Types of Magnets

You must have come across plenty of magnets in your daily life, some stuck on your walls, refrigerator magnets, some on the cupboards or in toys. Magnets are found in many other appliances around the house like telephone and radio. Even our planet earth is one giant ball of magnet, that attracts us all to the surface. There are two kinds of magnets, natural magnets and man-made magnets. The natural magnets are rich in iron mineral and called magnetite. Man-made magnets are made by processing metallic alloys to get the charges aligned. In this article we will cover the types of magnets for kids.

Different Kinds of Magnets

The answer to how many types of magnets are there is four. These four types are:

• Permanent magnets
• Temporary magnets
• Electromagnets
• Superconductors

Magnets and their Uses

The four types of magnets and their uses vary according to their use in various fields. The following paragraphs will explain all about these magnets.

Permanent Magnets
Of all the different kinds of magnets, the permanent magnets are the most commonly used. Permanent magnets are those magnets that once magnetized can retain their magnetism. The most common use of permanent magnet is used to hold notes and decorate the refrigerator door. They are used as hooks, in audio speakers, jewelry making, compass, etc. The permanent magnets are further divided into different based on their composition like:

• Neodymium Iron Boron (NdFeB or NIB) - These are really strong magnets that even half-inch diameter of a magnet is able to lift ferromagnetic objects of several pounds. These are the most expensive of all the types of permanent magnets.
• Samarium Cobalt (SmCo) - Similar to neodymium magnets, samarium care also the strongest magnets made of rare earth magnets. They too like the neodymium are very difficult to demagnetize.
• Alnico - The alnico magnets are very strong magnets that are used commonly for science experiments. They are more expensive than the ceramic magnets.
• Ceramic or Ferrite - These are strong magnets that are used for many lab experiments.

Temporary Magnets
The temporary magnets are those that act like permanent magnets only when they are within a range of a strong magnetic field. As soon as these magnets are removed from the field, they lose their magnetism. The objects that act as temporary magnets are paperclips, iron nails, etc. The temporary magnets and their uses include in telephones, electric motors, even in the production of electricity, etc.

Electromagnets
The electromagnets are magnets that are a tightly wound coil of wire. When current flows through the coil of wire, usually with an iron core, it acts like a permanent magnet. It is easy to change the strength and polarity of the magnetic field of the electromagnets. This can be done by changing the magnitude of the current flowing through the wire and changing the direction of electric charge. The uses of these magnets include large cranes, lifting cables and rods during construction, television, computers, radios, video tapes, speakers, etc.

Superconductors
The superconductors are the strongest magnets. These magnets are also made of wire coils of special metal alloys without a metal core. These metal alloys become superconductors when they are cooled at very low temperatures. The superconductor magnets uses include in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines, NMR equipment, mass spectrometers, magnetic separation process and particle accelerators, etc.

Sizes and Strength of Magnets

There are different types of magnets that vary in size and shape. You will find there are tiny magnets that are used by the electronic industry and giant magnets that are used for cyclotron experiments. Even the strength of the magnets vary widely. Simple magnets the stick to your refrigerator having one tenth of tesla strength. The U.S. Department of Energy's Berkeley Lab in 2001 build an electromagnet to bend the paths of high-speed atomic particles. The strength of this magnet was 14.7 tesla, the strongest in the world.

This was some explanation in short on the different types of magnets for kids. Magnets have been used for over thousands of centuries by sailors to find their way around at sea. William Gilbert, in the early 1600s, began studying the magnets to prove that the earth too had magnetic properties and one could change magnetism by external methods. Since then, the studies of magnets has helped in many useful inventions that has helped mankind immensely. I hope this article on magnets and their uses has been a helpful read.