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Asked by Sarah! to nikrobinson, Martin M, Jarrod H on 8 Mar 2024.
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Nik Robinson answered on 8 Mar 2024:
magnets have a +ve side and a -ve side. opposits attract and ends of the same charge repel
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Jarrod Hart answered on 8 Mar 2024: last edited 8 Mar 2024 10:33 am
I shall let you in on a secret that they rarely teach you at school – magnetic forces are nothing more that a sort of shadow or mirror of electric forces, which are the forces of attraction and repulsion between electric charges (usually electrons and protons).
The acceleration of electric charges creates magnetic fields, and it is the quantum motion (or uncertainty of position) of electrons in “ferromagnetic materials” that gives permanent magnets their permanent magnetic field.
So… the real question is: what causes *electric* fields and why are electrons and protons attracted to one another but repelled by their siblings?
Nobody knows! Nobody really knows what electric charge “is”, they can talk a lot about its effects, but little about how – and why – electric charge works…
The good news: if you can answer this, you will become a famous physicist 🙂
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Martin McCoustra answered on 8 Mar 2024:
Magnets have poles… North and South. Like poles repel each other. Try bring two South poles together! Opposite poles attract each other and will stick together. This is a bit like how electric charges behave. A Scottish scientist, James Clerk Maxwell, this correspondence between the behaviour of magnets and electric charges and developed the theory of electromagnetism without which our modern world would not exist.
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