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From: wware@world.std.com (Will Ware)
Subject: Re: See me, hear me, feel me, touch me.
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References: <3n651q$qro@ds2.acs.ucalgary.ca> <Andy.Bettis-2404951608250001@andyb-mac.isltd.insignia.com> <1995Apr24.124939.1@daffy.millersv <jandaD7v56L.6JM@netcom.com> <9505010008.AA001en@abarnett.demon.co.uk> <D7z1up.G5u@jack.sns.com> <3otqpp$78b@cabell.vcu.edu>
Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 14:15:07 GMT
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Corbett B. Hammond (mus5cbh@cabell.vcu.edu) wrote:
[ as an explanation of magnetism ]
:   ... charged particles will attract other oppositely charged
: particles, particularly those in iron, and repel similarly
: charged particles, those in most other magnets.

The direct interaction of charged particles is electrostatic force.
Magnetism is a relativistic second-order effect dependent on the
movement of charged particles. Usually, magnets do not carry a net
charge, and objects with no net charge don't interact
electrostatically (say, two chalkboard erasers).

Basically it works like this. When a current flows, magnetic field
vectors appear around the current, pointing circumferentially (like
the velocity vector on the surface of a soup can spinning around the
current flow with the current flow along its axis). When a current
flows in a circle (a crude approximation of what electrons do in
atoms), a donut-shaped magnetic field is created, flowing out of the
circle, around, and back thru it. That's how magnetic fields are
created. In all cases, you have current, i.e. *moving* charged
particles.

The effect of magnetic fields is to to create a sideways force on
moving charged particles. If a current flows thru a wire, and the
wire is sitting in a magnetic field, the wire will experience a
force perpendicular to both the magnetic field lines and the direction
of its current (if they are in the same or opposite directions, the
wire won't experience a force). Likewise, a charged particle just
zinging along thru empty space will tend to go in circles in the
presence of a magnetic field; you see this kind of thing in cloud
chambers.

Sorry to get pedantic about this, but to a quick casual reading
your post appeared to suggest that magnets operate electrostatically,
and the physicist in me couldn't contain himself.
-- 
=====================================================================
"Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force. Like
fire, a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - G. Washington
Will Ware <wware@world.std.com> PGP fp 45A8722CD14910CC F0CF48FB93BF7289
