Round

Can you get spherical magnets?

[This message has been edited by Epitectus (edited October 06, 1999).]

 

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I know we used to use cigar-shaped magnets when i grew up, for our cows. They were excellent to play with. They are called Bolus' and are used to collect nails and metal inside the cows stomach. You can buy them at farm supply or feed stores.

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Eric Cooper

 

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Is there even such a thing? Where would the poles be?

Actually, now that I think about it, Natural Wonders sells magnetic experiment kits that have round magnets the size of marbles.

 

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Spherical magnets?

Sure. We live on one. It is called Earth. Every star and many planets are spherical magnets.

Far more interesting question:

Take a hollow sphere and cut it up into 100 wedges. Each wedge has an outside end (from the sphere's surface) and the inside end - from its inner surface. Now make 100 magnets of the same shapes as the wedges, each with a north pole on the outside end and the south pole on the inside end (or other way around). Put them together into a sphere, like jigsaw puzzle. Will this sphere show any magnetic properties? Or will all magnetic field lines end up within the shell's thickness?

 

Hmmm...

That almost sounds like a large-scale magnetic monopole. I wonder...

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I am; therefore I think.

 

Poles have nothing to do with a magnets shape. Just how the iron atoms are oriented.