Light hearted article on magnetism

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http://discovermagazine.com/2008/may/02 ... ow-physics

I like how this guy adds a twist of humor into an otherwise bland subject.

yeah - but funnily enough, magnets are so mystifying.. I used to think about this as a kid, trying to understand how the world worked.
And I was faced with either religion or no religion to explain it. Always believe this or believe in nothing.
But yeah, what I find so striking like the author of that article is that no one seemed to care about wanting to understand how the magnet actually work.

U know, it's like we know what they do, we can see their field and stuff, but how do they do it?

I like science, well actually let me correct that, I love science, and what I really like about it is to prove and disprove things. Yet at some points, I've got to be humble enough and realize that science does not have all the answers.

Like living with a ghost for example.. for like 9ish years.. And I mean, seeing REAL poltergeist stuff.. Was that a big magnet in the house then?

To this day no one understands how magnets work fully and completely. The quantum theoretic explanation invoking electron spin and the orbital magnetic moment of bound electrons is just about as close as we can get. In a word --- magnetism is a relativistic side effect of electrostatic coulomb attraction/repulsion plus the Lorentz Fitzgerald contraction. Magnetism is just electrostatic interaction in a frame of reference in which the electric charges are moving. Is that a satisfactory explanation? Deep in my gut, I do not think so. In my head I hear a Brian Cox voice telling me that magnetism is fooking magic.

ruveyn

Haha, indeed. I've given a lot of though about magnetism after reading this article. Especially magnets themselves. One can define a magnet with a north and a south pole, but both like poles repel when faced together, it seems rather counter intuitive, but that's how the world tends to work. I did come to some conclusion though. I think it might have something to do with phase, N-N S-S magnet is out of phase. N-S magnet is in phase or one complete magnetic field.

Or is it just alignment?

Speaking of Brian Cox. I enjoyed his short series "Wonders of the Universe". He's very much a prodigy of the Sagan era. I wish he'd expand on that series.