Answer to Question #116090 in Electricity and Magnetism for Camil

Question

Only certain materials can be magnets. What does it depend on?

Answer 1

All atoms are magnetic; they have charges moving around within them. For a macroscopic object made of atoms to be a magnet, the atoms’ magnetic fields in it have to align with each other. This will create a large scale magnetic field around the object. In order for the atoms’ magnetic fields to line up within the material, they have to be able to move freely. In many materials the atoms are held too rigidly in place to be able to line up with any external magnetic field. If the magnetic fields of all those atoms are randomly oriented then they would cancel each other out and the material would have no net magnetic field.