I never really took these kinds of physics classes in high school. What science classes I did have were like standard biology/geology classes, or specifically related to other classes that also didn’t explain this.
It’s now years later, I’m currently trying to understand electronics today, and have project ideas that I want to do but just don’t know where to even begin. Ive been reading textbooks and watching videos that have helped me to better understand several concepts on a fundamental level. I get that current induces a magnetic field, and vice versa. But…
What I still don’t understand is how and why that magnetic field exists in the first place. How is it possible that an item’s atoms and charges and electrons and stuff are affected at all by something else, a completely separate item, that isn’t even touching it? How is it that a magnet can physically repel other magnets/materials? How can magnetic fields exist at all, why is it a real thing? It might as well be magic to me, and trying to think about it or find answers makes me think everybody else is just handwaving it away like “it just does, don’t try to understand it”.
Ive tried to look at previous posts and questions, but I don’t see this specific question being asked or answered.
In: Physics
There are a large number of forces that don’t require touching. For instance gravity. Objects get pulled towards each other based on their mass. There is another force called the electric force. Objects with a negative charge repel other objects with a negative charge and attract objects with a positive charge.
The reason for this has to do with subatomic particles. There are things called electrons which are the negative particle. They repel other electrons and attract the positive particle protons. Just like gravity they don’t need to touch for this to be the case. They experience a force away from each other that gets weaker the farther apart they get. So, objects with more negative charge than positive charge experience have an overall negative charge.
Magnetism is when you move a charged object in reference to other charged objects. When that happens the object experiences a different force perpendicular to the the direction of it’s movement and the force of the attraction or repulsion.
A magnet is an object where all the electrons are moving ways that they all create a magnetic force in the same direction. They build on one another and create a large magnetic force.
Latest Answers