Sorry, I know that’s a very broad topic but I’ll try and narrow it down.
I understand traditional electricity, I.e. electrons and their movement through conductors.
However I don’t understand magnets and how they work without any sort of contact or any particles. I also don’t understand how electricity and magnets are related to electromagnetic waves like light and x-rays.
TLDR: please explain magnets and electromagnetic waves
In: 9
So. Electricity and magnetism are kind of like two sides of the same coin. They influence each other, and all light, visible and invisible, is EM waves. Meaning waves with a measurable electric portion and magnetic portion.
Yknow how light can be described as both a particle and a wave?
Well light is essentially an electric wave and a magnetic wave flowing through an electric field and a magnetic field. Again, two halves of the same coin.
Now for how electricity and magnets tie together. Well, whenever electric current travels, I’m generated a magnet field around itself. This magnetic field isn’t crazy strong, but it is there. This is why when you wrap a coil of wire around something metal, you can create an electromagnet. Or how you’re able to make metal detectors.
Alternatively, when a magnetic field moves, it induces an electric current in metal around it. This is how generators work. You have something spinning like a turbine, then attach a magnet to that so the magnet spins too, then coil a bunch of wire around the spinning magnet, and the spinning magnet will generate an electric current in the wire.
Now for how permanent magnets work, like a bar magnet. These work under the same principle too, moving electricity generated a magnetic field.
Except instead of electricity flowing through a wire, it is the electrons of the atoms themselves.
If all the atoms are aligned in such a way that their electrons are spinning around the atoms in sync with each other, all these individual electrons and their atoms stack their effects and are able to create a strong magnet field.
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