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Asked by Maggie Kitchener to Aimee, Gemma, Hussain, Robert, Ross on 11 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by 853tund32.
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Aimee Goodall answered on 11 Nov 2015:
Hi Maggie,
This is a brilliant question, sorry I never got around to answering it on the live chat!
Not all metals are magnetic. Iron is magnetic, but aluminium, copper and gold are not magnetic!
Any object which contains iron will be attracted to a magnet.
Iron is magnetic because the small atoms (what make up everything) have an electric charge and line up when they are near a magnet, forming a “magnetic field” attracting the iron to a magnet!
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Hussain Jaffery answered on 13 Nov 2015:
Aimee’s right. Magnetism occurs only in certain elements in a strong way, mostly certain metals. Magnetism comes from the action of electrons in each atom.
If you can imagine in each atom, the electrons orbiting one side of the atomic nucleus than the other, you end up with an atom that has one side that is more negative, and the other, less negative (positive). This imbalance in electron orbit is called a dipole.
In metals, electrons are able to ‘jump’ from one atom to another, without much hinderance, so all of there dipoles, align and join up all of their individual electron imbalances to make one large dipole – which you can call a magnet.
Iron is usually found to be magnetic because it is found in the Earth’s core, which is also one giant liquid iron magnet. Most of the iron we find on the surface of the earth originated from the core in the distant past of Earth. The high temperatures in the core allowed the iron atoms to all align, a bit like stirring a pot of soup in one direction.
Did you know that magnetism and electricity are both that same kind of force? They both rely on the flow of electrons! :O
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