ELI5; How exactly do magnets pull other objects? Like, what exactly are North and South poles and what causes them? How do aligned iron atoms affect other objects and pull on electrons in wires?

Question

ELI5; How exactly do magnets pull other objects? Like, what exactly are North and South poles and what causes them? How do aligned iron atoms affect other objects and pull on electrons in wires?

In: 14

Answer 1

Charged objects that move make magnetic fields. Electrons are charged, so when they move, they make a magnetic field. The thing about electrons though is that they are always moving, so each electron always has a magnetic field. Magnetic fields have a direction to them – when they line up the same way they add together, when they line up opposite the cancel out, and when they are at 90 degrees from each other nothing happens.

Generally, electrons are disorganized and their magnetic fields point in every direction, so they all cancel out. When you have a whole bunch of electrons aligned the right way, all of their tiny magnetic fields add together to make one big magnetic field. When the magnetic field is big enough, magnetic forces become strong enough to beat out other forces like friction or gravity that keep the object still.