What Is a Magnetic Field?
1. Magnets
Weve all seen and/or used them, you may even have one stuck on your refrigerator, but what are they exactly? Electricity and magnetism are essentially the same thing, in much the same way that energy and matter are essentially the same thing. Atoms within objects are electrically charged, with negatively charged particles being attracted to positively charged particles. The atoms inside any material, such as a lump of iron, have electrons orbiting the nucleus. Atoms with unpaired electrons give that atom an electric charge, and this charge causes other nearby atoms to become aligned with them. When all of the atoms are aligned in this way, the object itself becomes magnetized.
