<3 magnets... how do they work?

thats a good question for wirefur

Fuck off Jesus, trying to teach a class here.

It's quite simple: changing, moving or rotating electric charges create magnetic fields.

Electrons are tiny charged particles, and so they have a tiny magnetic dipole moment because they spin in a quantum mechanical sense (non-zero quantum spin number). In atoms of ferromagnetic materials the electron shell has a configuration where the individual electrons' dipole moments do not cancel each other out, so the atom itself has a definite magnetic moment. In a permanent magnet, the atoms are then arranged so that their magnetic moments are aligned, each atom adding to the magnetic field strength of the magnet.

Magnets interact with other magnets through electromagnetism (the two forces are interrelated). Opposite poles of a magnetic dipole have an attractive force, while like poles have repulsive force. (There are no magnetic monopoles because no elementary particle has magnetic charge, only electric charge which results in all primordial magnets being dipoles.)

There are also some materials (most often metals) that are paramagnetic, where the electrons are configured so that they don't create a net magnetic moment, but they can temporarily align due to an external field. This explains why many metals are affected by magnets, while not being permanent magnets themselves.

In a strong enough magnetic field, even non-magnetic materials can be affected by the magnetic field because they still have electrons in them. But it has to be ridiculously strong magnetic field, on the order of 15 teslas or more (the Earth's magnetic field is about 0.00003 T, a refrigerator magnet is 0.005 T. Even MRI machines are "only" 1-3 T.)

Lol and I totally know who you're referring to with that >//3//>

Nice idea for a new avatar, though.

ERHMAHGAWD!