Magnets In The Land of Oz

What the Wizard of Oz might make of common everyday magnets is anyone's guess.

One thing's certain, however, and that is the fact how magnets really work in Kansas, as they do everywhere else, just doesn't match the popular scientific mythology of how magnets are supposed to function.

Let's face facts.

Modern science, just as medieval science before it, carries with it a truck-load of baggage from earlier superstitions, old-wives' tales and just plain over-imaginative fiction (it's called science-fiction these days).

The common explanations of how magnets really work should certainly be classified as one of these, rather than a reasoned and proven scientific fact....

We live in the Land of Oz if magnets work the way we are led to believe by misinformed educators.

Take so-called "magnetic attraction" for instance.

By what magical, mystical force of nature do magnets "attract" one another?

For that matter, what makes similar poles of magnets repel consistently, and how does a magnet know the difference between its north "pole" and its south?

What makes the two ends of a magnet polar opposites?

And even though we know about and can actually see the effect of magnetic fields, what creates this force and keeps it active almost perpetually?

That's a big chunk of unknown territory to modern science, which might make far better uses of magnetic fields and force than it presently does, if it only understood the correct answers to those ages-old puzzles....

Let's start with the fact that magnets can repel.

This force is not inherent in the magnet itself, which can be nothing more than a formerly non-magnetized piece of iron, after all.

Therefore the force must come from the environment and not the magnet, and is only funneled or channeled by the magnet or magnetizable material.

And the fact that this force has a weaker and stronger function is obvious by the fact that it moves in a circular path perpetually, from pole to pole.

For to move implies a stronger force in the direction of movement, and a weaker force in the direction from which the force has moved, and this force -- like everything else in nature, from flower leaves on stalks to mighty hurricanes -- moves cyclonically.

Consider two tornadoes approaching one another. What might happen?

If they rotate in the same direction, as they would, they could come together and form into a far larger and more powerful cyclone.

But what if one rotated the opposite of the other?

The force of pressure between the two would force them to fly apart, and perhaps flip one on its end, like a gyroscope righting itself, until both were aligned and rotating in the same direction as usual.

And that is just what magnets do.

When the poles are unopposed, the pressure of the two magnetic fields are such that the magnets are pushed apart.

But when the poles are opposite, their fields rotate in such a way that a vacuum is created between the magnets. Simple air pressure, then, pushes the magnets together.

So you see, there really is no such thing as "magnetic attraction," unless of course you happen to be "Mr. Wizard" and you live in the magical make-believe Land called Oz!

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