Science Question: Which metals are magnetic?

[LordRaiden]

Hey all. Filling out a science trivia thing and one of the questions is "What metals are magnetic, which are not?"

Uh, I don't really know without the ability to experiement on a whole bunch of them. Anybody know the answer to this one? I know things like iron and copper are, but what about other metals?

 

All ferrous metals are.

 

[Beau]

Everything is, given a strong enough magnetic field.

Watched a special on the discovery channel once where they made a grasshopper levitate in a magnetic chamber.

 

[slycat]

magneto!

 

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by: Roger
All ferrous metals are.

What makes a metal magnetic?

All materials are made up of atoms, which can behave like little magnets. If these magnets are permanently aligned, we obtain a net magnetic field, and therefore the entire material is a natural, usable, permanent magnet. In some materials, the little magnets are very weak (for example, aluminum, plastic, or copper). Thus these types of metals have no net magnetic properties, and therefore are not attracted or repelled by other magnets. In other types of materials (for example- steel bolt) the mini-magnets are not fixed and can therefore be aligned. For example, if the North pole of a permanent magnet is near this metal, the North poles of these mini-magnets will be pushed away and the South will be attracted. This causes the metal to be attracted to the magnet. The same is true for the case where the South pole of a permanent magnet is near this metal. The opposite occurs and the metal will still be attracted.

it has something to do with weak/strong valense (sp?) electrons

materials that are highly magnetic have an extra electron or something like that, now my head hurts because this question made that stuff float to the top of my brain

 

[Heisenberg]

Depends on what you mean by magnetic. Some materials have a net magnetic field all the time, even in the absence of an external magnetic field. These are called ferromagnetic materials. Other materials take on a magnetic field parallel to an external applied field (known as paramagnetic) while other take on a field anti-parallel to the external field (known as dimagnetic). They're probably asking about ferromagnetic materials. There's no easy to way to say which materials are ferromagnetic and which aren't just by "looking" as it depends on an interaction between the spin of the electron and what's called exchange coupling. But I digress; short answer: ferrous metals.