August 12, 2023 • 36 mins
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 classic episode of SYSK.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, it's Josh, and for this week's select, I've
chosen an ancient episode from April of twenty thirteen, more
than ten years ago. Can you believe it? And if
you don't understand how magnets work after listening to this one,
well then we didn't do a very good job of
explaining it. Check it out and see what you think.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
guess who tell him? Tell him how? I'm with Chuck. Oh, Chuck,
I'm with Chuck, and Jerry's in the room as well,
And since the three of us are together in this room,
we have tell the Stuff should Know Chuck, Stuff you
should Know. That's right the podcast. I am so excited
(00:54):
about this podcast. I know you would be, so much
so that I'm worried about it because, as you know,
and anybody who even likes occasionally listens to the Stuff
you Should Know is aware of the more excited I
get about a topic, the poorer job I do at
explaining it. Yeah, see you already did it. I should
have said, the poorer the job I do. Yeah, it's true.
(01:16):
So I'm just gonna try to remain calm, okay, because
all we're talking about is magnets after all, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
And that's the way I feel. We usually balance each
other out nicely like that.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
But you don't think that there is some a certain
cachet 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 two nine percent of the human population.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Knows how magnets work.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I don't know anybody else until we selected this and
started reading it besides Tracy Wilson, who knew how magnets work.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I think you are underestimating the curiosity of the general
public for people to look up this stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
On their own, all right, I would like to hear
from people if you already knew how magnets is.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Act like, if we don't tell people this and they're
just dumb dummies walking around.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I don't think that that's not at all what I think.
But I get.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
This, and I think that will prove that people know
this and more.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Okay, if you're if you're a physicist whose specialty is the.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Electromagnetic cracking their knuckles right now and listening to.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It right then. Yes, we're gonna mess things up, it's true.
But 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. It's all because but nice,
not in any way, shape or form in a condescending manner. No, no, no, no,
(02:47):
because all we do is research thems. Right, It's not
like we're making magnets here. No, we're just talking about them.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
You know, they discovered these in Magnesia in Greece. Did
you know that what magnets like? Natural magnets? Yeah, like loadstone, Yeah,
in Magnesia increase.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Is that really a place, yeah, Magnesia. Absolutely, you're not
pulling my leg, nope, okay, but it was loadstone, a
type of magnetite. Yeah, it was magnetite, because that's the
strongest naturally occurring magnet, right, Like you can attract a
paper clip just with this rock.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
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, maybe a weekly basis have been manipulated by humanity.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
See, I never come into contact with magnets.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
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 them.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Oh yeah, yeah. And I don't have refrigerator magnets because
you know, the stainless steel fridges, you can't put a
magnet on them.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
This is so weird.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
You can put it 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 a 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.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
In this shape of a pizza slice.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
And then like in a random random people have given
me magnets here and there, which I'll throw up there
on the side.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
That's good. Those are nice mementos. You meant one of
times you did. Yeah, that's nice. That's great, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So anyway, I don't have a lot of magnets or
experience with magnets, but I understand them now.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Now that you say that. I realized that I have
more experience than I realized with magnets, because we really
you mean, and I do have a pretty good magnet collection.
Well there you go on our fridge. But yeah, it is.
It always struck me as weird that like stainless steel,
wouldn't you couldn't put a magnet on that. Yeah, now
I understand why stainless steel is not a ferross metal.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
You have to have a fairist metal, like something say iron, nickel, cobalt, aluminum,
even Oh really, I think so, because there's a type
of magnet called the al Niko magnet, and that's aluminum, nickel,
cobalt alloy.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, if you've got a really good guitar amp, you
might have an al Nico speaker, is that right? Yeah?
They're pricey. Oh yeah, I 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 pricey. It's like four hundred bucks just for
the speaker.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
But how's this sound?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
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 hear the difference? And I'll be like, eh,
sort of.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Are these music guys also al Nico speaker salesman?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Probably so all right, so let's get so, this is
what I like about this article. It goes like basic
too specific. Yes, and you can start with the basics
about my magnets. They attract specific metals, as we said,
typically fairest metals. Yes, they have a north and south pole.
All magnets do. There's no north and east polled magnet.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, and the Earth is the biggest magnet of all.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I guess it is, at least on Earth. Opposite poles
attract one another like poles repel one another. They hate
each other.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Magnetic and electrical fields are related. And we're going to
explain why I'm so excited in magnetism. I think I
said electromagnetism earlier. So you can put your email away
because I'm correct in myself. Yes, 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,
(06:44):
that's magnets.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That's a great intro magnets. The object itself, or a
magnet is an object in itself that produces a magnetic
field and it's going to attract like you said, ferris metals, yep.
And there can be permanent magnets aka hard magnets, and
they always have a magnetic field going. And then you
(07:05):
have the temporary magnets aka soft magnets, and they just
produce a magnetic field when they're in the presence of
or when they're in the presence of a magnetic field
and only for a short time and then for a
little bit thereafter, right like once it's gone once.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah. And then electromagnets, when you apply an electrical current
to some magnets, they become magnetic.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And if you have a doorbell, you probably have an
electromagnet in your house. Yeah, the doorbell, Yeah, I looked
it up. It's it's more complicated than you would think.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
It's like a it's like a Rube Goldberg esque contraption
that that is apparently pretty standard and uses electromagnets. It's
neat and actually, if you're interested in that, there's an
article how doorbells work on howstuff Works dot com.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, isn't it weird that a door or maybe it's
just me as a misin throat, but like the sound
of a doorbell now is not like oh, I wonder
who's here? It's a crap who's here? Right, because no
one just drops by.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Anymore, either that or like they know yeah yeah, yeah,
so chuck. The magnets that you typically have, like your
pizza Pizza boy magnet or like the circle ones 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 ceramic magnets, and they're
(08:23):
probably the weakest magnets commercially available, except for the pizza
slice ones, right, because that's almost like a sticker.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, I mean it's connected to or it's got a
you know, a topper on it, right with printing, Yeah,
a topper.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
That's that's the find the top for the pizza slice tougher.
But with a ceramic magnet, it's it's magnetic material mixed
with ceramics and it kind of cuts it and it
makes it a little weak.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, but good enough to stick on a fridge, which
is all you're looking for.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
And it's cheap very cheap.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
You already mentioned the Alnico magnets, which are more expensive
and like you said, aluminum, nickel, and cobalt, and they
are stronger than ceramic obviously, but not as strong as
the ones we're about to talk about, like neodymium magnets, yeah,
or Samarium Samarium.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
You've gotta be kidding Samarium, Okay, Samarium. Both of those
magnets incorporate rare earth metals, yeah, which are extremely magnetic,
or when combining an alloy can be magnetic.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
That's true. And now they even have and this is
something I never knew, They have plastic magnets called magnetic polymers,
and I guess those are used in just very certain
applications like cold tempature applications.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, or maybe that's what's on your pizza slice magnet or.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
It says they pick up very only very lightweight things
like iron filling. So I wonder if that's what you
use with like your You remember the little little toy
kids thing where you could had a guy's face and
had the little iron fillings and you can move it
around and make a beard or a mustache or whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Sure, I bet that's what that is. What was that
called I don't know, old timey toy number two seventy three.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Not a etch a sketch, not a hugo, something like that.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
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, have you ever
heard of rushed in dolls? No, they had. They were
this very successful toy company, and they came out with
a line of hobo dolls that were like the scariest
(10:41):
things you've ever seen in your life. Of course, like
they were meant to damage children obviously.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Oh, keep them from hopping trains, probably, I guess you know, yeah,
play with it at home out on the road, yeah, if.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
You hop trains.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Let's see, Oh, I made a blog post actually called
twenty seven of the most unintentionally terrifying dolls You've ever
seen or ever created.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
That's like almost every doll in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
You should see the slide to It's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
I'll check it out.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Okay, So let's talk about making magnets chuckers.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
All right, Well, you talked about loadstone form of magnetite,
and that is, you know, the natural, strongest natural magnet, right.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
You don't have to do anything no to it. So
I guess the discovery of loadstone and the fact that
it attracted metals made people start to tinker around with it.
And I guess around the twelfth century people figured out
that if you took a little iron pin and you
took some loadstone and you petted it in the same direction,
preferably in a north northern direction, like, you could magnetize
(12:00):
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 Anthony Hopkins, The Edge, Oh yeah, yeah,
they magnetize like a needle and put it in like
a water filled leaf in it they figure out which
way's north through.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
I knew I had seen that before.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
So that's basically magnetizing a pin using loadstone. That's how
the earliest compasses were made.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Very cool. Yeah, So what's going on here, and this
is sort of the basis, and we'll break it down
to it, like you said, a more molecular level. Yeah,
but what's going on here is something known as a
region called a magnetic domain, and it is actually part
of the physical structure of any ferromagnetic material. So we're
talking again iron, cobalt, and nickel largely, and each one
(12:53):
is like its own tiny little magnet right there. It's
got its own little north pole, its own little south pole,
and they if it's unmagnetized, then this stuff is just
going to be random and pointing in all different directions.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Right. The domain has its own north and south pole,
but it's not necessarily aligned with the north and south
pole on Earth.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Right, they're just kind of a skew if it's magnetized,
all pointing in the same direction.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Right, Yes, that's pretty much all you have to do
is figure out how to get all of those magnetic
domains to align in the same north south line.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, because if they're not, they're just canceling each other
out exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So the more domains that you have pointing in the
same direction, the more powerful magnet you have. And 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 the north
pole of one domain flows into the south pole of
(13:53):
the domain in front of it.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
If they're all aligned and you add a bunch of
these up, they produce one large field for the magnet
as a whole.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, right, yeah, which explains why if you you know,
if you do the old trick in elementary school, where
you bring one magnet close to the other one, it'll
either repel it or you know, snap it together like
one larger magnet.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Right, 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.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Something very dirty about that, it is, right.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Or if you take the north pole of one magnet
north pole of another magnet, you put them together, they
repello another because their magnetic forces are flowing in opposite
directions and pushing one another apart. Which is kind of
funny because this is how magnets work. But it bears
such a striking resemblance to like something they would have
come up with in the fifteenth century, like yeah, the
force flowing out.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, this invisible force, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
It's witchery. And this is why magnets won't be brought together.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Like people would come and drag us out of here
and toss us in a lake to see if we
float a perfect So we could stop there and you
would have a pretty good idea of things, but we won't. No,
we'll continue on.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Okay, we'll go a little a little more in detail.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Huh, that's right. If you want to make a magnet,
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, you expose
it to this magnetic field and we're get in these
suckers to align in the same way and then boom.
That is one way that you can get a.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Magnet, right, and there's different ways of doing this. 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.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
It is a little crazy, like you're physically jarring these
domains into alignments. They're like, huh, yeah, okay, I'll point
this way then, or you can pass an electrical current
through it.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
That's kind of a cheat.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
And they think that this is where loadstone came from.
Either it was when this rock formed, the magnetite formed
from a lava. It was aligned with the north south
pole of the Earth, so it became magnetized. Yeah, or
it was struck by lightning, so an electrical current path
(16:08):
through it, that'd be pretty cool, and it became magnetized
as a result, And that seems likely, right, But today
the most common method of making magnets is to place
them in a very strong magnetic field. Yeah and baa
boom bata bing their domains start to wind up.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
But yeah, there's gonna be a little delay though. Yeah,
and I saw this like on a on a YouTube
video of this guy. There's a really good one. I
can't remember what it was called where the guy broke
it down. I always whenever it's stuff I don't understand,
I always type kid science and then then I look
and see what videos are availab Yeah, yeah, no, it's good.
It really helps out. Yeah, but there will be a
delay and called hysteresis or hysteresis, and uh, that's basically
(16:49):
just the time it takes for these for the field
to change direction and I'll align itself.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Right, because when you get these domains going, the ones
that aren't already lined up on a north south pole, Yeah,
they just rotate around and do a little crazy spinning
until they land on it, right, And the ones that
are already aligned north south are they grow.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Bigger, Yeah, become more robust, I guess.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah. And as a result other ones, the walls between
smaller domains will shrink, and so you have large north
south domains and then even the smaller ones are now
probably polarized along that north south line. Yeah, and you
have just created a magnet.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah. And here's what I think was one of the
really 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.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
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, it was then
stubborn undoing it at that action.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Right, which kind of makes you wonder like if over
enough of a time span, well, any magnetized material eventually
lose its magnetism, oh, just left alone. Yeah, huh, that's
a good question. Uh. There are things you can do
to demagnetize things. You could take a magnet and put
it in a magnetic field that's polarized the opposite direction.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Yeah, it's kind of mean.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, you can. You can boil it alive, which is
also very mean, and heat it to the point where
it loses its magnetism.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, the curey 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 like throwing and then he took
a is it a Jerry Lewis? Then he said, Dan,
bring me a lighter, and he got a lighter and
(18:49):
heat it up the paper clip and then you see
it start to shake and then eventually it just poop fell.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
That is a weird story.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Yeah, he demagnetized it. Yeah he did using the cure.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
So okay, again 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 produce their own magnetic field around
that magnetic material and then there you go. It flows
(19:22):
out of the north and into the south. Magnets, right, I.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Would like to see a survey. 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, you.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Know, I think our listeners are pretty curious folk.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Okay, so we're going deeper in Tracy Wilson, who are
site manager here of stuff you miss in history class? Now, Yeah,
she wrote this one, and she's so thorough. She has
a very nice little pun in this section called shipping magnets.
Get it, oh, shipping magnet.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, I got it now, I didn't notice that before.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, it's a pun. What she's talking about in this
section though, is interesting in that very large magnets present
a lot of problems because they're super strong and you
can't just throw it on a truck and you know,
drive it across country. You know, it'll disrupt everything. Yeah,
so very specific precautions have to be taken when delivering
(20:24):
large magnets use for certain like industrial applications, one of
which is they have machines that because it'll pick up
all this ferrost material along the way, right, they have
machines when they get there to remove all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, and I mean imagine if you're shipping it in
like a truck, and the truck is made of or
has some sort of iron alloy in it, Yeah, 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, Oh,
is that what they do? That's what I understand, or
else they just rely almost exclusively on electromagnets, which become
(21:01):
magnetic when you pass it current through.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Other you can say, manpower, right, give me those ten.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
American ingenuity, that's how you do it.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It stuck, sir. Right, Well, speaking of sticking, we're going
to break it down to the electrons, which.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
The atomic level, this is.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Bound to happen, yeah, because that's really where it all starts.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Well, I was just saying, like electromagnets, they become magnetic
when you pass the field of electricity through them. Yeah,
or current, and all electrical current is a flow of electrons.
Movement of electrons produces electricity, and electricity and magnetism are
very much related. And this is why because on the
atomic level of a ferrous material, iron nickel, cobalt, right,
(21:44):
yause are the big ones, what's called.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
The big three.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Well, let's let's talk specifically about iron. In an iron atom,
there are around its its orbit. In its orbit, there
are electrons moving around.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, would they spin downward or upward?
Speaker 1 (22:03):
And 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. It is always opposite.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, and that's called the poly exclusion principles.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, just not possible, right exactly. So in iron, you
also have four unpaired electrons that all spin the same way. Now,
those ones that are paired and spinning the opposite direction,
they cancel one another out. Yeah, but these four spinning
the same way produce a magnetic field, a very very
very very very tiny magnetic field, but a magnetic field nonetheless.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah, 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 like iron, cobalt, and nickel.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Right exactly. That's what makes them ferromagnetic materials. Yeah, potentially
magnetic because they have these unpaired electrons that are spinning
in a certain direction. Right, that's right. And then because
these things are spinning 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.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Well, a moment, they have a moment.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Oh yeah, I forget the moment, just.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Call the orbital magnetic moment, and I get it. Maybe
that's just when they realize, hey, we're all we're all
partying in the same way. We're all spinning downward.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Right, and we all like slacks.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yeah, and hey, we've got a magnetic feel all of
a sudden. It's small, but let's get a bunch of
other ones and let's create a larger one. Right.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
And that moment is it's it describes the force, the
I guess, the power and the direction of the spin.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
So yeah, when you have a bunch of them having
the same moment, they kind of line up around one another.
When when iron forms, that's right, And then that causes
the domain or that creates the little magnetic domains in
the material that's right.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Uh. And if you notice that materials that make good
magnets are the same materials that magnets attract, then it's
because they attract unpaired electrons that are spinning in that direction.
It's the same thing. And you can also have something
called dimagnetic which are unpaired electrons creating a field that
(24:15):
repels instead of attracts. And then some materials don't react at.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
All with magnetics, like pinestraw.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
I think now is the time for a word from
our sponsors. All right, back to magnets, because there's still
(24:46):
some more to go.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I mean, now everyone who's listening to this understands magnets
on a an atomic level. Yeah, it's the spin of electrons.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
It's physics. Yeah, my favorite thing. Yeah, this one actually
appealed to more than usual.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, physics wise, same here. You know, Remember the physics
is surfing I do.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
All right, So people measure magnets to see, you know,
how strong the magnetic field is using something called a
goss meter, and flux or webers are the what would.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
You call that measure measure in webers? Okay, so flux
is a line of magnetic force coming out of it.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
But I botch that.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
That's all right?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Okay, So The density of the flux is measured in
either Tesla or gossip, with Tesla being ten thousand goths,
which is pretty cool that you get a unit of
measurement named after you.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Oh yeah, if you're Tesla, you better if you're Tesla. Sure,
a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
And you can also measure it in Weber's per square meter,
but really, who wants to do that?
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Canada probably, And then the magnitude of the field is
measured in ampeers per meter or something called orsted.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah. I like orsted, you know, I'm a fan of orsted,
and I also like flux and Tesla's pretty awesome too.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
So where do we use magnets besides pizza reminders or
doorbells or doorbells or of course speakers.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
We use them to if you were in the cassette
tapes back in the day, Yeah, brother, you were into magnets,
like yeah, yeah. We also use them again, encompasses, burglar alarms,
electric motors. We use them to provide torque.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, car speedometers. If you have an old fashioned cathode
ray tube television set, you're using magnets. Yep, did you
listen to cassettes?
Speaker 1 (26:38):
What?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Mans? I grew up in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Okay, I was just I wasn't quite sure. You know,
you're a little younger, but I didn't know. No, I
was a late adopter. Oh of cassettes, well, no, of everything,
because what I would do is I would have a
big collection and then be like, I got all these records, right,
So I was late to cassettes, and then I had
all these cassettes. I didn't want to switch to CDs. Yeah,
until all my cassettes got stolen. Oh yeah, and I
was like, all right, I guess I'll get CDs.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Now, get them going CDs. Yeah, yeah, No, I was
there for the big transition from cassettes two CDs. Sure,
remember like they were across the board twenty dollars nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Nine, free d in the big box too, remember what
I waste?
Speaker 1 (27:16):
See look at that maglev trains.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah, we talked about this. We have a cool one
of our little one minute live action shorts online. We uh,
maybe I'll post this when we release this. But the
mag lev train system and a lot of roller coasters
and things like that use super magnets too.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I don't remember that one.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah, the maglev train uses it. To propel the train forward. Yeah,
and don't roller coasters use magnets for breaking a lot
of times?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Oh yeah, like new ones, Yeah, the good ones.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
You don't remember that one.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
No, we did like a dozen of them in four days. Okay,
I don't remember that one. I'll send it to you
the thank you. The magnetosphere 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 these solar winds
come in contact with the magnetosphere, you get something that's
(28:09):
called the northern or southern lights. Ah, that's what that is.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I knew. We talked about that at some point.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
In another short, that's right.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah. And then our favorite, of course, the Wonder Machine,
would not be possible without magnets because it is magnetic
resonance imaging.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Right, you know, and just be resonance imaging without it.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Yeah, there's no fun in that. And then doctor sometimes
use pulse electro magnetic fields to actually heal broken bones
that haven't healed correctly.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, amazing, I looked into this. They have no idea
how it works on a molecular level.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
All they know is that if you expose bone or tissue.
I think bones, 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 any other procedure,
if you hit it with an electromagnetic pulse, it'll you'll
(29:06):
get a reaction. And they're figuring out how to put
this in garments for astronauts. Yeah, because you have you
suffer substantial bone loss on a very long micro gravity flight.
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 they're bone density keeps up.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, that's pretty cool. But they don't know why it works.
They just know it works.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Cows are pretty happy they're magnets because there's this horrific
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
(29:51):
feed them, and it I guess gathers up all this
stuff and then they poop it out.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
They I'll bet that's horrible to poop out, isn't that
what happens? Or it punctures? Oh the magnet?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, I mean the poop the magnet out.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
It surely doesn't just stay in the body, does it.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
All right, I'm gonna have to look into that.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Some more people are known to put their arms into
cows rears.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Yeah, no, we that some of them have a hole
cut in their side, remember, so they can examine their stomach.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Yeah, the one with the porthole. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.
I'm gonna try this one, traumatic reticulo pericarditis.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
You practice that beforehand? Well done, So there's nothing wrong
with that. Yeah, some people might think practicing hard words
before you do a professionally released audio program are a
good thing.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
If if a human swallows a magnet, that's not good.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, you don't want to do that.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Cows intestines and stomachs are different than humans and testines
and stomachs, 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.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah, so that's no good parents caution to when your
kids are playing with magnets because kids like to swallow
things they shouldn't swallow.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah. And since we talked about electromagnetic pulses being capable
of spurring bone loss, is.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
It boning or growing man spurning bone loss spurring bone growth?
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Thank you? You would think that people wearing like magnetic
bracelets or magnetic insuls are getting some sort of benefit.
There's no there's no study that's ever shown that 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
(31:38):
going off, and they think that possibly the people who
are adherents to this think that it's either attracting iron
in the hemoglobin that kind of makes sense to improve circulation,
or it has some sort of effect on the cellular
structure in the body, right, and that that's why it
helps your back in so help your back, or a bracelet.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Helps your arthritis.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, but again there's no studies that suggest this.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Well, it's big money. Americans alone spend about five hundred
million per year on this kind of thing, and worldwide
about five billion dollars a year on magnetic treatment. So
the b Yeah, that's a lot of dough, it is.
And then there was one more thing. Magnetized drinking water
is a thing now to treat ailments, and I think
(32:28):
that they have not shown in clinical trials that that's
been proven either.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Rest of the minerals in drinking water are not ferromagnetic,
so to begin with, we didn't have anything to do
with it.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
And they found that 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 and more padded to begin with.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
There's also apparently a device that removes hard water, yeah,
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.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, we had a water softener when I lived in Yuma. Yeah,
and I'd never heard of that, and I was like,
oh what, And it's like, you know, it's in the
garage that sort of looked like a hot water heater
and it's soft in the water whatever that means.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, do you know what it did?
Speaker 2 (33:23):
It's soft in the water. Yeah, But I think I
remember asking my sister what hard water did, and she
was like, oh, you could tell a difference.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Like I can't remember your skin real dry, I think.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
And I think, yeah, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Yeah, So that's hard water everyone. If you want to
learn more about that, type the word magnets into the
search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. It will bring up
this awesome and exhaustive article. Also, if you're interested in doorbells,
type that word in the search bar too. And since
I said search bar twice, it means we go straight
to listener mail.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, I'm gonna call this military shout out. We don't
do shout outs that often. Sometimes we do eat a
lot of requests, so don't feel bad people if we
don't do your shout out. This is from Trevor. Hey guys,
my name is Trevor. And yes that it's spelled with
a B 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 am currently serving
(34:19):
in the US arm Forces and I am in stationed overseas.
My wife and I recently welcomed 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,
(34:39):
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 wanted to thank you
guys and ask if you could give a shout out
to her and listener mail. Her name is Tony with
an I, So Trevor and Tony Trevor, thanks for your
(35:02):
service obviously, and both of you thanks for hanging in
there as a military couple. It's tough, yeah, when you're
away for that long, and it's quite a sacrifice. My
sister and her husband. He's a career marine helicopter pilot.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
As I mentioned before, Yeah, he's been to Afghanistan, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
And they go for you know, long tour six and
eight months at a time, and you do enough of
those in your life and you realize you're spending years
away from your husband or wife totaled up. Yeah, and
family and the daughters and sons and so it's tough stuff.
So shouting out to you guys hanging there.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, thanks Trevor and Tony. That's pretty awesome that we're
like keeping their marriage happy. Well, we're providing a sustenance
to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
It's awesome exactly.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
If you want to let us know how we have
helped your marriage, we're very interested in that. You could
send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff You Should is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey there, it's Josh, and for this week's select, I've
chosen an ancient episode from April of twenty thirteen, more
than ten years ago. Can you believe it? And if
you don't understand how magnets work after listening to this one,
well then we didn't do a very good job of
explaining it. Check it out and see what you think.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
guess who tell him? Tell him how? I'm with Chuck. Oh, Chuck,
I'm with Chuck, and Jerry's in the room as well,
And since the three of us are together in this room,
we have tell the Stuff should Know Chuck, Stuff you
should Know. That's right the podcast. I am so excited
(00:54):
about this podcast. I know you would be, so much
so that I'm worried about it because, as you know,
and anybody who even likes occasionally listens to the Stuff
you Should Know is aware of the more excited I
get about a topic, the poorer job I do at
explaining it. Yeah, see you already did it. I should
have said, the poorer the job I do. Yeah, it's true.
(01:16):
So I'm just gonna try to remain calm, okay, because
all we're talking about is magnets after all, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
And that's the way I feel. We usually balance each
other out nicely like that.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
But you don't think that there is some a certain
cachet 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 two nine percent of the human population.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Knows how magnets work.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I don't know anybody else until we selected this and
started reading it besides Tracy Wilson, who knew how magnets work.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I think you are underestimating the curiosity of the general
public for people to look up this stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
On their own, all right, I would like to hear
from people if you already knew how magnets is.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Act like, if we don't tell people this and they're
just dumb dummies walking around.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I don't think that that's not at all what I think.
But I get.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
This, and I think that will prove that people know
this and more.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Okay, if you're if you're a physicist whose specialty is the.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Electromagnetic cracking their knuckles right now and listening to.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It right then. Yes, we're gonna mess things up, it's true.
But 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. It's all because but nice,
not in any way, shape or form in a condescending manner. No, no, no, no,
(02:47):
because all we do is research thems. Right, It's not
like we're making magnets here. No, we're just talking about them.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
You know, they discovered these in Magnesia in Greece. Did
you know that what magnets like? Natural magnets? Yeah, like loadstone, Yeah,
in Magnesia increase.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Is that really a place, yeah, Magnesia. Absolutely, you're not
pulling my leg, nope, okay, but it was loadstone, a
type of magnetite. Yeah, it was magnetite, because that's the
strongest naturally occurring magnet, right, Like you can attract a
paper clip just with this rock.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
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, maybe a weekly basis have been manipulated by humanity.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
See, I never come into contact with magnets.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
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 them.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Oh yeah, yeah. And I don't have refrigerator magnets because
you know, the stainless steel fridges, you can't put a
magnet on them.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
This is so weird.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
You can put it 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 a 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.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
In this shape of a pizza slice.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
And then like in a random random people have given
me magnets here and there, which I'll throw up there
on the side.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
That's good. Those are nice mementos. You meant one of
times you did. Yeah, that's nice. That's great, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So anyway, I don't have a lot of magnets or
experience with magnets, but I understand them now.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Now that you say that. I realized that I have
more experience than I realized with magnets, because we really
you mean, and I do have a pretty good magnet collection.
Well there you go on our fridge. But yeah, it is.
It always struck me as weird that like stainless steel,
wouldn't you couldn't put a magnet on that. Yeah, now
I understand why stainless steel is not a ferross metal.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
You have to have a fairist metal, like something say iron, nickel, cobalt, aluminum,
even Oh really, I think so, because there's a type
of magnet called the al Niko magnet, and that's aluminum, nickel,
cobalt alloy.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, if you've got a really good guitar amp, you
might have an al Nico speaker, is that right? Yeah?
They're pricey. Oh yeah, I 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 pricey. It's like four hundred bucks just for
the speaker.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
But how's this sound?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
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 hear the difference? And I'll be like, eh,
sort of.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Are these music guys also al Nico speaker salesman?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Probably so all right, so let's get so, this is
what I like about this article. It goes like basic
too specific. Yes, and you can start with the basics
about my magnets. They attract specific metals, as we said,
typically fairest metals. Yes, they have a north and south pole.
All magnets do. There's no north and east polled magnet.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, and the Earth is the biggest magnet of all.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I guess it is, at least on Earth. Opposite poles
attract one another like poles repel one another. They hate
each other.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Magnetic and electrical fields are related. And we're going to
explain why I'm so excited in magnetism. I think I
said electromagnetism earlier. So you can put your email away
because I'm correct in myself. Yes, 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,
(06:44):
that's magnets.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That's a great intro magnets. The object itself, or a
magnet is an object in itself that produces a magnetic
field and it's going to attract like you said, ferris metals, yep.
And there can be permanent magnets aka hard magnets, and
they always have a magnetic field going. And then you
(07:05):
have the temporary magnets aka soft magnets, and they just
produce a magnetic field when they're in the presence of
or when they're in the presence of a magnetic field
and only for a short time and then for a
little bit thereafter, right like once it's gone once.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah. And then electromagnets, when you apply an electrical current
to some magnets, they become magnetic.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And if you have a doorbell, you probably have an
electromagnet in your house. Yeah, the doorbell, Yeah, I looked
it up. It's it's more complicated than you would think.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
It's like a it's like a Rube Goldberg esque contraption
that that is apparently pretty standard and uses electromagnets. It's
neat and actually, if you're interested in that, there's an
article how doorbells work on howstuff Works dot com.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, isn't it weird that a door or maybe it's
just me as a misin throat, but like the sound
of a doorbell now is not like oh, I wonder
who's here? It's a crap who's here? Right, because no
one just drops by.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Anymore, either that or like they know yeah yeah, yeah,
so chuck. The magnets that you typically have, like your
pizza Pizza boy magnet or like the circle ones 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 ceramic magnets, and they're
(08:23):
probably the weakest magnets commercially available, except for the pizza
slice ones, right, because that's almost like a sticker.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, I mean it's connected to or it's got a
you know, a topper on it, right with printing, Yeah,
a topper.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
That's that's the find the top for the pizza slice tougher.
But with a ceramic magnet, it's it's magnetic material mixed
with ceramics and it kind of cuts it and it
makes it a little weak.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, but good enough to stick on a fridge, which
is all you're looking for.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
And it's cheap very cheap.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
You already mentioned the Alnico magnets, which are more expensive
and like you said, aluminum, nickel, and cobalt, and they
are stronger than ceramic obviously, but not as strong as
the ones we're about to talk about, like neodymium magnets, yeah,
or Samarium Samarium.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
You've gotta be kidding Samarium, Okay, Samarium. Both of those
magnets incorporate rare earth metals, yeah, which are extremely magnetic,
or when combining an alloy can be magnetic.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
That's true. And now they even have and this is
something I never knew, They have plastic magnets called magnetic polymers,
and I guess those are used in just very certain
applications like cold tempature applications.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, or maybe that's what's on your pizza slice magnet or.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
It says they pick up very only very lightweight things
like iron filling. So I wonder if that's what you
use with like your You remember the little little toy
kids thing where you could had a guy's face and
had the little iron fillings and you can move it
around and make a beard or a mustache or whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Sure, I bet that's what that is. What was that
called I don't know, old timey toy number two seventy three.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Not a etch a sketch, not a hugo, something like that.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
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, have you ever
heard of rushed in dolls? No, they had. They were
this very successful toy company, and they came out with
a line of hobo dolls that were like the scariest
(10:41):
things you've ever seen in your life. Of course, like
they were meant to damage children obviously.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Oh, keep them from hopping trains, probably, I guess you know, yeah,
play with it at home out on the road, yeah, if.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
You hop trains.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Let's see, Oh, I made a blog post actually called
twenty seven of the most unintentionally terrifying dolls You've ever
seen or ever created.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
That's like almost every doll in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
You should see the slide to It's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
I'll check it out.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Okay, So let's talk about making magnets chuckers.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
All right, Well, you talked about loadstone form of magnetite,
and that is, you know, the natural, strongest natural magnet, right.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
You don't have to do anything no to it. So
I guess the discovery of loadstone and the fact that
it attracted metals made people start to tinker around with it.
And I guess around the twelfth century people figured out
that if you took a little iron pin and you
took some loadstone and you petted it in the same direction,
preferably in a north northern direction, like, you could magnetize
(12:00):
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 Anthony Hopkins, The Edge, Oh yeah, yeah,
they magnetize like a needle and put it in like
a water filled leaf in it they figure out which
way's north through.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
I knew I had seen that before.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
So that's basically magnetizing a pin using loadstone. That's how
the earliest compasses were made.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Very cool. Yeah, So what's going on here, and this
is sort of the basis, and we'll break it down
to it, like you said, a more molecular level. Yeah,
but what's going on here is something known as a
region called a magnetic domain, and it is actually part
of the physical structure of any ferromagnetic material. So we're
talking again iron, cobalt, and nickel largely, and each one
(12:53):
is like its own tiny little magnet right there. It's
got its own little north pole, its own little south pole,
and they if it's unmagnetized, then this stuff is just
going to be random and pointing in all different directions.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Right. The domain has its own north and south pole,
but it's not necessarily aligned with the north and south
pole on Earth.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Right, they're just kind of a skew if it's magnetized,
all pointing in the same direction.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Right, Yes, that's pretty much all you have to do
is figure out how to get all of those magnetic
domains to align in the same north south line.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, because if they're not, they're just canceling each other
out exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So the more domains that you have pointing in the
same direction, the more powerful magnet you have. And 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 the north
pole of one domain flows into the south pole of
(13:53):
the domain in front of it.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
If they're all aligned and you add a bunch of
these up, they produce one large field for the magnet
as a whole.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, right, yeah, which explains why if you you know,
if you do the old trick in elementary school, where
you bring one magnet close to the other one, it'll
either repel it or you know, snap it together like
one larger magnet.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Right, 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.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Something very dirty about that, it is, right.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Or if you take the north pole of one magnet
north pole of another magnet, you put them together, they
repello another because their magnetic forces are flowing in opposite
directions and pushing one another apart. Which is kind of
funny because this is how magnets work. But it bears
such a striking resemblance to like something they would have
come up with in the fifteenth century, like yeah, the
force flowing out.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, this invisible force, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
It's witchery. And this is why magnets won't be brought together.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Like people would come and drag us out of here
and toss us in a lake to see if we
float a perfect So we could stop there and you
would have a pretty good idea of things, but we won't. No,
we'll continue on.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Okay, we'll go a little a little more in detail.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Huh, that's right. If you want to make a magnet,
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, you expose
it to this magnetic field and we're get in these
suckers to align in the same way and then boom.
That is one way that you can get a.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Magnet, right, and there's different ways of doing this. 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.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
It is a little crazy, like you're physically jarring these
domains into alignments. They're like, huh, yeah, okay, I'll point
this way then, or you can pass an electrical current
through it.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
That's kind of a cheat.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
And they think that this is where loadstone came from.
Either it was when this rock formed, the magnetite formed
from a lava. It was aligned with the north south
pole of the Earth, so it became magnetized. Yeah, or
it was struck by lightning, so an electrical current path
(16:08):
through it, that'd be pretty cool, and it became magnetized
as a result, And that seems likely, right, But today
the most common method of making magnets is to place
them in a very strong magnetic field. Yeah and baa
boom bata bing their domains start to wind up.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
But yeah, there's gonna be a little delay though. Yeah,
and I saw this like on a on a YouTube
video of this guy. There's a really good one. I
can't remember what it was called where the guy broke
it down. I always whenever it's stuff I don't understand,
I always type kid science and then then I look
and see what videos are availab Yeah, yeah, no, it's good.
It really helps out. Yeah, but there will be a
delay and called hysteresis or hysteresis, and uh, that's basically
(16:49):
just the time it takes for these for the field
to change direction and I'll align itself.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Right, because when you get these domains going, the ones
that aren't already lined up on a north south pole, Yeah,
they just rotate around and do a little crazy spinning
until they land on it, right, And the ones that
are already aligned north south are they grow.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Bigger, Yeah, become more robust, I guess.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah. And as a result other ones, the walls between
smaller domains will shrink, and so you have large north
south domains and then even the smaller ones are now
probably polarized along that north south line. Yeah, and you
have just created a magnet.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah. And here's what I think was one of the
really 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.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
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, it was then
stubborn undoing it at that action.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Right, which kind of makes you wonder like if over
enough of a time span, well, any magnetized material eventually
lose its magnetism, oh, just left alone. Yeah, huh, that's
a good question. Uh. There are things you can do
to demagnetize things. You could take a magnet and put
it in a magnetic field that's polarized the opposite direction.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Yeah, it's kind of mean.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, you can. You can boil it alive, which is
also very mean, and heat it to the point where
it loses its magnetism.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, the curey 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 like throwing and then he took
a is it a Jerry Lewis? Then he said, Dan,
bring me a lighter, and he got a lighter and
(18:49):
heat it up the paper clip and then you see
it start to shake and then eventually it just poop fell.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
That is a weird story.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Yeah, he demagnetized it. Yeah he did using the cure.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
So okay, again 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 produce their own magnetic field around
that magnetic material and then there you go. It flows
(19:22):
out of the north and into the south. Magnets, right, I.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Would like to see a survey. 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, you.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Know, I think our listeners are pretty curious folk.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Okay, so we're going deeper in Tracy Wilson, who are
site manager here of stuff you miss in history class? Now, Yeah,
she wrote this one, and she's so thorough. She has
a very nice little pun in this section called shipping magnets.
Get it, oh, shipping magnet.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, I got it now, I didn't notice that before.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, it's a pun. What she's talking about in this
section though, is interesting in that very large magnets present
a lot of problems because they're super strong and you
can't just throw it on a truck and you know,
drive it across country. You know, it'll disrupt everything. Yeah,
so very specific precautions have to be taken when delivering
(20:24):
large magnets use for certain like industrial applications, one of
which is they have machines that because it'll pick up
all this ferrost material along the way, right, they have
machines when they get there to remove all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, and I mean imagine if you're shipping it in
like a truck, and the truck is made of or
has some sort of iron alloy in it, Yeah, 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, Oh,
is that what they do? That's what I understand, or
else they just rely almost exclusively on electromagnets, which become
(21:01):
magnetic when you pass it current through.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Other you can say, manpower, right, give me those ten.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
American ingenuity, that's how you do it.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It stuck, sir. Right, Well, speaking of sticking, we're going
to break it down to the electrons, which.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
The atomic level, this is.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Bound to happen, yeah, because that's really where it all starts.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Well, I was just saying, like electromagnets, they become magnetic
when you pass the field of electricity through them. Yeah,
or current, and all electrical current is a flow of electrons.
Movement of electrons produces electricity, and electricity and magnetism are
very much related. And this is why because on the
atomic level of a ferrous material, iron nickel, cobalt, right,
(21:44):
yause are the big ones, what's called.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
The big three.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Well, let's let's talk specifically about iron. In an iron atom,
there are around its its orbit. In its orbit, there
are electrons moving around.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, would they spin downward or upward?
Speaker 1 (22:03):
And 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. It is always opposite.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, and that's called the poly exclusion principles.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, just not possible, right exactly. So in iron, you
also have four unpaired electrons that all spin the same way. Now,
those ones that are paired and spinning the opposite direction,
they cancel one another out. Yeah, but these four spinning
the same way produce a magnetic field, a very very
very very very tiny magnetic field, but a magnetic field nonetheless.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah, 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 like iron, cobalt, and nickel.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Right exactly. That's what makes them ferromagnetic materials. Yeah, potentially
magnetic because they have these unpaired electrons that are spinning
in a certain direction. Right, that's right. And then because
these things are spinning 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.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Well, a moment, they have a moment.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Oh yeah, I forget the moment, just.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Call the orbital magnetic moment, and I get it. Maybe
that's just when they realize, hey, we're all we're all
partying in the same way. We're all spinning downward.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Right, and we all like slacks.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yeah, and hey, we've got a magnetic feel all of
a sudden. It's small, but let's get a bunch of
other ones and let's create a larger one. Right.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
And that moment is it's it describes the force, the
I guess, the power and the direction of the spin.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
So yeah, when you have a bunch of them having
the same moment, they kind of line up around one another.
When when iron forms, that's right, And then that causes
the domain or that creates the little magnetic domains in
the material that's right.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Uh. And if you notice that materials that make good
magnets are the same materials that magnets attract, then it's
because they attract unpaired electrons that are spinning in that direction.
It's the same thing. And you can also have something
called dimagnetic which are unpaired electrons creating a field that
(24:15):
repels instead of attracts. And then some materials don't react at.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
All with magnetics, like pinestraw.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
I think now is the time for a word from
our sponsors. All right, back to magnets, because there's still
(24:46):
some more to go.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I mean, now everyone who's listening to this understands magnets
on a an atomic level. Yeah, it's the spin of electrons.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
It's physics. Yeah, my favorite thing. Yeah, this one actually
appealed to more than usual.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, physics wise, same here. You know, Remember the physics
is surfing I do.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
All right, So people measure magnets to see, you know,
how strong the magnetic field is using something called a
goss meter, and flux or webers are the what would.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
You call that measure measure in webers? Okay, so flux
is a line of magnetic force coming out of it.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
But I botch that.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
That's all right?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Okay, So The density of the flux is measured in
either Tesla or gossip, with Tesla being ten thousand goths,
which is pretty cool that you get a unit of
measurement named after you.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Oh yeah, if you're Tesla, you better if you're Tesla. Sure,
a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
And you can also measure it in Weber's per square meter,
but really, who wants to do that?
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Canada probably, And then the magnitude of the field is
measured in ampeers per meter or something called orsted.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah. I like orsted, you know, I'm a fan of orsted,
and I also like flux and Tesla's pretty awesome too.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
So where do we use magnets besides pizza reminders or
doorbells or doorbells or of course speakers.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
We use them to if you were in the cassette
tapes back in the day, Yeah, brother, you were into magnets,
like yeah, yeah. We also use them again, encompasses, burglar alarms,
electric motors. We use them to provide torque.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, car speedometers. If you have an old fashioned cathode
ray tube television set, you're using magnets. Yep, did you
listen to cassettes?
Speaker 1 (26:38):
What?
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Mans? I grew up in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Okay, I was just I wasn't quite sure. You know,
you're a little younger, but I didn't know. No, I
was a late adopter. Oh of cassettes, well, no, of everything,
because what I would do is I would have a
big collection and then be like, I got all these records, right,
So I was late to cassettes, and then I had
all these cassettes. I didn't want to switch to CDs. Yeah,
until all my cassettes got stolen. Oh yeah, and I
was like, all right, I guess I'll get CDs.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Now, get them going CDs. Yeah, yeah, No, I was
there for the big transition from cassettes two CDs. Sure,
remember like they were across the board twenty dollars nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Nine, free d in the big box too, remember what
I waste?
Speaker 1 (27:16):
See look at that maglev trains.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah, we talked about this. We have a cool one
of our little one minute live action shorts online. We uh,
maybe I'll post this when we release this. But the
mag lev train system and a lot of roller coasters
and things like that use super magnets too.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I don't remember that one.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah, the maglev train uses it. To propel the train forward. Yeah,
and don't roller coasters use magnets for breaking a lot
of times?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Oh yeah, like new ones, Yeah, the good ones.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
You don't remember that one.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
No, we did like a dozen of them in four days. Okay,
I don't remember that one. I'll send it to you
the thank you. The magnetosphere 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 these solar winds
come in contact with the magnetosphere, you get something that's
(28:09):
called the northern or southern lights. Ah, that's what that is.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I knew. We talked about that at some point.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
In another short, that's right.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah. And then our favorite, of course, the Wonder Machine,
would not be possible without magnets because it is magnetic
resonance imaging.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Right, you know, and just be resonance imaging without it.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Yeah, there's no fun in that. And then doctor sometimes
use pulse electro magnetic fields to actually heal broken bones
that haven't healed correctly.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, amazing, I looked into this. They have no idea
how it works on a molecular level.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
All they know is that if you expose bone or tissue.
I think bones, 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 any other procedure,
if you hit it with an electromagnetic pulse, it'll you'll
(29:06):
get a reaction. And they're figuring out how to put
this in garments for astronauts. Yeah, because you have you
suffer substantial bone loss on a very long micro gravity flight.
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 they're bone density keeps up.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, that's pretty cool. But they don't know why it works.
They just know it works.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Cows are pretty happy they're magnets because there's this horrific
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
(29:51):
feed them, and it I guess gathers up all this
stuff and then they poop it out.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
They I'll bet that's horrible to poop out, isn't that
what happens? Or it punctures? Oh the magnet?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, I mean the poop the magnet out.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
It surely doesn't just stay in the body, does it.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
All right, I'm gonna have to look into that.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Some more people are known to put their arms into
cows rears.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Yeah, no, we that some of them have a hole
cut in their side, remember, so they can examine their stomach.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Yeah, the one with the porthole. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.
I'm gonna try this one, traumatic reticulo pericarditis.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
You practice that beforehand? Well done, So there's nothing wrong
with that. Yeah, some people might think practicing hard words
before you do a professionally released audio program are a
good thing.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
If if a human swallows a magnet, that's not good.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, you don't want to do that.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Cows intestines and stomachs are different than humans and testines
and stomachs, 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.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah, so that's no good parents caution to when your
kids are playing with magnets because kids like to swallow
things they shouldn't swallow.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah. And since we talked about electromagnetic pulses being capable
of spurring bone loss, is.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
It boning or growing man spurning bone loss spurring bone growth?
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Thank you? You would think that people wearing like magnetic
bracelets or magnetic insuls are getting some sort of benefit.
There's no there's no study that's ever shown that 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
(31:38):
going off, and they think that possibly the people who
are adherents to this think that it's either attracting iron
in the hemoglobin that kind of makes sense to improve circulation,
or it has some sort of effect on the cellular
structure in the body, right, and that that's why it
helps your back in so help your back, or a bracelet.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Helps your arthritis.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, but again there's no studies that suggest this.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Well, it's big money. Americans alone spend about five hundred
million per year on this kind of thing, and worldwide
about five billion dollars a year on magnetic treatment. So
the b Yeah, that's a lot of dough, it is.
And then there was one more thing. Magnetized drinking water
is a thing now to treat ailments, and I think
(32:28):
that they have not shown in clinical trials that that's
been proven either.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Rest of the minerals in drinking water are not ferromagnetic,
so to begin with, we didn't have anything to do
with it.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
And they found that 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 and more padded to begin with.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
There's also apparently a device that removes hard water, yeah,
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.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, we had a water softener when I lived in Yuma. Yeah,
and I'd never heard of that, and I was like,
oh what, And it's like, you know, it's in the
garage that sort of looked like a hot water heater
and it's soft in the water whatever that means.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, do you know what it did?
Speaker 2 (33:23):
It's soft in the water. Yeah, But I think I
remember asking my sister what hard water did, and she
was like, oh, you could tell a difference.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Like I can't remember your skin real dry, I think.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
And I think, yeah, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Yeah, So that's hard water everyone. If you want to
learn more about that, type the word magnets into the
search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. It will bring up
this awesome and exhaustive article. Also, if you're interested in doorbells,
type that word in the search bar too. And since
I said search bar twice, it means we go straight
to listener mail.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, I'm gonna call this military shout out. We don't
do shout outs that often. Sometimes we do eat a
lot of requests, so don't feel bad people if we
don't do your shout out. This is from Trevor. Hey guys,
my name is Trevor. And yes that it's spelled with
a B 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 am currently serving
(34:19):
in the US arm Forces and I am in stationed overseas.
My wife and I recently welcomed 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,
(34:39):
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 wanted to thank you
guys and ask if you could give a shout out
to her and listener mail. Her name is Tony with
an I, So Trevor and Tony Trevor, thanks for your
(35:02):
service obviously, and both of you thanks for hanging in
there as a military couple. It's tough, yeah, when you're
away for that long, and it's quite a sacrifice. My
sister and her husband. He's a career marine helicopter pilot.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
As I mentioned before, Yeah, he's been to Afghanistan, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
And they go for you know, long tour six and
eight months at a time, and you do enough of
those in your life and you realize you're spending years
away from your husband or wife totaled up. Yeah, and
family and the daughters and sons and so it's tough stuff.
So shouting out to you guys hanging there.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, thanks Trevor and Tony. That's pretty awesome that we're
like keeping their marriage happy. Well, we're providing a sustenance
to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
It's awesome exactly.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
If you want to let us know how we have
helped your marriage, we're very interested in that. You could
send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff You Should is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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