Properties of magnets and their interactions

Properties of Magnets

  • Attractive Property

  • Reflective Property

  • Directive Property

Attractive Property

  • A magnet always attracts objects like iron, nickel, cobalt.

  • With the experiment with iron filling the can conclude that the Iron filling gets attracted near the ends of the magnets. These ends are called as Poles of a Magnet.

  • The attractive property is more at the poles.

  • Every magnet consists of two poles one is the north pole and other one south pole.

  • The magnetic poles always exist in pairs” (Tamil Nadu Government #).

  • When a magnet is broken into two pieces, each piece behaves as a separate bar magnet.

  • When a magnet is vertically split, the length of the altered and each piece acts as a magnet.

  • When a magnet is horizontally split, the length of the new pieces of magnet remains unaltered and there is no change in their polarity.

  • In both cases, the strength of the magnet is reduced.

Repulsive Property

  • Like poles repel and unlike poles attract each other.

  • That is north pole attracts south pole and south pole attracts the north pole.

  • And North pole repels the north pole and south pole repels the south pole.

Directive Property

  • A suspended magnet always points towards the North-South Direction.

  • The freely suspended magnet always aligns itself to the North-South Direction and this property is called as the Directive property of magnet.

  • The north pole of the bar magnet always points towards the North and south pole of the bar magnet always points towards the south.