What do iron filings show

Classroom Activity Having reminded your students that magnetic fields can be found near permanent magnets and in the presence of an electric Lesson One magnet exerts a force on another. Magnetic field line patterns see the SPT: Magnetism topic episode 01 for an Physics Narrative Magnetic Field.

Magnetic Field Electricity and Magnetism. Misconceptions Electricity and Magnetism Many students are slow to adopt the idea of magnetic poles and only gradually come to see magnetic effects in terms of attraction of unlike poles and repulsion of like poles Number of Resources 3 Number of References 4 Number of Diagnostic Resources 0. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Find out more here. The pole of a magnet is attracted to the opposite pole of another magnet, north to south and south to north.

Magnetic lines of force from the north and south poles pull together and join. You cannot see the magnetic force around a magnet, but you can see the effects of its presence when an iron nail sticks to a magnet. In , Faraday experimented to prove the existence of lines of force. He demonstrated their existence by coating sheets of paper with a thin layer of melted wax.

He then placed these sheets of paper on top of bar magnets and gently poured tiny powder like pieces of iron iron filings over the top.

A force is exerted on a magnetic material brought into a magnetic field. The force is a non-contact force because the magnet and the material do not have to touch each other. You can use a plotting compass or iron filings to detect a magnetic field:. It would be difficult to draw the results from the sort of experiment seen in the photograph, so we draw simple magnetic field lines instead.