magnetism

Magnetism is a fascinating invisible force – it influences the environment around it. A magnet is a material that can pull certain types of metal towards ...

What is magnetism used for? Do you have fridge magnets? Have you ever noticed that the refrigerator door pulls itself shut when you start to close ...

A New Zealand-designed benchtop nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer called Spinsolve is making material analysis easier for a variety of industries. According to the machine’s developers ...

Stars like our Sun are made of ionised gas known as plasma. In fact, space is dominated by plasma – space scientists (astrophysicists) believe that about ...

We happily live in the Earth’s gaseous lower atmosphere composed of a mixture of gases – primarily nitrogen and oxygen. However, if we move upwards from ...

Professor Sir Paul Callaghan, physicist and founding director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, passed away on 24 March 2012. Professor Sir Paul ...

Astronomers at Victoria University were part of an international team led by Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), which has pooled their radio astronomy observations ...

The Earth has a magnetic field around it, and some magnetic minerals line up with that field. A compass also lines up in the field so ...

Position: Senior Scientist, Robinson Research Institute. Former Research scientist, Industrial Research Limited (IRL). Field: Physics research A visit to the Ontario Science Centre in Canada as ...

Superconductors are materials that lose all resistance to electric current when cooled to a certain temperature. This temperature depends on the structure and composition of the ...

Industrial Research Limited (IRL) has developed a type of very powerful magnet – a dipole – using high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coils. In 2009 the first magnet ...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be used to detect things an X-ray can’t. MRI can look for disease, bleeding, Parkinson’s disease and head injuries. Dr Richard ...

Blood contains haemoglobin. Haemoglobin is an iron (Fe) containing protein that transports oxygen around the body from the lungs to where it is needed, like the ...

Magnetism and electricity are forces generated by the movement of electrons. They are both electromagnetic forces – the interplay of these two forces is the basis ...

Magnetism is an engaging context for science learning, and investigating the properties of magnets is a great activity for building curiosity. Moving students from simply playing ...

The earliest weather vane we know about was in Greece in 48 BC, erected in honour of the Greek god Triton. It became quite popular for ...

Three historic discoveries were instrumental in the development of electric motors – the invention of the battery by Alessandro Volta in 1800, the generation of a ...

In this activity, students watch video clips of IRL research scientist Dr Nick Strickland talking about superconductivity and the Meissner effect and then answer a series ...

In this activity, students listen to a podcast of IRL superconductivity scientist Bob Buckley talking about this work and then answer a series of graded questions ...

In this activity, students investigate the pattern of magnetic fields on a fridge magnet. This will give them an idea of the principle behind scanning probe ...

In this activity, students practise and then design n-back tests. By the end of this activity, students should be able to: understand how the n-back test ...

In this recorded professional learning session, Lyn Rogers and Dr Simon Taylor explore aspects of magnetism. They: explore how magnetism can be used as a context ...

Use this interactive to explore the similarities and differences between weather and climate. Place the statement cards where you think they belong. The three options are: ...

Bar magnets are typical magnets used in schools, coloured to show the poles – red showing north and grey showing south.