magnetism

During fleeting fits, the sun occasionally hurls a colossal amount of energy into space. Called solar flares, these eruptions last for mere minutes, and they can trigger catastrophic blackouts and dazzling auroras on Earth. But our leading…

Meanwhile, demand is rising for magnets embedded in the tools of decarbonization, such as cars and wind turbines. Currently, 12 percent of rare earths go into EVs, according to Adamas Intelligence, a market that’s just now taking off. At…

Finally, we have the crane itself. I left off some of the unimportant forces here—the most critical are the forces from the magnet and the cart pulling in opposite directions.All of these objects have a net force of zero. That's the…

Suppose this parallel plate capacitor is connected to a 9-volt battery. A volt is a measure of the electric potential difference. In short, this is the electric potential energy per charge—it’s a measure of how much energy a charge would…

Earth’s northern and southern lights—the result of a rendezvous between magnetic fields, energized particles from the Sun, and our planet’s atmospheric admixture—are wondrous spectacles. But Earth doesn’t hold a monopoly on auroras. They…

In Poul Anderson's 1970 novel Tau Zero, a starship crew seeks to travel to the star Beta Virginis in hopes of colonizing a new planet. The ship's mode of propulsion is a "Bussard ramjet," an actual (though hypothetical) means of propulsion…

I like to analyze the physics of science fiction, and so I'm going to argue that the Merrie Melodies cartoon “Compressed Hare” takes place in the far future when animals rule the world. I mean, Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote walk on two…

The flocking of birds can also be viewed as a breaking of symmetry: Instead of flying in random directions, they align like the spins in a magnet. But there is an important difference: A ferromagnetic phase transition is easily explained…

Issued on: 01/07/2021 - 17:16 There have been many videos posted online that have attempted to prove that Covid-19 vaccines can make your arm magnetic. These videos have shown people…

We are constantly immersed in magnetic fields. The Earth produces a field that envelops us. Toasters, microwaves, and all of our other appliances produce their own faint ones. All of these fields are weak enough that we can’t feel them. But…