Make steel objects magnetic by stroking them with a permanent magnet
Suitable For
Grade 2
Difficulty
3
Time Required
<1 Hour
Supervision
Advised
What’s it about?
Although only temporary, any metal object that is touched with a magnet becomes magnetic itself and can attract other metal items which then also becomes magnetic. As soon as the first object is no longer in contact with the magnet, all the steel objects loses their magnetic properties.
A piece of steel or steel nail can also be turned into a ‘permanent’ magnet by stroking it several times with another strong permanent magnet as you will see in the following science experiment:
Topics covered
Magnetism, Ferrous
What will I need?
- IRON NAIL
- BAR MAGNETS
- IRON FILINGS
- SANDWICH BAG
- PENCIL
- PAPER
- KITCHEN SCALE
Procedure (Method)
Although only temporary, any metal object that is touched with a magnet becomes magnetic itself and can attract other metal items which then also becomes magnetic. As soon as the first object is no longer in contact with the magnet, all the steel objects loses their magnetic properties.
A piece of steel or steel nail can also be turned into a ‘permanent’ magnet by stroking it several times with another strong permanent magnet as you will see in the following science experiment:
- Hold the iron nail on a flat surface; then with the north end of a strong bar magnet stroke the iron nail from the head towards the end multiple times. Make sure that you raise the magnet clear of the nail at the end of each stroke and come back down to the head of the nail in a circular motion. Continue this motion for about 50 strokes and the nail should be a little magnetised.
- Place the magnetized nail into a small sandwich bag and hold the plastic of the bag tight over the nail.
- Pour some iron filings onto a piece of paper and dip the nail into the filings.
- Slowly lift the bag with the iron filing sticking to the nail and measure the weight of the filings with a sensitive (grams) kitchen scale. Use pen and paper to record your findings in a chart.
- Remove the filings from the scale and do not use it again as it might have become magnetised and would influence the accuracy of the rest of the results.
- Now, stroke the nail about 50 more times as in ‘step 1’ and repeat the dipping, weighing and recording of the results as in ‘step 3 & 4’.
- Repeat these steps several times for strokes of 200 as well as 500 times and keep on charting the results.
- Examine the data recorded and notice that the more the nail is stroked the stronger is becomes!
How does it work?
A magnet is a metal object of which its electrons are lined up so that it can attract other pieces of ferrous (metal) objects. Certain metals have a structure that allows their electrons to more easily line up and form a magnetic field. Iron, nickel and cobalt are the easiest metals to magnetize by stroking with a permanent magnet. The longer the nail in this science experiment is stroked by the permanent magnet, the more electrons in the metal are lined up and the stronger the magnetic field it produces. The longer any piece of metal is stroked by a magnet the stronger a magnet the metal piece will become, but it can never become stronger than the original magnet!
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