magnets are weird we're talking about real life telekinesis how can they just pull stuff why can they pull this kind of stuff but not this kind of stuff and why is the entire Earth a magnet well first we need to start with the basics magnets have two sides north and south north loves South but North really hates North so it's kind of like a Romeo and Juliet situation but if everyone was Romeo and Juliet but why are these named after directions well if you freely suspend one of these suckers once side will point to the
North and the other to the South which is kind of funny because if Opposites Attract that means the Earth's magnetic pole has the North in the South and the south in the north and that's not confusing at all what if you take two magnets and point them in the opposite direction at say a piece of metal well they start beefing so hard they actually forget about the metal altogether and cancel each other out okay but what actually is it magnets just like pretty much everything else that's ever existed is made up of atoms so what
makes these atoms have the force and these atoms totally lame their differences can actually be found in their similarity all atoms have stuff called electrons which orbit the middle SL nucleus of the atom atoms also have stuff in the middle called protons there's also neutrons but they're kind of completely useless for magnetism purposes and total bumps that's because protons and electrons have charge and when charge is moving that charge becomes a mini little magnet remember that it's going to be important later so while the proton might not be moving the electron is making magnetism right
no because I totally just lied to you you gullible Goose electrons don't orbit the middle of the atom at all they actually just teleport around in little clouds in all directions which is weird and a whole other scientific Beast maybe for another video The Gist is they don't move enough to really be magnetic but that's okay cuz this guy named Otto Stern thought up a really complicated experiment that proves each electron is actually a teeny magnet in and of itself pause what the freak why is an electron a teeny magnet in and of itself well
that's kind of a hard question because no one really knows the answer is it just is we spawned in here and it was just like that and that is literally the best answer physics can give okay but then if normal stuff is made up of magnetic stuff why the flip isn't everything magnetic well to answer that question we have to ask a bonus question why is the periodic table such a dumb shape ding ding ding valence electrons valence electrons are the electrons on the outer shell which is also called an energy level why is this
important well remember how I was explaining earlier that two magnets facing the opposite way cancel out and don't do anything the same exact thing happens here half of the electrons in an energy level can be facing the same direction once you hit halfway the rest of the electrons have to be facing the opposite direction because that's just how spinning particles like electrons interact let me show you an example let's pluck one of the energy levels that can hold eight electrons throw one electron in there and the atom has a magnetism of one electron easy enough
throw another and the atom has the magnetism of two electrons that math checks out another and it's three another we get four but throw one more electron in there and because it's past halfway point the electron faces the opposite direction canceling out the other electrons so now your atom only has the magnetism of three electrons thrown in another and you get two down to one fill it all the way and your atom is no longer magnetic at all so that means atoms with almost full or almost empty energy levels have pretty much no magnetism which
in turn means that stuff made up by these atoms in the periodic table are not even capable of being significantly magnetic and we're left with this stuff you might have noticed some of this stuff isn't even metal let alone magnetic that's because thus far we have only discussed the magnetism of a single atom which surprise surprise is basically nothing you need a lot of magnetic atoms pointing in the same direction in order to have any sort of magnetism at all which means all of these nearby atoms have to Cluster and work together these cluster SL
crystals fall under one of two categories pherom magnetic and antiferromagnetic AKA yes magnetism and no magnetism again back to basic magnetic principles ferromagnetic crystals have the atoms all facing the same way while atoms in the anti-er freaking while atoms in the anti-ferromagnetic are all flipped cancelling each other out finally we found them are super special magnetic stuff but even though something like iron is ferromagnetic your typical stainless steel spoon isn't automatically magnetic it's magnetic when it's touching a magnet but not magnetic by default why well sure you might have magnetic electrons that make up magnetic
atoms that make up magnetic crystals these crystals aren't always pointing their magnetism the same way because they're all grouped up this Crystal might be pointing this way but a different group over here might be pointing that way do that a couple more times and everyone ends up canceling each other out but if you put this spoon up to a magnet all of the crystals get attracted so the norm North all point up and the South all Point down making the spoon magnetic satisfied but what about the permanent no I'm not doing that but what about
the permanent magnet that is touching the spoon or the magnets on the fridge those are always magnetic all right listen here pal we're going to take one of your beloved ferromagnetic materials and absolutely torch them then we're going to shock them with electricity and that oh hey it's permanently magnetic uh what well it makes a lot more sense when you know how electromagnets work remember remember when I said moving electrons make a magnetic field and then I was like electrons don't move though well while they don't move in the atom they do move from atom
to atom which is what you would call electricity so throw an electric current in a wire and that wire will have a little magnetic field super weak one but if you coil it around a ferromagnetic material like an iron nail the wire is strong enough to pull all of those little groups of atoms in the nail to One Direction making an electromagnet Stay With Me here if you want to make a permanent magnet out of say that nail first you need to heat that nail up to a very specific and very high temperature why well
when you heat up atoms they move you can think of this like loosening up all of the magnetic groups of atoms and where they are pointing now that it's loose we just need to get them to All Point the same way if you tried doing this with an already permanent magnet that magnet would just heat up before even getting to your nail become loose itself and lose its own magnetism that's where electromag magnetism comes in instead of using permanent magnets we pump that nail with a fat electric current and that current is going to align
the groups of atoms all in one single direction as the magnet cools the clusters of atoms tighten and cement in place maintaining the magnetism boom permanent magnet hooray but why then is the entire Earth a permanent magnet last time I checked dirt water and human people are not in fact pherom magnet magnetic well my friend you need to look deeper literally about 5 to 6,000 km deeper under the Earth you will find a ginormous molten iron core but iron isn't inherently magnetic we got to do all this stuff to make it magnetic right well Earth
is pretty much just doing all that stuff on its own Earth spinning causes swirling whirlpools in its core and the constant sinking and rising in different densities of iron within the core all make this flow of metals that produces electric currents and as we know electric currents plus fer magnetic freak ferromagnetic metal such as iron equals magnetism and boom that's how you get the Earth magnet but we don't just give the Earth magnets away here that's going to cost you one subscribe and I'll just flip this screen here for you so yeah
