Magnetism [1 of 2]

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How the Resistor works

Overview

There are two types of magnets that are known to exist that are known as a natural magnet and the artificial magnet "man-made magnet". Natural magnets are found in small quantities on the earth's crust and are known as loadstone or magnetite. Artificial magnets are ether made form rubbing a magnet over a soft iron and making it magnetized or by flowing electrons through a wire / coil.

Intro to flux

Lets first look at the artificial magnet, to do this we must take a step back and look at the characteristics of particles.
When we first looked at the atom we saw that the positively charged and neutrally charged particles gathered at the center to form the nucleus while negatively charges electrons orbited the nucleus. If you read the article on the atom you would quickly realize that I did not go into too much detail on why these particles are attracted to each other.

Surrounding every particle there is a field of influence that is thought to act like fingers "known as flux" that reaches outward to attract other particles of the opposite charge. As you see below positively charges particles have a one kind of charge seems to have arrows that point outward while negatively charged particles have what looks like arrows that point inward. Although we may never know which particle has the positive property and which particle has a negative property, we do know that these two particles have opposite charges and are attracted together with opposite charges of flux.

This model to the left was discovered by Neils Bohr, it states that like charges repel each other and opposite charges attract each other. The reason that like charges can never attract each other is because the lines of flux are attracted to the opposite charged lines while similar flux lines never touch or cross over each other.
Now these flux lines are small, they are invisible but also very small, almost to the point to where they are the size of the atom. When you have electrical flow, something happens that completely changes the properties of the material that is caused by a slight change in flux behavior. When electrons flow through a wire in one direction the flux lines combine into something that can be seen when you introduce flux conductive filings "iron filings".

Flux laws

These flux lines are governed by a law that it states that if you wrap left hand around a wire with you thumb pointing in the direction of current flow then the flux lines will point in the direction of your other fingers.

   So far we know that flux lines with the same charges never intersects each other but what happens when two of the same charged flux lines comes in contact with each other?

   Since only the electrons are flowing in electronics, you will never deal with positive flux lines because protons are stationary in the atom. With that said and done you will only have to remember two short rules.
   This would cause the wires to separate but with such little force that it would not be noticeable. To create a field strong enough to do work then you will need to make something called a coil which is basically a wire wrapped around its self in a ring like manner so that the fields combine together. If you were to turn the wire a couple if times you will be able to produce something called an electromagnet. The difference between the wire with flux lines and a coil is that the coil has a north and south pole. Not only that but the coil has the ability to pick up objects like screws and paperclips.

Lets say we have two wires with enough electricity going through them that they have a substantial magnetic field "flux field" around it. If another wire is running parallel to it and electrons are flowing the same direction then the flux lines will combine to produce a field that has twice the strength.

Now if the same wire was in place but one of the wires had an electron flow in the opposite direction then the flux lines will repel one another and compact the field.

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