How do mighty magnets work

People who have purchased Mighty Magnet TM can have them rebuilt for a small fee. They can wear from extensive use Mighty Magnets feature Velcro for fast and easy pad replacement. Please specify size and style when ordering pads. The pads have changed along with some of the styles. Let me know when you bought your magnet and the MM for proper sizing.

Mighty Magnets now have a custom scratch removal kit for acrylic applications. No need to drain the tank to repair scratches.! Here is what you get shipped to you direct from the manufacture:. Comes with two magnets, spacer, floating string, protective case, and instruction. Floating string not included in MMF models. The Mighty Magnet Floating 1. Mighty Magnet 2. Mighty Magnet 4. They have a much larger directional wiping space than Mighty Magnets 1,2. Comes with two magnets, spacer, floating string, protective case , and instructions.

The Mighty Magnet Floating 4 allows t he inner cleaning magnet to float to the surface once separated from the pull of the outer magnet making the retrieval string unnecessary. Ages 3 - In stock. Add to Basket. Skip to the end of the images gallery. Skip to the beginning of the images gallery. Product Description. Except that these filings won't retain the property in the absence of a field. The second you take the magnet away, they're demoted again from miniscule magnets to run-of-the-mill iron filings.

Easy come, easy go. Soft iron and other types of iron alloys behave this way. That's why they are used as temporary magnets in telephones and electric motors. Resistive electromagnets , another type of temporary magnet, combine the powers of electricity and of magnetism to enormous effect. Some of the world's most powerful resistive magnets here at the MagLab; they can generate a sustained magnetic field of 35 tesla.

Scientists use these high fields to do a wide range of experiments concerning physical, chemical and biological processes of different types of matter. But electromagnets don't have to be hugely powerful.

Whether in your toaster or TV, even small ones can be quite useful. To make one, you start out with some wire. Now, plug that wire in so that a current runs through it. A magnetic field depicted in blue — and a temporary magnet that you switched on with the current. Think of this as the simplest kind of electromagnet.

Ever hear of "animal magnetism"? Some doctors once believed magnetic fields ran through the human body, and that applying magnets to them could cure various ills.

Some people today believe magnets have special healing properties. That's because electrical current — the flow of electrons through a wire — always generates a magnetic field. You can tell which way the invisible lines of that field are traveling: If you point the thumb of your right hand in the direction of the current, the magnetic field travels in the direction that your fingers, curved as if clasping a rod, are pointing. This web site features an interactive tutorial on the magnetic field around a wire , if you'd like to learn more.

The magnetic field around a household electrical wire, and household appliances, is pretty small. About a foot away from a whirring ceiling fan, for example, the magnetic field measures just a few milligauss. To create a much more powerful magnet, we need to take it to the next level. Let's see what happens when we take that same wire and coil it around once in a circle.

What do you know? With that simple step, all the smaller, separate magnetic fields circling the wire have joined forces to create a far, far greater magnetic field. Very cool! Our new magnetic field is about 10 times more powerful.

This special type of coil, by the way, is called a solenoid , and the magnetic field it produces increases proportionately to the number of coils you include. Coiling the wire also makes the field more uniform, a property important to scientists testing the effects of magnetic fields on different materials. We can improve the magnetic field power of this solenoid even more by inserting an iron alloy core in the middle. Remember our iron atoms of earlier, and how each was a tiny little magnet?

Speaking of electricity, the more power you add to your solenoid, the greater your magnetic field. You can improve on this basic solenoid by replacing the coils with specially designed Bitter plates that better withstand both the pressure resulting from high magnetic fields and the heat resulting from electrical current.

These plates were first invented by a fellow named Francis Bitter in In the s MagLab scientists greatly improved on his design, inventing the Florida Bitter plate, which enabled the creation of more powerful magnets.

Most large electromagnets used for research use Bitter plates, which is why they are sometimes called "Bitter magnets. These electromagnets are called "resistive" magnets because, as in any machine running on normal electricity, the electrons that make up the current encounter resistance as they bump into atoms and other electrons along their journey.

This inefficiency costs when it comes time to pay the electric bill; in fact, the Magnet Lab uses about 7 percent of the electricity consumed in Tallahassee, a city of about , residents! The MagLab also uses a considerable amount of water, which is forced through the holes of the Bitter plates to prevent the magnets from getting too hot.

So resistive magnets eat lots of electricity and drink lots of water , two expensive habits. This is where superconducting magnets, the next type of temporary magnet we will explore, offer some advantages. You could think of it this way: In a superconducting current , the atoms that make up the conducting material stay the heck out of the way of the electrons that make up the current: They're just too cold to make any trouble!

It's easy street for those electrons; once you get 'em started, they'll chug along well after you've unplugged the thing, as long as you keep things chilly.

Superconducting magnets are powered this way, rather than by conventional electricity. In fact, if you look at a superconducting magnet such as the one pictured below , you'll notice that most of it is made up of the materials devoted to keeping it cold.

Superconductivity is an awesomely powerful phenomenon, one that scientists have only just begun to exploit. For years doctors have used it in the powerful superconducting magnets of MRI machines , which take noninvasive pictures of their patients' insides.

Researchers are also aggressively studying how superconducting magnets can be used in levitating trains. The Magnet Lab is home to one of the most powerful superconducting magnets on the planet, a megahertz machine used for nuclear magnetic resonance NMR studies that delivers a field of 21 tesla.

At Japan's National Institute for Materials Science, a slightly more powerful superconducting magnet is in operation. Magnet designers continue to push the envelope, struggling to overcome problems with critical fields , the point at which superconducting materials cease to superconduct. At the Magnet Lab, scientists are working on superconducting magnets with fields upwards of 38 tesla; they have already demonstrated the technology to make these magnets.