of their pounces, when their prey is hidden by snow.

It's clear that magnetic senses will remain alluring and controversial for many years to come. Baker has left the field behind, but he is still intrigued by it. "I would be really thrilled if somebody managed to vindicate those ten years of work, because I still have no doubt that there is a real phenomenon there," he says. "This new paper is a very long way from being vindication, but just to read somebody saying that human magnetoreception deserves another look did give me a brief surge of satisfaction."

Reference: Foley, Gegear & Reppert. 2011. Human cryptochrome exhibits light-dependent magnetosensitivity. Nature Communications http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1364

Images by JJ Harrison and Biswarup Ganguly
For more on magnetic senses, see my feature in New Scientist, and also:
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Humans have a magnetic sensor in our eyes, but can we detect magnetic fields? - Not Exactly Rocket Science

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Many birds have a compass in their eyes. Their retinas are loaded with a protein called cryptochrome, which is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic fields. It's possible that the birds can literally see these fields, overlaid on top of their normal vision. This remarkable sense allows them to keep their bearings when no other landmarks ...

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Apple somewhat recently had the Worldwide Developers Conference in which they released many new improvements to add to their lineup of products. It is no secret that magnets have gradually evolved into a household feature in products, but consumers believe that magnets could even enter a budget line of products. Apples new iPad Pro features 102 hidden magnets throughout the unibody frame. This essentially can hang on your fridge like a normal magnet would. But why does new tech have this sort of integration? The simple answer is for accessories and add-ons. Magnets in tech are still an extremely new idea. Company iFixit opened up the Pro device and commented that sticking a magnet on all 4 corners of the iPad could potentially mess-up the logic board of the device. iFixit also commented "If we had a nickel for every magnet in here, we could melt then all down and make a giant novelty nickel." Do you think that this technology is the way forward? Is there too much financial risk to ruin an expensive device?

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Magnets are one of the neatest features in the new iPad Pro -- even though you can't see them.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

One of the neatest features of the new 2018-era iPad Pro is something you can't even see from outside. That's the fact that it's studded with 102 small magnets, which allow you to attach the Apple Pencil, stick it to the Smart Keyboard Folio, or even adhere it to your fridge door if you're feeling brave.

Advertisement But just how are the magnets distributed inside Apple's next-gen tablet? Using some special magnet paper, tech vlogger Marques Brownlee found out.

MAGNETS pic.twitter.com/SCSzHNFo9W

- Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) November 13, 2018

The material Brownlee uses for his experiment is magnetic field viewing paper. This makes it possible visualize magnetic fields using micro-encapsulated film sometimes called field paper.

As can be seen in Marques Brownlee's video, most of the magnets are gathered in the four corners of the iPad Pro.

This isn't the first time we've seen the magnets inside the new iPad Pro. In the recent iFixit teardown, the team commented on how, "If we had a nickel for every magnet in here, we could melt them all down and make a giant novelty nickel."

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Trick reveals all 102 hidden magnets in the 2018 iPad Pro | Cult of Mac

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One of the neatest features of the new 2018-era iPad Pro is something you can't even see from outside. That's the fact that it's studded with 102 small magnets, which allow you to attach the Apple Pencil, stick it to the Smart Keyboard Folio, or even adhere it to your fridge door if you're feeling brave.

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3. Article - Research team creates superfluid in a record-high magnetic field

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3. Article - Research team creates superfluid in a record-high magnetic field

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For those of you that don't know, super-fluidity is a property that is possessed by elements that are liquid near absolute zero, or the coldest temperature in the universe. This is very hard to recreate on earth, as it is not that cold in any of its most extreme climates. To solve this, scientists use magnets to contain the superfluids briefly. These magnets are among the most powerful in the world, ranking at about 100 times the strength of the previously created electromagnet. This magnet works by concentrating lasers to create a magnetic field.(Don't ask me how, i don't know)

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https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/engines-equipment/maglev-train.htm
This article is about how the maglev train works and how magnets can be used to make super fast trains.

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This article explains how speakers work. The speakers use a electromagnet that vibrates and a stationary normal magnet. The electromagnet pulses and the vibrations amplify the sound. I did not know any of this so the entire article's information was new to me.
Link:
http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=54

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2: Article - 8 Strange Facts About Magnets

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2: Article - 8 Strange Facts About Magnets

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https://www.apexmagnets.com/news-how-tos/8-strange-facts-about-magnets-and-magnetism/

Magnets always have 2 poles no matter how you cut them. Magnets a magnetic north and a magnetic south pole. You can take a bar magnet and cut it in half to test it out. The two remaining pieces will still have a north and a south. You can cut it multiple times and the results will be the same. This is interesting, because I don't understand how this could be possible!

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This article explains how electricity creates a magnetic field. A copper penny, for example, does not have a permanent magnetic field. But by giving it an electric current, it now has its own magnetic field.
Here's the link:
https://www.popsci.com/breakdown/article/2008-07/everyday-electromagnetism

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3. Explanatory Article - Magnet Facts and Explanations

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3. Explanatory Article - Magnet Facts and Explanations

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This article has deep facts about magnets, like the flow of particles between attracting poles and such. It also includes fun topics such as where the largest magnets in the world are located, though. My favorite part was the explanation about how magnets were found, but not truly discovered till recently. This article is more of a scientific analysis read, getting into molecular structure, than a fun one.

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Credit: Lena Lir / Shutterstock.com

The line "f-ing magnets, how do they work?" was coined in 2009 by the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse. Magnets aren't really all that mysterious - the basics have been known for two centuries. As a basic component of disk drives, magnets are part of just about every laptop or desktop computer, and they have made their way into tape players and, of course, the things we use to hold stuff on a fridge. Before the advent of flat screens, televisions and monitors were home to some of the most powerful magnets in the average home.

Although the physics of magnets are pretty well-understood (except perhaps by some hip-hop musicians), and they've been part of our lives for centuries, they do surprise and delight. Here's a look at some fascinating facts about magnets.

1. Magnets come in four flavors: Ferromagnets - which include substances like iron and nickel - are composed of atoms with unpaired electrons whose spins are aligned. They make good permanent magnets. In another type of magnet - called ferrimagnets - only some of the electron spins are aligned.

Maglev train starts operation on June 1, 2010.

Credit: Hung Chung Chih Shutterstock.com

Most chemical elements, however, are considered paramagnetic, meaning they are magnetized only when inside another magnetic field. Paramagnets also boast unpaired electrons.

If you're looking to levitate objects, diamagnetic materials are the way to go. These materials are magnetized when in a field, but they generate fields opposite to the one in which they are located. Maglev trains work on this principle.

2. Magnetism is light: Why do magnets stick? Magnets attract each other because they exchange photons, or the particles that make up light. But unlike the photons streaming out of a desk lamp or reflecting off of everything you see around you, these photons are virtual, and your eyes (or any particle detector) can't "see" them. They can, however, exchange momentum, and this is why they stick to things or repel them. When a kid throws a dodge ball, they're exchanging momentum with the ball, and the thrower feels a slight push back. Meanwhile the target person feels the force of the ball, and (maybe) gets knocked over - they are "repelled" from the thrower. With photons, the process can also happen in reverse, as though one kid reached out and grabbed the ball while the other was still hanging on to it, which would look like an attractive force.

Photons are the force carriers not only for magnets but also for electrostatic phenomena like static electricity, and it's why electromagnetism is the term we use for effects produced by these phenomena - including light, which is an electromagnetic wave.

3. 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.

This has consequences for charged particles in wires. Ordinarily, the negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons in a wire cancel each other out. But when current moves through a wire, the electrons are moving. From the point of view of any stationary charged particle outside the wire, the distance between electrons gets smaller. That means it looks like there are more electrons than protons in a given space - all of a sudden there's a net negative charge. Put any positively charged particle (or wire) next to the wire with current in it, and you feel a magnetic force of attraction. Put a negatively charged particle near it and it will repel - and this is why if you run the current in opposite directions through two wires, they will attract each other, and if the current is running in the same direction, they will repel.

A similar thing happens when a charged particle moves through a magnetic field, say, near a (permanent) bar magnet . The particle experiences force. But according to the theory of relativity, you can't say that the particle is moving and the magnet isn't. From the point of view of the particle, the bar magnet is moving. Maxwell's equations, which describe electromagnetic waves and forces, show that you'd see different forces, depending on which reference frame you choose. For a stationary observer it looks like a magnetic force pushing or pulling on the particle, and for a moving one it's an electrostatic force. This problem was a major piece of Einstein's development of special relativity, which accounted for the discrepancy.

4. 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.

The 45-tesla hybrid magnet, looking up toward magnet, with detail of coldwater pipes at Florida State University.

Credit: National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, FSU

The Los Alamos magnet is designed to generate fields that last only a few seconds, while the FSU magnet can maintain its fields for as long as the power is on. Each magnet is designed to perform different kinds of experiments, noted Ross McDonald, a staff scientist at Los Alamos.

An interesting effect happens with the FSU magnet when there are diamagnetic materials, such as an aluminum canister, around. The diamagnetism creates fields with an opposite orientation to the magnet, so anything made of such materials is stuck in place. "It's like trying to move it through molasses," McDonald said.

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.

5. 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.

That didn't happen. Instead, the experimenters got two clusters of hits, as though the beam had split into two directions with the particles unable to deflect to anywhere in between. Stern and Gerlach had just demonstrated that particle spins were quantized - they can be up or down, but nothing else.

6. Magnets don't have to be iron or even metal: Most of the magnets we use are made of iron (like fridge magnets). But that doesn't have to be so. Magnets can be made of any material with unpaired electrons. That includes many metals and alloys, such as neodymium, which is used in disk drives. Ferrimagnetic materials, in fact, are often not metals at all. Among them are spinels, which are used in the magnets that seal refrigerator doors.

7. Magnetic medicine: There isn't any evidence that magnets work for pain relief. The reason? Even though there is iron in your blood, it's made up of atoms that are too far apart and too diffuse for magnets to affect them. If you tested this by pricking your finger and spilling blood near a magnet, you'd find that neither your blood nor the magnet would attract one another. [ 11 Surprising Facts About the Circulatory System]

That said, magnets are used in magnetic resonance imaging machines, which use magnets stronger than the ones in junkyards that lift cars. In most cases MRI magnets are superconducting and cooled with liquid helium.

8. Long known, but not understood: The ancient Greeks and Chinese noticed something was up with certain materials, known as lodestones. Lodestones were actually magnetite, a form of iron oxide that forms when magma cools slowly. The lodestones attracted other ironlike metals, and even better, could magnetize ordinary iron. When small pieces of metal were magnetized, then hung from a string or floated in water, they aligned with the Earth's magnetic field - becoming the first magnetic compasses.

9. Animals sport magnets: Some animals and bacteria have magnetite in their bodies. A type of mollusk called a chiton even has magnetite in its "teeth," which actually cover its tongue. The magnetite is abrasive and lets the animal scrape algae, but it might also provide a homing sense, enabling chitons to find their way back to certain places where they like to mate and feed. Studies of homing pigeons seem to show that they have a magnetic sense that helps them navigate. Magnetite in the animals' beaks seems to be the key, though how big a role that magnetic sense (called magnetoception) plays is unclear.

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The line "f-ing magnets, how do they work?" was coined in 2009 by the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse. Magnets aren't really all that mysterious - the basics have been known for two centuries.

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2. Cool Science Video - Cool Magnet Tricks

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2. Cool Science Video - Cool Magnet Tricks

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This video is really amazing! It features slow falling magnets (because when passing through a copper tube it slows down) and fruit pendulums that somehow get effected by magnets! It also shows burnt matches getting attracted by magnets, and even magnetic slime. I likes the fruit pendulum the most because it was the hardest to understand.

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TOP 10 Magnet Science Experiments & Tricks from Mr. Hacker!

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This is a comic about magnets and the danger of accidentally or purposefully ingesting magnets. It is extremely harmful for the body, and in addition things may tear their way through intestinal tissue and skin to get to a magnetic attractor. Magnetic therapy is also a promising use of magnets in technology, and involves using magnets to control the iron levels in the bloodstream.
https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/m/magnets.asp

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This video show how when a magnet goes through a copper tube, it slows down even though copper isn't even magnetic. This is because of Lenz's law, which says that when a piece of metal moves quickly through a magnetic field, it causes the electrons in the metal to move. This produces its own magnetic current opposite in the direction it's moving in. This is definitely an experiment you should try at home!

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Can You Make Something Fall Slow? The Slow Falling Ball Experiment

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This article shows a clock made out of ferrofluid! Ferrofluid is made out of iron particles suspended in oil, and it easily reacts to magnets. This clock has hidden electromagnets that help control the shape of the ferrofluid

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This clock by Dutch designer Zelf Koelman spells out the time with magnetic fluid under the control of electromagnets (+ movie).

Unlike traditional clocks, the Ferrolic has no mechanical parts and relies on embedded electromagnets to control the display's ferrofluid - a black liquid made up of suspended magnetic particles.

The fluid is held in a rectangular aluminium-framed screen that is filled with liquid allowing it to flow freely about the enclosure.

Formafantasma uses saxophones and a brass pendulum to track the passing of time

By turning on the electromagnets, the ferrofluid is attracted to where the magnetism is strongest and forms the clock numbers on the display.

"Its unique dynamics are the visual result of the black fluid continuously finding balance between gravity, magnetic fields and its own van der Waals forces," Koelman explained.

The software used to control the magnets is accessible via a web browser, meaning users can customise it themselves and adapt the shapes and numbers shown on the display.

"Because the fluid behaves in an unpredictable way, it is possible to give the bodies, perceived in the Ferrolic display, a strong reference to living creatures," the designer said.

BCXSY creates linear clock for Designers' Days

Koelman, who is currently completing a masters in industrial design at the Eindhoven University of Technology, has spent the last year researching the fluid's possibilities.

"A few years ago I fell in love with the magical characteristics of a little black 'blob' in a bottle," he said. "The dynamics and shape of this liquid body was much like a living entity. I decided to allow this entity to live its own life and have a function."

Ferrofluid was also used to create shapes in time with music in Nigel Stanford's Cymatics music video, while designer Jólan van der Wiel has previously used magnets to form spiky stools, dresses and shoes.

The Ferrolic is currently still in development, although the designer intends to make small batches available for pre-order, with each clock costing $8,300 (£5,300).

Other examples of atypical clocks include Rachel Suming's engraved aluminium plates that overlap every three hours to reveal the time, and Japanese design collective Bril's Coniferous Clock - made of leaves that fade from green to brown over the course of year, to create an annual timepiece.

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Zelf Koelman's Ferrolic clock tells time with magnetic ferrofluid

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This clock by Dutch designer Zelf Koelman spells out the time with magnetic fluid under the control of electromagnets (+ movie). Unlike traditional clocks, the Ferrolic has no mechanical parts and relies on embedded electromagnets to control the display's ferrofluid - a black liquid made up of suspended magnetic particles.

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2. Article - Magnetic Therapy Treatments for pain

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2. Article - Magnetic Therapy Treatments for pain

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https://www.verywellhealth.com/can-magnet-therapy-relieve-your-pain-89732
This article is about how magnetic therapy works. Similar to my other post, the comic, this goes more in depth about using magnets to heal people and different perspectives on whether it works or not. The supporters of this claim that it relaxes the bloodstream by cultivating the iron within them.

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https://www.livescience.com/47383-cool-facts-about-magnets.html
This article shows that even though there is iron in your blood, you can't get a magnet to move them. This is because the iron in your blood is made up of atoms that are too far apart. This refutes any theory that states that magnets can be used to guide blood.

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https://science.howstuffworks.com/mri.htm
This article shows what an MRI is and how it was made by Dr. Raymond Damadian. The MRI is a large machine that uses a large magnet and radio waves to help diagnose problems.

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1. Article - Moving Magnetic Poles Through Materials

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1. Article - Moving Magnetic Poles Through Materials

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This article is about the discovery of electric fields being created by not so electric components. Also, it includes the separation of magnetic poles. It's amazingly cool how scientists have recently discovered how to split magnetic poles (my fav. part). The main idea, though, is that they can move magnetic force through an ice shard (or something similar).

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Every magnet has two poles, the north and the south. It's true for magnets big and small, short and tall. If you break a magnet into smaller pieces, then each small magnet ends up with a north and a south. (Magnets are said to be polarized, because they have two poles.) For magnets, if you have a north, you have a south.

That's the case ... usually.

But a recent experiment shows that even magnets can be broken up. In a new study, scientists, in a way, separate north poles from south poles. One pole without the other is called a monopole ( mono- means one); the researchers also refer to these isolated poles as magnetic charges. After creating these monopoles, the scientists were able to make them move through a material. This movement of magnetic charges acts a lot like a current of electricity, the researchers report.

And that similarity gave the researchers a great reason to coin a new word. They call the flow magnetricity (combining the words magnet and electricity).

"We get them all going the same direction," Sean Giblin told Science News. Giblin, a physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire (which is in the United Kingdom), worked on the new experiment.

It's too early to start thinking about static magnetricity or plugging appliances into magnetric sockets ― though the researchers say they'd like to see magnetronic devices one day. The discovery does highlight some of the similarities between magnetism and electricity, so perhaps magnetricity's day isn't too far away.

Electricity flows from generators and batteries through power lines and wires. That electric flow is not liquid - it's a fast parade of tiny charged particles called electrons. Each electron is a negative charge, and electric current is the movement of many negative charges in the same direction.

In the recent experiment, the current did not come from moving electrons ― it was magnetic, rather than electric. The scientists created the current in small crystals of a material called spin ice. Spin ice is made of unusual molecules shaped like pyramids with triangular bases. Imagine lots of these tiny pyramids linked together and you can imagine what spin ice looks like up close.

Each pyramid has four vertices ( vertices is plural for vertex, a point where three sides come together). Each vertex acts like a tiny magnet with a north pole and a south pole. If the north poles of two magnets point in, and the north poles of two magnets point out, then the pyramid-shaped molecule is neutral. But the molecules don't always stay neutral.

Sometimes the magnets' poles flip, as discovered in 2009 by Steven Bramwell, a chemist at University College London who also worked on the new research. When that happens, the magnet at a vertex switches direction. If its north pole used to point in, now it points out. The molecule is no longer balanced or neutral, since now it has more north poles pointed out.

When one magnet switches direction, it causes other magnets to switch direction ― like passing a signal down the line. The molecules stay put but a chain reaction gets going as the poles, like a relay, move down the line and through the spin ice.

"Eventually they [the poles] get so far apart that they lose all memory of each other," Bramwell told Science News.

That's what happens in the case of magnetricity. To get the magnetic flow going, the researchers applied pulses of a magnetic field to the crystal. (Magnetic fields surround magnets and provide the force that can do action. For example, if you use one magnet to push or pull another ― without letting the magnets touch - you're seeing the magnetic field in action.) "We apply a magnetic field to create magnetic charges," Giblin said.

As magnets flipped, they appeared to be passing a magnetic monopole down the line - like the smallest game of hot potato you could imagine (without a potato). This game of hot potato created a magnetic current. The scientists measured that current and discovered that it behaved almost exactly like an electric current. These magnetic currents can last for several minutes.

The new experiment shows how close the connection between magnetism and electricity is. And perhaps, in the future, we can all drive magnetric cars.

POWER WORDS (adapted from Britannica.com)

magnet An object that attracts some metals and is capable of creating a magnetic field.

electric charge A basic property of some particles. It can be positive, negative or neutral. Protons have positive charge, electrons have negative charge and neutrons have no charge.

magnetic dipole A magnet, usually very small, with two opposite poles, usually called north and south. Bar magnets and compass needles are examples of larger magnetic dipoles.

magnetic monopole A particle with a magnetic charge that is similar to an electric charge. Monopoles have been studied but never observed. A monopole has only one pole, as compared to a dipole, which has two.

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Every magnet has two poles, the north and the south. It's true for magnets big and small, short and tall. If you break a magnet into smaller pieces, then each small magnet ends up with a north and a south. (Magnets are said to be polarized, because they have two poles.)

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2. Article - Researchers Develop Magnetic Cooling Cycle

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2. Article - Researchers Develop Magnetic Cooling Cycle

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This article shows how the we need new  technology to fight climate change.  The refrigeration that the scientists have discovered reveals better cooling systems that incorporate magnets.  As the earth's temperature rises, we need new solutions like this cooling system that may help civilization.

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As a result of climate change, population growth, and rising expectations regarding quality of life, energy requirements for cooling processes are growing much faster worldwide than for heating. Another problem that besets today's refrigeration systems is that most coolants cause environmental and health damage. A novel technology could provide a solution: refrigeration using magnetic materials in magnetic fields. Researchers at the Technische Universität (TU) Darmstadt and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have developed the idea of a cooling cycle based on the 'magnetic memory' of special alloys. Relevant initial experimental results have now been published in the journal Nature Materials. The project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

The magnetic properties of metals can change when they are heated or cooled. "Iron, for example, is only ferromagnetic below 768 degrees Celsius; nickel's transformation temperature is 360 degrees Celsius," says Oliver Gutfleisch, Professor of Functional Materials at the TU Darmstadt. "Conversely, some alloys become ferromagnetic when they warm up. This phase transition is connected with the so-called magnetocaloric effect: when these shape-memory alloys are placed in an external magnetic field just below their transformation temperature, they spontaneously jump to their magnetic order and simultaneously cool down," explains Gutfleisch. "The stronger the magnetic field, the more they cool."

Dr. Tino Gottschall, who is now researching at the HZDR's Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory (HLD), and his colleagues have studied different shape-memory alloys and their properties in minute detail: "The application of a magnetic field can also change other properties, for example density -- which is why some alloys increase their volume." The physicists discovered that externally applied pressure can indeed reverse the magnetization process, causing the alloy to heat up.
Slight pressure -- big impact
Together with Prof. Antoni Planes and Prof. Lluís Mañosa from the University of Barcelona, the scientists succeeded in providing experimental proof: "We used an alloy of nickel, manganese, and indium for our experiments because its conversion can be triggered at room temperature," says Gottschall. The researchers generated the magnetic field using the strongest permanent magnets known to date -- containing the rare-earth metal neodymium in addition to iron and boron. They can generate magnetic fields up to a flux density of 2 tesla -- that is 40,000 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. "Under such conditions, our alloy cools down by several degrees," explains Gottschall. "Measurements we have made at the HLD have shown that a millisecond in the magnetic field is already enough for permanent transformation."

In the next step of the six-step cycle, the researchers removed the cooling element from the magnetic field, which retained its magnetization. In step three, the heat sink comes into contact with goods to be cooled down and absorbs its heat. The alloy even remains magnetic if the material returns to its original temperature. This can be remedied by mechanical pressure: in step four, a roller compresses the shape memory alloy. Under pressure, it switches to its denser, non-magnetic form and heats up in the process. When the pressure is removed in step five, the material retains its state and remains demagnetized. In the final step, the alloy releases heat into the environment until it has returned to its initial temperature and the cooling cycle can recommence.
Expensive raw materials
"Just a few years ago, alloys with a magnetic memory were regarded as unusable because they can only be cooled in the magnetic field once," explains Gutfleisch. "Global research, therefore, focused on materials that have no memory effect. However, refrigerators produced according to this principle come at a price." The largest item in the manufacturing costs are the necessary permanent magnets: "In the case of reversible magnetization, the cooling effect only lasts as long as the cooling element is exposed to the magnetic field. Even in the best-case scenario, half of the coolant must be placed between the magnets. This means that you need four times as much permanent magnet as cooling medium." Neodymium magnets are the most effective, but they are also the most expensive on the market. In addition, the rare-earth metal is a critical raw material, and considerable amounts of it are needed. The largest known deposits are in China, and its extraction causes considerable environmental pollution.

Electromagnets cannot be used for magnetic cooling. For physical reasons, the level of efficiency would be lower than with vapor compression, which is used in billions of refrigerators and air conditioners. However, the researchers are convinced that this cooling technology no longer has a future: "There are simply no suitable cooling liquids," says Gottschall. "The coolants commonly used today are highly effective as heat-transfer media, but their greenhouse impact is a thousand times greater than that of carbon dioxide. The production licenses for most of them in Europe will expire in the near future. Propane or butane are effective coolants, but form highly explosive mixtures in contact with the air. Ammonia is toxic and corrosive. Carbon dioxide is not especially efficient as a coolant."
Using rare earths sparingly
Oliver Gutfleisch is also convinced that the future belongs to solid coolants. "We have been able to show that shape-memory alloys are highly suitable for cooling cycles," says the functional materials expert: "We need far fewer neodymium magnets but can nevertheless generate stronger fields and a correspondingly greater cooling effect." By 2022, he intends to build a demonstrator at the TU Darmstadt that makes it possible to estimate both the actual cooling capacity under real-life conditions and the energy efficiency of the process. For this, he has received an ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council worth a total of 2.5 million euros over five years. The collaboration between the TU Darmstadt and the HZDR could help make the principle suitable for mass use: "In the meantime, we have found alloys that combine all the desired properties, including a large magnetocaloric effect, without using any rare earths or other critical raw materials at all," says Tino Gottschall, who wants to explore the physical limits of these materials at the HLD.

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spintronics; thermodynamics; materials science; medical technology; electronics; nature of water; civil engineering; engineering and construction

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Keep cool: Researchers develop magnetic cooling cycle

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As a result of climate change, population growth, and rising expectations regarding quality of life, energy requirements for cooling processes are growing much faster worldwide than for heating. Another problem that besets today's refrigeration systems is that most coolants cause environmental and health damage.

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1. Article - How Animals Sense The Magnetic Field

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1. Article - How Animals Sense The Magnetic Field

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To find north, humans look to a compass. But birds may just need to open their eyes, a new study says.

Scientists already suspected birds' eyes contain molecules that are thought to sense Earth's magnetic field. In a new study, German researchers found that these molecules are linked to an area of the brain known to process visual information.

In that sense, "birds may see the magnetic field," said study lead author Dominik Heyers, a biologist at the University of Oldenburg.

Human-made compasses work by using Earth as an enormous magnet and orienting a tiny magnet attached to a needle to the planet's north and south poles.

Scientists have thought for years that migratory birds may use an internal compass to navigate between their nesting areas and wintering grounds, which can be separated by thousands of miles. (Related news: "Migrating Birds Reset 'Compasses' at Sunset, Study Says" [April 15, 2004].)

The new research helps explain how this natural compass may work.

Heyers and his colleagues injected migratory garden warblers with a special dye that can be traced as it travels along nerve fibers.

The team put one type of tracer dye into the eyes and another in a region of the brain called Cluster N, which is most active when birds orient themselves.

When the birds got their bearings, both tracers traveled to and met in the thalamus, a region in the middle of the brain responsible for vision.

"That shows there is direct linkage between the eye and Cluster N," Heyers said.

The finding strongly supports the hypothesis that migratory birds use their visual system to navigate using the magnetic field.

"The magnetic field or magnetic direction may be perceived as a dark or light spot which lies upon the normal visual field of the bird," Heyers said, "and which, of course, changes when the bird turns its head."

The study was published in a recent issue of the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.

Scientists not involved with the study said it is impressive and well done, but cautioned that there are more pieces to the puzzle of how birds navigate on their long migrations.

"An animal that has to migrate over great distances needs to have both a compass and a map," said Cordula Mora, a biologist who recently completed her postdoctoral research at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Mora's work suggests that birds may use magnetic crystals in their beaks to sense the intensity of the magnetic field and thus glean information on their physical location. (Related news: "Magnetic Beaks Help Birds Navigate, Study Says" [November 24, 2004].)

"If you have a compass, you know where north, south, east, [and] west [are], but you don't know where you are, so you don't know where you should be going," she said.

Study author Heyers said "both [map and compass] systems may act in concert."

Robert Beason is a wildlife research biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Sandusky, Ohio, and an expert on bird navigation.

He noted that stars may also either fully or in part provide the birds with their visual bearing-not the magnetic field.

The next step is to figure out where all this information comes together in the bird brain, he noted.

"That's probably going to tell us where the navigation center for birds is," he said.

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To find north, humans look to a compass. But birds may just need to open their eyes, a new study says. Scientists already suspected birds' eyes contain molecules that are thought to sense Earth's magnetic field. In a new study, German researchers found that these molecules are linked to an area of the brain known to process visual information.

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This article presents and explains a way to protect swimmers from sharks. Magnets are placed in protective tubes and disguised as a kelp forest. These magnets repel sharks and keep them away from beaches. This is done without harming harming the sharks.

https://www.apexmagnets.com/news-how-tos/can-magnetic-barriers-save-sharks-and-swimmers/

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This article is about a scientist famous for discoveries including electromagnetic induction and diamagnetism. He established the basis for the concept of electromagnetic fields in physics. His experiments formed the foundation for modern electromagnetic technology.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/faraday_michael.shtml

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This article contains information what magnets are made of and how they are made. It also talks about how magnets can be found in nature (ex: lodestone). The final thing the article talks about is some of the uses for magnets. What I found interesting is that magnets are used to store data on computers.
The link: https://www.universetoday.com/73723/what-are-magnets-made-of/

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3. Video - Top 10 CRAZIEST Magnet Tricks You Should Try

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3. Video - Top 10 CRAZIEST Magnet Tricks You Should Try

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This video shows you many things that you can do with magnets, and explains a little bit about magnetism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t699W5_NJF0

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Top 10 CRAZIEST Magnet Tricks You Should Try

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This article explains how magnets are used in the design of hover boards. Electromagnets are used in hover boards. These magnets interact with the magnetic field and create electric currents under the hover board. The electric currents create their own magnetic field and repel the electromagnets, causing the hover board to float.

https://www.wired.com/2015/10/how-the-most-promising-hoverboards-actually-work/

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https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/12/17449910/ferrofluid-magnetic-nanoparticles-biomedicine-nasa-invention-cancer-infections-neurons
this article explains how a substance created by NASA, called ferrofluid, originally created to move fuel in space, can be used to transport medicine in your body. Ferrofluid was first created as an easy and effective way to transport fuel in space. However, that idea was soon put out of use, as it didn't work. Now, ferrofluid is used in many different places, like stereos and hard drives. Ferrofluid is made of magnetic nanoparticles (like iron oxide), a water-based or oil-based liquid, and a special coating that keeps the particles from clumping. Nanofluid can be moved around with a simple magnet,  which can be used to move medicine inside your body. Now, scientists are expermenting with how ferrofluid can defeat cancer and other diseases.

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2. Article - 19 cool facts about Magnets

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2. Article - 19 cool facts about Magnets

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This article contains more cool facts about magnets, and how magnets are part of our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not.

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19 Fascinating Facts about Magnets for Kids

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From our cars to computers, to the great earth we walk everyday, magnets are everywhere. Here are 19 facts about magnets that will peak your interests!

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1. Article - Magnet Technology Development

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1. Article - Magnet Technology Development

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https://www.nap.edu/read/18355/chapter/9
This article shows how magnets have been incorporated into new technology.  It shows different tests from the magnets and how strong their force is.

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Read "High Magnetic Field Science and Its Application in the United States: Current Status and Future Directions" at NAP.edu

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Read chapter 7 Magnet Technology Development: The Committee to Assess the Current Status and Future Direction of High Magnetic Field Science in the United...

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1. Video - Magnetic Levitation and Magnetic Repulsion used in Hyperloop.

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1. Video - Magnetic Levitation and Magnetic Repulsion used in Hyperloop.

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This video shows how magnetic levitation and magnetic repulsion is used to move trains in the Hyperloop.

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Watch how the Hyperloop uses magnets to move at 760 mph | CNBC International

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This article has many cool facts about magnets that you probably didn't know before, such as magnets don't have to be made up of iron or even metal!

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Credit: Lena Lir / Shutterstock.com

The line "f-ing magnets, how do they work?" was coined in 2009 by the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse. Magnets aren't really all that mysterious - the basics have been known for two centuries. As a basic component of disk drives, magnets are part of just about every laptop or desktop computer, and they have made their way into tape players and, of course, the things we use to hold stuff on a fridge. Before the advent of flat screens, televisions and monitors were home to some of the most powerful magnets in the average home.

Although the physics of magnets are pretty well-understood (except perhaps by some hip-hop musicians), and they've been part of our lives for centuries, they do surprise and delight. Here's a look at some fascinating facts about magnets.

1. Magnets come in four flavors: Ferromagnets - which include substances like iron and nickel - are composed of atoms with unpaired electrons whose spins are aligned. They make good permanent magnets. In another type of magnet - called ferrimagnets - only some of the electron spins are aligned.

Maglev train starts operation on June 1, 2010.

Credit: Hung Chung Chih Shutterstock.com

Most chemical elements, however, are considered paramagnetic, meaning they are magnetized only when inside another magnetic field. Paramagnets also boast unpaired electrons.

If you're looking to levitate objects, diamagnetic materials are the way to go. These materials are magnetized when in a field, but they generate fields opposite to the one in which they are located. Maglev trains work on this principle.

2. Magnetism is light: Why do magnets stick? Magnets attract each other because they exchange photons, or the particles that make up light. But unlike the photons streaming out of a desk lamp or reflecting off of everything you see around you, these photons are virtual, and your eyes (or any particle detector) can't "see" them. They can, however, exchange momentum, and this is why they stick to things or repel them. When a kid throws a dodge ball, they're exchanging momentum with the ball, and the thrower feels a slight push back. Meanwhile the target person feels the force of the ball, and (maybe) gets knocked over - they are "repelled" from the thrower. With photons, the process can also happen in reverse, as though one kid reached out and grabbed the ball while the other was still hanging on to it, which would look like an attractive force.

Photons are the force carriers not only for magnets but also for electrostatic phenomena like static electricity, and it's why electromagnetism is the term we use for effects produced by these phenomena - including light, which is an electromagnetic wave.

3. 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.

This has consequences for charged particles in wires. Ordinarily, the negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons in a wire cancel each other out. But when current moves through a wire, the electrons are moving. From the point of view of any stationary charged particle outside the wire, the distance between electrons gets smaller. That means it looks like there are more electrons than protons in a given space - all of a sudden there's a net negative charge. Put any positively charged particle (or wire) next to the wire with current in it, and you feel a magnetic force of attraction. Put a negatively charged particle near it and it will repel - and this is why if you run the current in opposite directions through two wires, they will attract each other, and if the current is running in the same direction, they will repel.

A similar thing happens when a charged particle moves through a magnetic field, say, near a (permanent) bar magnet . The particle experiences force. But according to the theory of relativity, you can't say that the particle is moving and the magnet isn't. From the point of view of the particle, the bar magnet is moving. Maxwell's equations, which describe electromagnetic waves and forces, show that you'd see different forces, depending on which reference frame you choose. For a stationary observer it looks like a magnetic force pushing or pulling on the particle, and for a moving one it's an electrostatic force. This problem was a major piece of Einstein's development of special relativity, which accounted for the discrepancy.

4. 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.

The 45-tesla hybrid magnet, looking up toward magnet, with detail of coldwater pipes at Florida State University.

Credit: National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, FSU

The Los Alamos magnet is designed to generate fields that last only a few seconds, while the FSU magnet can maintain its fields for as long as the power is on. Each magnet is designed to perform different kinds of experiments, noted Ross McDonald, a staff scientist at Los Alamos.

An interesting effect happens with the FSU magnet when there are diamagnetic materials, such as an aluminum canister, around. The diamagnetism creates fields with an opposite orientation to the magnet, so anything made of such materials is stuck in place. "It's like trying to move it through molasses," McDonald said.

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.

5. 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.

That didn't happen. Instead, the experimenters got two clusters of hits, as though the beam had split into two directions with the particles unable to deflect to anywhere in between. Stern and Gerlach had just demonstrated that particle spins were quantized - they can be up or down, but nothing else.

6. Magnets don't have to be iron or even metal: Most of the magnets we use are made of iron (like fridge magnets). But that doesn't have to be so. Magnets can be made of any material with unpaired electrons. That includes many metals and alloys, such as neodymium, which is used in disk drives. Ferrimagnetic materials, in fact, are often not metals at all. Among them are spinels, which are used in the magnets that seal refrigerator doors.

7. Magnetic medicine: There isn't any evidence that magnets work for pain relief. The reason? Even though there is iron in your blood, it's made up of atoms that are too far apart and too diffuse for magnets to affect them. If you tested this by pricking your finger and spilling blood near a magnet, you'd find that neither your blood nor the magnet would attract one another. [ 11 Surprising Facts About the Circulatory System]

That said, magnets are used in magnetic resonance imaging machines, which use magnets stronger than the ones in junkyards that lift cars. In most cases MRI magnets are superconducting and cooled with liquid helium.

8. Long known, but not understood: The ancient Greeks and Chinese noticed something was up with certain materials, known as lodestones. Lodestones were actually magnetite, a form of iron oxide that forms when magma cools slowly. The lodestones attracted other ironlike metals, and even better, could magnetize ordinary iron. When small pieces of metal were magnetized, then hung from a string or floated in water, they aligned with the Earth's magnetic field - becoming the first magnetic compasses.

9. Animals sport magnets: Some animals and bacteria have magnetite in their bodies. A type of mollusk called a chiton even has magnetite in its "teeth," which actually cover its tongue. The magnetite is abrasive and lets the animal scrape algae, but it might also provide a homing sense, enabling chitons to find their way back to certain places where they like to mate and feed. Studies of homing pigeons seem to show that they have a magnetic sense that helps them navigate. Magnetite in the animals' beaks seems to be the key, though how big a role that magnetic sense (called magnetoception) plays is unclear.

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The line "f-ing magnets, how do they work?" was coined in 2009 by the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse. Magnets aren't really all that mysterious - the basics have been known for two centuries.

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This article contains information about how repelling magnets are used to create motors. The alternating current that the magnets pass creates a rotating magnetic field. This magnetic field is what causes the motor to spin around. Without the use of magnets, we wouldn't have motors.
https://www.apexmagnets.com/news-how-tos/inventions-that-make-us-thankful-for-magnetism/

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This article contains some information to how the Maglab Tallahassee facility created a superconducting magnet that clocked a magnetic field of 32 teslas, which is a 33% stronger than the previous record. In comparison, this magnet is over 3000 times stronger than the magnets we put on our fridge. According to MagLab, this is one of the biggest feats in the last 40 years, and could make its way to the car and plane industry. Scientist Huub Weijers says that with a little more development and a little money, magnets could easily reach 100 teslas. MagLab director Greg Boebinger also said ''Not only will the state of the art magnet design allow us to offer new experimental techniques here at the lab, but it will boost the power of other scientific tools such as X-rays and neutron scattering around the world.

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In brief: The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory has created the world's most powerful superconducting magnet. Named 32 T, it's 33 percent more powerful than the previous record-holding magnet, and thousands of times stronger than refrigerator magnets.
BACK ON TOP

The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (National MagLab) is no stranger to breaking records. In August, the team took back the title of "world's strongest resistive magnet" - after losing it in 2014 - with their Project 11 magnet that reached 41.4 teslas, a unit of magnetic field strength. On December 8, they came back once again to set a new record: this time, for the world's most powerful superconducting magnet.

Their new superconducting magnet, created in the MagLab Tallahassee facility, created a magnetic field of 32 teslas, making it nearly 33 percent stronger than the magnet that held the previous record (and giving it the nickname of "32T"). For reference, that's 3000 times stronger than the magnets we put on our refrigerators. According to MagLab, the world record set last week represents one of the biggest improvements made in the last 40 years.

"This is a transformational step in magnet technology, a true revolution in the making," said Greg Boebinger, MagLab Director, in a press release. "Not only will this state-of-the-art magnet design allow us to offer new experimental techniques here at the lab, but it will boost the power of other scientific tools such as X-rays and neutron scattering around the world."

ADVANCED PHYSICS

Superconductors are already vital to the operation of a range of different devices, from MRI machines to high-speed transportation systems, and nuclear fusion reactors to enormous particle colliders. This superconducting magnet is therefore expected to help advance research in several areas, including physics, chemistry, biology, and quantum matter. To help facilitate its use, MagLab is allowing scientists from around the world to apply for the opportunity to use it.

The team doesn't intend to stop at 32 teslas, however. One day, the superconducting magnet may be as powerful as the lab's record-breaking resistive magnet, though MagLab engineer Huub Weijers - who oversaw the magnet's construction - foresees magnets going even further beyond that.

"We've opened up an enormous new realm," said Weijers in the press release. "I don't know what that limit is, but it's beyond 100 teslas. The required materials exist. It's just technology and dollars that are between us and 100 teslas."
"New Superconducting Magnet Smashes World Record" was originally published by Futurism, LLC on Dec. 19, 2017 by Kyree Leary. Copyright 2017. Futurism, LLC. All rights reserved.
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High-tech magnet smashes world record and opens new frontiers in tech

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In brief: The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory has created the world's most powerful superconducting magnet. Named 32 T, it's 33 percent more powerful than the previous record-holding magnet, and thousands of times stronger than refrigerator magnets. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (National MagLab) is no stranger to breaking records.

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