Magnetism and Matter

Magnetic phenomena are universal in nature. Vast, distant galaxies, the tiny invisible atoms, humans and beasts all are permeated through and through with a host of magnetic fields from a variety of sources. The earth’s magnetism predates human evolution. The word magnet is derived from the name of an island in Greece called magnesia where magnetic ore deposits were found, as early as 600 BC. In the previous chapter we have learned that moving charges or electric currents produce magnetic fields. This discovery, which was made in the early part of the nineteenth century is credited to Oersted, Ampere, Biot and Savart, among others. In the present chapter, we take a look at magnetism as a subject in its own right. Some of the commonly known ideas regarding magnetism are: (i) The earth behaves as a magnet with the magnetic field pointing approximately from the geographic south to the north. (ii) When a bar magnet is freely suspended, it points in the north-south direction. The tip which points to the geographic north is called the north pole and the tip which points to the geographic south is called the south pole of the magnet.

We begin our study by examining iron filings sprinkled on a sheet of glass placed over a short bar magnet. The arrangement of iron filings is shown in Fig. 5.1. The pattern of iron filings suggests that the magnet has two poles similar to the positive and negative charge of an electric dipole. As mentioned in the introductory section, one pole is designated the North pole and the other, the South pole. When suspended freely, these poles point approximately towards the geographic north and south poles, respectively. A similar pattern of iron filings is observed around a current carrying solenoid.

The pattern of iron filings permits us to plot the magnetic field lines*. This is shown both for the bar-magnet and the current-carrying solenoid in Fig. 5.2. For comparison refer to the Chapter 1, Figure 1.14(d). Electric field lines of an electric dipole are also displayed in Fig. 5.2(c). The magnetic field lines are a visual and intuitive realisation of the magnetic field. Their properties are: (i) The magnetic field lines of a magnet (or a solenoid) form continuous closed loops. This is unlike the electric dipole where these field lines begin from a positive charge and end on the negative charge or escape to infinity.

In some textbooks the magnetic field lines are called magnetic lines of force. * This nomenclature is avoided since it can be confusing. Unlike electrostatics the field lines in magnetism do not indicate the direction of the force on a (moving) charge.

(ii) The tangent to the field line at a given point represents the direction of the net magnetic field $\mathbf{B}$ at that point. (iii) The larger the number of field lines crossing per unit area, the stronger is the magnitude of the magnetic field $\mathbf{B}$. In Fig. 5.2(a), $\mathbf{B}$ is larger around region ii than in region i . (iv) The magnetic field lines do not intersect, for if they did, the direction of the magnetic field would not be unique at the point of intersection. One can plot the magnetic field lines in a variety of ways. One way is to place a small magnetic compass needle at various positions and note its orientation. This gives us an idea of the magnetic field direction at various points in space.

In the previous chapter, we have explained how a current loop acts as a magnetic dipole (Section 4.9). We mentioned Ampere’s hypothesis that all magnetic phenomena can be explained in terms of circulating currents.

The resemblance of magnetic field lines for a bar magnet and a solenoid suggest that a bar magnet may be thought of as a large number of circulating currents in analogy with a solenoid. Cutting a bar magnet in half is like cutting a solenoid. We get two smaller solenoids with weaker magnetic properties. The field lines remain continuous, emerging from one face of the solenoid and entering into the other face. One can test this analogy by moving a small compass needle in the neighbourhood of a bar magnet and a current-carrying finite solenoid and noting that the deflections of the needle are similar in both cases. To make this analogy more firm we may calculate the axial field of a finite solenoid depicted in Fig. 5.3 (a). We can demonstrate that at large distances this axial field resembles that of a bar magnet. The magnitude of the field at point P due to the solenoid is

$$B=\frac{{\mu }_0}{4\pi }\frac{2m}{r^3}(5.1)$$

This is also the far axial magnetic field of a bar magnet which one may obtain experimentally. Thus, a bar magnet and a solenoid produce similar magnetic fields. The magnetic moment of a bar magnet is thus equal to the magnetic moment of an equivalent solenoid that produces the same magnetic field.