Magnetism and Electromagnetism

Magnetism and Electromagnetism

Introduction

Have you ever played with magnets? Do you wonder why it attracts iron? Magnets are always very attractive objects for the humans. In fact famous scientist Einstein mentioned that he was always attracted by magnets in his childhood. In the olden days magnets were used in the ships. Captains of the ships effectively used the magnets to identify the direction of the ship in the sea.

There are two kinds of magnets that we can see around us: Natural magnet and Artificial magnet. Natural magnets exist in the nature. These kind of magnets can be found in rocks and sandy deposits in various parts of the world. The strangest natural magnet is lodestone magnetite (Fig. 3.1)

The magnetic property in the natural magnets is permanent. It never gets destroyed. The lodestone are used to make compasses in the olden days. Arti cial magnets are made by us. The magnets available in the shops are basically arti cial magnets (Fig. 3.2) In this lesson we shall study about magnetic properties and how it is effectively used in day to day life.