If iron cobalt and nickel are magnetic (which I think is the right term, but it feels wrong since magnets stick but it doesn’t magnet to other steel) then why does using nickel to make stainless steel render steel non-magnetic?
Or is my metallurgical understanding just completely off?
In: Physics
One thing to keep in mind is that materials are magnetic due to how the atoms (and their electrons) are organized relative to each other, ie, their crystalline structure.
Iron is magnetic because iron atoms organize themselves in a way that makes them so. And they organize this eys because of the “shape” of the atoms.
It’s like a puzzle, and if you add some nickel, you’ll have another distribution, just like if you add added fee triangles in a square tile pattern. If you add more, the structure changes again to make everything fit.
So, magnetism in the end is not intrinsic to the element, it’s that the element has characteristics that create these magnetic materials. If you add them together, they may or may not become some magnetic material as well.
Very smart 5yo you are.
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