What Rare-earth Magnets are Used in Everyday Life

Rare earth magnets play a significant role in a wide range of devices including simple toys, computers, credit cards, MRI machines, and business equipment. There are:

Health and Medicine

Magnets are found in some commonly used medical equipment such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines. MRIs use powerful magnetic fields to generate a radar-like radio signal from inside the body, using the signal to create a clear, detailed picture of bones, organs and other tissue. An MRI magnet is very strong – thousands of times more powerful than common kitchen magnets. Another medical use for magnets is for treating cancer. A doctor injects a magnetically-sensitive fluid into the cancer area and uses a powerful magnet to generate heat in the body. The heat kills the cancer cells without harming healthy organs.

Further Reading: Permanent Magnet used in the Medical Industry

In the Home

Though it may not be obvious, most homes contain many magnets. Refrigerator magnets hold papers, bottle openers, and other small items to the metal refrigerator door. A pocket compass uses a magnetic needle to show which way is north. The dark magnetic strip on the backside of a credit card stores data in much the same way as a computer’s hard drive does. Vacuum cleaners, blenders, and washing machines all have electric motors that work by magnetic principles. You’ll find magnets in phones, doorbells, shower curtain weights and children’s toys.

Further Reading: 9 Uses of Magnets in the House

Computers and Electronics

Many computers use magnets to store data on hard drives. Magnets alter the direction of magnetic material on a hard disk in segments that then represent computer data. Later, computers read the direction of each segment of the magnetic material to “read” the data. The small speakers found in computers, televisions, and radios also use magnets; inside the speaker, a wire coil and magnet convert electronic signals into sound vibrations.

Electric Power and Other Industries

Magnets offer many benefits to the industrial world. Magnets in electric generators turn mechanical energy into electricity, while some motors use magnets to convert electricity back into mechanical work. In recycling, electrically-powered magnets in cranes grab and move large pieces of metal, some weighing thousands of pounds. Mines use magnetic sorting machines to separate useful metallic ores from crushed rock. In food processing, magnets remove small metal bits from grains and other food. Farmers use magnets to catch pieces of metal that cows eat out in the field. The cow swallows the magnet with its food; as it moves through the animal’s digestive system it traps metal fragments.

Compasses and Navigation

In historic times, magnets had a supernatural thriller to them due to the fact human beings didn’t virtually recognize the technology at the back of how they work. However, the early Chinese are believed to have first used them in magnetic compasses for navigation purposes. They found out magnets could direct needles and correlated with the north pole, and used that information to navigate. The early compasses have been created with lodestone because present-day magnets were no longer invented yet.

Lodestone comes from the mineral magnetite and is the handiest obviously-occurring magnet. modern-day day magnets, like neodymium magnets and uncommon earth magnets, are crafted from a complicated process in which some of the metals are forged together. This technique helps to cause them to be stronger and extra suitable for the way they’re used today. Therefore, lodestone in comparison to sturdy uncommon earth magnets is weaker.

Robots and Medicine

Now, the uses of NdFeB magnets are numerous and varied. Advances in the manner that uncommon earth magnets are created have made them more flexible and easier to use in some exceptional applications. In robotics, magnets are essential. Not only do magnets assist with the electronics part, but they assist make robots extra mobile and compact. These days, foldable drones, magnetic nanotechnologies like Google X and other progressive makes use of magnets have popped up.

Magnets can be one of the oldest materials in the world, but there may be nevertheless lots that we don’t recognize about them. Innovators will probably continue to use them in new, creative methods which have the capability to improve how we stay.

Magnets are historic. They’re so old the real discovery of magnetism is extremely of a legend. It becomes stated that approximately 4000 years ago, a shepherd named Magnes to become out herding his sheep when his metallic workforce and the nails in his shoes stuck to a black rock. That black rock becomes magnetite and it contained lodestone. Since then, our use of magnets has developed in hundreds of different methods.

Magnets and their Strength

We may additionally have been using magnets for centuries, however, it wasn’t until in the direction of the 20th century that they have been greater fully understood with the aid of scientists. Before they had been more of a paranormal or mysterious substance and nobody surely knew how or why they worked, attracting magnetic materials. But, as soon as magnetic fields have been extra absolutely understood, scientists started out coming across the connection between magnets and different phenomena, mainly power.