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Lodestone. Lodestones are naturally magnetized pieces of the mineral magnetite. [1][2] They are naturally occurring magnets, which can attract iron. The property of magnetism was first discovered in antiquity through lodestones. [3] Pieces of lodestone, suspended so they could turn, were the first magnetic compasses, [3][4][5][6] and their ...
Magnetite is one of the very few minerals that is ferrimagnetic; it is attracted by a magnet as shown here. Unit cell of magnetite. The gray spheres are oxygen, green are divalent iron, blue are trivalent iron. Also shown are an iron atom in an octahedral space (light blue) and another in a tetrahedral space (gray).
A vibrating sample magnetometer, a widely used tool for measuring magnetic hysteresis. Rock magnetism is the study of the magnetic properties of rocks, sediments and soils. The field arose out of the need in paleomagnetism to understand how rocks record the Earth's magnetic field. This remanence is carried by minerals, particularly certain ...
Natural remanent magnetization is the permanent magnetism of a rock or sediment. This preserves a record of the Earth's magnetic field at the time the mineral was laid down as sediment or crystallized in magma and also the tectonic movement of the rock over millions of years from its original position. Natural remanent magnetization forms the ...
A rare-earth magnet is a strong permanent magnet made from alloys of rare-earth elements. Developed in the 1970s and 1980s, rare-earth magnets are the strongest type of permanent magnets made, producing significantly stronger magnetic fields than other types such as ferrite or alnico magnets. The magnetic field typically produced by rare-earth ...
Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that occur through a magnetic field, which allows objects to attract or repel each other. Because both electric currents and magnetic moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field, magnetism is one of two aspects of electromagnetism. The most familiar effects occur in ferromagnetic ...
Black sand is sand that is black in color. One type of black sand is a heavy, glossy, partly magnetic mixture of usually fine sands containing minerals such as magnetite, found as part of a placer deposit. Another type of black sand, found on beaches near a volcano, consists of tiny fragments of basalt. While some beaches are predominantly made ...
The history of geomagnetism is concerned with the history of the study of Earth's magnetic field. It encompasses the history of navigation using compasses, studies of the prehistoric magnetic field (archeomagnetism and paleomagnetism), and applications to plate tectonics. Magnetism has been known since prehistory, but knowledge of the Earth's ...