A legend tells that a shepherd called Magnes (who lived in the northeastern region of Greece called Magnesia) was once fixed to the ground as the nails in his shoes stuck to the black stone where he was resting. The rock was made of a naturally occurring iron ore called loadstone. Loadstone is a magnetic material or magnet. A Magnet attracts objects

materials are not appreciably affected by these objects except for a few rare elements. That\u2019s how poor old Magnes got glued to the rock because of the iron nails in his shoes! Magnets have been studied more or less systematically by Peregrinus (13th century) and later by Gilbert (17th century who is considered to be the father of both electricity and magnetism. Gilbert also realized that the Earth behaved as a giant magnet and suggested for the first time that electric and magnetic phenomena might by related.

Natural magnets are pieces of loadstone, a stone that contains high amounts of magnetite (an iron ore). To day man made artificial magnets are made of different materials (all of them include iron, nickel or cobalt). These synthetic materials are used to make artificial magnets with convenient shapes and sizes for use. Shapes of magnets can vary as - a disc, a bar magnet or a horse shoe magnet.

If a magnet is hung from a cotton thread, it will orient one of its poles pointing north. If the thread is twisted so that the other pole points north, the magnet will promptly turn back to the original orientation.

of magnets was discovered centuries ago by Chinese sailors and has been a powerful tool for orientation especially for sailing across the open seas: thecomp as s.

When you studied forces, one of the three forces at distances was the magnetic force. A field of magnetic forces surrounds a magnet with lines of force. These lines are given the direction to which the N of a small compass at that point will show. Hence, magnetic lines

During the first years of the 19th century Oersted discovered that a current is sheathed in a magnetic field. This field was detected and studied by moving a tiny little compass and drawing small arrow showing its orientation in this magnetic field caused by the current. The arrows will form concentric circles with the N pole of the compass pointing as shown in the figure: if the positive current goes in the direction of your thumb

If the wire is shaped into a loop, the following figure shows how the field at different points would look. Notice that all lines of force will point down the page inside the loop so their effects are reinforced.

the fingers of the right hand curl around the coil in the same direction as conventional current, the thumb points to the north pole of the coil.

materials are neither magnetic. But if an external magnetic field is applied, they get aligned reinforcing the effect. Some experiments with powerful microscopes and extremely sensitive microphones have shown how the boundaries of the domains change as they snap over to align with the field and the crackling sound as they do so. In this way, the samples get magnetised. One of the ends becomes a N pole and the opposite a S pole! A small piece of iron in a magnetic field turns into an \u201cinduced magnet\u201d and will move under its influence.

Magnets are thought to be formed by materials in which there is a permanent alignment of its domains. According to this, N and S poles would just be apparent and not a real thing!! That is why they cannot be separated.

As it was previously stated, the poles of a bar magnet orient themselves so that one of them looks to the north (North seeking or N pole) and the other one to the south (South seeking or S pole). This \u201cmysterious\u201d property lead Gilbert to suggest that the Earth itself behaves