Answer to Question #202756 in Electricity and Magnetism for ciara

Question

What happens if you cut a bar magnet in half between the north and south poles? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

If you cut the magnet between the north and south poles, you will get two smaller magnets with the north and south poles. This happens because of the structure of magnetic materials. Magnetic materials have a specific structure - they consist of small magnetic domains. Each of those domains acts like a small magnet. So cutting the big magnet between the poles reduces the amounts of domains in each half twice, but both halves become separate magnets. The cutting procedure can be continued until we ruin domains, each time we will have twice as many magnets.