Magnets and the curiosities I have about them

[TXWolfie]

Has anyone on this board ever thought about what would happen, if they took a magnet from a speaker and ground it down to almost dust.  when this is accomplished I wonder if there would be north and south poles of the tiny shards/dust or will it be 1 huge pile of North or South. I actually was thinking about this today, and wondered what would be the outcome of it. My brain is always thinking and always has idea's running thru it. And before I go and pulverize a magnet figured I would ask on the board. Please don't go burning me for this its an experiment I am thinking of doing and figured I would ask this before I attempt it.

[RP]

All magnets (of any size) have a north and south pole.  There is no such thing as only a north or only a south pole.  If you break a magnet in two pieces they will both have a north and south pole.

Much like every object has a top and bottom side.  If you grind it up, each piece will still have a top and bottom side.

[Madscientist267]

Assuming the Curie point for the magnet's material isn't hit due to heat from the grinding... 

I'd bet that the resulting pile would have some peculiar looking physical characteristics, ferrofluid comes to mind.

Even though the north of one chunk and the south of another would be attracted to each other in tendencies of chains, repulsion due to leakage from 'awkward' alignment of the numerous sizes and shapes would probably cause them to work their way into bows (like solar flares), or peaks (like ferrofluid), or maybe a combination of the two?

Couldn't say for sure, never ground one up to find out. But I'd be willing to bet you'd have an interesting looking pile of dust when you're done!

Take pictures!

Steve

[zap]

TXWolfie, I've done it... a bunch of dust everywhere.

Exercise extreme caution if you do it.

If they're speaker magnets then there's a good chance they're ceramic and you'll have lots of dust... BUT...  if they're rare earth magnets:

Rare earth magnets are brittle and can be abrasively machined with coolant  served to absorb heating and dust. Without  coolant, rare earth magnets could crack and chip by the heat produced during  high speed cutting or grinding, and the sparks contain the easily oxidized grinding dust that  could cause fire!

I've cut some rare earth (Samarium Cobalt?) before... wicked sparks and some weird smoldering masses.

[joestue]

Has anyone on this board ever thought about what would happen, if they took a magnet from a speaker and ground it down to almost dust.  when this is accomplished I wonder if there would be north and south poles of the tiny shards/dust or will it be 1 huge pile of North or South.

there's a thread on sciencemadness about boiling such magnets in nitric acid 
i don't think anyone here has ground them into dust without also lighting them on fire.
I've heard a story about a guy who ground up a bunch of Al in a ball mill, when he opened the container up it exploded, neo's might do something similar.

[DamonHD]

There's a lot of theoretical argy-bargy about the existence or otherwise of magnetic monopoles (just north or just south), and as a bunch of them would make an excellent antigrav/maglev, people have been trying to isolate them, without success.

You're unlikely to succeed where DARPA has failed!

Rgds

Damon

[electrondady1]

i've used a wet tile saw to cut up a lot of ceramic speaker magnets.
some hard drive neo. mags as well
a tile saw  uses a diamond covered blade.
the resulting slurry does not exhibit any unusual properties other than that of normal iron filings.
it is very magnetic.
but except for the odd chunk,  seems to have lost any polarization
i have dried and kept the" magnet dust"
i think i have a use for it

[TXWolfie]

The grinding I was referring to would be in a mortal pestle or in a better term hammer and another hard substance not an actual grinding machine. As I was thinking of this and looking at the magnet I figured using something with speed to it might be a little extensive and would do alot more harm then good to myself. So theoretically i was correct if you keep making the magnet smaller it will always have a north and south pole, now my curiosity got the best of me.

[Tritium]

WillitBlend.com  (Blendtec) ground magnets in a one of their blenders once upon a time.

http://willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=magnets

Thurmond

[zap]

WillitBlend.com   (Blendtec) ground magnets in a one of their blenders once upon a time.

http://willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=magnets

Thurmond

ROFL... I loved the "Will it blend? - iPad 2"

Phewww... app smoke... Don't breath this.

Thanks for that Thurmond!