Review on Magnetism: Attraction and Applications

Magnetism is a very interesting topic to talk about because of magnets. Some of these magnets lose their magnetism over time. This is an essential fact to consumers because it is better to buy a real-magnet rather than a man-made magnet due to the loss of magnetism. Many different kinds of magnets exist in the world today but an electromagnet is by far the most common. An electromagnet consists of coils and when connected with electricity, produces an electric charge. Electromagnets have the ability to be turned on and off and are much stronger than regular magnets. The conventional approach has been through fields generated by electromagnets, which require large amounts of current, are bulky, and severely limit the applications of magnetic materials. Sun and his colleagues pursued a newer method known as electric field control, which is potentially more space and energy efficient. As part of this research, Sun began investigating a new group of composite materials, known as multiferroic composites, five years ago. Magnets have existed for hundreds of thousands of years and have been used by many different cultures throughout this time A strong, effective magnetic field was produced by an electric field in a layered multiferroic composite, which used a negligible amount of energy. In sharp contrast, conventional electromagnets typically need hundreds of watts of power consumption to generate such a magnetic field, Sun said. The effective electric field control of magnetism in magnetic layered structures has significant technological implications,” said Sun. “The compact and nearly passive electric magnetic control of magnetism could lead to more compact wireless communication systems and radar systems with significantly reduced power consumption and longer battery life. It may also lead to new magnetic random access memory devices and other novel spintronic devices.

Magnetism is a class of physical phenomena that are mediated by magnetic fields. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field, which acts on other currents and magnetic moments. The most familiar effects occur in ferromagnetic materials, which are strongly attracted by magnetic fields and can be magnetized to become permanent magnets, producing magnetic fields themselves. Only a few substances are ferromagnetic; the most common ones are iron, nickel and cobalt and their alloys. The prefix ferro- refers to iron, because permanent magnetism was first observed in lodestone, a form of a natural iron ore called magnetite, Fe3O4. Magnets have been useful throughout the years because they can hold two things together just through the force of the metal in the magnet. all other materials are influenced to some extent by a magnetic field, by several other types of magnetism. Paramagnetic substances such as aluminum and oxygen are weakly attracted to an applied magnetic field; diamagnetic substances such as copper and carbon are weakly repelled; while antiferromagnetic materials such as chromium and spin glasses have a more complex relationship with a magnetic field. The force of a magnet on paramagnetic, diamagnetic, antiferromagnetic materials is usually too weak to be felt and can be detected only by laboratory instruments, so in everyday life, these substances are often described as non-magnetic.

The magnetic state of a material depends on temperature and other variables such as pressure and the applied magnetic field. A material may exhibit more than one form of magnetism as these variables change. In ancient China, the earliest literary reference to magnetism lies in a 4th-century BC book named after its author, The Sage of Ghost Valley. The 2nd-century BC annals, Lüshi Chunqiu, also notes: “The lodestone makes an iron approach, or it attracts it. The earliest mention of the attraction of a needle is in a 1st-century work Lunheng “A lodestone attracts a needle.”The 11th-century Chinese scientist Shen Kuo was the first person to write – in the Dream Pool Essays – of the magnetic needle compass and that it improved the accuracy of navigation by employing the astronomical concept of true north. By the 12th century, the Chinese were known to use the lodestone compass for navigation. They sculpted a directional spoon from lodestone in such a way that the handle of the spoon always pointed south.

Works Cited

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