How to Destroy a Magnet (+ interactive periodic table)
Interactive Periodic Table!! - http://bit.ly/MPeriodic_table (built by Jasper Palfree) FREE Audiobook for you at http://www.audible.com/minutephysics Magnets are amazingly strong... but there's...
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This is a neodymium magnet - it's pretty darn strong. And now, after heating it in a flame...it's no longer magnetic. What just happened?Well, to build a magnet, all you need to do is find a bunch of magnetic atoms (that'seasy - they're the ones with half-filled electron shells in the middle of any of the major blocksof the periodic table) and then make a compound where the magnetic fields of the atoms alignin the same direction - this is Ferromagnetism, named after Iron, which is pretty darn magnetic.However, it's not so easy - sometimes the atoms actually want to align their magneticfields in alternating directions - this is called "anti-ferromagnetism," and it meansthe bulk material won't have a ma...
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This is a neodymium magnet - it's pretty darn strong. And now, after heating it in a flame...it's no longer magnetic. What just happened?Well, to build a magnet, all you need to do is find a bunch of magnetic atoms (that'seasy - they're the ones with half-filled electron shells in the middle of any of the major blocksof the periodic table) and then make a compound where the magnetic fields of the atoms alignin the same direction - this is Ferromagnetism, named after Iron, which is pretty darn magnetic.However, it's not so easy - sometimes the atoms actually want to align their magneticfields in alternating directions - this is called "anti-ferromagnetism," and it meansthe bulk material won't have a ma...
