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Comment by pugworthy | Hacker News Reader

Magnets - We thought we knew how they worked.

We do. This is just a different way to build one. It's a configuration of atoms that we didn't realize could be made stable, and their atom-level magnets line up in a novel way. We understand atomic magnetism pretty well.

Somebody get ICP on the phone this instant.

What is ICP?

Insane Clown Posse. The source of the “magnets, how do they work” meme since it’s a lyric from their song.

Insane Clown Posse. They have a song called Miracles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracles_(Insane_Clown_Posse_s... which has the line: "Fucking magnets, how do they work?" which became a meme for a while.

I highly recommend watching its video if anyone hasn't. It's got a nice groove, the lyrics are actually quite appreciative of nature... but the magnet line is a real weird inclusion.

Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-agl0pOQfs

I was a high school science teacher when that song was popular. That was a fun time!

Older school hiphop gritty downshift order when The Beastie Boys or Biggie just won't work:

1. Dr. Octagon (Kool Keith)

2. Insane Clown Posse

3. Bubb Rubb (also memetic) https://youtu.be/DYRDuOCKr2A

Inductively Coupled Plasma A method to energize samples for photometric analysis.

Anyone who claims they know how magnets work, are a liar

Strong words. Why do you believe no one knows how magnets work? What would be a satisfactory answer?

I believe GP is a riff on the common joke among physicists: "Anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics is either lying or crazy."

To be more specific in the case of magenetism, you can say that, for example, ferromagnetism arises from the alignment of magnetic moments into cohesive domains, where the individual magenetic moments arise on the atomic level from unpaired electrons in the d or f orbitals.

But if you poke at that (incomplete) answer a little bit, things start to get complicated. How exactly do magnetic domains align? What if there's a disruption in crystal structure? Are there other sources of magnetic moments? Where does the magnetic moment on an elementary particle come from? The answers to these questions get pretty complicated and questions like these motivate a lot of active scientific research.

we don't know why or how there is electric charge (and their related fields), we just know that there is electric charge; it's one of the properties of the universe; same with gravity. We have uncovered mathematical laws of charge and and their relationship (via div, grad, curl and all that) to magnetic fields, but we don't know how or why, just what is.

My source is Feynman.

Feynman was awhile ago.

But which Fenyman?

"A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." — Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity

You are confusing conceptual models of reality with reality itself.

The Scientific Method is used to construct an accurate, reliable, self-consistent, non-arbitrary representation of the world, which are models.

QED is one of the most stringently tested theories in physics. But it is a model and will never be proven as 'True', we just get more confident in he model after it passes test after test, after test, after test.

But it is still just the map and not the territory itself.

Feynman knew this well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw

I think you misunderstand the sentiment. You can know how they work; you cannot know why they work.

For a better tomorrow?

Physics answers what and how. Why is for philosophers and theologians.

The why is not required. It works whether we want it to or not.

Magnets are part of the Elves technology. That's why there's a magnetic North Pole. So, we do know how they work...magic of Christmas

It’s why magnets only work for people who truly believe.

Yes, and electricity uses magic smoke technology.

    :magic smoke: n.

       A  substance trapped inside IC packages that enables them to function
       (also  called  blue  smoke; this is similar to the archaic phlogiston
       hypothesis  about  combustion). Its existence is demonstrated by what
       happens  when  a chip burns up -- the magic smoke gets let out, so it
       doesn't work any more. See {smoke test}, {let the smoke out}.

       Usenetter Jay Maynard tells the following story: "Once, while hacking
       on  a  dedicated Z80 system, I was testing code by blowing EPROMs and
       plugging  them  in the system, then seeing what happened. One time, I
       plugged  one  in  backwards.  I only discovered that after I realized
       that Intel didn't put power-on lights under the quartz windows on the
       tops of their EPROMs -- the die was glowing white-hot. Amazingly, the
       EPROM  worked  fine  after I erased it, filled it full of zeros, then
       erased  it  again.  For all I know, it's still in service. Of course,
       this  is  because  the  magic  smoke didn't get let out." Compare the
       original phrasing of {Murphy's Law}.


    curl -fsSL https://jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-4.4.7.dos.txt | LC_ALL=C sed -n '/^:magic smoke/, /^:/{/^:mail storm/d;p;}'

James Clerk Maxwell is a liar?

Are you telling me that this is not true?

∆ • B = 0

EDIT: See? Right there on the tin.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_equations

EDIT2: The meaning of this statement is that the sum of magnetic lines of force entering a frame is equal to those exiting; there are no magnetic monopoles.

Why tho?

There are four fundamental forces that are observed: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force.

Why these forces exist, we cannot know.

How these forces act is a question of physics and mathematics.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction

Physics and math are things people invented to build models of what we see. They don't govern reality.

If you like electricity, and everything that it does for you, then you must understand that it is absolutely described by Maxwell's laws.

No exceptions.

I have upvoted you, and I don't think that you should be punished for what you have said.

There are ways that it is wrong, and ways that it is right.

...if you had said "why?" and not "how?" then you would be absolutely right.

The Orange Man was right!

Yes, I thought it was the Covid vaccine that made people magnetic

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