Giant Magnetoresistance Have you ever sat around on a rainy day contemplating your computer’s hard disk drive? Though often taken for granted, this magnetized device makes it possible to store and retrieve information digitally – in everything from video games to iPods to your personal computer. The first hard disk drives (HDDs) date back to [...]
Permanent Magnets: A Study in Sticktoitiveness There are two basic kinds of magnets permanent and temporary. We'll take on permanent first which is appropriate, because before humans could invent and exploit temporary magnets, they had to discover the permanent kind first. People first happened upon magnets sometime before 600 BC with the discovery of the [...]
Hybrid Magnets: Best of Both Worlds Unlike most of the math that goes on at the Magnet Lab, the equation you need to make a more powerful continuous field magnet is pretty easy. Take a very powerful superconducting magnet say, 11.5 tesla and a very powerful resistive magnet say, 33.5 tesla and put them together. [...]
Electromagnets: Two Forces Team Up Resistive electromagnets, another type of temporary magnet, combine the powers of electricity and of magnetism to enormous effect. Although superconducting electromagnets, which we'll discuss soon, offer many advantages, certain laws of physics prevent them from reaching the field strengths electromagnets are capable of. Some of the world's most powerful resistive [...]
