How Magnets Work

You can stick them to the fridge or use them to transpose sound to tape, whatever they are used for magnets are surprisingly interesting. And knowing just exactly how and why magnets work will make you more interesting, which is why you should listen to this episode of SYSK.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with guess who tell him tell him home
with Chuck Chuck. I'm with Chuck and Jerry's in the
room as well, And since the three of us are

(00:23):
together in this room, we have that's right, the podcast. Um.
I am so excited about this podcast. I knew you
would be, so much so that I'm worried about it because,
as you know, in anybody who even like occasionally listens
to the Stuff you should Know is aware of the
more excited I get about a topic, the poorer job

(00:46):
I do at explaining it. Yeah, so you already did it.
I should have said, the poorer the job I do. Yeah,
it's true. So I'm just gonna try to remain calm
because all we're talking about magna. It's after all, you know,
And that's the way I feel. We usually balance each
other up nicely like that. But you don't think that

(01:07):
there is some a certain cash to walking around understanding
how a magnet works? Do you realize what percentage of
the population you're a member of for knowing that maybe maybe,
and this is a guess like point zero zero to
nine percent of the human populations how magnets work. I

(01:27):
don't know anybody else until we selected this and started
reading it besides Tracy Wilson, who knew how magnets work.
I think you are underestimating the curiosity of the general
public for people to look up this stuff on their own.
All right, Um, I would like to hear from people
if you already knew how magnets act. Like if we
don't tell people this and they're just dumb dummies walking up,

(01:48):
I don't think that. That's not at all what I think.
But I will get corrections on this, and I think
that will prove that people know this and more. If
you're if you're a is a cyst whose specialty is
the electro magnetic crack in their knuckles right now and listening,
then yes, we're gonna mess things up, it's true. But

(02:09):
we have a general, good, well i'd say, fairly detailed
idea of why magnets exist. That's right, and we're gonna
explain that to everybody. But nic not in any way,
shape or form in a condescending manner. No, no, no, no,
because all we did was research and it's right. It's
not like we're making magnets here. No, we're just talking

(02:31):
about them. You know, they discovered these in Magnesia in Greece.
Did you know that what magnets like natural magnets? Yeah,
like loadstone in Magnesia increase. Is that really a place Magnesia? Absolutely,
you're not pulling my leg Nope, okay, but it was loadstone,

(02:52):
a type of magnetite. It was magnetite because that's the
strongest naturally occurring magnet, right, Like you can attract a
paper clip just with this rock. That's pretty cool. Yeah.
It is even cooler, though, are the ones that humans
have conquered and mastered and own. That's right, because all
the magnets you come in contact with on a daily basis,

(03:13):
maybe a weekly basis, um have been manipulated by humanity.
I never come into contact with magnets. You know something,
It's hard to find a decent magnet these days in
an average store, Like you have to like mail off
for him. Yeah, And I don't have a refrigerator magnets
because you know, the stainless steel uh fridges, you can't

(03:35):
put a magnet on them. That's so weird. You can
put on the side. So we have a few. You know,
you get magnets over the court of your life, whether
it's like the pizza delivery guy has, like we have
one in the shape of a pizza slice with their
number on it, you do, and that's on the side,
and like our vet, like we have a vet magnet
in this shape of a pizza slice the number and

(03:55):
then like you know, random random people have given me
magnets here and there, which I'll throw up there on
the side. That's good. Those are nice me mentos. You
mean you did, Yeah, that's nice. That's great. So anyway,
I don't have a lot of magnets or experience with magnets,
but I understand them now now that you say that,

(04:16):
I realized that I have more experience than I realized
with magnets, because we really you mean, I do have
a pretty good magnet collection fridge um. But yeah, it is.
It always struck me as weird that like stainless steel
wouldn't you couldn't put a magnet on that. I understand
why stainless steel is not a fairest metal. That's right.

(04:39):
You have to have a fairest metal, like something to
say iron nickel, cobalt aluminum. Even really, I think so
because there's a type of male magnet called the Alnico magnet,
and that's aluminum, nickel, cobalt alloy. Yeah, that have If
you've got a really good guitar amp, you might have
an Alnico seker. Yeah, they're they're pricing. Oh yeah. I

(05:04):
can imagine like you can buy the speaker separately and
like switch it out in your amp to make your
amp some better, which I have been meaning to do
for years. But they're just kind of pricing. It's like
foucks just for the speaker. But how's this sound? Well,
I'm told it's great. But music guys here much more
than I do, like real real music guys. They're like,
can't you have the difference. Then I'll be like, yeah, sort,

(05:26):
are these music guys also al Nico speaker salesman? Yeah? Probably?
So all right, So let's get so this is what
I like about this article. It goes like basic, too specific,
and you can start with the basics about magnets. They
attract specific metals, as we said, typically fairest metals. Uh.
They have a north and south pole. All magnets do.

(05:46):
There's no north and east polled magnet, and the Earth
is the biggest magnet of all. I guess it is,
at least on Earth. Opposite poles attract one another like
poles repel one another. They hate each other. That's right.
Magnetic and electrical fields are related. And we're going to
explain why I'm so excited. And magnetism I think I

(06:08):
said electro magnetism earlier, so you can put your email
away because I'm correcting myself. Is one of the four
fundamental forces of the universe. Right, that's right, with gravity
and the strong and weak nuclear forces. That's right. That's magnets.
That's a great intro um magnets the object itself or
a magnet is an object in itself, Uh, that produces

(06:30):
a magnetic field, and it's gonna attract like you said,
ferrous metals, and uh. There can be permanent magnets um
a k A. Hard magnets and they always have a
magnetic field going. And then you have the temporary magnets
a k A. Soft magnets, and they just produce a
magnetic field when they're in the presence of h or

(06:53):
when they're in the presence of a magnetic field, and
only for a short time and then for a little
bit thereafter, like once it's gone once yeah, and then electromagnets.
When you apply an electrical current to some magnets, they
become magnetic. That's right. And if you have a doorbell,
you probably have an electromagnet in your house. Yeah, the doorbell,
I looked it up. It's it's more complicated than you
would think. It's it's like a contract. It's like a

(07:15):
Rube Goldbergesque contraption that that is apparently pretty standard uses electromagnets.
It's the Actually, if you're interested in that, there's an
article how doorbells work on how Stuff Works dot com. Yeah,
isn't it weird that the door or maybe it's just
me as a missing throw, but like the sound of
a doorbell, now it's not like, oh, I wonder who's here?
It's a crap who's here? Right? Because no one just

(07:37):
drops by anymore? Right? Either that or like they know yeah, yeah,
so chuck um. The magnets that you typically have, like
your pizza pizza boy magnet um or like the circle
ones that are probably the best example, just a ring,
that magnetic ring that you see, yeah, and grew up
with those are a specific type and they're called um

(08:00):
ceramic magnets, and they're probably the weakest magnets commercially available,
except for the pizza slice ones, right, because that's almost
like a sticker. Yeah, I mean it's connected to or
it's got a you know, a topper on it with
printing topper. That's that's there's the topper, the pizza slice toper.

(08:24):
But with the ceramic magnet, it's um. It's magnetic material
mixed with ceramics and it kind of cuts it um
and it makes it a little weak, Yeah, but good
enough to stick on the fridge, which is all you're
looking for. And it's cheap, very cheap. You already mentioned
the Alnico magnets, which are more expensive and like you said, aluminum, nickel,

(08:44):
and cobalt, and they are stronger than ceramic obviously, but
not as strong as the ones we're about to talk about,
like uh neodymium magnets or sammari um samarium. You gotta
be kidding, Samariam, Okay, Samariam. Both of those magnets incorporate

(09:07):
rare earth metals which are extremely magnetic or when combining
an alloy, can be very magnetic It's true. And now
they even have uh and this is something I never knew.
They have a plastic magnets called magnetic polymers uh. And
I guess those are pret used in just very certain
applications like cold cold temperature applications, or maybe that's what's

(09:30):
on your pizza slice magnet or it says they pick
up very only very lightweight things like iron fillings. So
I wonder if that's what you use with like your uh.
You remember the little little toy kids thing where you
could had a guy's face and I had the little
iron fillings and you can move it around and make
a beard or a mustache or whatever. I bet that's

(09:51):
what that is. What was that call? I don't know,
old timey toy number two seventy three a sketch, not
a hugo, something like that. And why was it that
anybody who had a beard. From the nineteen forties to
the nineteen sixties, any child's toy was like the most
disturbing looking creature you could come up with. You think, oh, yeah,

(10:11):
have you ever heard of rushed in dolls? They had
They were this very successful toy company and they came
out with a line of hobo dolls that were like
the scariest things you've ever seen in your life, like
they were meant to damage children. Obviously, we'll keep them
from hopping trains probably, I guess, you know, yeah, play
with it at home on the road, Yeah, if you

(10:32):
hop trains. Interesting. Uh, let's see. Oh, I made a
blog post actually called twenty seven and the most unintentionally
terrifying dolls you've ever seen or ever created. It's like
almost every doll in my opinion. You should see the slides.
It's pretty good. I'll check it up. Okay, So let's
talk about making magnets chuckers. All right, Well you talked
about load stone, uh, form of magnetite, and that is,

(10:53):
you know, the natural strongest natural magnet You don't have
to do anything to it. Um. So, I guess the
discovery of loadstone and the fact that it attractive metals
made people start to tinker around with it. And um,
I guess around the twelfth century people figured out that
if you took a little iron pin and he took
some loadstone, and you petted it in the same direction,

(11:16):
preferably in a north northern direction, like you, you could
magnetize that iron filling and if you suspended it in
something like water in a leaf. For anyone who's seen
that movie with Alec Baldwin and um Anthony Hopkins, the
edge they magnetize like a needle and put it in

(11:37):
like a water filled leaf and it they figure out
which way is north through. I knew had seen that before.
So that's uh, that's basically magnetizing a pin using loadstone.
That's how the earliest compasses were made. Very cool. So
what's going on here, and this is sort of the basis,
and we'll break it down to, like you said, a
more molecular level. But what's going on here is something

(12:00):
own as a region called a magnetic domain, and it
is actually part of the physical structure of any uh,
ferromagnetic material. So we're talking again iron, cobalt, and nickel largely,
and each one is like its own tiny little magnet
right there. It's got its own little north pole, its
own little south pole, and um they if it's unmagnetized,

(12:24):
then this stuff is just gonna be random and pointing
in all different directions. Right. The domain has its own
north and south pole, but it's not necessarily aligned with
the north and south pole. On Earth, right, they're just
kind of a skew. If it's magnetized, they're all pointing
in the same direction, right, Yes, that's that's pretty much
all you have to do is figure out how to
um get all of those magnetic domains to align in

(12:46):
the same north south line, yeah, because if they're not,
they're just canceling each other out exactly. So, um, the
more domains that you have pointing in the same direction,
the more powerful magnet you have, UM, and the in
each of these little domains you can just kind of
I almost see it as like a little pocket in
the molecular makeup of this, like an iron. Um. The

(13:11):
north pole of one domain flows into the south pole
of the domain in front of it. If they're all
aligned and you add a bunch of these up, they
produce one large magnetic field for the magnet as a whole, right, Yeah,
which explains why if you you know, if you do
the old trick in elementary school, or you bring one
magnet close to the other one, it'll either repel it
or you know, snap it together like one larger magnet, right,

(13:34):
Because the force, this magnetic force is going into out
of the north pole of the magnet and into the
south pole of the magnet in front of it. Very dirty,
it is right. Um. Or if you take the north
pole of one magnet north pole of another magnet and
put them together, they were polling another because their magnetic
forces are flowing in opposite directions and pushing one another apart.

(13:57):
Which is kind of funny because this is how magnets work.
But it bears such a striking resemblance like something they
would have come up with in the fifteenth century, like
the force flowing out, this invisible force. It's witchery. And
this is why magnets won't be brought together. Like people
would come and drag us out of here and toss
us in a lake to see if we float that. Uh.

(14:18):
So we could stop there and you would have a
pretty good idea of things, but we won't know. We'll
continue on. Okay, we'll go a little a little more
in detail. Huh. That's right. If you want to make
a magnet, you have you have to get all these
magnetic domains flowing in the same direction, just like we
were talking about earlier. When you rub the needle on
the magnet, uh, you expose it to this magnetic field

(14:41):
and we're getting these suckers to align in the same
way and then boom. That is one way that you
can get a magnet, right, And there's different ways of
doing this. Um you place it in a magnetic field
in the north south direction. You can hold it in
north south direction and hit it at the hammer. That's crazy.
It is a little crazy, like you're physically jarring these
domains into alignment. Yeah, okay, I'll point this way then um.

(15:04):
Or you can pass an electrical current through it. That's
kind of a cheap. And they think that this is
where um loadstone came from. Either it was when this
rock formed the magnetize formed um from a lava. It
was aligned with the north south pole of the Earth,
so it became magnetized, or it was struck by lightning,

(15:28):
so an electrical current paths through it. That'd be pretty cool,
and it became magnetized as a result, And it seems
likely right, um, But today the most common method of
of making magnet is to place them in a very
strong magnetic field and by a boom, by a being,
their domains start to to wind up. But yeah, there's
gonna be a little delay though. And I saw this
like on a on a YouTube video of this guy.

(15:50):
There's a really good one. I can't remember what it
was called where the guy broke it down. Whateverage stuff
I don't understand. I always type kid science and then
then I look and see what videos are A yeah, yeah, no,
it's it really helps out. Um. But there will be
a delay called hysteresis or hysteresis, and uh that that's
basically just the time it takes for these for the

(16:13):
field to change direction and I'll align itself right, Because
when you get these domains going, um, the ones that
aren't already lined up on a north south pole, Um,
they just rotate around and do a little crazy spinning
until they land on it. And the ones that are
already aligned north south, Um, are they grow bigger, Yeah,

(16:34):
become more robust, I guess yeah. And as a result
other ones, the walls between um, smaller domains will shrink,
and so you have large north south domains and then
even the smaller ones are now probably polarized along that
that north south line and you have just created a magnet. Yeah.
And here's what I think was one of the really

(16:55):
cooler aspects of this is how strong your magnet is
depends on how hard it was to get these domains
to move in that direction, and the harder it is,
the longer it will stay magnetized, which sort of makes sense.
It's almost like that it was so stubborn to get going,
but then once you got it going in the right direction,

(17:16):
it was then stubborn on doing it at that action right,
which kind of makes you wonder like if over enough
of a time span, well, any magnetized material eventually lose
its magnetism just left alone. Huh, that's a good question. Uh,
you there are things you can do to de magnetized things.
You could take a magnet and put it in a

(17:37):
magnetic field that's polarized the opposite direction. It's kind of mean. Yeah,
you can. You can boil it alive, which is also
very mean, and uh, heat it to the point where
it loses its magnetism. Yeah, the cury point. The guy
in the video tested this. He had a paper clip
on a string tied to the table and then the
magnet was like a foot off, so it was just

(17:59):
like doing and then he took a Jerry Lewis and
then he said, Dean, bring me a lighter, and uh,
he got a lighter and heat it up the paper
clip and then you see it start to shake and
then eventually it just poop fell. That is a weird story.
He demagnetized it using the Curry point. Um. So, okay, again,

(18:24):
we could stop here. I think everybody understands how magnets work, right, Like,
there's little magnetic domains that are in all kinds of
crazy directions, and then when you expose them to a
magnetic field, they line up together and they produced their
own magnetic field around that magnetic material, and then there
you go. It flows out of the north and into

(18:44):
the south. Magnets, right, I would like to see a survey.
I wish you could take an instant survey of people
that you know, half of them are going go, go go,
and half of them are like, I'm good. Right, that's
all I need to know about magnets, right know. I
think our listeners are pretty curious folk. Okay, so we're
going deeper. And Tracy Wilson, m who are site manager

(19:08):
here of stuff you miss in history class? Now, she
wrote this one, and she's so thorough. She has a
very nice little pun in this section called shipping magnets
get it ah shipping magnets. Yeah, I got it now.
I didn't notice that before. Yeah, it's a pun um.
What she's talking about in this section though, was interesting
in that very large magnets present a lot of problems

(19:32):
because they're super strong and you can't just throw it
on a truck. Uh, and you know, drive it across country.
You know, it'll disrupt everything. So very uh specific precautions
have to be taken when delivering large magnets used for
certain like industrial applications, one of which is they have
machines that because it will pick up all this fairest

(19:54):
material along the way, they have machines when they get
there to remove all that stuff. Yeah, and I mean
a manager if you're shipping it in like a truck,
and the truck is made of or has some sort
of iron alloy in it, and you have a huge
industrial magnet, how are you going to get that off
of the truck? You're not exactly, So they magnetize these
materials on site typically, right, That's what I understand. Or

(20:18):
else they just rely almost exclusively on electro magnets, which
become magnetic when you pass the current through ather. You
can say manpower, right, American ingenuity. That's how you do it.
It stuck, sir, right, um, Well, speaking of sticking, we're
going to break it down to the electrons, which the
atomic level. This is about to happen because that's really

(20:39):
where it all starts. Well, we're I was just saying,
like electro magnets, they become magnetic when you pass the
field of electricity through them, or current, And all electrical
current is is a flow of electrons. Movement of electrons
produces electricity, and electricity and magnetism are are very much related.
And this is why because on the atomic level of

(21:00):
a ferrous material, iron, nickel, cobalt, right, because are the
big ones. It's called the big three. Well, let's let's
talk specifically about iron in In an iron atom, there
are around it's its orbit. In its orbit, there are
electrons moving around the spin downward or or upward, and

(21:24):
typically they're paired. And when you have a pair of electrons,
one spinning upward, one spinning downward, there's there never any
other way. There's no pair of electrons that both spin
in the same direction. Is always opposite. Yeah, it's called
the poly exclusion principles. Just not possible, right, exactly. Um,
So in iron, you also have four unpaired electrons that

(21:46):
all spin the same way. Now, those ones that are
paired in spinning the opposite direction, they cancel one another out.
But these four spinning the same way produce a magnetic field,
a very very very very very tiny magnetic field, but
a magnetic field. Then the last, right, and this is
very unusual for these unpaired electrons to be spinning in
the same direction. That's why it only happens in things

(22:07):
like iron, cobalt, nickel, right exactly. That's what makes them
ferro magnetic materials. Yeah, potentially magnetic because they have these
unpaired electrons that are spinning in a certain direction. Right.
And then because these things are spinning in the same direction,
they attract other atoms to kind of line up that
are spinning in the same direction, to line up nearby,
and then those create what domains well, what a moment

(22:29):
they have a moment? Oh yeah, I forgot the moment.
It's called the orbital magnetic moment. And I get maybe
that's just when they realize, hey, we're all we're all
partying in the same way, we're all spinning downward, and
we all like slacks. Yeah, and hey, we've got a
magnetic field all of a sudden, small, but let's get
a bunch of other ones and let's create a larger one, right,

(22:50):
And that moment is um. It's a It describes the force,
the I guess, the power and the direction of the spin. Yeah.
So yeah, when you have a bunch of them having
the same moment, they kind of line up around one another.
When this when iron forms, that's right, And then that
causes the domain or that creates the little magnetic domains

(23:11):
and in the material that's right. Uh. And if you
notice that um materials that make good magnets are the
same materials that magnets attract, then uh, it's because they
attract unpaired electrons that are spending in that direction. It's
it's the same thing. And you can also have something
called die magnetic, which are unpaired electrons creating a field

(23:35):
that repels instead of attracts. And then some materials don't
react at all with magnetics, like pine straw. I think
now is the time for a word from our sponsor.
All right, back to magnets, because there's still some more

(23:58):
to go. I mean, now everyone's listening to this understands
magnets on a an atomic level. It's the spin of electrons.
It's physics. Yeah, my favorite thing. Yeah, this one actually
appealed to me more than usual phys physics one is here.
You know, remember the physics is surfing I do. Alright,

(24:20):
So people measure magnets to see, you know, how strong
the magnetic field is using something called a goss meter,
and um, flux or Webber's are the um what would
you call that? You measure? Okay, so flux is a
line of magnetic force coming out of it, but I botch,

(24:41):
that's all right, Okay, So the density of the flux
is measured in either tesla or goss, with Tesla being
ten thousand goss, which is pretty cool that you get
a unit of measurement named after you. If you're Tesla,
you better if you're tesla stuff. Uh. And you can
also measure it in Webber's per square meter, but really

(25:03):
who wants to do that in Canada? Probably, And then
the magnitude of the field is measured in Ampire's per
meter or something called or stead. Yeah. I like Courstead.
I'm a fan of Oorstead, and I also like flux
and Testa's pretty awesome too. So where do we use
magnets besides pizza reminders or doorbell um word of course speakers,

(25:28):
we use them too. If you were in the cassette
tapes back in the day, brother, you were into magnets. Yeah, um,
we also used them again, encompasses, burglar alarms, electric motors.
We use them to provide torque. Yeah, car spetometers. If
you have an old fashioned cathode rate tube television set,
you're using magnets. Did you listen to cassettes? What sure? Man?

(25:51):
It was I grew up in the eighties, Okay, I
was just I wasn't quite sure. You know, you're a
little younger, but I didn't know. I was a late
adopter of cassettes, well know of everything, because what I
would do is I would have a big collection and
then be like, I got all these records. So I
was late to cassettes, and then I had all these cassettes.
I didn't want to switch to CDs until all my
cassettes got stolen and I was like, all right, I

(26:13):
guess I'll get CDs now. Let IM going CDs. Yeah, yeah, No.
I was there for the big transition from cassettes to
c ds, remember, like they were across the board, twenty
dollars in the big box to waste. See look at
that maglev trains. Yeah, we talked about this. We have

(26:33):
a cool one of our little one minute um live
action shorts online. We we uh and maybe I'll post
this when we release this. But the maglev train system
and a lot of roller coasters and things like that
use super magnets. You don't remember that one. Yeah, the
maglev train uses it to propel the train forward, and
roller coasters use magnets for breaking a lot of times,

(26:55):
like new ones. Yeah, the good ones. You don't remember
that one. No, we did like a dozen of them
in four days. I don't remember that one. I'll send
it to you, thank you. The magnetis sphere is a
part of our atmosphere. I guess it's outside of the atmosphere,
but it surrounds Earth in a protective layer that protects
it from charged ions known as solar winds. And when

(27:17):
these solar winds come in contact with the magnetosphere, you
get something that's called the northern or southern lights. Ah,
that's what that is. I knew. We talked about that
at some point in another short that's right. Um. And
then our favorite, of course, the Wonder Machine, would not
be possible without magnets because it is magnetic resonance imaging, right,

(27:38):
you know, and just be resonance imaging without it. Yeah,
and there's no fun in that. Uh. And then doctor
sometimes use pulse electro magnetic fields to actually heal broken
bones that haven't heal correctly. It's amazing. I looked into this.
They have no idea how it works on a molecular level.
All they know is that if you expose bone or tissue.

(28:00):
I think bones more more bone and muscle maybe are
easier to grow to an electromagnetic pulse, it grows. Even
if it like it hasn't healed under after surgery or
any other procedure, if you hit it with an electromagnetic pulse,
it'll you'll get a reaction. And they're figuring out how
to put this in garments for astronauts. Yeah, because you

(28:23):
have you you suffer substantial bone loss on a very
long microgravity flight. Um. So they're figuring out how to
weave it into their clothes so their clothes can get
can blast them with an electromagnetic pulse to make sure
their bone density keeps up. That's pretty cool. But they
don't know why it works. They just know it works.
Cows are pretty happy they're magnets because there's this horrific

(28:48):
thing called traumatic you know, we'll just call it hardware disease.
And this is when when cows eat small metal objects
that are in their food. And it's pretty awful that
that happens. But luckily they have a cow magnet to
feed them, and I guess gathers up all this stuff
and then they poop it out. Uh they I'll bet

(29:10):
that's horrible to poop out, isn't that what happens? Or
punctures the magnet? Yeah, the magnet out. I don't know it.
He surely doesn't just stay in the body, does it.
I don't know. All right, I'm gonna have to look
into that some more. And people are known to put
their arms into cows rears. Yeah, now we we that
some some of them have a hole cut in their side, remember,

(29:31):
so they can examine their stomach. Yeah, the one with
the poor hole. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. I'm going
to try this one. Traumatic reticulo pericarditis. You practice that beforehand?
Well done, so nothing wrong with that. Yeah, some people
might think practicing hard words before you do a professionally
released audio program a good thing. Um. If if a

(29:52):
human swallows a magnet, that's not good. Yeah, you don't
want to do that. Cows intestines and stomachs are different
than humans. Intestines and stuff mix. And if we swallow,
especially more than one magnet, they will basically clamp your
entrails together and you will be in big trouble and
you'll have to undergo surgery to have them removed. So
that's no good. The parents be caution to when your

(30:13):
kids are playing with magnets because kids like the swallow things.
You shouldn't swallow. Yeah. And since we talked about electromagnetic
pulses being um capable of spurring bone loss man spurning growth,
thank you. Um. You would think that people wearing like

(30:34):
magnetic bracelets or magnetic insoles are getting some sort of benefit,
there's no there's no study that's ever shown that there
those things actually help. Although there's a lot of people
out there who believe in static magnetic therapy, which is
just a magnet on your skin. There's no pulse or
anything going off, and they think that possibly the people
who are adherent to this, I think that it's either

(30:56):
attracting iron in the hemoglobin that kind of makes sense
to improve their sculation, or um, it has some sort
of effect on the cellular structure in the body. Uh,
and that that's why it helps your back. Insoles help
your back, or a bracelet helps your authorritis. Yeah. Um,
but again there's no studies that suggest this. Well, it's

(31:19):
big money. Um. Americans alone spent about five million per
year on this kind of thing, um, and worldwide about
five billion dollars a year on magnetic treatment. So the
b Yeah, that's a lot of dough. Uh. And then
there was one more thing. Magnetized drinking water is a
thing now to treat ailments. And I think that they

(31:40):
have not shown in clinical trials that that's been proven either.
Most of the minerals in drinking water are not pharo magnetic,
so to begin with, we didn't have anything to do
with it. And they they found that UM in clinical trials,
a lot of the positive benefits come from placebo maybe
or a passage of time, or maybe the fact that
these insult cushionings are just better made, more padded. To

(32:03):
begin with. There's also apparently um a device that removes
um hard water minerals from water using magnets, but apparently, again,
it's not really doing anything as far as Consumer Report
says in a two year study. Yeah, we had a
water softener when I lived in Yuma. Yeah, and I've

(32:24):
never heard of that. I was like what, And it's like,
you know, it's in the garage. Just sort of looked
like a hot water heater and it's soft in the
water whatever that means. Yeah, do do you know what
it did? It's soften the water. But I think I
remember asking my sister what hard water did and she
was like, oh, you could tell the difference, Like I
can't remember your skin real dry, I think, And I think, yeah,

(32:45):
I don't remember. So that's hard water everyone. If you
want to learn more about that, type the word magnets
into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
It will bring up this awesome and exhaustive article. Also,
if you're interested in doorbells, type that word in the
search part you And since I said search part twice,
it means we go straight to listener mail. Yeah, I'm

(33:09):
gonna call this military shout out. We don't do shoutouts
that often sometimes we do. We get a lot of requests.
I don't feel bad people if we don't do your
shout out. Um, this is from Trevor. Hey, guys, my
name is Trevor, and yes that it's spelled with to
be and not a V. And that is a long
story that I'll tell you you would like, but that's
not why i'm writing in. I'm currently serving in the

(33:31):
US arm Forces and I am in stationed overseas. My
wife and I recently welcome my daughter into the world.
Congratulations Trevor and wife, and I got to spend some
time with them, although not as much as I would
like to obviously, before I had to come back overseas.
It's been a really long tough trip being away from them,
and even harder on our marriage. I work long hours

(33:51):
and when I come home to talk to my wife,
I really dread talking about work, and she really hates
talking about herself all the time. So that's when I
bring up topics that you guys talk about on the show.
I've listened for years and I have turned her onto
them as well. And I just want to thank you
guys and ask if you could give a shout out
to her and listener mail. Her name is Tony with
an eye. So Trevor and Tony, Trevor, thanks for your

(34:14):
service obviously, and both of you thanks for hanging in there.
As a military couple. It's stuff when you're away for
that long and uh, it's quite a sacrifice. My sister
and her husband. He's a career marine helicopter pilot as
I mentioned before. Yeah, he's been to Afghanistan, right, Yeah,
and they go for you know, long tour six and
eight months at a time, and you do enough of

(34:36):
those in your life and you realize you're spending years
away from your husband or wife totaled up and family
and the daughters and sons, and so it's tough stuff.
So shouting out to you guys hanging there. Yeah, thanks
Trevor and Tony. Um, that's pretty awesome that we're like
keeping their marriage happy. Well, we're providing their sustenance to

(34:56):
talk about. It's awesome exactly. H If you want to
let us know how we have helped your marriage, we're
very interested in that. You can also try us on
a shout out. Again, we don't do it very often,
but it's worth a shot. If you really think so. Um.
You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
you Should Know, send us an email to Stuff Podcasts

(35:17):
at Discovery dot com, and join us at our home
on the web www dot Stuff you should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
that how Stuff Works dot com. This episode of Stuff

(35:42):
You Should Know is brought to you by Jack Threads
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