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Magnets.
A magnet has two poles,
called North and South.
A magnetic field is a region around the magnet
where magnet materials experience a
force.
There are only three magnetic elements,
iron, nickel and cobalt.
In practice you will only use iron,
or steel which is an alloy of iron (see
GCSE
Chemistry).
The shape of the magnetic
field around the magnet is
shown by lines.
Arrows on the lines point away from
North and towards South
to show the direction of the
magnetic field.
Notice that the lines of magnetic
force do not
cross each other.
The closer together the lines are, the stronger the field
is.
You need to know the shape of the
magnetic field for a bar magnet,
poles which attract and
poles which repel.
The magnetic
field can be seen by placing the magnet
under a piece
of paper with small
iron filings on top.
The filings line
up in the shape of the
field, as shown above.
The direction of the arrows can be seen by placing a compass in the field.
The compass points in the direction of the arrows,
away from North and towards
South.
Note - this means that when a compass
points to the Earth's North
Pole,
there must be a magnetic South
Pole up there
(bet that confuses the penguins!).
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