Comment on Hummingbird feet
wedeworps@sh.itjust.works 10 months agoWhat that teacher probably wanted to say was that, while we can explain how magnetism works, no one can tell you why it happens.
gens@programming.dev 10 months ago
Comment on Hummingbird feet
wedeworps@sh.itjust.works 10 months agoWhat that teacher probably wanted to say was that, while we can explain how magnetism works, no one can tell you why it happens.
venoft@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Nature doesn’t have a reason to do things. There’s no ‘why’ in anything, other than ‘the laws of physics make it do so’.
Gabu@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Therein lies the issue. We don’t know shit about the fundamentals of magnetism, other than “it sort of just follows the rules of electricity”.
madejackson@lemmy.world 10 months ago
For completeness, we cannot say for sure if we even exist. The universe could very well just be an imagination and nothing really matters, including the laws of physics and our understanding of magnets.
elbarto777@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m addicted to solipsism. I know I’m meaningless in the grand scheme of things. But I’ve been thinking that when I die and cease to observe the universe and be aware that it exists, then what’s the point of it existing?
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Okay, but, with other forces, like electricity, we understand that elections are bumping down the line and the force/motion of that can be used to do work or something.
With magnetism, it’s more like, a complete black box, we can see what happens when we do x, but we have no idea what makes it do that. Magnetism it’s measurable, we know it exists, we don’t know how it exists. We know it works, but we can’t figure out why it works.
It’s a bit like gravity. We have some good theories, but that’s about it.
I_Has_A_Hat@startrek.website 10 months ago
Isn’t it the alignment of molecules in a material so that their electrical charges are all oriented in the same direction, thus attracting the opposite charged ions of other molecules in other objects towards the corresponding side of the magnet material? That’s why magnetism only affects materials like iron where the molecules naturally form in a uniform orientation during it’s transition from solid to liquid, and not other material that has a more random orientation.
I mean, I guess when you really boil it down, there may still be some question as to why positively charged ions are attracted to negatively charged ions in the first place. But then we’re getting into quantum mechanics which is way deeper of an answer than a grade schooler would be looking for and so far down the rabbit hole that making a claim like “we dont know how magnets work” is only true in the technical sense. And by that, I mean it holds as much truth as “we don’t know how anything works”.
evranch@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
No! That’s the point I’m trying to make! Gravity and its source truly are a mystery (aside from the basic fact that it causes mass to attract other mass, of course)
Magnetism is a well defined component of the electromagnetic force. We know what it is, where it comes from, and why it has the effect that it does. We’ve known most of this for a century! The study of electromagnetism came early to the field of physics because it’s easy to work with and understand on human scales.
To be very short, moving electricity creates magnetism; moving magnetism creates electricity. A permanent magnet is magnetic because most of the electrons are spinning the same way, creating magnetism. That’s it.
That is what you tell the grade 4 students.
Later you can teach them about magnetic domains, dipole moment, electric and magnetic fields and their relationship to radio waves etc… But these are all things we know, and I feel like it’s important that kids know that humanity has in fact mastered magnetism.
Sure there is still a lot to learn, but at this point it’s engineering, not science. Practical things like magnetic alloys or optimal field arrangements for motors.