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. [...]
magnetic-propulsion-space-pixabay With help from magnets, we may be able to explore farther and deeper into the final frontier than ever before. This may sound like science fiction, but scientists are already experimenting with electromagnetic propulsion as a possible alternative to chemical launches. So, how does electromagnetic propulsion work? When an electromagnet is cooled [...]
A superconducting magnet is an electromagnet where the coils are made of a type II superconductor. It can easily create steady magnetic fields of 100,000 Oersted (8,000,000 amperes per meter). They produce stronger magnetic fields than standard iron-core electromagnets and cost less to operate. Superconductor electromagnets produce a significantly stronger magnetic field than iron-core [...]
