• Question: why do magnets attract and fight apart?

    Asked by sammy1 to Ben, Clare, Ezzy, Mario, Sam on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Mario Campanelli

      Mario Campanelli answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      every charged particle moving in a magnetic field feels s force, called Lorentz force. And permanent magnets have electrons all moving coherently in similar trajectories, so they feel the Lorentz force and are moved away

    • Photo: Clare Burrage

      Clare Burrage answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Magnets can have two charges + and -, in fact all the magnets we know have + at one end and – at the other. The magnetic force says that similar charges attract one another (so + and +, and – and -) and that opposite charges repel each other ( + and – ).

      They do this because physics always wants to end up in the system with least energy (it’s very lazy!). You can feel that trying to put two similar magnets next to each other requires a lot of effort.

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