What is the spin of an electron?
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There isn’t really an ELI5 explanation of what it actually is or where it comes from. Telling you to imagine a ball that’s spinning except it’s not a ball and it’s not spinning won’t get you too far.
All I can say is that it’s a property that electrons have and it has a certain direction.
Magnetic fields are created by the flow of electric charge, right? Well, electrons have charge, and they’re moving, so they should have their own mini magnetic fields. The electron’s spin tells you how that magnetic field is aligned.
In most materials you have a fairly equal amount of electron spins in each direction, so they balance out and the material ends up having no overall magnetic properties.
In some materials like iron, there’s an overall direction that means it has some magnetic behaviour.
I can tell you that much, but I can’t really tell you what spin actually is or where it comes from.
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