Magnets
- Magnets have two poles called North and South.
- Similar (like) magnetic poles repel. Unlike magnetic poles attract. A magnet attracts a piece of iron. The most important of the two properties of When two or more things come together, eg the north pole of a magnet is attracted to the south pole of a magnet. and repulsion is When two or more things are forced apart, eg the north pole of a magnet is repelled by the north pole of another magnet.. The only way to tell if an object is magnetised is to see if it repels another magnetised object.
- The strength and direction of a magnetic field is represented by magnetic field lines. Field lines by convention go from North to South. A magnetic field is three-dimensional, although this is not often seen on a drawing of magnetic field lines.
Super magnets
Super magnets are very strong magnets. First developed in the 1970s they are a relatively new discovery.
Much stronger than regular magnets, they can achieve the same strengths using smaller sizes of magnets than regular magnets, taking up less space.
This gives them a variety of uses from jewellery clasps to in MRI machines.
